The Fight Isn't Over

[Heavy Arms]

Op detected.

And yet, that exact sort of attitude killed the punk artistic movement as something that had any sort of cultural clout, and has rendered it a bunch of old hats clinging onto their youthful coolness that the actual young activist cultures have moved beyond.

I remember when the first 90s era punk bands that went mainstream did, and the punk community immediately labelled them as sellouts (despite not having actually changed their music). Instead of the punk community embracing the idea that their message was resonating with a wider audience - even people that didn't consider themselves into the punk scene itself - as a good thing, they rejected it. So we got the, generally, better post-punk revival acts that put the spirit of being punk over aesthetics, and all the shit punk-pop revival that put the aesthetics on a shiny hollow pop lyric.

Meanwhile all the OG punks were just shaking their heads at the next generation repeating the same thing that their generation of punks did that cause them to fall off the map during the 80s.

One of the problems with punk as a genre, is that it tends to turn into a circular firing squad as everyone wants to declare their vision of punk the "true" one and go after other punks for not being the right kind of punk, instead of remembering what brought them all together in the first place.

Just like punk subculture would have done better for itself if it left room for there to be mainstream successful punk bands, the WoD needs to have room for punks that make deals with the powers-that-be to try to spread the message to a wider audience and make it easier for people to get into the serious punk scene.

The WoD isn't being true to being punk when it gets prescriptivist about what is and isn't punk; instead of letting people explore all of punk's iterations.

[Heavy Arms]

Sure they are evil, but in terms of hunters the question is not IF they are evil but are they evil in a way that compromises supernatural hunting. If not, as long as the vampires and werewolves get killed, who cares?

Additionally, "the CIA is evil," is the lack of nuace that harms the viability of the setting. The CIA is full of people that think they're fighting evil. They think they're in the right. They think it's justified. If you can't explore why extra-judicial drone strikes are evil, but extra-judicial vampire hunting is good, you can't really do independent Driven hunters or compromised Org hunters narrative justice,

[Jachra]

Additionally, "the CIA is evil," is the lack of nuace that harms the viability of the setting. The CIA is full of people that think they're fighting evil. They think they're in the right. They think it's justified. If you can't explore why extra-judicial drone strikes are evil, but extra-judicial vampire hunting is good, you can't really do independent Driven hunters or compromised Org hunters narrative justice,

This is pretty cringingly pro-CIA, not gonna lie! I don't think it benefits anyone except the powers that be to prevaricate about it, honestly. The CIA causes way more harm than VtM Vampires ever do.

Which gets me back to werewoofs -

Our mega floofs need something defining them, and Row Row Fight the Powah has always been a pretty good one.

[TwoDSix]

Out of the original five WoD I'm fairly certain both Werewolf and Changeling had you as part of the gameline's 'elite' by default, while Mage had multiple Traditions in the core rulebook who used to be the man (the OoH and the Technocracy defectors, I don't know enough about the other Traditions to say if it applies to all). Not every gameline began as Anarchs fighting the Camarilla.

I mean, you were still assumed to be at the bottom rungs of the elite, except for maybe Changeling, but you were one of them. In Werewolf you were supposed to be an internal reformist, changing the nation from within.

As for something to define our werewolves, 'row row fight the powah' feels like it was done well in Vampire, no need to make the lines too samey. What if we went for something different, maybe highly religious warriors fighting to stop environmental destruction? It might be a bit shallow but we can develop it, maybe the major causes are ones you can't solve with claws and fangs?

[Heavy Arms]

This is pretty cringingly pro-CIA, not gonna lie!

That sounds exactly like a CIA plant trying to discredit left leaning organizations and individuals would say in this situation.

My father once described a party he was at where everyone knew there were three FBI "undercover" informants, because they did exactly this: say the most extreme and lacking in nuance views in hopes of getting people to voice agreement, to isolate targets to report to their superiors, and then try to paint anyone that wasn't as hardcore "anti-the-man" as their initial rhetoric as a traitor to the cause to increase their perceived status. All actual planning for protests, political rallies, and so on didn't include those people, and the FBI couldn't figure out why they couldn't get good intel.

I didn't say anything pro-CIA. I pointed out that the human beings working at the CIA don't think the CIA is evil.

I pointed out that you undermine the point of a punk critique of the hunter Orgs if the Orgs are inherently bad, and the Driven can never be so bad to have their Driven status removed. Actual punk activists might want to shout their messages loud and in people's faces, but they know the work to make things happen takes a more nuanced world view.

