Been quiet. Quiet is good because it means I’m getting stuff done. On the other hand, quiet means no open development, which is less good. So I’ll give you a general update now and work out what I can share for the next post.
- Book of Changing Breeds is with editing and art notes are compiled and with Mike Chaney. It’s a bit bigger than we first planned, around 120,000 words rather than 90,000—or 220 pages rather than 160. The vast majority of that is Changing Breed write-ups and mechanics, the book has some details on the Hengeyokai and the fledgling Ahadi, but nowhere near as much as Player’s Guide to the Changing Breeds. We need some stretch goals for the Kickstarter, after all.
- RAGE Across the World is in my hands. I’m taking a break from writing the introduction and art notes to write this post, in fact. It should be going to editing/art direction by the end of the week. Have I showed you the outline yet? No? Damn. Have a look at the outline and get excited.
- Book of the Wyrm first drafts are coming in and they’re looking good. I’ll throw the outline up once you’ve had a chance to digest RATW. Redlines here might be a bit delayed since I’m travelling 5,200 miles to attend a conference next week but I’ll try to show off a few bits before I fly.
Finally, this video is really quite interesting. As a fan of all things lycanthropic, seeing the development of the European werewolf myth is absolutely fascinating.
Comments
26 responses to “Busy as a mad thing”
Looking great! I’m excited to read up on some of the previous conflicts and stomping grounds and if/how they will be addressed in the new books, especially the Amazon and New York ^^
As one who thinks that the 20th Anniversary Edition should be at least as long as PGttCB, and on behalf of all the other players who think likewise, I would just like to say:
Challenge Accepted
This is fantastic news, exciting for both the “near” future as well as the potential for future books.
The RATW looks spectacular, it promises to really help adapt the mid-Second edition setting with the modern day. I’m also particularly excited for the new lupus section. My current group were all first timers when I found them which made me “lock out” lupus characters (due to that pesky “homid with more gnosis” bit I’ve seen so often). This should give them the info to really push themselves and reach a new level as roleplayers. Very exciting.
I also wouldn’t be me if I didn’t whinge for info about getting the PDF of W20? I know the book itself isn’t projected until January, but I’m hoping we’ll see the PDF sooner. I thought all those new gifts would be a great gift (thought I’d let them re-roll on the gifts to let them play with some new ones right away).
Read the “Rage across the world” outline, but I’m not sure how much I like it. Having some example places described in Wyld, Weaver, Wyrm chapters seems cool to show how different certain caerns/places/septs can be.
I fear however that creating mechanics and adding to much rules in the sept live chapter, will actually destroy that diversity again. For introducing new Rites and such makes differences too easily into rule mechanical choices instead of leaving them narrative quirks and local oddities.
It doesn’t have to be how your Sept works. All tribes, all Septs and all Totems will add their own distinct flavor to it. Guardian of the Caern once said “If you’ve seen one Sept… you’ve seen one Sept.” May I suggest seeing it as a solid ground to work from, a source of inspiration for tone, mood and mechanics? Then, you adjust with your setting’s elements.
Thing is, once it is statted, people will -want- the stats and the stats become the main point of the position, not roleplaying the position.
Much like Nexus Crawlers, other spirits, names of Gifts, the spirits that teach them, canon setting and more, it is up to the ST and the players to decide how they want to play the game (the idea of Nexus Crawlers having standard stats is funny to me anyways.)
These will be rules STs and players can use, but not every ST will use them, or use them as they’re written.
Yes, there will be players who will be upset if their totem/caern isn’t as it “should be” by the “new rules”, but there are players who can’t understand how a Garou who claims he has “Healing Touch of Gaia” can be using the Gift “Mother’s Touch” just because they call it something else IC. It’s up to STs to be up-front with their players about what to expect, but players have to be bendable too to the rules the ST uses.
We also don’t know just how strict these rules will be either. They could just be “suggestions”, or “influences” of sorts too. 🙂
I think that book is bloody brilliant. It covers everything I hoped it would. It’s like Christmas in a book. In all the blogs and all the forums, I’ve been voicing my concern about a lack of a lupus perspective and a need for expanded lore about the Garou’s every day life. And this is what this book is all about.
I couldn’t be happier about this and I simply must thank you all who will work on this book for delving into those topics. 🙂
We want to stick with the feel and the flavor of W20, that deep down thrill that comes with
seeing that the world’s fucked up, finding something responsible and cutting it’s throat
out. While Werewolf is a very cohesive game line, the Revised books sometimes played
up the fatalism. Let’s dial that back a bit and bring back the heavy metal. Bring back the
RAGE.
I disagree with this. While revised often felt less fantastic and wonderous, it also brought a lot of maturity on the table. That is why so many revised tribebooks and books in general worked so well for me, because they sat down and discussed the issues a tribe or the Nation as a whole faced. Simple things like poverty and inner tribal arguments gave the tribe a lot of flavour. As well as it gave the players a chance to use the different takes on things with their PCs.
