W5 QA

[Ana Mizuki]

So apparently there was a QA on the WoD discord on W5 with JUstin.

Link to the doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...G4pjUFfyw/edit

I find it interesting to how 'most garou are assumed to be human-born' but lupus are still an option. One that apparently has ZERO statistical negatives.

[Knightingale]

I've just posted it on another forum but I've listened to the interview with Outstar and here are my notes on the details:

• Q1: What is WtA?
• Garou are werewolves and what makes them special is their spiritual side
• But you’re also a creature of rage
• Spirit-world is part of the game and interaction with spirits is important
• Genesis of Garou is to fight for Gaia
• Gaia is dead or dying
• World is in a state of apocalypse and the reason for that is human greed
• Humans have abused Gaia for their own profit
• Werewolves as Gaia’s original chosen warriors fight back against that
• A lot of werewolves believe that the war is lost
• But many battles can still be fought and that is what W5 is about
• Outstar comment: Unlike previous editions, this one is in the age of apocalypse and the fifth edition is going back to the roots in what the original game-splats were about
• Q2: But it also brings the game into the modern age and to a modern audience, so how does W5 show that?
• W5 makes a clean break with legacy-editions
• Intention to refocus on a personal, street-level presentation
• Which is why in W5 the apocalypse is happening
• Previously you fought to avert the apocalypse and there was this grand, almost legendary, heroic, epic style of “We’re going to fight for the sake of the world!”
• But that makes it difficult to keep a very personal focus
• You can have personal stories in that mode too but you partake in this grand, epic fantasy to save the world
• But if you look at the world outside you see that humanity is in dire straits
• Young werewolves have to deal with becoming werewolves and the fact that the world is doomed
• And because of that individual choices become more important
• Werewolves don’t know how much time is left before the world truly ends
• Q3: Is 5^th edition/W5 more like a reboot?
• Justin: Absolutely
• Wants to go back to 1^st edition
• Garou are warriors for Gaia
• Werewolves are opposed to
• Cosmology of the spirit-world: You’ve got three entities who aren’t exactly spirits, more like demiurges, forces of nature
• Wyld: sense of creation, raw creation, chaos,
• Weaver: order, law, stasis
• Wyrm: collapse, decay, corruption
• There’s a cosmological cycle to the world
• In the apocalypse of W5 the Wyrm is ascendant
• One reason is that people exploit the earth
• The cycle is out of balance like the rich get richer, people with connections can build more connections
• Once you start taking, you can’t stop and that has elevated the Wyrm
• Weaver tries to put the Wyrm in check but it’s not the Garou’s friend
• Weaver putting order on things and fence things in
• Wyld also no friend to Garou
• Weaver and Wyrm are overclocked and try to crush Wyld
• All three threaten Gaia
• Q4: How does this play in the game?
• You the werewolf have to figure this out
• For example, there’s no more gift like “Sense Wyrm”
• There’s no power that can objectively tell you what is wyrm-tainted
• You’re supposed to figure it out from the clues
• Is this disease-spirt a Wyld-spirit or a Wyrm-spirit, for example
• Q5: V5 and H5 are focusing on young Vampires and young Hunters, does W5 play in a similar way? How do young Werewolves learn about the cosmology, for example?
• Even though the apocalypse has happened, there are elder Garou out there
• Young Garou resent older Garou because “if you had done your fucking job, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”
• There are tensions between age-groups
• Finding a mentor important to young garou to understand legacy, though
• But it’s a warrior-culture, a might-makes-right-culture and it leans into authoritarianism
• Older Garou are like “you have to do it our way.” And believe they can turn things around.
• The culture is important, though, in making sure you’re not just a rage-filled monster (like wights in Vampire)
• Or the truth about the universe could send you into a state called Harano (which is essentially heavy depression)
• Q6: Even though you fight for the betterment of the world, you are still a monster, you’re not a hero.
• You’re not playing the good guys
• You’re the protagonist
• The cause of Gaia is righteous
• Touchstones could get hurt because of the Rage
• Q7: What concepts are there that 5^th edition players would be familiar with?
• Touchstones are there to bring down the Rage and will help you restore Willpower
• There are Loresheets in W5
• They’re still working on figuring out what they exactly are
• Loresheets could be Camps or traditions/groups/subsets of Tribes
• Or you may know something about the antagonists
• You may have been a Get of Fenris and once that Tribe has gone off-the-rails you may have left the Tribe