Orgs bad, Driven good, with no deep exploration of why, isn't punk. It's pop-punk at best, and anti-punk more directly.

Our mega floofs need something defining them, and Row Row Fight the Powah has always been a pretty good one.

The Garou had plenty defining them. W5 is getting rid of all of that. "Row Row Fight the Powah" isn't what pre-W5 was about, and isn't what W5 is setting up either.

[Heavy Arms]

Out of the original five WoD I'm fairly certain both Werewolf and Changeling had you as part of the gameline's 'elite' by default, while Mage had multiple Traditions in the core rulebook who used to be the man (the OoH and the Technocracy defectors, I don't know enough about the other Traditions to say if it applies to all).

For mages, it kinda depends.

To an extent, all of the Traditions (and most of the Crafts for that matter) draw from people that were elites at some point in history. This is largely because for most of human history, people were more isolated. The Dreamspeakers are the most extreme example, because we don't really consider their former positions of power in human communities as being "elite" in the same sense, because for many proto-Dreamspeaker groups, the gap between the elite and the average was very small because survival pressures put far more on cooperative activity. But even with that, it's canon that the Awakened among the various Shinto priests (not all members of the Shinto faith) joined the Dreamspeakers by a huge margin, making the Dreamspeakers elite status in Japan that would still be significant today. So it's not just sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas dealing with colonialism.

Even the Cult of Ecstasy and Akashayana were elites in the sense starting as groups with a lot of mystics living off in isolated areas, but who had insights people would come to them for. The Oracle of Delphi might not be "the man," but the Seers of Chronos were the proto-Tradition that benefited from the elite status of being the people peasant and prince would come to ply for insight into the future.

The Chorus and the Chakravanti are probably closer to the Order of Hermes in terms of traditional political elite power.

It's worth remembering that this is a fairly big point of disagreement between the Traditions and the Disparates. The Traditions have abandoned trying to reclaim a world where being a mage is inherently a place of power, even if it will always be a place of privilege. The Disparates largely want to reclaim the social or political power they used to have.

[AnubisXy]

Yeah Heavy Arms, virtually all of the mage Traditions were part of groups that held positions of power or respect in some society. The only Tradition (or semi-Tradition) I can think of that didn't really have those sorts of ties were Hollow Ones. As a Tradition they're fairly and new most of their members came from the lower and middle classes. Further, unlike the Virtual Adepts (who were also a relatively new Tradition) they tended not to amass power, wealth and influence to the same extent.

Even most of the Crafts like the Al-i-Batin or the Wu Lung tended to be groups in power. One of the only Crafts I can think of that wasn't and was specifically composed of people that had little place in positions of power was the Wu Keng and they were a weird, weird group.

On the subject of Changeling though, there was very explicitly a major divide in the game between the Noble Kiths and the Commoner Kiths. The conflict between the nobles (mainly Sidhe) and the Commoners, and the way the Sidhe had just recently shown up, kicked everyone's ass and took over, was a major story point of the game. You could play one of the "elite" like a Sidhe noble, but if you were playing a Redcap of a Sluagh, you were most definitely not part of the elite and you would likely be facing some level of classism/racism from those in power.

[MrNatas]

I'm going to try to not dog pile here since I think everyone said what I was thinking.

My point wasn't "Hunter Orgs are not corrupt" my point was "why can't you play with someone climbing the corpo ladder" ... which is verbatim what I said. The heart of WoD isn't really a constant rage against the machine but more of the personal horror of realizing that the monster was never the thing you are (Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, Demon) but the monster the systems made you into.

And that's the rub of werewolf. The culture of being a Garou slowly erodes your sense into being something that only views things through the lens of violence. The few tribes that say things like "hey maybe we should temper our rage a bit" or "hey maybe technology can help us" are often viewed as lesser by other tribes (and by people in the werewolf community.) Personally, I find that interesting especially when you have people that are not born into that culture trying to adjust.

So, to address the statement, it's not about if Hunter Orgs are good (they are not) it's about if Hunters themselves are good people which, through the lens of personal horror, shouldn't be. So why is it not a valid mode of play to climb the Corpo ladder? Because it's not "punk", which just limits the type of play and stories you can tell.

[Asmodai]

I think it's worth also noting that for better or for worse, organisations like the CIA are responsible for the geopolitical standing of the USA. Morality of their actions is easy to question, but in geopolitics morals seem to be a quirk rather than a necessity as you're playing against titanic entities through small scale efforts. In a way, every successful vampire should aspire to be as effective as the CIA.