As well, the fatalism doesn’t just come from the WoD side of things, the world has literally become darker from the 80s in some many ways. Ways that the Nation has few tools to combat with, if they stick to the Heavy Metal-way. That is where the revised maturity on these situations shone, the garou had to actually step from their Tage.pedal and use their lesser known skills and methods to fight the War on very different fronts.
The RAGE should be there, of course, but at the same time, there are many people who came to love Werewolf because of Revised edition’s themes and mood. These are as big of a nostalgic factor to the game, as is the Rage.
Werewolf politics have to be strict and ritualistic because it’s the only way to stop
the Garou from killing each other over the tiniest slight. These creatures feel supernatural
anger, the burning agony of a dying goddess. Yes, that’s flowery. But it’s also the point.
More even than W20, this book should grab the reader by the short and curlies and get
them psyched to fuck things up.
I feel this needs a bit dialing down, on the other hand. XD
While the garou are these Ragefilled monsters, they are also highly spiritual and religious creatures. A lot of garou rites aren’t actually that filled with Rage and ‘Raar kill’, there is a lot of sombre respect towards their pack/sept/tribal totems. When it comes to their worship, they often err on the side of respect rather than violence.
The garou live in large socities where the smallest unit is not an individual, but a pack. A pack’s duty is to their sept, and to their Elders. That alone, without tribal issues, is a huge amount of garou naturally working together. If a pack can have members from different tribes, and even a metis, I highly doubt they are the type to kill each other out of every little slight. The violence towards other werewolves as a general rule is much closer to Forsaken than Apocalyse. Forsaken can have wars just between two packs, while in Apocalypse that wouldn’t fly as easily.
Those are two points I really wanted to note.
I have read this and want to comment on it but I don’t have time just now.
What the hell, let’s see how well my fingers manage on a smartphone.
On tone, we’ve gone through a lot of writers since we were last publishing Apocalypse, and I’ve found that a bit of over-egging the outline towards the Heavy Metal approach actually ends up bringing just enough of it back to capture the feel of the really good books that we released during late 2E and Revised — you’ll see some of that in W20 and Changing Breeds as well.
On ritual, it’s not so much because Rage. It’s more to do with the way that militaries and martial societies use strict social rules and ritual behaviour to control their trained killers so they only kill people that the larger organization wants dead rather than making a bunch of trained killers and leaving them to piss one another off and come back and whoops everyone’s dead. That’d happen between packs because werewolves (the fundamental unit of werewolf society is the pack) but in a sept you still need all of that stuff because the culture’s been at war for the past several thousand years.
Okay, this is a good keyboar.d
What are these good books, exactly? One of my favourite books have been Past Lives and Players Guide to Garou.
As for the culture, while I agree on that take, it might be more in line with more militant tribes. tribes like Children of Gaia, Glass Walkers,etc. would not probaply be as volatile.
And I guess the question about metis still stands. If the garou need that strict rules to function -without- having a mule around, what hope is there for any metis to survive even few weeks alive after birth?
Please note that I am not trying to insult you, it is just something I am curious about.
Well converning the Metis that one’s fairly easy to answer.
In older time, they downright didn’t survive. A lot of the tribes killed them and their parents and that was that.
But in modern times, when you really look at it from a tribal culture perspective instead of the “vanilla tribeless” perspective of core books, it turns out that most tribes don’t really give a damn about Metis. Even the most antagonising, least forgiving and let’s kill an entire people just because they are too weak to defend their lands tribe (The Get, in case it wasn’t obvious) do not have issues with Metis. The Get blame parents for the mistakes of any children and that include things done by Metis (of course, in that case the parents will often be dead).
The only thing that matters is if the metis can prove himself worthy. If he’s strong of body, mind and will. If he’s accepted by Fenris, then he’s a Get. He’s strong, and that’s all that matters. He will not in any way be treated any differently than any other Garou.
Almost every tribes have a similar justification in one book or another for Metis characters to be viable within each tribe and rarely actually get persecuted. Some are hidden from visitors, most can never leave the caern before they can shift, but all in all, most Garou won’t care much further than an occasional verbal abuse.
I think the Fianna still kill the metis and both parents, but they are the rare exception rather than the rule. Of course any number of individuals from any of those tribes can ignore the “tribal” views and may be quite unpleasant, or even violent, to Metis.
That I know.
I simply pondered how it would work in the more stylized view that the Rage Across the World offers, is all ^^”
Stew: Oh, and might I say. I’ve very impressed by your capacity to type on a little phone’s keyboard.
Anna: I guess I’ll just let Stew answer then 🙂 I’m very curious about these things myself.
