So the authors are rummaging around in the guts of Werewolf like a bunch of Theurges who just figured out that haruspicy is a pretty fun way to get your divination on. A lot of discussion is flying back and forth about what to change, what is far too legacy to get rid of, and so on. Want to see some guts? Let’s see some guts, torn from writer commentary, and then I’d like to see what you think.
Ability Changes: Some notables here. It was pointed out that Leadership was a Skill in Werewolf: The Apocalypse, but a Talent in Werewolf and Mage. The proposed plan we’re looking at is:
* Talents loses Dodge, but gains Leadership. (“Dodge” was moved into Awareness for V20; it might be taken under Athletics for werewolves, which seems apt.)
* Skills loses Leadership, but gains Larceny. (Larceny is a useful Skill, especially for Ragabash and some tribes, that doesn’t have a good equivalent. Some Ragabash Gifts would do well to roll Larceny rather than Stealth.)
* Knowledges loses Linguistics, gains Technology. (Basically following V20’s lead.)
Backgrounds: Not all Background restrictions are very loved, despite being an old tradition. As Matt McFarland puts it, “Bone Gnawers not have Pure Breed, OK, makes sense. Glass Walkers not getting Mentor? Um…why? Options are better than restrictions, any day.”
This was counterpointed by Holden Shearer: “Some of the restrictions make sense, I think– lack of Pure Breed for some tribes, lack of Ancestors for the Silent Striders– but the social ones have always been weird… I mean, are Bone Gnawers incapable of rifling through the wallets of dead fomori? Does Rat destroy any money or stolen credit cards they scrounge up?”
Now, I may operate with a pretty wide-reaching hand on this issue. What do you think?
Gifts: Some changes here. A good example is making sure that some Gifts are the same level in all lists. Name the Spirit is the example here: level two for Theurges, level three for lupus. Yet:
“Cost for a lupus to buy the Gift out of his own list: 9xp. But he has to wait till Level Three.
Cost for a lupus to buy the Gift as a Theurge Gift: 10xp. But he can get it at Level Two.
Is 1xp worth of savings worth it to a lupus to wait a whole rank? Worse, that’s just the XP differential for that particular range– there are plenty of matchups where the earlier Gift could be cheaper to buy at ‘un-favored’ cost in addition to being available earlier.”
This is what happens when you hire writers who do math. So, expect some alterations to the Gift lists.
Rites: “Does anyone have any strong objections to me just burning the Rite of Caern Building to the ground and starting over from scratch, system-wise? I just ran the math on the thing and even with the best dice pool possible, the chances of ever successfully executing it to create even a lv1 caern are less than 0.1%. I know it’s supposed to be hard, but Jesus.”
I don’t have much to add to this. If your experiences were counter, though, I’d love to hear about them.
Spirit Combat:There are two sets of rules: pre-Revised, and Revised/Dark Ages. Here’s a plan: “I was going to go with the post-errata Revised rules, so the difficulty to damage a spirit is Rage -2, and we don’t have so many spirits with Rage 10. However, variable difficulties on the damage roll is a bad idea because it stops the damage roll being universal.
“So what I’m currently thinking: Garou use their physical traits in spirit combat, just like Revised. Spirits attack with Willpower, use Rage for damage, and soak with Willpower. The difficulty of the damage roll is fixed at 6.”
So, those are a few examples of the rules changes and tweaks we’re considering. Naturally, we still want Werewolf to feel like the sweet spot around 2nd edition, with the best parts of 1st edition and Revised incorporated. But sometimes the changes go a little further, and naturally we’re cool with feedback on what goes too far and what is highly welcome.
Guts Talk Welcome: In the comments for this post I encourage you to leave your own commentary and findings on what you’ve discovered as you’ve rummaged around in the rules for Werewolf. I assure you we are big kids and can take it if you point out flaws: we fully acknowledge that our math was often… less than rigorously applied, and that speed bumps arose as a consequence. Just as we acknowledge that often our cultural stereotypes could get a bit out of hand…
Actually, that’s another topic entirely, and I’ll talk about it next time. Until then, strew the guts, people. There’s a few lovely omens in those loops of viscera if you’re willing to dig.
Ability Changes: I like the abilities changes. Technology could replace Science for some Glass Walkers Gifts.
Backgrounds: Of course that the Bone Gnawers are capable of “rifling through the wallets of dead fomori”, but that’s hardly a steady income. However some Bone Gnawers may have blue-collar jobs and some money (No more than one dot for Resources).
I love the Get of Fenris restriction: “Get cannot purchase the Contacts Background. True friends are the only friends a Fenrir wants” Werewolf Rev. Ed. p. 77.
For the Glass Walkers, well, the Pure Breed and Ancestors restrictions make sense. But a Mentor does not has to be an old and anachronic garou, as long as he still understands technology i bet he could teach a thing or two to the young ones. (And any Don should be respected, or else).
The Shadow Lords restrictions are well suited for the tribe. No Allies, No Mentor: Don’t trust anybody.
And i also agree with the Wendigo restrictions, i think they are a quite isolated tribe (most of them live in reservations?).
Gifts: YOU NEED TO REVISIT THE GALLIARD GIFTS (In general they are useless!).
Spirit Combat: I dont know how, but a garou’s gnosis should have a role in spirit combat.
and that’s it… (for the moment)
=)
Could you point out some particular issues with the Galliard Gifts?
(Please understand that these issues came from my playgroup, no one ever wanted to play a Galliard because they dont liked their gifts)
Mindspeak (level one): one Willpower per sentient being is way too much for communicating with a packmate.
Dreamspeak (level two): so i can affect the course of a dream… and then? there must be a system.
Shadows by the Fire (level four): great storytelling device… but it’s a level four gift! A player would never spend 12 xp for this.
The other Gifts are ok, i suppose… But i think that’s the problem: they are ok, not great.
Other auspices get more interesting gifts.
Take by example the level two Gifts:
Ragabash: ‘Sense of the Prey’ and ‘Taking the Forgotten’.
Theurge: ‘Command Spirit’.
Philodox: ‘Call to Duty’, ‘King of the Beasts’ and ‘Strength of Purpose’.
Ahroun: ‘Spirit of the Fray’ and ‘True Fear’.
Galliard? Call of the Wyrm (which is very useful until a Nexus Crawler comes), Distractions (a support gift, no spotlight for the garou) and Dreamspeak (?).
And thats only for the Core Book. If you look at the supplements you’ll notice the same tendencies.
I love the Galliard concept, they are the poets, dancers, singers. They keep alive the stories of their people. Their hearts burn with passion (Rage 4 is one step behind the Ahroun!).
Their gifts should reflect that.
I dont think you want to create new gifts for them, but at least rewrite some mechanics.
(Also, when the difficulty is Willpower, as it is the case with many Galliard’s gifts, in my games more often than not that means 10).
Good points, much appreciated. And yeah, the Galliard and Philodox non-corebook Gifts were pretty underwhelming. If anyone knows any good ones I might have overlooked, feel free to call them out.
The Philodox gifts weren’t underwhelming completely. They were one of my favourite auspices, Truth of gaia i love. Made you damn near a walking lie detector for as long as you squint at people. (lots of philodox do nothing but squint at people anyway.) i think they had theirs down just about right.
I’m going to say my piece on the storyteller system and leave it at that. Please don’t think I’m hating on the World of Darkness here.
Comprehensive and Sprawling Review of All of World of Darkness
by Ian Williams on Saturday, January 21, 2012 at 7:01pm
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World of Darkness is not, specifically, what got me into roleplaying. That was RIFTS, and that’s another topic for another day. However, World of Darkness is what got me into gming. It’s exactly the types of games I want to run, and many times it’s what I want to play, too.
However, tonight I’ve been convinced of the bad sides of World of Darkness, and also have seen all the reviews. Most just treat it as a great, simplistic horror rpg, lavish it with praise and leave it at that, or condemn it utterly to the pits. Let’s not do either here.
A history of White Wolf
They made a game called Vampire the Masquerade, the system was designed around this and it’s successor in the reboot is still their flagship title. It was an interesting and different rpg wherein you played a supernatural and monstrous vampire with an inner demon who had to struggle not to let his inner demon loose all the time or risk degeneration. This was played out with politicking among an elite vampire society that walks among us unseen, their original great idea. Other supernaturals followed, and soon the WoD had books for every aspect, alternate times, and practically any other variant of their setting they could muster. They also pioneered LARP(Live Action Roleplay). The setting imploded under the weight of a bad decision to canonize the metaplot in their setting, and uphold even bad decisions such as a supertwink vampire/werewolf/mage character as an official part of the World of Darkness. They revamped their mechanics some, and presented a streamlined, tiny core book offering up mortals as the baseline(a good decision), and restarted their big three franchises, Werewolf Vampire and Mage, unfortunately throwing out the rest. They also made some new, good ideas such as Prometheans and Geists. Now, the Tabletop market is imploding and they have thrown in their lot with a software company, CCP(time will tell whether this is good or bad). They are, in many ways, the same company plagued by inheriting the same flawed system and not restarting it from scratch, and in many ways, completely different and evolving all the time(like having almost entirely new people from the founders).
So, a quick rundown on the two main parts an rpg system is made of:
System and Setting
The System is the mechanical, crunchy bits that the rules apply to; it’s the parts of the rpg where the agreement between storyteller and players can break down, and therefore needs arbitration by dice(or other method). Many of my favorite rpgs for System are also my least favorite for setting, since it seems they were designed for building your own settings from scratch. GURPS is a great example of this. It has the most logically consistent mechanics(that still broadly cover every scenario) in gaming, arguably, but has some craptastical and uninspired turds like Banestorm as setting. Banestorm is basically, copy/paste every fantasy stereotype, then tell people to run a game where there are um, some elves and stuff? Maybe at war with some dwarves or orcs or goblins? Horrible.
The Setting, if applicable, is a prebuilt world for your characters to play in, and helps if you don’t want to spend years of your life designing each campaign. This is where many systems that combine the two explicitly shine, especially if they have the luxury(like White Wolf) of sort of randomly generating the horrible dice system around the setting’s logic. D&D also seems to suffer from this.
The two main types of mainstream RPG systems sold are System only and Setting/System combined. I don’t know of a mainstream setting only rpg, but probably one exists. The best of both worlds in terms of Setting/System still seem to have silly rules designed to facilitate that genres subconflicts, like the random hit location table you roll in champions, or the chance of critical success or failure on every strike in RIFTS.
Prefacing further, let me explain about White Wolf’s failing here, and it’s consequences.
White Wolf has opted for a horrible, annoying dice system that fits around their concept of the play that more visible subsets of their fans, such as their fan club the camarilla, which is by all accounts a catty club for dicks who like to lord power over new players. I can’t fathom really whether White Wolf in this respect are actually cultured snobs or just have a very bad grasp on mechanics. I’m not trying to hate on them, it’s just that certain things they do are, well, inexplicable. For instance, suing Underworld for making a vampires vs. Werewolves movie: completely pointless. Or, suing another fan club(they did later apologize). I guess a lot of it is that you can’t get too attached to things like how a product is played if you want it to sell. Emergent behavior you may not agree with like playing the sims to put them in rooms full of mirrors with no way out is going to happen, no matter what. Someone will always find a way to break your game, or a way it’s broken and offer (possibly bluntly) ways to fix it quick, please, because it’s not playable. This is what I’m hoping to do with White Wolf. Please, fix your vaunted storyteller system. It’s not that this or that area needs shored up, as I thought previously, it’s that it’s fundamentally broken, at least from all indications. Each time I’ve rolled the dice I’ve regretted it, some areas of each area are more potent than others, the list goes on and on. From a mechanical standpoint, it’s really bizarre, and I don’t know the math or statistics to explain it, but it’s there.