[Knightingale]

Yeah, and if you want a game that is about topics like geopolitics or themes like power and responsibility or there's a moralistic lens you're supposed to apply to tough choices or the effects of corruption on a bureaucracy... All of that can be explored if you're a part of an organization. The "everybody's evil and a sellout"-perspective is one suited for punk-stories where the perspective is one from people who are outsiders looking in due to their lack of privilege, resources, social standing etc. That comes with its own theme-set, of course.

And what H5 suffered from isn't its focus on punk necessarily but that it seemed to also make it their business to tell readers what NOT to play. It went out of its way to come up with in-world explanations to justify reprimanding people about how to play H5. Nothing about that added anything to the game.

What worries me is that the Get will end up fulfilling a similar function. You have one kind of evil Garou who worship the Wyrm and you have another kind of evil Garou who are "playing W5 the wrong way".

[Asmodai]

Yeah, and if you want a game that is about topics like geopolitics or themes like power and responsibility or there's a moralistic lens you're supposed to apply to tough choices or the effects of corruption on a bureaucracy... All of that can be explored if you're a part of an organization. The "everybody's evil and a sellout"-perspective is one suited for punk-stories where the perspective is one from people who are outsiders looking in due to their lack of privilege, resources, social standing etc. That comes with its own theme-set, of course.

This is exactly the theme for running Technocracy chronicles.And something I feel is very lost with the whole performative punk of the 5th edition.

[MrNatas]

All these things loop back to the ideas so far presented of W5. To me, fighting against the system with the world stacked against you seems 'Punk' ... but that's the Get. So, if W5 is supposed to go back to the "true gothic-punk" then why are we not exploring the ideas of what it means to fight the system that is baked into reality itself?

If the game is supposed to be how you as a young Garou are trying to fight the Wyrm but, the Elders of your Sept/Tribe are more content just laying down and weathering the storm. And it has been established that changing your tribe is pretty simple ... Why isn't there a massive migration to join the Get? Like what is it about the Get's position that is so unappealing that it makes it a non-starter. That's what I mean by limiting creativity. It's not enough to say "X organization is bad/corrupt so isn't an option" but, Why the organization is corrupt and what does that mean for the character in question.

[Knightingale]

I'm starting to think the way Garou-player-characters are supposed to operate in W5 is very different from previous editions. Justin Achilli just tweeted this about his favorite Formori in the W5 antagonist-chapter:

Pizza and coffee and revisiting the antagonists chapter. My favorite of the fomori (done by @kkhelil) is the one who's a lobbyist and supernaturally makes nothing get better in their proximity.

(later in response to someone liking the idea)

Totally. It fits the theme, in that they represent greenwashing interests, but they also prevent things like regeneration and Willpower recovery in their presence.

So one of the example Formori-antagonists is a... lobbyist? How would a pack of Garou ever encounter that guy... unless this new version of Garou is expected to be really invested in their human lives and spending quite some time just living a normal life with a job and whatnot.

[Ana Mizuki]

If the game is supposed to be how you as a young Garou are trying to fight the Wyrm but, the Elders of your Sept/Tribe are more content just laying down and weathering the storm. And it has been established that changing your tribe is pretty simple ... Why isn't there a massive migration to join the Get? Like what is it about the Get's position that is so unappealing that it makes it a non-starter.

This is just my theory, but maybe the intended message is that if you go and die on the battlefield, there is no one left to guard your Caern. Along with the mentality that leaving behind your human ties is wrong and you should try to have a (semi) normal human life too.

Most likely, the intended play would reflect the way Forsaken live; Guarding their territory and trying to cleave to human and spirit both.


Of course, the neon red glowing BUT in the skies is that since the Apocalypse is happening the Nation would not feel the need to guard things as much as put their all into a final battle to delay the end just a BIT.

But that is too epic and not personal (even though nothing is more personal than seeing the results of your actions during the final battle) and so the final push is demonized and the focus is instead on arranging deckchairs on the Titanic.

[Ana Mizuki]

So one of the example Formori-antagonists is a... lobbyist? How would a pack of Garou ever encounter that guy... unless this new version of Garou is expected to be really invested in their human lives and spending quite some time just living a normal life with a job and whatnot.

I'd say this is the case, which would mean no Curse or anything making interaction with humans hard. After all, there are no more kinfolk to handle this stuff.