• You may know stuff about the Black Spiral Dancers (who have given themselves over to the Wyrm)
• A lot of Werewolf vs Werewolf conflict in W5 (which fell by the wayside in legacy-editions sometimes)
• Rage-dice analogous to V5 Hunger-dice
• Q7: What did playtests tell you about where you want to take the game?
• Werewolves are volatile creatures of rage
• If systems get too complex, you might lose the feeling of how a werewolf can just explode with rage
• Werewolf most combat-oriented and therefore they should feel powerful
• The base combat-system of H5 is kept but Werewolves have more options in augmenting their power through Gifts and Rites (that are performed by the pack)
• But it shouldn’t feel like a min-maxing tactical exercise
• Q8: What are the most fundamental changes to W5 compared to previous editions? (And this is about the two recent blog-posts on world-of-darkness.com)
• Tribe is what you do: For example, Bone Gnawer is gathering secrets, testing taboos is Ghost Council, fight injustice is Black Furies
• Auspice is your moonsign… (the connection got lost there, so the answer couldn’t be heard)
• Breed isn’t part of the game
• Main-thing is to build Renown (relationship with spirits and other Garou)
• Q9: How do you become a Werewolf?
• Nobody knows, Werewolves just emerge (which is a huge change for W5)
• Part of Pack-duties is to look for “Kin” (people who have potential to become werewolves but don’t know that yet)
• There are special abilities for that but you can also look for clues like anger-issues
• But there’s no discernible rhyme or reason to this
• Get and Black Spiral Dancers are also looking for Kin
• Packs also compete over Kin
• Kin who never find their mentors or reject Garou can become these rage-filled monsters
• And there’s another type of Kin, for example, who somehow managed to get into the Umbra but couldn’t find their way back, starve and then turn into a ravenous spirit
• But the First Change can be triggered by a traumatic event, so a Pack might decide to push a Kin into trouble to trigger the change
• There’s a subsection in “Being a werewolf” for each Tribe, for example, Red Talons say “Gaia chooses, that’s it.”, others says “You find your spiritual calling through meditation and individual alignment with particular beliefs.”
• Q10: Tribe is not like a Vampire-Clan in that it’s forever tied to a character, so how does that work?
• The way Tribe works is another mystery to Garou
• You may feel that it’s predetermined, a kind of calling even before the First Change
• For example, you may have this feeling to fight injustice and therefore become a Black Fury
• Or after the First Change, you may have your moment of clarity and then become a Black Fury
• You pledge to a Tribe, it’s not innate
• Q11: What about the Umbra?
• That is another mystery to the Garou, they don’t know exactly how it works
• It’s a shadow-reflection of the world
• But something can only be reflected in the Umbra if people care about it emotionally
• For example, if there’s an oil-spill and the animals that are trapped in it are suffering – that’s going to be reflected in the Umbra
• Umbra doesn’t align with the physical geography of the real world
• Thoughts and emotions are more important
• Umbra isn’t hostile to Garou but it’s unpredictable
• If a pharma-corporation is poisoning people, then there’s a reflection of that in the Umbra
• ST-tool to create a world of metaphor
• Q12: What about the Patron-Spirit?
• You pledge to a Patron-spirit and then inherit the other people who pledged to that spirit and that’s what creates the Tribe
• Through the Patron-Spirit the social structure of the Tribe emerges
• The PS grants you Gifts but not the powers themselves but rather access to spirits who align with the PS and those spirits then grant the Gifts
• Like “Oh, you’re one of Stag’s brood, let me give you this power.”
• PS gives a Favor and a Ban
• Favor something that you’re good at additionally
• Ban a behavior-code that the Patron-Spirit expects from the Garou
• But the PS of the pack doesn’t have to relate to the Tribes (but Justin Achilli & co are still working out how this could work)
• And this pack spirit could then help the entire pack rather than PS only helping individual Garou
• Q13: How do Rites and Gifts work? (But development-wise this is still a work-in-progress)
• Gifts are finite, short-term special abilities (like Disciplines in V5 or Edges in H5)
• Like turn your claws to silver, make yourself difficult to see
• You call on a spirit to do something for you
• Garou are societal people but in W5 the Garou-Nation has been torn apart
• Rites are rituals performed by a gathering of multiple Garou which gives all attendees benefits
• They get easier to do the more people are doing them
• But there’s a risk: The more Garou are together the bigger the risk of one of them freaking out and losing themselves to the Rage

(There’s talk here about the process of getting an RPG-book from idea to finished, physical copy… nothing too illuminating particularly about W5 is said here)