The problems with White Wolfs’ dice system, the Storyteller System(also referred to as the ST), in three posts on their forum:
Morangias replied on Thu, Aug 12 2010 5:46 AM
Storyteller is a godawful abortion of a game system. It’s certainly not the worst I’ve seen, considering abominations like FATAL do exist in this crapsack world, but it’s definitely in the first league of worst designed systems ever.
It’s worst flaw is that it fails to do the only thing it was supposed to do, i.e. support storytelling. The only way it ever supported storytelling for me is by making me loathe the dice rolling so much, I regularly preferred handling things by ST fiat. I mean, c’mon, this system doesn’t support telling the story at all, it tries to simulate realistic outcomes of various situations. It involves tons of rolling to adjudicate any action more complex than tying your shoelaces, and it doesn’t give a shit about a character’s narrative potential, or scene’s narrative potential, or anything’s narrative potential. If you want to see how a storytelling system ought to work, see FATE.
I’ve played and ran many games throughout the years – all incarnations of Storyteller/Storytelling, various incarnations of d20, various incarnations of Warhammer, FATE, Savage Worlds, Framewerk, various homebrew mechanics. I’ve also played in various styles, from a mindless hack and slash to deep, involved stories, with all degrees in between. Regardless of assumed style, I’ve always found it easier to run a game on anything other than Storyteller/Storytelling. Including d20. My only games that came grinding to a halt due to mechanical problems were those ran on WW’s systems. The only games ran on WW’s systems that worked were those where I’d ditched the system entirely and ran with pure narration. Which I could have done without buying tons of sourcebooks. The only reason I put up with this trainwreck is because I love worlds that WW produces so much. Still, I can’t help but think how much better those games would have been if they had actual working mechanics.
Mouse replied on Thu, Aug 12 2010 11:32 AM
Ok. Flaws of the system that aren’t part of only one implementation.
* It doesn’t scale well.
On a normal human range, it doesn’t do a terribly good job of differentiating between different skill levels. Someone with a 4 is supposed to be much, much better than someone with a 2, yet the only difference is an average of 1 more success, and the deviation of any given roll is big enough that the one success doesn’t consistently show up.
On the above human range, die pools get silly. 30 dice isn’t terribly difficult to reach, depending on the version of the system. And Aberrant had two kinds of dice that you roll at the same time, while you still might be rolling large pools.
* It has too many steps of combat resolution.
Roll to hit, roll to dodge, roll for damage, roll for soak was the old WoD paradigm. Man, did that take forever. It didn’t add anything beyond a little more randomness.
The ten steps of combat in Exalted is likewise too damned many. You can skip a lot of them in most fights, but they’re still there, and you still might need to use them.
* Doesn’t drive story.
For a system that is called the Storyteller System, it doesn’t really do much to facilitate telling stories. It’s a bog standard task resolution system with some “bad stuff happens to you” style personality mechanics riveted to it.
At the very least, I’d expect something supposed to drive stories to have a, “No, and,” “No,” No, but,” Yes, but,” “Yes,” Yes, and,” style success mechanic. At least that forces complications and additional detail into things.
* Poorly thought out power mechanics.
Storyteller consistently has poorly thought out mechanics for powers. You have the bad crunch in Charms for Exalted, many of the Disciplines of Masquerade, most of the powers from Aberrant, etc. For some reason, White Wolf keeps trying to pull off medium to heavy game mechanics for powers, but only putting the effort into considering and testing them that you’d expect from a light heft game mechanic.
The net effect of this is that as PCs acquire the nifty toys that are those powers, the game begins to fall apart more and more. But players want their PCs to get those toys, because toys are fun. So going for fun things tends to crash the game.
* Curved costs for linear benefits.
This one boggles me. Adding a die has a pretty consistent result on the number of successes it gives you, yet the cost for each die is more than that of the previous one. So your 4th die in Athletics costs more than your 3rd, but it only adds 0.5 successes, the same as the 3rd dot. (My example uses Exalted probabilities, but it applies to any of the Storyteller System games.)
* Two (or more) improvement point systems.
BP and XP are the common ones, and Aberrant had… can’t remember what they were called. Your super power points. Whatever. There are multiple economies, each incentivizing different facets of the system.
First, this is inefficient. There’s really no need for this.
Second, it creates an unnecessary trend whereby those who know the system and choose to do so can create significantly more effective characters that those who don’t. And the differences are pretty damned significant.
* Poorly thought out stats.
There’s very little sense of balance between the various stats. Some are just flat out better (pretty consistent with Dexterity, for example).
Morangias replied on Thu, Aug 12 2010 12:20 PM
Mouse:
Ok. Flaws of the system that aren’t part of only one implementation.
Great summary. I’d add two points to your list:
* Too random
You have touched upon this issue in the Doesn’t scale well point, but I think it’s significant enough to warrant it’s own point. Treating each die in pool separately for determining success means that your dice don’t always contribute to your effort. Theoretically, in Exalted, each die gives you 50% chance of success, but from another point of view, it has only 40% chance of contributing to your success (because outside of TN-changing effects, only four of ten possible results on any one die count as one or more successes). Also, your entire effort is represented by the random roll. Outside of Charms and very specific subsystems, there is no mechanical baseline to which the roll adds, it’s “all or nothing” every time. There is absolutely no consistency in how your stats affect the outcome outside of a theoretical probability. It was even worse in early incarnations of oWoD, where 1’s subtracted successes, but it’s still bad.
* Mathematically counterintuitive
It’s much less pain in the ass in Exalted than it was in oWoD, but it still exists, and perhaps even gets worse when “powers” are taken into account. Basically, the more effects you stack on an action, the harder it gets to predict the exact result and to compare it against other similar effects. Both Holden and Neph like to say that creating Charms is more art than science. I find it a fundamental flaw of the system. I know no other system where it’s so hard to balance a new effect to be in line with the power curve. When talking about Exalted in particular, the curve is also damn counterintuitive in itself.
So, read it and believe it, ladies and gentleman, the Storyteller system as a mechanic, even as one that allows much of the arbitration or adjudication to be up to the Storyteller, is fundamentally broken, and that’s why. Could I have figured that out? Maybe, after statistics class and many more painfully mechanics-less games. I’m really glad I found that topic instead.
My own accounting of the Storyteller System:
Every time I roll dice in this system, I get bewildered. Theres no clear indicator of anything less vague than, more dice pool equals more successes. Beyond this, the system seems to consistently get sort of counterintuitive results if you’re used to, say, a d6 based target number system(which work great, btw).
Also broken are some of the setting-specific pieces.
Here’s a piece-by-piece breakdown:
The morality scale, in particular, is worse than a static alignment in D&D, and basically dooms your character (if they’re doing useful things within the genre) to become deranged psychopath that is canon-wise unplayable, or borderline unplayable. Doing morality as a mechanic at all is a mistake as far as I’m concerned. It should be roleplayed out. White Wolf seems to think it’s fun to roll on a derangement table every time you steal a car or beat a thug. You basically start at a 7 out of 10 and there are arbitrarily concrete limits to what you do without gaining derangements. The idea is sound for, say, their sanity system if you run that kind of game, but morality, this has convinced me, should never, ever be a stat. Every supernatural also has a morality, which make more sense than humans but still less sense than they should. Mechanically speaking, they take their theme of inner torment far too far.
Also particularly horrible is the christian ethic of Virtue/Vice. There are seven of each, and they are very confining, and mechanically, are the only way to regain the only piece of the storyteller system I like: Willpower.
Willpower is kewl, it’s a renewable resource that acts as both a buffer from resistable attacks and pressures(like resisting social pressure or mind control), or as bonus dice in a roll.
Stats and Skills add together to rolls, which is good(unfortunately it’s in a dice pool, which is statistically bad from what I gathered from both those posts and a friend whose taken statistics).
They also have several good fringe ideas on their dice rolling, such as gm fiat on difficulty, and modifiers based on relevant equipment, and so on.
Stats are good, they are divided into power, finesse and resistance, and then mental, physical, social.
Skills are extremely limited, something like only 28.
Their splats, while sometimes inventive and original, as a whole are frankly too much stereotypes, for lack of a better description, and not enough broadly useful concepts. Splats are things that go in every World of Darkness book except the core, limiting each supernatural to a tiny spectrum of political and ancestry based character types.
And that’s basically it, we’ll stop there.
So: Summary is, Storyteller system needs to go.
The Setting
The Setting is, in a word, amazing. It’s the best setting I’ve ever come across, and I don’t think that’s exaggeration, really. There are a few parts that are wastes of space in some books, like stories they want me to run I’ll never run, but overall: amazing.
Reasons Why:
It’s inventive and unique
-It takes place in our contemporary world, only with supernaturals unseen among us playing out secret wars, grudges, etc…and often, humanity pays the price.
It uses, and gives a clear handle on, metaphysical powers
-Oh yes, who could forget the powers in any game system. But where else do you play a freeform magic system that alters reality to suit your whim, but is balanced by the paradox backlash it causes? Where else do you make fae contracts that bind reality but have loopholes?
It has the richest, darkest, history
-There are literally worlds upon worlds encompassed by the World of Darkness, and I love them all(almost all, it’s hyperbole). The world of darkness has a rich, unique, totally inspired cosmology to draw off of.
It has the greatest potential for games with grand, overarching social themes
-Themes like genocide are best for world of darkness, or war, or even something more hopeful like redemption, it all plays out magnificently in World of Darkness as a dark and twisted morality tale.
It has unique and convincing contemporary supernaturals as the protagonists
-Simply put, the history, lore, role in the world, view of other supernaturals, and so on and so forth, is always dynamic, unique, and shifting, just like in real life. Each type also has it’s own subsociety, curse, and special powers.
It personifies the metaphor of inner struggle
-Every supernatural has some darker aspect that makes conflicted, writ large and interesting, rather than humans with different skin color and horns.
It can adjust to your needs
-If you have old World of Darkness and new World of Darkness, you can literally shift the stories they tell any way you want.
That said there are, of course, a myriad of reasons why I love WoD and I don’t see that ever changing. I just feel they have not addressed some peculiarities of their mechanics for so long that they have become the unapproachable norm, and the response I’ve gotten on fansites ranges from “Play something else” to “You’re doing it wrong” and doesn’t really help. Even on ShadownEssence, sadly.
Excuse me but… What the FUCK does this have to do with Werewolf: the Apocalypse 20th Anniversary edition?
What does this have to do with the questions asked?
This tirade has no place here. Take it to the forums, but this is a development blog for W20.
Did this account get fucking hacked or something?
It has NO purpose here and should be deleted. Period.
What, they asked a question about game mechanics, he told them what he thinks of the mechanics. If you disagree with his opinions, then offer counterpoints.
However, Ian you could have offered some more specifics, or some concrete steps they could take in W20 to address these issues.
Okay, I admit that my reaction was more caustic than normal (where were my personal filters last night? Geez.) I appologize for losing my cool on the previous poster “ian_williams”.