Something I find wonderful about the WoD books, particularly in Werewolf, is that a lot of their books are opinion and suggestion. Chapters written as if told by a character, with all the prejudices and views they hold. As much as I have the same sticking points as Ana wrt the lack of spiritual side presented (and the maturity of revised), I accept that this is the opinion and world view presented to champion the ideals of RAGE Across the World 🙂
Saying that… I really, really hope there will be books that tread similar ground from a different perspective! For example, a spiritual look at Garou society or the influence of that homid-side-born logic on curtailing some of the more detrimental aspects of Rage.
All I can say is; Sounds good to me. Keep it up.
Might we be allowed to know who is doing art for the CB book?
So far, all Rich has said is “Jeff Rebner”. So, there’s one. Hopefully more to come. 🙂
http://whitewolfblogs.com/blog/2012/12/10/why-were-media-junkies/
Dear Mr. Wilson,
Any chance we can see the outline for Book of the Wyrm as a Christmas present? We’ve been nice 😀
Thanks,
Yiodan
First off, to the White Wolf writers: you guys rock. I’ve been waiting for Werewolf: The Apocalypse to come back for a looooong time. You’ve made this Garou fangirl very, VERY happy.
I’m a bit wary about the new RatW, though. Garou being involved in all those protests…? With Pentex, the Technocratic Union, and the Camarilla pulling the strings, when has public opinion ever mattered? Maybe the Children of Gaia would try, I can see that. Same goes for Garou attitudes softening about the cities. But a big part of being Garou (from what I’ve seen) is living – and operating – outside of human society. That was the point: they’re werewolves. They’re not humans with super-powers, and they’re not activists, they’re shapeshifting beasts fighting for their wilderness territories and the fate of Gaia. They don’t wave signs and chant slogans, they go in there tooth-and-claw and raise hell for Pentex or whoever threatens their Goddess.
(Glass Walkers excepted, of course. But they’ll always be a Weaver-tainted Tribe in my eyes.)
Just my two cents. Thanks for bringing back Werewolf.
Actually, if I can chime in a bit here… getting involved in protest movements isn’t just about waving signs for Gaia. It’s about playing elaborate games of political chess with Gaia’s enemies, trying to thwart the string-pullers. It’s about leveling out the battlefield. (Also, some would argue that public opinion matters a very good bit to the Technocracy)
Also, movements like the Arab Spring can strengthen potential spirit allies that can be useful to the Garou in empowering fetishes or serving as pack totems.
But keep in mind that it’s not like the entire Garou Nation is getting involved in these matters as standard operating procedure. The ones focused on it are naturally going to be the ones who are personally invested in the humans involved — the Glass Walkers and Children of Gaia are naturally going to have an interest as are tribes whose kinfolk are part of it. But it’s not like anyone’s got Red Talons howling protest songs on street corners.
I agree with Shaffer. In 1992 it would be easy for werewolves to live without human interaction and involvement. But current day, twenty one years later the Weaver seems to have as much a stranglehold on the Wyld as the Wyrm does. Even the Amazon forest is being infested with deforestation and “soy plantations”.
One thing that the Garou would have to be is adaptable, or face extinction like the Red Talons. I think it would be incredibly interesting to see how the Garou have evolved to survive in the modern world. Humans obviously aren’t going away, and any Garou who adapt will be the wolves that come out on top.
Where I’m from in rural Ontario, there’s extensive wilderness, lots of forests, lots of wolves. Enough for like, sixty full Garou Septs. Maybe I’m a bit provincial? But there’s also the Rockies, and the Northwest Coast… I can see the Red Talons falling back to the North as their American territories collapse.
I don’t mind more Urrah as long as they keep their wildness, their werewolf-ness, and never forget their resentment of the Weaver and the cities and the apes. As long as they don’t forget the wild. I don’t want the entire Garou Nation turning into bloody Glass Walkers.
I can see the new generation of city Garou full of bitter, desperate Rage, ready to go out in a blaze of glory..
While there might be space for 60 septs, caerns have always been portrayed as few and far between. Certainly, when able, Garou take these places as territory but they just don’t have the manpower (pun not intended) to do so. YMMV with the tone of the stories you personally run, but in my experience caerns are goodly distances from each other. That’s why there is time dilution in parts of the Umbra and why the Garou utilize Moon Bridges.
Oopsie… you’re right, public opinion (i.e. consensus reality) *is* vital to the Technocracy. I just meant they they can spin things the way they want.
Ah, the Red Talons… my favorite-est tribe. They can sing Aerosmith’s “Eat the Rich”. But more likely, while the COGs and Glass Walkers are playing politics, they’re quietly chomping key Pentex personnel.
Just a little question. I’m sorry if I seem like I’m coming right out of nowhere with this, but, I thought Ethan was running the W20 show. Now, I realize it’s Stew Wilson. And I’m confused, because, Ethan was here with us when the blog started, and seemed to run it.
I really don’t mean to sound like I have a favorite. I’ve loved Ethan’s work for years and I’m very eager to see what Stew will cook us. I’m really just wondering which of you is doing what exactly. Thanks 🙂