• Q14: How does the diversity-consulting work?
• Early on before the outline, they talked to Native American diversity consultaants
• For example, the word “savage” won’t appear in W5
• After the book is finished Justin & co it will go to an editor and then to a diversity-consultant who will also proofread it
• The diversity-consultant is not there to say “You can’t do this!” but to interrogate what the developers are going for and how best to present that
• Q15: What is the scope of W5? What about places where wolves naturally don’t exist?
• W5 assumes majority of Garou are Homid (Human-born), so anywhere where people are, there can be werewolves
• In future supplements particular indigenous animal populations and local cultures that resonate with werewolves may be explored
• There’s also another set of antagonists in the corebook, like for example, raven-shifters or spider-shifters
• And in future books things like the Gurahl (the werebears) may be introduced
• Q16: What are the antagonists of W5 like?
• Antagonist-chapter currently 26.5k words
• The antagonist-descriptions are more concise compared to H5
• A lot of spirit-antagonists
• Gaia-spirits can also be antagonists
• Human and animal hosts can be invaded by a spirit and become antagonists
• If it happens in the longterm, they’re called Formori, in the short-term it’s possession
• Werewolves also antagonists like BSD
• The Get of Fenris used to be a good Tribe but they pursued their own goals and got so lost in it that they split from the Garou-Nation
• They represent Haglust, driven by Rage and are very fanatical in their crusade against the Wyrm (kind of a “If you’re not with me, you’re against me.”-vibe plus rage-induced paranoia)
• Stargazers are also in the antagonist-section but they’re more like an enigmatic ally
• Once they were part of the Garou-Nation but lost faith in it and sought alliances with other shapeshifters
• Vampires, mages, changelings, mortals are also represented
• Mortals can become obstacles to saving Gaia like police, soldiers or members of the PMC by being exploiters or agents of state-violence
• Criminals or a priest could become obstacles
• Q17: What is the role/position of vampires in W5?
• They aren’t necessarily of the Wyrm anymore but that’s because in W5 there’s no objective way to determine if something is “Wyrm-tainted”, for example.
• Vampires may associate with a company that supports the Wyrm’s agenda
• But they aren’t inherently antagonistic
• It always has to be decided on a case-by-case basis in W5
• All WOD5E games are just looking at the same core through different lense

[Knightingale]

Looking at the google-doc of the discord-Q&A...

Are camps still a thing?
Camps aren't in the core book, but there's definitely room for factions of werewolves within tribes. Maybe a Loresheet built on this concept...

Weird that Justin would say that... In the overview with Outstar he mentioned that it could be something like that but overall, Loresheets are still a WIP for what they exactly will be like in W5.

Also, though, what didn't come across in the interview with Outstar was that how exactly Rage works in W5 is still in development.

[Heavy Arms]

Does anyone else find it strange that W5 is supposed to be coming out next year, they've already started releasing blogs about it, they've commissioned art and other design aspects for it... but so many things are still "work in progress" or otherwise underdevelopment?

It seems strange to me that the game seems to be ramping up for pre-release hype, but at the same time there's some pretty important details that haven't been hammered out yet. Even after the manuscript is finished, things like layout, art, editing (esp. with a diversity consultant pass), proofing print copies... all that stuff can take months to finish.

I'm not expecting a release before August, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it laterin 2023, but there's a communication disconnect between W5 getting ready to go, and how much still needs to be figured out on the base development side of things.

[Knightingale]

Does anyone else find it strange that W5 is supposed to be coming out next year, they've already started releasing blogs about it, they've commissioned art and other design aspects for it... but so many things are still "work in progress" or otherwise underdevelopment?

It seems strange to me that the game seems to be ramping up for pre-release hype, but at the same time there's some pretty important details that haven't been hammered out yet. Even after the manuscript is finished, things like layout, art, editing (esp. with a diversity consultant pass), proofing print copies... all that stuff can take months to finish.

I'm not expecting a release before August, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it laterin 2023, but there's a communication disconnect between W5 getting ready to go, and how much still needs to be figured out on the base development side of things.

Had the same thought... Also found that weird in the context of the Outstar-interview where she asked about playtests and what Justin Achilli had learned from that. The amount of stuff that is still a WIP, I'm doubtful that they're even out of the playtesting-stage yet where various options are being tested.

Personally, I think Q1 2024 is more realistic. Maybe 2023 is tentatively talked about because the higher-ups at Paradox are expecting (or want) W5 to be released in 2023. Time will show if they will be able to do that...

[Helur]

so we're gonna get Werewolf the Apocalypse V edition and Werewolf the Forsaken III in one book.