However, while there was a request at the end for some thoughts on W20 mechanics (after the primary question of thoughts on Abilities, Backgrounds, Rites and Gifts), giving a history on one’s personal thoughts about gaming in their lives, and a general thought on the Storyteller system in general compared to other games, and its themes and concepts and where they succeeded and failed was not (to me) at all the intent of the question. Hardly ever are the mechanics for Werewolf: the Apocalypse mentioned. No specifics are given to assist in THIS project.
And that’s where my issue lay, I guess. This blog is to assist the writers in creating a better W20 product for those of us who loved and played the game. It will not be a “complete re-write of the system, of the story, of the setting, etc.” and while there are a few small pieces in the long rant/prose, very little of it is useful to what this blog is for.
It could be taken to the Forums over at http://forums.white-wolf.com , but 99% is not useful here, IMO. Even his talks about how the rules and story were squashed by the metaplot are not useful as the W20 book (as was V20) was metaplot-light (as stated before, it’s more of Setting than Metaplot.)
Could I be wrong? sure. Maybe the Ethan and crew want to hear about how the Storyteller system is broken for playing games and telling stories from the ground-up, and how he liked his other games, or his knowledge of Exalted. But not once was “Werewolf” mentioned unless it was written between “Vampire/” and “/Mage”.
It was really just a opinion piece written about the CWoD system and story in general and unhelpful to this endeavor for a better W20 book.
(Of course, if we’d like to discuss this sort of topic in more length, we could create a forum over on the WW forums, or speak in PMs to continue as well.)
No worries about losing your cool. It happens. I’m just as passionate about Demon as you are about Werewolf, so, I understand. I apologize if my post wasn’t helpful, I just figured I’d throw it out there and see what happened. I will definitely be ordering a copy of W20, BTW. I will try and be more on-topic with my next posts.
Rite Of Caern Building. Personally i think it should be one of the most dangerous things a player can do is to build a caern of rank 3 or even more so higher than rank 3. It should take massively significant amounts of personal investment. So roll difficulties being scary enough as to demand at least 1 willpower be invested if not more just to get through fairly safely. Then the fact the rite should require ‘spiritual guardians’ aka your favourite big pack or 3 of extra muscled extra hairy loons to stand watch with a ragabash and theurge aiming them.
As an ST i would not want to see the players turn all of there homes into a caern, or pick up an ‘oh we lost that caern lets make a new one on grandmas lawn.’ sort of attitude. It should be a process of such magnitude that it is not undertaken lightly, it is an epic feet in itself to do. and merely being present for it (which by proxy for a garou and probably kin means ready to defend the rite master) a glorious and fantastic event. yes you should have a few fomori police turn up, a chunk of banes, maybe a bored nexus crawling coming to have a nose. Blood sweat and tears is a small price to pay for a level 4 caern.
Personal opinion on caern creation is if the Wyrm forces don’t stop it. they should of at least taken a few garou (plus however many kin they saw.) with the attempt. The value of a caern of 3 or greater in potency shouldn’t be sold short. The rite master doing it i would pray would have a dice pool of 8 absolute minimum to attempt it. (Thats with willpower expenditure),
Also you can hook so much on the creation of a Caern for stories the challenges being laid down by theurges at each other for the right to do the rite. The spirit to be tied into it as caern totem. Which tribe is to claim it primarily can be so fantastic as to make it any easier decreases the ‘epicness’ of what the rite stands for.
in summary for a rite of caern building to even happen i expect blood sweat and tears. When it is happening i expect more blood than before more sweat, many prayers to gaia and a lot of wyrm beasties. then when the rage has cooled some a lot of tears and mournful howls. Oh we won. we have a new caern insert tribe relevant party/brawl/spiritual discusion/whatever
Quite happy with the Ability changes. Always bugged me that Leadership wasn’t a little more standardized across games. (Dodge in V20, by the way, is indeed based on Athletics, not Awareness: see p. 275.)
Background restrictions definitely need reworking. Some are fine, but some seem pretty arbitrary.
Gifts and Rites: Sounds good. Holden’s a wizard with mathing powers. I’ve always been more of a setting guy, so I’ll take his word for it. Honestly, I don’t care, so long as my Garou gets to do cool stuff that makes him *feel* like a powerhouse.
Spirit Combat: Same as above. I’ll trust Holden, but I’ll echo Smiling Jack on saying that Gnosis should probably be involved somehow.
I’m doing the Spirit Combat bit, not Holden. I’m looking at Gnosis as a possible thing–maybe the Garou can use Gnosis instead of Stamina to soak damage in the Umbra? Thing is, people think “Gnosis” and think “Theurge”, when it’s actually “Lupus”.
Glad people like the change to the Abilities (though yes, Dodge will be based on Athletics).
Garou’s soak was Gnosis back in 2nd edition and was changed to Stamina in revised, with the FAQ (from Storyteller’s Handbook) stating, it is okay either way.
I always found it unfortunate, that a Ahroun, with good stamina but low Gnosis was reduced to shreds by spirits for the lack of soak dice, when only Gnosis was used to soak. As Ahroun he is spiritually meant to be the fighter and should therefore not go down with a single blow. So I find the “use the higher of stamina or Gnosis”-method that is iirc also mentioned in FAQ a good way.
I like that idea to use the higher of the two scores, also.
Higher of the Two scores? Nice. 🙂 Even if it sounds too 4th Edition DnD to me… I like the idea of the Ahroun being the meanest fighter on the Umbral wild as well as the physical plane. The Theurge always seemed to me the “other, better solution”. 🙂
I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention to the forums, but in case you haven’t, we’ve been discussing a lot of things regarding W20 in general, but the “worst gifts” section a bunch of points have been brought up there as well (though, I admit some of it has devolved a bit, as forums are want to do.)
Hopefully we get a new forum alongside V20 there for W20 so discussions can be a bit more organized there too.
I think there was a mis-type above where you may have meant “Vampire and Mage.” As well as the use of Awareness for Dodge in V20, but that was mentioned by a previous post.
Something I would like to bring up is Primal Urge. With Awareness and Alertness, the “primal senses” Talent starts to feel a bit like some zones are being overlapped. As much of a change as it may seem, what if Primal Urge was replaced by the Awareness, or if Awareness was replaced by Primal Urge for Werewolf? (Though, I know Bastet had Awareness as a “new ability”, at least in 2nd Ed.) To be honest, most STs only use it for transformations (IF they even make their players roll for transformation) and it is often more of a fall-back roll when they fail a search roll otherwise. While I get why it should be a potent skill, it just doesn’t get used as it should, and again with Awareness for Vampires and others, wrapping it all together might make sense to me.
We don’t have Awareness on the cards with W20. It’s just Alertness and Primal Urge (the space where Dodge would be, where V20 added Awareness, is filled by Leadership), precisely because Primal Urge already covers some of Awareness but also covers a bunch of shit that’s really important to being a werewolf that other supernatural beings don’t need. I’m doing my best to make that plain in the Talent description.
Primal Urge is a distinctive Trait for Werewolf. Losing it would be like amputating the game.
I completely agree. I’ve been STing werewolf for about 10 years and I can tell you my players Roll Primal-Urge pretty often. In lupus form (and Lupus Characters in general), the senses are completely different and you need Primal-Urge to be able to function more efficiently. Tracking by smell, for exemple, is Percep + Primal Urge in my games. It’s also very hard to grasp and raise for young Homid characters. You have to be ready to abandon yourself to your instincts and live in the now as wolves do. Finally, I also made it so that botching to shapeshift is painfull and may cause injury.
As such, Primal-Urge is both rare, coveted and extremely important to all my players (Obviously, it’s not rare for Lupus and Metis).
I’m not sure if it was just our gaming group or what, but would it be possible to get a clearer explanation on how the Health System works (maybe more visuals)? Over the many years we’ve been playing, we’ve had a couple different ideas on how it is supposed to work (and after a while I think we finally got it), but it never seemed to ‘flow’ very well. Thanks!!
@Abilities
One could just rename “Primal-Urge” to “Awareness” with still using the same Roll to shape shift, or remove “Primal-Urge” in favour of Awareness and change the roll to shape shift into something else like “Stamina+Athletics”.
In general I like the changes to the Abilities. Some gifts would need new rolls though, since Technology or Larceny would make a good choice for some gifts.
@Backgrounds
I fear for the flavour of some Tribes, if the Backgrounds are lifted. Certainly there were reasons for those, when they were fist formulated. Still, I think some word of advice would be nice, like “Fetishes are rare among Stargazers, because…” or “Get do not tend to have Contacts since they…”
Pure Breed might need some reworking or rewriting. A 1:1 bonus to social rolls is strong, especially in Homid (with no adjustment to Appearance and Manipulation). Also, there aren’t any hard rules on for example convincing NPCs, but from my experience a Manipulation + Subterfuge or Charisma + Leadership roll, with added Pure Breed, often leads to incredible amounts of successes, leaving me clueless on how overwhelming a reaction of the NPC should be. Also, high Pure Breed Character fall victim to another’s social manoeuvring as easy as anybody, although they are just as much “Alpha Wolf” as them. Unless the ST goes for a contested roll, the Pure breed does not grant and social “defence”.
So, a system like “each uneven dot gets you a extra die on social interaction with other garou, while each even dot raises the difficulty to affect you with any social roll (including gifts) by one.” would be nice.
Also, a guideline on “usual” pure breed rating would be nice, like having each tribe have an entry like this:
“There are some exceptionally pure breed Children of Gaia but in general the members of the tribe mate with whom they fall in love with, even other tribes kin or occasionally humans. The tribe tends to have pure breed Ratings from zero two three.”
etc.
Ancestors is nice, system-wise. Fluff-wise I’d appreciate a distinction between the tribes. Like “Uktena and Wendigo tend to see all who came before them, usually great leaders or shamans, as their ancestors, forbearers in a spiritual sense; therefore most Uktena and Wendigo are, by means of this background, visited by Ancestors of their tribe, even if they are not blood related. Fenrir and Fianna on the other hand hold their personal bloodline in high regard and are usually visited by Ancestors that are there forefathers in blood, as long as they are of the same tribe. Stargazer on the other hand believe in reincarnation and experience usage of the Ancestor Background as remembering a previous incarnation as Stargazer.”
@Gifts
There are many gifts that are strange or explained to shallow. However, some improvements were made in DA:Werewolf. My personal hatred goes to “Sense of the Prey”. Not only that it is often confused with “Sense Prey” it is just uncarefully worded. Player’s assume that even the slightest information about anyone might be enough to find him and while garou should be good trackers, having them unbeatable by anything except maybe magic is hazardous to certain sub-genres like for example detective stories.
Also, I find it okay, that some gifts were at different levels for different auspices/breeds/tribes. I wouldn’t mind if you changed that, but I don’t really find it a necessarily.
@Rites
Here my personal hate goes to the Rite of summoning. Performing a extra long summoning to get a god-like entity send an avatar to you with a difficulty of 3. Really?
Getting really powerful entities to appear should take a lot longer than that and the difficulty shouldn’t be adjusted by more than two, maybe three steps for “doing the summoning extra-long”.
I like your idea of using Athletics to shapeshift and Awareness for unexplained senses of the unknown. Though, it may be for some reasons that people could interpret as “wrong”, since I would like words like “primal” and “instinct” used as sparingly as possible, and in the case of the latter, only when appropriate (not everything done by animals that aren’t human is instinctual, in fact, quite a great many thinks aren’t).
The Glass Walker mentor thing is true, the tribe may focus on the future, but it is still a tribe. And cubs need teaching, no matter what location.