[Ana Mizuki]

• Intention to refocus on a personal, street-level presentation
• Which is why in W5 the apocalypse is happening
• Previously you fought to avert the apocalypse and there was this grand, almost legendary, heroic, epic style of “We’re going to fight for the sake of the world!”
• But that makes it difficult to keep a very personal focus
• You can have personal stories in that mode too but you partake in this grand, epic fantasy to save the world
• But if you look at the world outside you see that humanity is in dire straits
• Young werewolves have to deal with becoming werewolves and the fact that the world is doomed
• And because of that individual choices become more important
• Werewolves don’t know how much time is left before the world truly ends

The focus is on the immediate and personal, individual battles rather than winning the war (which may well be done at this point). "We hold on to our caern for another few weeks and the ragabash may even survive" instead of "we saved the planet and destroyed the Wyrm."

This really bothers me because it implies that the point of these epic fights and adventures was missed. The scale was epic because the stakes were high, if the Nation failed the whole of existence would go poof.

Now, the implications are that the Garou Nation lost, the Apocalypse is happening and the Wyrm is winning.

There are two reasons why this is a very bad idea;

1.) If the Apocalypse is happening, why are regular people/Hunters/Vampires not noticing it? The Veil is artificial, it does not ACTUALLY exist and the Wyrm's forces are as stifled by it as the Gaians. If they are winning, why the heck would they care to upkeep the Veil anymore?

2.) It is really REALLY bad form for a game about environmental destruction and societal wrongs to just go "Eh, sorry, the fight was lost." Especially given the reason the fight is lost is to make the game more personal. The heart of WtA is pushing against insane odds to earn inches of hope, just like we are IRL. There is no longer any hope, this is now just selfish survival.


I think the dumbest part of it all is, that you could have a more personal setting without killing hope by just flipping things. Instead of the Apocalypse happening, have the garou WIN it. When all the stressors of saving the world are gone and the Nation does no longer need to stay together just to survive? Well, I could MUCH more easily see the Gazers leaving and the Fenrir deciding to go and take over stuff.

[Saur Ops Specialist]

Does anyone else find it strange that W5 is supposed to be coming out next year, they've already started releasing blogs about it, they've commissioned art and other design aspects for it... but so many things are still "work in progress" or otherwise underdevelopment?

It seems strange to me that the game seems to be ramping up for pre-release hype, but at the same time there's some pretty important details that haven't been hammered out yet. Even after the manuscript is finished, things like layout, art, editing (esp. with a diversity consultant pass), proofing print copies... all that stuff can take months to finish.

I'm not expecting a release before August, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it laterin 2023, but there's a communication disconnect between W5 getting ready to go, and how much still needs to be figured out on the base development side of things.

IIRC, Exalted 1e was also not fully put together when they started doing glossary drops around late 2000/early 2001, and that was no more than an eight-month leadup to release (August 2001, slightly sooner for the collector's edition). It may just be a habitual old WW thing.

[Heavy Arms]

I also want to make Justin and Outstar read the review of Don't Look Up. Even for people that liked the movie, and are receptive to its message, the pessimism of the movie turned people off. I'm not sure how many times I've said this in various topics, but Millennials and Zoomers do not react positively as a generality towards entertainment where "you're fucked, how are you going to spend what time there is left before the end," is a central aspect.

The the 18 to 36 cohort does not need even more reminders that humanity is on the verge of irrevocably fucking itself into extinction and taking out a lot of the rest of life on Earth with it.

[Ana Mizuki]

Actually, the "Apocalypse is happening and no one else notices" is also really short-sighted considering the WOD5 canon. The Second Inquisition scored a HUGE win for humanity and is doing a bang-up job at chasing the vampires about. As silly as it sounds, things are looking up for humanity.


So why on earth would you take a setting where the ancient puppet masters are on the run and then just make it so all of it is for naught. Especially as Justin tweeted that WoD is no longer even a darker version of our world.

So he is unintentionally saying that -we- have lost XD

[Heavy Arms]

IIRC, Exalted 1e was also not fully put together when they started doing glossary drops around late 2000/early 2001, and that was no more than an eight-month leadup to release (August 2001, slightly sooner for the collector's edition). It may just be a habitual old WW thing.

A lot of that stuff was also not actually in the core book (like every Exalted's fully details that wasn't a Solar), which gave them a lot of time to finish them up without it negatively impacting the overall product. Each Exalted edition has started development of the non-Solars before the corebook released, enough to drop stuff about the non-Solars, even though there was a lot of WIP left on them.

[Knightingale]

Even as a game-setting... So the general mood of the game is for young, inexperienced Garou to go on some mission, adventure or whatever and the ST has to make sure that after the PCs are successful, everyone's reminded that this is just a drop in the bucket and the world is still ending.