For Wendigo background restrictions, I’d like to quote, because I think this person said it best;
“Wendigo cannot have Contacts or Resources.
The explanation for no Contacts is that new characters are ‘unlikely to know anyone in normal society who could function as a Contact.’
Right. Kids on reserves don’t know Chiefs, social workers, teachers, elders, nurses, EMTs, doctors, pilots, hunters, trappers, smugglers, politicians, cops, band officials, store clerks, drug dealers, RCMP officers, clergy or workers from the area. After they Change, they definitely don’t keep in contact with any of those people. Or, alternately, since many of them are probably First Nations, they don’t ‘count’ as ‘normal society’.
Also, no Wendigo ever has come from an urban reserve, or from kinfolk who moved off-rez to pursue business or education. And no Wendigo or their kinfolk runs (or works in) a store, a trapline, a fishery, a smuggling outfit, a drug ring, an outfitting company, a farm or a casino. And if they do, they’re just too naturally noble and pure to need money for anything, since all Wendigo live in the northern wilderness, hunting, fishing and trading with other Wendigo and kin for things they need. Therefore they don’t have Resources. Lupus and metis can start with Resources, but Wendigo can’t. ”
Said by WereJace on ShadownEssence forums.
*In Character*
“Do you think that our people endured genocide so we can build a casino!?
And those social workers, teachers, nurses, doctors, hunters, trappers, politicians, cops and workers are our Allies and Kinfolk!
No damned Contact that would sell us for a bottle of whisky!”
— This-is-our-Land Wendigo Philodox
I think this raises a really interesting question on what on earth Garou and kinfolk character is. How do they live their day to day lives? Do some of them, such as the Wendigo and their kin, that live the lives of what are effectively uber survivalist, isolationist communities? Never communicating with the outside world? Fending off the interests of social services and ATF? I know its not guts but its something I’d like to know more about.
From what I understand, the Wendigo tribe was supposed to represent a native american tribe free of white man’s taint. Hence the restrictions. However, it doesn’t make them ANY less unfortunate choices.
Now, for most tribes, kin handle most money, business, housing etc. work. The garou meanwhile focus on fighting for Gaia.
I get that, I’m just interested in what “free from the white man’s taint” looks like in the game world. I’m interested in what Garou do all day as well.
As far as I know, live in the woods in a Caern. Maybe some in some abadoned ruins etc. But generally without electricity, without phones etc.
Now, what do garou do all day? Argue, perform rites. Go in umbral quests. Fight in wars that may or may not be justified. Do recon work for attacks, plan attacks. Teach cubs,etc.
This is super problematic, but its a part of how we deal with W20. A lot of Werewolf’s views on the pre-contact and immediate post-contact America are hilariously ethnocentric, short-sighted, and simplistic. Obviously, the game is not Ward Churchill the RPG, but this idea of “White Man Taint” being something that the Wendigo are pure of is problematic.
I don’t have an easy solution except to work on focusing on werewolf limiting only or mostly supernatural backgrounds rather than presenting a scenario where “all Bone Gnawers are some nebulous mass of ‘poors’ because no resources background.”
Adding;
Purebreed requires a major overhaul, because at this point, there are multiple takes on what purebreed -is-.
1) You look like idealized member of your tribe, therefore your outer breeding is respected.
2) Purebreed tells how close you are to the first pack (First garou) and other garou respect you for that bond.
3) Purebreed is a line of heroes you come from, wether you look like the ideal image or not.
Those are just three takes on purebreed, there are plenty more. I think it should be a mix between the first and the third, to enforce the looks the artists give each tribe, but also sign that those markings are related to great heroes. Red Talons revisited did a great job illustrating that by having a white furred wolf come from a line of famous human killers.
And Silver Fangs curse should be addressed, as it is often tied to their purebreed. The Silver Fang revisoted tribebook explains that the tribe’s madness comes not from inbreeding, but from Luna disliking the Fangs’ doubletiming with Helios.
Also, to support this, look how widely spread Silver Fang houses (noble houses) are spread. Remember that garou need kin, and Silver Fangs breed with those they feel show their noble bearing. No matter if they are french, russian, arabian or chinese. Therefore, the Fangs blood is not as inbred as it might seem like.
I hope these two posts have been helpful.
I’d like it, if it was addressed that all three options are valid, but also that it is a spiritual closeness to the mighty members of the tribe’s past as well as that the pure breed is subconsciously reflected in the garou’s bearing and behaviour and therefore has a psychological aspect as well.
As for the Tribal weakness. Most other tribes think of it as inbreeding and the Silver fang would probably not tell anyone “Hey, mother Luna is pissed, since we also serve Helios”.
So, having that mentioned is okay, but I don’t think it should be a well-known fact among the garou of other tribes.
Besides that, I hope tribal weaknesses remain optional.
Yeah, me too. I like that the tribes don’t have weaknesses.
Just covering -that- base, as it was related to purebreed XD
@Spirit combat
I’d like to have spirits roll attack and soak with willpower and damage with rage. Difficulties should be at 6, as of normal combat.
Damage done by spirits should be bashing, lethal or aggravated, as appropriate for the spirit.
Also, this rules should always apply, meaning the stats should not change if the spirits enters the material world, nor should there be any special rules, if a human enters the umbra some how.
Minimum in Gnosis, Willpower and Rage should be 1. Spirits with exceptional might should be able to exceed 10 (Garou can max out Dex+Brawl to 11 too, with the chrinos bonus, so that isn’t really of balance).
For what it’s worth, I strongly agree that a werewolf’s stats should remain unchanged as he enters spirit combat– I deeply appreciated it when Revised threw out Gnosis-to-soak.
1) The Ability Changes are all good. Athletics taking over for Dodge is perfectly appropriate, and Leadership makes more sense as a Talent than a Skill anyway. Larceny and Technology would both be good additions.
2) Background Restrictions are a funny one. Some make perfect sense and are quite appropriate. Others don’t seem to make sure sense, or could even be construed as offensive. They feel too traditional to me to get rid of, but they could certainly be reassessed with “common sense”. I’ve never felt that the restrictions were really a matter of “balance”, but I wouldn’t want some Tribes to be so restrictive that players were put off playing them.
Perhaps an easier solution would be restrict the starting level of some of these Backgrounds?
Bone Gnawers: I’m fine with all of these restrictions, though I suppose they could be allowed to grab one dot of Resources rather than all be forced to be broke!
Get of Fenris: I love these restrictions, they make perfect sense.
Glass Walkers: Pure Breed is fine, but honestly, yeah, they should be allowed Mentors. I never really got that one and tended to ignore it.
Red Talons: I’m fine with all of these.
Shadow Lords: All good.
Silent Striders: Fine, but again, I suppose you could allow one Dot of Resources.
Silver Fangs: Somewhat essential?
Wendigo: Yeah…I don’t like these. Sure, you could cap Resources if you want (though I’d leave that to the ST here), but the no Contacts makes no sense to me.
3) Gifts: I think a number of these need reassessments. The thread on the WW forums brings up a number of good examples. Rules-wise I think these are probably the biggest issues the game has.
4 Spirit Combat: Personally I liked the simpler approach of Revised. Still, my gut feels that Gnosis ought to be playing a role somewhere…
About the Bone Gnawer thing, yes, they should get atleast a dot in resources. To assume ALL of tribe of Rat are simply bums living in the streets, is limiting. Rat doesn’t ask his children to be poor, he asks them to be survialists.
Also, it is quite amusing that tribes who look down upon Bone Gnawers and Glass Walkers for living in the city, have money to use despite living in Caerns and Septs. While a tribe that is near humans is forbidden from it.
Yes, they are omega, but being omega garou doesn’t always mean an omega human.
“Also, it is quite amusing that tribes who look down upon Bone Gnawers and Glass Walkers for living in the city, have money to use despite living in Caerns and Septs. While a tribe that is near humans is forbidden from it.”
Yeah, this is a pretty good point.
I wouldn’t want Bone Gnawers to be pumping dots in Resources, but I think it’s fine to let them take a single dot, *or* at least say that they can be in possession of some money, even if it’s not much. Like you said, they’re survivalists, not poverty seeking hobos.
I think with Gnawers, it’s good to remove bit of that comedy that’s been given to them. ‘Oh,they are poor but funny homeless happily living in homelessness without a care in the world’
As much as I like that aspect of the tribe, it really ignores the fact that these are garou. Hell, look at the suggestion to Ron Spencer;
“Avoid making them look like luckless and homeless: they’re street survivors, hunters, with improvised weapons that have been turned into fetishes, and strong enough to uproot a parking meter and murder you with it.”
That is the image of a Gnawer; not a poor ragabash doing dances for money. These guys -thrive- in this world, they don’t need fancy klaives or elaborate rites, they will make do with rotten pipes and markers. Not because that’s all they have, but because they don’t see the point of fancy.
But,none of that says you have to be homeless to be a survialist. Maybe they lead kin gangs against wyrmtainted ones, maybe they and their kin run pubs on the bad side of a town. Trailer parks just build to keep watch on potential taints.
I picture Gnawers more as english lower class, yes, they aren’t rich. But they have pride in their bluecollar jobs, their families etc. They may not be fancy, but they make sure a job is done.
(Besides, the typical garou situation with other tribes is that kin take care of their finances…. so why not Gnawer kin?)
(Why ‘english’? What’s the difference with other lower classes?).
Bone Gnawers Kinfolk can have up to 3 dots in Resources according to the Kinfolk Sourcebook (p. 51):
“Some Bone Gnawer Kin actually have money and property to aid their Garou families, but never more than three dots’ worth.”
@ spirit combat
What ’bout that… the Garou could use her normal traits (Dex + Brawl), but in spiritual combat his dice pool would be limited by her Gnosis rating… therefore the Deeper the Garou’s connection to the spirit world the better warrior the Garou would be…
Can limited or banned Backgrounds be bought up with Freebie or Experience Points? That might offer a compromise for when someone wants something outwith the Tribe norm.
Typically, “no” on both accounts.
Background restrictions are at character creation. That would include freebies, IMO. Some would say that they couldn’t be gained after either. However, my STs have often allowed purchasing, or being given the background points when such things are earned/gained through RP.
For instance: If my character makes an ally, or a contact, I may be able to “purchase” that background, or my ST may give it to me so that I have the mechanic for it. If I steal $1M from an enemy, and I invest it into accounts I can take from later, then my ST may give me that background. The same goes for totems, fetishes and rites.
However, there may be some justification for your tribal totem forcing the character to forego such things that are “restricted”, if you needed a reason for the backgrounds to be denied.
But an official “clarification” would be nice, as to why, or how these are restricted.
“And Silver Fangs curse should be addressed, as it is often tied to their purebreed. The Silver Fang revisoted tribebook explains that the tribe’s madness comes not from inbreeding, but from Luna disliking the Fangs’ doubletiming with Helios.”
Actually, I think revisiting the curses of all the tribes might be a good thing. Explaining their curse from both a mythological standpoint and a scientific one would be good, since it increases character ambiguity and Storyteller options as to what kind of game they’d like to run.
Related to this, I believe the 2e Players Guide had weaknesses for each tribe, akin to Vampire’s clan weaknesses. They may merit a re-examination for inclusion in W20.
I’d deeply appreciate it if the Silent Strider predicament was attributed to ghosts and not vampires. They might have fought vampires for some time and hate them, but their curse stemming from some other game’s big bad leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
This is probably one of those things that is too entrenched in legacy to get rid of; there were in my experience (and still may be) a lot of Silent Strider fans who deeply enjoyed having that deep-seated hatred for/rivalry with vampires, and I don’t think ghosts would stir nearly as visceral a reaction.
That should be “that particular reason for their deep-seated hatred”, etc., sorry.
Well, if there’s a way to disengage it, I would welcome it. Perhaps it’s just the way they always were? The hatred can come from having a group representing the worst of what vampires have to offer (and that’s saying something) in their homeland, only mentioned in-depth in the event of a crossover event (or pseudo-crossover event, modeling vampire powers with Gifts and fomori powers).
Besides, they’re vampires. Do you need another reason to hate them? ^VVVVVVV^
If a sample size of one matters, I’m one of those fans :p
Well, there go my hopes for dealing rampant crossover a blow of Complete. Global. Elimination. ^VVVVVVVV^
I’d prefer not removing this. That would mean rewriting a huge chunk of their history and past.
I agree. Cross-over happens. Tremere were Mages, and Fianna have a connection with Fae, etc., etc.. I have no problem with FoS or Cainites in particular (not just generic Vampires) being in the W:tA canon. 🙂
And the Idea of and Antidiluvian laying a curse ona whole tribe just so a single Silent Strider Hero (Shu Heru) never show it’s ugly face again through his descendants is awesome in itself! 🙂
I don’t have a problem with the Wendigo having no Resources or Contacts. If it does need changed, homid Wendigo can have Resources (unless they are a part of The Sacred Hoop). Not sure how the Contacts would work out (considering that they won’t trust white people who isn’t Garou or Kin).
But white people aren’t the only ones with jobs that could serve as contacts, that IS the problem with the lack of contacts. It assumes Native Americans are without contact to the civilized world, and that’s..unfortunate.
Uktena don’t have this same restriction, so I would say that it isn’t a “Native Americans” issue. I would say that, following Wendigo Totem of War, the Warriors are separated from the outside world. They use their Allies, but not Contacts as other Tribes do. Similarly, they, as warriors, don’t hold jobs, don’t keep credit cards, and use their Allies/Kinfolk for their personal financial needs, as Resources represents a constant personal income that usually comes from jobs and relies on the human financial system.
Then it ought to be made clear that it is a lifestyle choice or a ban demanded by Great Wendigo.
Agreed. Along with the other bans and weaknesses. Especially for a game so strong on narrative and story, just having mechanical limitations without a good explanation of why is sort of weird and at odds with the intent of the mechanics and game, IMO. This is perhaps where the mentioned “writer’s notes” that could be updated to the living PDF could be very helpful too.
Just a summary of my W20 thread on the Onyx Path forum:
Basically I was trying to gather a list of messy places in the rules that should be addresses. So far we’ve hit up…
1) Totem bonuses. While buying the Totem background is obvious enough (at least with the errata to WtA Rev) and building the avatar spirit you get as your buddy isn’t too hard, understanding what on earth the Totem pack bonuses are supposed to be is pure frustration. DA: W made some headway here, but we need clear rules text on this.
2) As previously mentioned here, Purebreed is a bit of a mess in terms of trying to figure out what exactly it is supposed to represent. To me this is especially frustrating because it makes it very hard to know how to apply the social dice in a logical fashion. Why a given Garou would care about your Purebreed can change radically depending on the version of it you use.
3) Again, already mentioned here, but addressing the optional Tribal Weakness would be a great thing. Especially in hopes of maybe cleaning them up a bit to avoid some of the excessive stereotyping present in parts of the game.
4) Minor Rites came up, as something to address simply because while they’re cool from an immersion and cultural perspective, their role in the game is a bit odd and difficult to manage for STs.
5) Rage can use some reworking, or at least discussion of different methods, especially in regards to regaining Rage in combat, interactions of Rage and Frenzy checks, and just making sure all the rules get consolidated in the same place.
6) An in-depth treatment on Rank and Renown, especially in regards to the methods on assigning Renown and witnesses to actions. The charts available also have the issue of not scaling to Rank or previous accomplishments, so some discussion on whether or not killing your fifth Rank 1 BSD should be worth less Renown or not since you’ve shown you’re pretty damn good at it already.
7) Trying to include a good deal of information on portraying the different breeds. Maybe looking at some of the character creation mechanics and seeing if they could be adjusted (minor self-plug: I posted an idea for this in the general cWOD forum, it’s probably too far from baseline WtA for W20).
8) And another one already touched on: Background restrictions and why certain ones exist. Another note though, is if it is possible to perhaps lift some of the shared background rules from DA to help reinforce pack dynamics. It always struck me personally as odd that the WOD game with the strongest PC group dynamic often left this consideration absent.
—————————————
And some personal responses to stuff here:
@Abilities
The changes all seem for the better. Perhaps another suggestion?
WtA doesn’t include Academics by default. I always felt this was kind of awkward, especially since it didn’t give Metis and Lupus and place to invest to represent learning more about human culture. Perhaps swapping out Law for Academics, putting human law into Academics anyway, and turning Rituals into a more general “Garou Society” Knowledge?
@Gifts
I think this is probably the biggest undertaking needed for WtA, so I’m glad it’s on the table. Anything that might cut down on the sheer number of Gifts by looking to remove repetition or overlapping ones is good to me.
@Rites
Like Gifts, Rites suffer a bit from mathematical inconsistency and vary quality. So looking at that is probably a good idea.
On Caern Building specifically, I tried to mention to Holden (but it might have gotten lost in the thread in question) that the rite goes from impossible, to actually kind of easy if you get enough extra helpers. I don’t think that’s necessarily the best idea, and if he makes a new one that isn’t so binary, it’s worth trying out. But as it stands it can be done (you know, with 40 Garou all working together not counting guards keeping them from dying from the inevitable Wyrm attack).
Huh, a thought that came to me right after I hit post…
While really looking at which Background restrictions make sense and which ones don’t is important, if pooled Background rules were included, it allows for an interesting dynamic: Background Restrictions don’t count for shared Backgrounds. So an individual Bone Gnawer might not have Resources, but a pack of Bone Gnawers could pool together a shared communal fund.
On Caern Building:
While there are probably methods to juke the odds into the realms of possibility, to be totally blunt, cWoD fans don’t tend to be, as a group, the most crunch-focused people in the hobby. And you know, that’s fine. But given that fact, it strikes me as kind of a bad idea to have a crucial rite that requires throwing the group’s resident munchkin at it and having him wring every last possible bonus out of the system before it’s workable.
Also, even if, in-setting, the odds of actually pulling off the rite successfully are say, one in a dozen, it doesn’t necessarily follow that the mechanics of the rite should reflect that, since that’s really not the story anybody /using the rite at their table/ wants to tell– the glorious tale of how the player characters tried to establish a new caern, but failed miserably a whole bunch of times before the laws of probability finally cut them some slack. As it stands, I think it’s mostly a roadblock in the way of telling stories about establishing a new caern, when it should be there to facilitate telling a story, as most of the good social rites are.
Holden,
I get what you’re saying, but I think the thread got off track on what it takes to pull the ritual off.
You don’t have to wring the hell out of the system. You have to take advantage of the specific thing the Rite tells you to take advantage of: Large numbers of participants.
Consider the odds for a character with 8 dice trying this Rite, with different numbers of participants (though I admit I didn’t include the cWOD botch rules, because that’s messy as hell):
13 (base required) – less than 0.001%
18 – less than 0.001%
23 – ~0.03%
28 – ~0.39%
33 – ~0.92%
38 – greater than 0.999%
There is a huge jump in how likely you are to succeed just based in adding more participants.
Since getting enough Garou involved can virtually guarantee success, doesn’t it provide good story fodder to have the big push of using the Rite focus on the characters collecting a force big enough to pull it off?
Damn it I am spoiled by the ability to edit posts.
Please move all those decimal places two to the right.
I thought the worst part of the Caern Building Rite was to gather enough people for the ritual AND man the defenses. Because i assumed the Wyrm would to the utmost to stop that rite, and that would show on their side’s oracular abilities as well (BSD theurges also can do divinations, and quite well). So it’s not just the people for the ritual, but the effort of defending the ritualists. I Roleplayed that particular situation with 4 gaming tables playing during two weekends, representing the 4 packs that were in charge of the defenses. It was interesting to see how the munchkin builds fell apart quickly when gnosis, willpower, rage and talens became resources of an extended running race. 🙂
To me, the hardest part of Caern Building wasn’t the ritual itself… it was the vulnerability of opening a new source of power that was basically a beacon to all of the Wyrm beasties in the area. You gotta keep that rite going without being disrupted, and THAT was the hardest part, IMO. And that was what made for great war stories.
… Getting onto Omaha Beach was easy… staying alive, or taking out the guys defending it until your forces could achieve their goal was the hard part. And, even then… once you’ve made your mark, it’s a matter of “capture the flag”, and fighting until the end of Time to maintain it, against the odds.
This. 🙂
I’d really like to see a pooled resource system as well, at least for certain BGs… resources, allies, contacts, etc, much like V20 has. It just makes sense given the way the pack works.
I also wondert, why there isn’t an Aacademics trait, but Science, Politics and Law.
In my opinion one should look at most of the knowledge skills. Swapping Rituals for “Garou Society” is a very good idea, since in every other System one uses Occult to perform a Rite. That should be the same in W:tA.
@Rites
Yeah the Caern Building Rite hasn’t the best rules. But in my opinion this Rite is not deadly enough.
Like you said, it is quite easy to perform that Rite, if you haven’t been so stupid not having enough Garou with you and not performing it at the right time (Winter Solstice).
I think that Rite is so powerful for the Garou and being part of that Rite is so high rewarded (or should be), that almost everybody should have a chance to die during the Rite.
It is good to see a close look at Werewolf.
I like the ideas for changing Abilities to be consistent with V20. Moving Leadership to Talents, and eliminating Dodge is good. I hope W20 keeps Primal Urge and leaves out Awareness. Adding in Larceny and Technology makes sense.
Backgrounds: I like the restrictions, but they should be reviewed. I always considered the Bone Gnawer restriction to represent an inability to keep a consistent flow of money. Perhaps it can be a cap; no more than 1 or 2 Resources for Bone Gnawers. The Mentor restriction for Glass Walkers and Shadow Lords makes no sense given the tight structure these tribes have.
Gifts: this is where the closest look should be. Smoothing out the levels for a Gift between categories is good. I’d also like to see a thematic review. Allowing Garou to fly (Spirit of the Bird), leap hundreds of feet (Great Leap), or control all Technology (Control Simple/Complex Machine) may be cool but it strips away some of the horror and focus on being a Werewolf. Another thought is to tie Gifts to form. Some of the more shamanistic powers might fit better tied Breed forms only, and the more primal/wolfish Gifts tied to Crinos/Glabro/Hispo. Maybe via a toughening of the rule on keeping Gnosis feats separate from Rage feats.
I’d also like to see the effects of certain Gifts better balanced between levels. Some Gifts such as Persuasion or Inspiration seem dwarfed by other Gifts of the same level such as Resist Pain, Mother’s Tough, and Open Seal.
Rites: Caern Building? Have at it. I’d also live to see inclusion of some of the useful rites from different sources. Anyone remember the Rite of Luna’s Spear?
Spirit Combat changes seem good at first glance.
Guts Talk: As I said above, keep in mind when reviewing that these are Werewolves and their capabilities should reflect that.