But the scope/focus is supposed to be personal stories...?

In general, the type of storytelling where you deal with the apocalypse and stopping it isn't an option... The kind of tropes you associate with that are (kinda similar to a character facing a terminal illness) about making amends, finding freedom now that you're free of the constraints of normal life since normality isn't a thing in the face of the end of the world, exploring your curiosity before all things end, trying to preserve stuff for whatever civilization rises out of the ashes of the current one... stuff like that. Why would any Garou play spirit-cop - even when it comes to Wyrm-spirits? Just let them run rampant. The world is ending anyway.

I could imagine an older Garou filled with regret facing the apocalypse by still doing the same old thing he has done his whole life, still trying to be Gaia's protector even though Gaia's dead/dying. But young werewolves...? Why would they even care about the whole Garou-thing in that setting? It has become irrelevant.

[Ana Mizuki]

Even as a game-setting... So the general mood of the game is for young, inexperienced Garou to go on some mission, adventure or whatever and the ST has to make sure that after the PCs are successful, everyone's reminded that this is just a drop in the bucket and the world is still ending.

But the scope/focus is supposed to be personal stories...?

In general, the type of storytelling where you deal with the apocalypse and stopping it isn't an option... The kind of tropes you associate with that are (kinda similar to a character facing a terminal illness) about making amends, finding freedom now that you're free of the constraints of normal life since normality isn't a thing in the face of the end of the world, exploring your curiosity before all things end, trying to preserve stuff for whatever civilization rises out of the ashes of the current one... stuff like that. Why would any Garou play spirit-cop - even when it comes to Wyrm-spirits? Just let them run rampant. The world is ending anyway.

I could imagine an older Garou filled with regret facing the apocalypse by still doing the same old thing he has done his whole life, still trying to be Gaia's protector even though Gaia's dead/dying. But young werewolves...? Why would they even care about the whole Garou-thing in that setting? It has become irrelevant.

Yeah, it seems like they took a look at the premise and decided that saving Gaia and trying to work together to do so was too...idk, optimistic? When the whole point is that it is a hope to do anything good. To use a recent show as an example, in the Dark Crystal Age of Resistance we know that the gelfling will mostly be slaughtered. No matter how succesful the resistance seems, it will not be enough. But the point is that through their efforts something does remain and hope is not yet dead. That is what WtA is about.

Heck, as much as W5 is taking from Forsaken, it is not taking the relaxed setting where threats truly are personal.

[Knightingale]

Yeah, it seems like they took a look at the premise and decided that saving Gaia and trying to work together to do so was too...idk, optimistic? When the whole point is that it is a hope to do anything good. To use a recent show as an example, in the Dark Crystal Age of Resistance we know that the gelfling will mostly be slaughtered. No matter how succesful the resistance seems, it will not be enough. But the point is that through their efforts something does remain and hope is not yet dead. That is what WtA is about.

Heck, as much as W5 is taking from Forsaken, it is not taking the relaxed setting where threats truly are personal.

With how the Kin work and the focus on Patron Spirits with Tribes and the pessimism regarding Garou... What I'm thinking about is a game in some post-apocalyptic wasteland of Jack Vance's Dying Earth variety or maybe something like Darren Aronofsky's Noah. You're playing these packs of Werewolves trying to survive. And Garou are talked about in jokes and described as failures. But the PCs are part of a cohort who don't just look at the losses and failings of the Garou-Nation but also at the legends of their heroics. And they think "Maybe it's time to bring back the Garou-Nation, maybe things can still get turned around."

But as I'm writing this, I realize... I'm just talking myself into something we've already had with the old WtA. I just can't picture how this focus on personal street-level stories is supposed to work together with a bleak "The apocalypse is here!"-setting.

[Asmodai]

• Previously you fought to avert the apocalypse and there was this grand, almost legendary, heroic, epic style of “We’re going to fight for the sake of the world!”
• But that makes it difficult to keep a very personal focus
• You can have personal stories in that mode too but you partake in this grand, epic fantasy to save the world

There's a lot of crap in there, but honestly this REALLY pisses me off. What I can see from this is essentially this:



I've loved how Sense Wyrm was implemented. It was a brilliant way to show how the world was corrupted on all the levels, and how anyone who used it as sense evil would be an utterly psychotic maniac and would be causing even more harm than good. But no worries, now we cannot tell bloodsucking corpses that enslave humanity and turn them into addics are bad for the world.. Alas, That's just a few more things that Justin seems to not understand.