Personally I’m against background restrictions. Restrictions, as opposed to suggestions and advice, have a low opinion of players. It’s bascially a way to avoid players turning out dumb, jarring character concepts like.. I don’t know, Wendigo computer hacker who has made all his money on credit card scams. But to avoid excesses we end up cutting out the marginal corner cases and potentially interesting takes on characters. I can’t think of a single restriction that should be absolutely true of every single tribe member and the game would be broken if they had a dot in it. Maybe Bone Gnawers and pure breed but that’s it. And as someone above has said, what is pure breed anyway? I would rather a section in the splat giving strong advice rather than a list of prohibitions that limit the potential of an interesting experiment.
Ability Changes
I prefer Athletics for Dodge, and have been using it for a long time.
Background Restrictions
Don’t change them.
I’ve always explained the bans social/financial backgrounds as a defining characteristic of the tribe. The characters can have money (in the case of Resource) or a superior who will help out (in the case of Mentor), however they gain no benefit from it in the terms of game mechanics.
Money doesn’t disintegrate in the hands of a Bone Gnawer, but they don’t care about it much, and thus never save it to be the equivalent of a dot of Resources. Perhaps they give it to homeless people, blow it on fast food, or perhaps they buy basic supplies (like blankets) for the night but in the morning then walk off without the blankets. Also, Resources isn’t just cash in hand, but represents credit as well. It’s required for big ticket items even at the lower end of resources, such as how Resources 2 indicates you can own a home. Frankly, the life of a Bone Gnawer is murder to your credit score, and no banker in their right mind would hand them cash…
No access to the Mentor background reinforces the image of Glass Walkers as a very prideful and independent lot. Despite loud distain of others as to living in an urban environment, the Glass Walkers have broken from almost all of the other tribes and have set out to master the urban jungle and associated spirits. They take pride is learning the tools of the weaver, mastering those spirits, and thus defying the conventional wisdom of the other tribes. So, since pride is very strong amongst the Glass Walkers, I don’t see it as difficult that they can easily have social relationships with equals or lessers (Allies and Contacts), however forming an intimate bond of trust with a Mentor is difficult.
Spirit Combat
Fighting spirits has always needed a significant overhaul in every edition. Spirit traits need to be simple and abstract in comparison to the PCs, however they also have to match the concept of the spirit as well as the rules that the PCs will be using.
The Revised/Dark Ages system is far too abstracted, and produce invincible, pathetic or glass tiger combatants. Rage, Willpower, and Gnosis should be linked to the concept of the spirit (the spirit of a mountain might not be full of Rage, but instead a colossus of Willpower and Gnosis) rather than the combat abilities of those traits. Unfortunately, given how the combat rules work, while that same giant mountain of rock would have an excellent chance in hitting a target in combat (Willpower), it attempting to crush you would result in a pathetic hit due to low Rage. Worse, that creature of rock might as well be made out of glass, as a low Rage means that it is far easier for it’s enemies to deal damage to it. As a result of disconnects like this, you end up with powerful spirits with extremely high traits, even if it makes absolutely no sense at all.
I recommend keeping Rage, Willpower, and Gnosis, however those should be used as traits you can use to fuel Charms. Create additional broad traits for spirits, such as Physical, Mental, and Social, so they match the rules that every other PC/NPC is using in the game. If necessary, add a few charms to provide a bonus to Physical tests involving attacking, defending, and soaking, perhaps fueled by Rage, Willpower and Gnosis.
Background restrictions- Toss ’em. Nearly all of the social background restrictions seem like they’re meant to force you to play the stereotype. In the case of the bone gnawers, it’s stupid: even staying out of traditional venues of money-making, you’re really going to tell me no bone gnawer theurge ever took up a side business slinging spirit-awakened weed? Or one of their ragabashes running gambling numbers? Come on y’all, there’s plenty of ways to make money and not all of them require filling out your W-2s.
Same for the Get and the Shadow Lords. Sure, the stereotypical Fenrir or Lord might not be interested in information networks or close friends respectively, but are we saying that every single member of the tribe socializes exactly like the stereotype? That’s just stupid.
Glad to see them go.
Err, meant to continue the thought to say that, in the case of the Wendigo, it’s just hell of racist, which is probably not something to keep.
Wendigo are followers of Wendigo, Totem of War. What purpose do they have for personal finance and making human connections? Spinning this as a “Racist” thing is silly, since the Uktena don’t have the same restrictions.
Get are garou of war under totem of war, yet they can get money just fine.
The reason the Wendigo thing is seem as racist has more to do with the fact that those restrictions suggest that the wendigo are dirt poor, living in either nature..or very poor reservation with little contact to the outside world.
To me the Wendigo want to honor the ways of their ancestors. They want to live as they did before the white man came and slaughtered their people.
That means no Resouces for them in the World of Darkness. If you compare this Background from the Core Book to the Croatan Song Sourcebook (p. 113) you’ll notice the difference:
Resources (5 dots):
(V20)
-Extremely Wealthy. You are the model to which others strive to achieve, at least in the popular mind. Television shows, magazine spreads, and gossip websites speculate about your clothing, the appointments of your numerous homes, and the luxury of your modes of transportation. You have vast and widely distributed assets, perhaps tied to the fates of nations, each with huge staffs and connections to every level of society through a region. (…)
(Croatan Song)
-Few chiefs are as wealthy as you are; you have enough goods to support you your tribe FOR AN ENTIRE WINTER IF NEED BE.
The Wendigo struggle is not about money; its about preserving their traditions and culture.
Otherwise they would just be dark skinned Glass Walkers. (which would be a great concept for a character, but no for a whole tribe).
Even in Croatan song, the idea that Resources 5 is just food for one winter is pretty silly. Granted the book doesn’t focus on Mesoamerica, but Uktena at least lived there and the emperor of Tenochtitlan had at least about 15 Resources by that scale.
If the Wendigo are going to keep those two restrictions, they should come with an explanation of how their tribal totem requires them to voluntarily give up such things after their First Change, as a form of asceticism. Make it clear that it’s voluntary and deliberate, not just being isolated, dirt-poor Indians out of touch with “modern” people.
I agree restrictions should go, but If you’ll allow me to barge in on this, it is actually said that they do this willingly. It’s just not in the description of ressources it’s in the various source books related to them. The Wendigo do their damned best to stay as far as they can from civilisation which they see as corruption, they even have entire villages hidden in the north where their kin live exactly as their ancestors did and those never even heard of the concept of money. That’s Wendigo culture, it’s how they want it to be. BUT, then you get Evan Heals-the-Past and a thousand other little things which shows that it’s not a 100% thing and that therefore the restriction cannot hold.
One idea is to fold Background restrictions into Tribal Weaknesses. Bone Gnawers never become “wealthy” or move upward socially even if they accumulate great Resources. Silent Striders cannot have Past Lives as a result of being cursed.
Actually, as part of the meta plot, there were Strider NPCs in the first TB, that had “Ancestors” and as of revised, one could buy a merit to get the Background. With a W20 edition hopefully being metaplot-free, still the character option should remain, with possibly some background option in a sidebar, so STs and Players understand, why the restriction is in place and that “those who have the Background” are some cherished youngsters and the first in millennia.
Metaplot inclusion has gone back and forth. If we included the Silent Strider restriction on Ancestors in their Haunted weakness it would provide a metaplot free explanation.
Personally, I like the metaplot. But the system should be able to accomodate both views. I think my suggestion does this.
Yeah, but having a optional tribal weakness, that may or may not encompass Ancestor restriction, as it suits the ST is kind of a clutter.
Having the Background restricted and a Merit to lift that restriction would be fine. Also, the Curse affecting the Silent Strider isn’t meta plot, is is setting, has been since WtA’s inception. The reason why the Curse weakens (as given in Apocalypse) could be regarded as either metaplot or setting, since it also happend since early WtA.
I think a sidebar explaining the restriction and the way to circumvent it as well as a few words on how likely it is to be one of those few who have Ancestors, would be sufficient to incorporate 1st/2nd edition feel and revised flexibility.
Please fix the massive gap in Gnosis between Homids, Metis and Lupus. Even if I can roleplay lupus-born Garou, the difference is irritating. Someone on Shadownessence suggested 2/3/4 which sounds fine to me.
I’d also put in a request to make Metis the ones with the highest starting Gnosis. They are closer than the other breeds to their spirit sides, being born in a shape that’s more a product of an umbral imprint than the two other breeds.
Gnosis is a power of a primal energy. Note that it’s the Revel at a Moot that recharges a Caern’s Gnosis. The connection to the primal roots is what Gnosis is about. Therefore, it is the Lupus, who grow up with a closer connection to that primal way of thinking and less “tainted” upbringing that allows them that more natural and stronger connection to their spiritual/Gnostic energies. At least, that’s how I’ve learned to understand it. Perhaps this needs better explanations in the book?
Lupus are born entirely of the material or of one spirit-flesh hybrid. Metis are born of two spirit-flesh hybrid beings. Thus, if you’re talking about which one would be closer to spirit energies, it would probably be the Metis.
I see gnosis as being more of a “living as you were meant to by Gia” gauge. Wolves behave like wolves always have. Max points. Metis, although horrid crimes were committed in their creation, are still closer in their lifestyles to what Gia intended, hwoling at the moon and all.. 3 points. Homids. Way off base. Grew up in a house standing on synthetic carpet. Lowest points. I see gnosis not so much as a measure of “spiritiness” but of proximity to the spiritual state intended for them.
If that were true, Metis would have Gnosis 0, because the first tenet of the Litany suggests she never intended for them to exist at all.
Besides, Gaia intended for living things to change. Mokole rolled with reproductive barrier punches for well over one or two hundreds of millions of years, and while they remain The Memory, they have changed what their vaguely humanoid form looked liike. Possibly quite a great deal more often than just from Dinosaur King to Human, too.
If you tie it into the caern, shouldn’t metis then have the MOST Gnosis as well having grown up in the area with the lowest Gauntlet and having had the revel go on around them for years? They’ve been bathing in the ebb and flow of Gnosis to the caern for years!
Nah, I wasn’t tying it to the Caern, just using how the Caern gets its Gnosis during the Moot reflects that Gnosis is a connection to something more primal, and that connection to something more Primal is a trait better known/experienced/natural to a Wolf-born than someone who’s got more Human in them. At least that’s all in my understanding of how it works.
I agree on the Lupus stil having more gnosis. If it represents a primal connection to Gaia, and humans have schewed that connection with the use of Tools and Fire (book of the Weaver), it makes sense that Metis have less than the lupus.
I like the approach in this Forum-Topic:
http://forums.white-wolf.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1254974#post1254974
It allows for more well rounded characters. Characters that do not inherit a flaw from the Auspice or Breed chosen that just doesn’t make a lot of sense for his Auspice or Tribe choice.
Ability Changes:
No problem here. Of course, don’t forget to inlcude these changes in Gifts’ systems (removing Dodge and replacing it with Athletics is one particular example).
Backgrounds:
They were never a problem in my games. My advice: if you have a great idea how to make it work (for example: without making an implausible thing such as a millionaire Bone Gnawer (5 dots in Resources) then do it, but don’t push it where it would obviously break the setting (for example, the Ancestors background restriction for Silent Striders).
Gifts:
Again, change and/or remove only if it is really redundant and/or useless. Just because “Sense the Unnatural’ (Lupus Gift, Level Two, WtA Rev. p. 136) sounds similar to “Sight from Beyond” (Theurge Gift, Level Two, WtA Rev. p.139) it doesn’t mean they’re both redundant. The first one allows to detect and get an “I-feel-it-in-my-guts” info about a supernatural person or object when a Garou is actively looking for it (thus making him or her good at detecting and guessing what he or she is dealing with), while the second one warns and makes the Garou experience visions about a potentially dangerous and very often supernatural person or object the Garou is not aware of (thus making him or her a great “advanced warning” for the pack). They obviously revolve around detecting and identifying supernatural danger but in a different way. Please approach such cases carefully.
Rites:
No problem here with one exception: the Rite of Caern Building as it is written in WtA Rev is definitely too difficult to pull off. I don’t mean to allow Garou to make caerns pop-up like mushrooms around the globe but, geez, in RAW it requires a ritemaster with Wits rating 5 and Caern Rites speciality in Rituals (rating 5) and permanent Gnosis rating of 10 to have a slight chance at creating a decent level 3 caern! And that’s even with extra Garou, beyond the necessarry 13!
Spirit Combat:
I like the changes in spirit combat you’ve suggested above since they improve the already good system from WtA Rev.. I’m also one of the people who think that allowing Gnosis-soaking is a bad idea since it could potentially muddle the system and invite confusion. To me, a Garou’s Stamina is more than enough for soaking any damage and Gnosis already plays a role in spirit combat in terms of Gifts used against them. Let’s keep it simple.
Guts Talk:
Whatever happens, please leave the “current rating” in the Experience Chart as it is in WtA Rev. (i.e. meaning “the number of dots in a given Trait on your character sheet BEFORE you buy the next dot”). It’s simply logical and doesn’t make buying that next dot in anything arduous.
Yeah, after running some numbers and scenarios, I’m currently leaning towards Gnosis to soak being too fiddly for a core system.
Does “3 Experience for the first dot, 2 XP for the second dot” make sense though?
To me? No. But I’ve seen it go back and forth enough times.
From a purely mechanical design view the “dip” in XP cost doesn’t make any sense. Two dots in something is better than one dot in something. If you’re using an increasing scale instead of a flat fee, it makes no sense that it would then be cheaper.
From an aesthetic perspective it gets more complicated. Some people feel the dip is warranted because they feel that it can take more work to get the basics down than progress a bit deeper in. Some people feel the dip isn’t warranted because the think that “ah ha!” moment when everything starts getting easier is when you have the next dot and are now better than before.
I’m not sure either is accurate to reality, so I fall on the mechanical sense side.
I played for many years with “X times New Cost”. It slowed progression a bit in the game (making the 5th dot in an ability 20 points rather than 16), but I often find that I have lots of unspent dice in our games because I can rarely say “Yeah, after 3 missions, I’m a Master at Melee combat.” So the extra couple of points doesn’t bother me–I’m usually sitting on 15 or more points at a time because our session rarely really gives me reason to increase my points in anything that makes sense story-wise, even though I’ve gained experience mechanically.
So, in “2 x Next Level” first level of an Ability is 3 points. Second is 4 points, Third is 6 points, Fourth is 8 points, Fifth is 10 points. A total of 21 points. Otherwise (2 x Current) it’s 3+2+4+8=17 points. 4 points total, or maybe 2 games of XP difference for an ability. (Assuming I did my math right.)
For games that are meant to be long-running chronicles, X-times-Next-Level allows for slower advancement (and gets rid of that dip) and the eventual plateau/maxing out of stats can happen many more games down the road. A game using X-times-Current, means characters will become bad-ass much faster and the plateau/maxing of stats will happen sooner.
The question of whether to use “X times Current” or “X times New Cost” depends really on how generous one as a ST is with XPs. If your every session is a complete story (not just one chapter), then, by the book, you get 8 XPs. The “X times New Cost” isn’t so bad in this variant, however, if one runs a multi-chapter story, in which each session is a chapter, then you can accumulater 5 XPs at maximum and those additional 3 XPs are only once in a while. In addition, note that one of the reasons for getting an XP (Heroism, WtA Rev. p. 181) is pretty tricky to get since the situation during gameplay doesn’t always arrange itself to accomplish a feat of heroism (which the ST acknowledges as such) easily and thus, you usually get only 4 XPs. That’s the default way of running a chronicle, where “X times Next Level” would be detrimental to character development compared to “X times Current”. Besides, cWoD in general has an opinion of being a system in which if one doesn’t invest one’s freebies into a given Trait at character creation there’s almost no chance that throughout the chronicle he or she’ll accumulate enough experience points to raise it to usable levels in the future. IMHO using “X times New Level” method would only make it worse.
As for plateau/maxing of stats… well, one solution comes to mind: buy new skills not printed on the character sheet form Player’s Guides, Tribebooks etc.. The rules permit buying only one dot at a time so it’s not unrealistic for a master of many skills to learn something new instead of just honing skills he or she already has. If this fails… well, the players are badasses now so begin the final fight between them an their main antagonist in a historical chronicle or, when running a chronicle set in modern times, start the Apocalypse already! 😉
I think the “how long it takes to grow” is a wash in this, just like the aesthetic arguments. Despite “New level” or “Level you already have,” you can speed up or slow down growth by changing XP hand out rates.
Which, again, falls back into the argument for “New” being the better choice: It makes the most mechanical sense and all the other arguments for overriding mechanical elegance are washes.
Ok…
Primal Urge = Keep it. It represents how connected you are to your animal side. It measures you animal instincts, ability to shift naturally, etc.
Weaknesses = Keep them. Seriously. The Tribal weakness added to each tribe and helped make them different from each other, and showed how each tribe member is connected to the tribe. It even deserves a space on the character sheet.
Backgrounds = I normally say let any character have any background.
Restrictions on backgrounds. Tribal restrictions or must haves do have a place if it is 100% universal to that tribe. Social Backgrounds that deal outside of the garou should be unrestricted. Silver fangs all requiring Purebreed 3 makes sense. Bone Gnawers not able to have resources does not make sense, but their restriction to having Purebreed makes sense to me. Maybe under the section of common backgrounds, we can have blurbs about tribes looking down on certain backgrounds but no 100% no way backgrounds.
GIFTS = We need to add COMMON GIFTS for Garou. These Gifts are not unique to Breed, Auspice, or Tribe. Common Gifts should be printed before the others. Then when the Breed, Auspice, Tribe gifts are printed up, they can refer us to common gifts if one happens to be a common gift for garou.
I disagree on the common gifts.
It is okay that each “splat” has it’s list and that some gifts are on more than one. Common gifts partly remove the things that make the different garou different in the first place.
Background restrictions are a hard lot.
Hard restrictions are foolish. But a Bone Gnawer with more than one or two dots in Resources just doesn’t make sense. That’s called a Glass Walker.
This seems to be more of a “Storyteller Preference” kind of thing, anyway.
As for Spirit Combat, it does need a rework. It’s not fair if the Ahroun dominates combat on both sides of the Gauntlet. The Theurge should be the powerhouse in the umbra, considering spirits are their bread and butter.
Gifts could be cleaned up, the descriptions clarified.
The Renown system is fine. Make wise choices, carry yourself with honor, Achieve glory in battle or by doing fantastic deeds. Easy.
Do you think that a Theurge should be better at killing spirits than an Ahourn? Or should he be better at communicating with and persuading them? It’s a genuine question.
All three. The Theurge should, in theory, be trying to communicate with spirits, but not all spirits are good. When the bane comes a’screamin’, the Theurge should step up as the master of the spirit he’s supposed to be.
When the pack gets caught breaking into Pentex, and formori are pouring from the walls, That should be the Ahroun’s cue. At least that’s what I think.
The theurge *does* step up, they just step up with magick-y solutions rather than stabby ones. Command Spirit leaps to mind.
Not to mention “Exorcism” (Theurge Gift Level 3, WtA Rev. p. 139) and “Malleable Spirit”(Theurge Gift Level 5, WtA Rev. p. 139). Sure, an Ahroun can rip a spirit apart, but it is the Theurge who can do to a hostile spirit the equivalent of its worst nightmare.
I remember the weaknesses as being very awkward in some cases, pushing the stereotype rather than the depth. The Fianna one stands out. Not wanting to compare with vampire, but the weaknesses in that game made sense as mystical curses that are part of the wider vampiric curse. Why do werewolves have these problems though? It’s bound into their DNA? A Bone Gnawer is going to have a social difficulties with other werewolves under every circumstance? All Silver Fangs have derrnagements? Don’t get me wrong I think these are very inspiring roleplaying ideas, even optional flaws, but players don’t need their experiences railroaded like that. I’m not suggesting the unrestricted world of possibilities that charcterises the world design of NWoD but, as has been said, its got to be options in character design over restrictions wherever possible.
Sorry I managed to mix in a Werewolf/Vampire comparison and a NWoD/OWoD comparison into a single post.
Agreed, tribal weaknesses should be optional, and they have been for a reason.
Not that I want to undercut the narrative potency of blood relation within a tribe, but tribal weaknesses by definition need to cover werewolves that are adopted into a tribe and accepted by the totem. The most obvious example are the male cubs born to Black Furies that are given away to other tribes: a Child of Gaia whose bloodline is pure Black Fury should manifest the Children of Gaia tribal weakness if you’re using tribal weaknesses at all. So they are probably best served as mystical/social.
I think that tribal weaknesses will enter the game for legacy purposes, but remain strictly optional as before, and be carefully considered.
Regarding adoption, either of cubs a tribe gives away (I like the idea that true born male Black Furies are rarer than statistics would allow for some reason) or accepting an adult who wants to defect.
Rules have always been a little fuzzy on what the consequences of that should be for Ancestors or Pure Breed background.
Ancestors should be tribe specific and Ancestors, for the most part, should not show themselves to a garou how defects his Ancestor’s tribe. There is a Merit for Bone Gnawers that one dot worth of Ancestors from the original tribe sticks around, if one is a Bone Gnawer because one’s parent or grandparent was banished from his tribe. I’t would be okay to have a general Merit that allows for the Ancestor background to come from another tribe, if defecting or adoption was part of a characters background story.
As for Pure Breed. It kind of incorporates, that the garou in question is the poster boy/girl of that tribe in a mystical way, too. So, having pure breed should incorporate a genetic/spiritual/mental/social component that just makes it unlikely to ever think about defecting one’s tribe and join another, or make it especially hard to enter the “wrong” tribe, if garou of that tribe found and raised the pure breed one as their own (That would be dishonourable too, I guess, but that never stopped the BSD, unfortunately).
One the other hand few garou should ever enter a tribe that is not part of their linage and few garou should be born to a garou of one tribe and a kin, whose heritage is from another tribe. So, writing explicit rules about what happens in this cased, might send a wrong signal, too…
“One the other hand few garou should ever enter a tribe that is not part of their linage and few garou should be born to a garou of one tribe and a kin, whose heritage is from another tribe. So, writing explicit rules about what happens in this cased, might send a wrong signal, too…”
The trading of kin among tribes is a sort of bartering tool. and the Silver Fangs would often take the Kin of highest breeding regardless of their tribe. It would seem then that a Kinfolk’s pure breeding is sort of a universal PB. So a child of a PB4 Silver Fang kin and a PB4 Shadow Lord Garou would produce a Kin with PB as well… and if it were to be born True, then it would be PB shadow Lord?
Other issues of PB include “Is PB linear? Does it just pop up? If a PB4 and PB2 have a child, is is PB 4, 3, or 2, or something else?” And, yes, is PB of a specific tribe, or is it just a general “Greatness” characteristic?
It was said, that Pure Breed is tribe specific, and that should also count for Kinfolk, even though, Kin uses other rules for Pure Breed then Garou (no bonus on social rolls).
“Kinfolk: Unsung Heroes” was kind of schizophrenic on that part, telling us about self-aware and self-assured kin-characters while stating at the same time that garou see kin belonging to the tribe of the “associated garou” (as in romantically involved with) instead of the tribe of her parents. Obviously, that is kind of unrealistic, because cultural background, heritage, involvement with friends and family of a specific social group usually do not simply change, once I decide to shag a member of another ethincity.
Specifically, a ill-placed love interest of a pure breed 4 silverfang kin to a young bone gnawer won’t turn him into a bone gnawer in the eyes of all garou. It’s more likely the athro father will see that he is turned into a boarding-school student and the bone gnawer girl is turned into a corpse. Ending the affair.
But, you are right, this should be stated more clearly in W20, and in my opinion should read like this:
“Pure Breed is partly based on inheritance. However the trait only represents the characters own greatness and how garou react towards him. It does not directly influence the pure breed of his/her children. So, while any given garou or kinfolk child tends to have a relative high pure breed when the generations before also had a relatively high level there isn’t a clear mechanic to that. For one is is that pure breed is also a partly mystical trait, representing among other things how archetypical the character is for his tribe. Besides that, coincidences and probabilities play a certain part, too. So just like random minor mutations would alter certain characteristics of a child in a strictly biological process, some unforeseeable and unknown effects influence the pure breed a child inherits form the parents, grandparents or even earlier predecessors.
Some mystics still try to discern how to breed especially pure children, though.”
Part of the confusion for me is that Pure Breed shows how much a paragon you, or your Garou ancestors, are for your tribe. But for your kinfolk brother, it shows how likely he is to sire a werewolf. I know that as a partly spiritual trait it isn’t going to be perfectly rational, but there seems to be a disconnect.
True. As I pointed out earlier, the game mechanic bonuses for Pure Breed are kind of unbalanced, since they for one help the proactive garou with extra dice while they do not grant any bonus on resisting domination or intimidation by another garou in any way. That is, if the ST doesn’t switch to resisted rolls in such cases.
So, besides a more detailed description what Pure Breed is and what traits are found “usually” with what tribe, the mechanics could use some reworking, too. A system which works equally for garou and kin would be preferred, of course.
Best would be that Pure Breed influences the ability to persuade, charm, intimidate, challenge etc. other garou and kin, while granting a bonus on resisting those attempts.
Easiest change would be not to add the dices one has in pure breed to any social rolls, but only to add the difference between the own pure breed and the targets pure breed. This would result in a penalty, if one tries to affect a person with more pure breed than one self has.
But other systems, with difficulty reduction/increases and only a few bonus dice would also work, although they are a bit more complicated…
Ooh, in time for this one, although I’ll only mention the suggestions that I think are likely to get listened to:
– I would like the Silver Fang flaw to work as hinted by their TB, that it starts weak but gets stronger as the garou rises in rank/status; also that any enforced pure breed is free to balance the flaw.
– I have always balanced the lupus gnosis boost by reducing the number of ability points. It seems fair.
– Allow Rage to go higher than base Rage; or at least the dice rolled for frenzy; otherwise there is nothing stopping the Ragabash having an unimpaired home life, which runs contrary to the descriptive text.
– Whatever you do with Gifts, please can you note whether each Gift is reflexive or requires an action? It’s something that I’ve always found lacking.
Thanks,
PaF
Hi. I want to share a House Rule for Remaining Active:
It’s quite simple, when you roll your permanent Rage (difficulty 8) to remain active (and heal damage), you dont count 1’s.
Probably most players prefer a more deadly game, but this house rule its great for lasting characters. (And you really dont want to kill a character for a bad dice roll).
difficulty 8, obviously.
Thoughts:
Talents gain Leadership. I approve, it makes sense as a talent instead of skill.
Dodge should be moved to awareness just like it was for V20. Keep it consistent, the same argument you make later for another change.
Skills gain Larceny in place of Leadership. I highly approve. Way too many gifts use stealth in a way that makes you go “huh, I’ll have to really abstract my thinking on this one.”
Options better than restrictions any day. Glass Walkers have no mentors? I’d managed to forget that. It makes no sense. I can get Bone Gnawers not having resources – Rat wants them to scrounge but at the same time why would he mind them scrounging off the best? I could see a few dots of resources or at least a better explanation of how they can have temporary resources through scrounging. I disagree with Bone Gnawers not having pure breed strongly – a rat can be a pure bred rat and still scrounge.
I’m biased here as the Bone Gnawers are one of my favorites but I’d like to see more diversity from them. They are a broad concept as a tribe that got a very narrow interpretation due to their restrictions.
Various math on gifts and rites: yeah, there’s a reason I arbitrarily set costs sometimes.
*Continued from earlier convo*
I have to agree with Adamant Siaka, if Gaia did intend her children just be wolves living in the wild.. she would have made sentient megawolves, not shapeshifting human-wolves.
One thing that has always bothered me with WtA is the constant praising of lupus as the ‘true’ garou, untouched by vile humanity etc etc. However, if you think about the function of garou, that makes little sense. Garou were given the ability to interbreed with both humans and wolves, because those who were born among humans could understand the humanity better, and thus temper the predator and know which of the humans were sick. They also brought a calculating and complex brain to the mix, while those born to wolves brought sharp senses, preydrive and wild nature to the garou.
Therefore, homids are intended to be the way they are. They are not a fluke of nature that just happened, otherwise they would be the abomination breed, not metis. So, homids are not living against the will of Gaia, they are doing exactly what the breed is supposed to do. Fit in and know how humans act.
I’m not sure that’s entirely true. I accept the criticism of the idea of the wolves being “right” and human’s “wrong.” I’m not sure I believe that myself. However human beings, and by dint homids who are of are born of humans are problematic creatures in the eyes of Gia. Human’s got the impergium imposed on them, no other species did. Being human, or related to humans, isn’t a state of purely natural wonderfulness in the world of WtA. In the cosmology of this world homids are at least creatures with some very problematic family history.
Sure, humans are problematic.
However, homids still are a planned part of the garou specie, made so by Gaia. Yes, they may not be as natural as wolves, but without the human mind, lupus couldn’t plan their attacks or strategise as well as they do as garou. Human blood allows garou to think further than any regular wolf could, and that’s a good thing fighting the wyrm and dealing with rage.
As for homids themselves, Gaia still wanted garou to be able to shift between human and wolf. Not just be wolves.
I think what this boils down to for me is the problem in the representation of homids in the game. I don’t want a game in which human born garou are modern primitives who are naturally living in harmony with nature,perfect examples of what they were intended to be by Gia. I’d rather they had problems accessing their spirit nature because the lives the have lead are so at odds with the will of their god. I’d rather they had a problem to deal with. I’d rather (rather anticlimactically) they started with 1 gnosid
Sadly, the canon pretty much assumes homids from tribes other than Glass Walkers can be in harmony with Gaia. Considering how lupus are often portrayed (wolves who can talk), homids are the only ones upholding the tribal culture.
Again, I think that the faulty belief is that Gaia = Gnosis. Lupus have more Gnosis because they are closer to their Wyld side. It is the wild, primal acts of nature that are closer to the Spirits (less Weaverish) and that is why the Revel of a Moot (when Werewolves turn into Wolves and run around destroying anything that may threaten their territory) renews the Gnosis of a Caern. Gaia is a concept that involves the entirety of the Traits. In my opinion, and if I recall, the werewolves (and players) tend to forget this little part of the issue and just assume that Gaia is somehow aligned with one trait over another. At least, originally, all three in harmony best represented the original concept of Gaia. BUT, that’s out of wack now because the Weaver caused the rift between the physical realm and spirit realm. Humans are creatures of Gaia. Wolves are creatures of Gaia. And Garou are creatures of Gaia (with a bit more prestige.)
But Humans are more aligned with the Weaver’s way of thinking (that which separated physical from spiritual), and Wolves are still primal (Wyld), and Garou (born of Werewolves) are torn between the two… so they have just a bit less natural connection than Wolves, but more than Homids. At least, that’s how I account for it.
Part of the thesis of W:tA is that humans are maybe not acting how they’re supposed to act. And homids are raised among humans, in human culture. By the time of the First Change, they’ve become very estranged from the Mother, in comparison to Lupus, who grow up living as wolves have lived pretty much since there have been wolves.
Metis grow up in the spiritual culture of the Garou, but held at arm’s length by their people’s disdain for them, which puts them sort of in the middle.
Yes, this does suggest that a homid born and raised within the bawn of a caern should have higher Gnosis (and that’s what freebie points are for!), and that a Lupus raised in a zoo should maybe have lower starting Gnosis (perhaps there could be a Flaw for that?). The starting values are supposed to represent the average, for the general background most werewolves in the game come from.
The above is very well expressed.. I think each breed a flaw (rather than Flaw) and a lack of connection with the spiritual makes for a good one for homids. It needs to be something as significant as being a horrid abomination of the litany or never having seen a door knob before.
I don’t know why I think breed should come with an inherent weakness and tribe shouldn’t but I do.
I really agree with that, but sadly it does create a huge problem due how the books are written, and what breeds players choose often.
See, lupus sadly get the ‘talking’ wolf treatment, and some books seem to hint that they can never get past it. Lupus are also often treated as something STs don’t like giving players and ‘hard to play’.
So, typical pack is homids+1 metis. That often means the theurge is a homid, and by the ‘homids are outside nature’ rule, they would be useless for a long while.
There is also the fact that the books are written assuming that most garou in a given sept or tribe is homid. This means they HAVE to have stronger spiritual connection, otherwise the sept would be in trouble.
I do accept your point, particularly with regards to Theurges. Maybe they need a flaw that expresses their disconnect in a way that doesn’t relate to Gnosis?
This is it, for me. It is not that homids and humans are inherently bad or low-gnosis. It’s that humans have, over thousands of years, soundly rejected Gaia and everything she stands for, turned their backs on living by her laws, and embraced artificial landscapes that take them away from the world as Gaia intended it to be. If you grow up in a city (or yes, in a circus or lab or crappy zoo), surrounded by pesticides and plastic and concrete and strait roads, getting up by clock time instead of when the light tells you to get up, eating manufactured crap from a store that you didn’t grow or hunt, never noticing the seasons or moon phase because you need to be more concerned with arriving on time for the meeting just to survive day-to-day, you are out of touch with Gaia. If you grow up on a family farm or in a decent zoo, in a less artificial environment or with some involvement in where your food comes from, you are more likely to have better Gnosis (bought with freebie points), but still not likely optimal. The more artificial the environment, the thicker the Gauntlet, the less chance you have to grow gnosis. Your parents can try to minimize the problem by giving you lots of camping trips or something, but again that’s freebie points and still not optimal.
So, my two cents.
1) I will repeat that I don’t like the wedging of Dodge into Athletics, largely because they’re not the same thing. There are many different ways to be athletic, but under the current system it’s pretty much assumed that if you can do one thing, you can do everything, and since everybody wants to be able to dodge nasty death, virtually everybody is going to be highly athletic now. You have very few people who actually can run and jump and climb and throw and kick and balance and so on with equal aptitude across the board.
2) Tribal flaws. Trash ’em. Seriously. It was a lame attempt to make Werewolf a bit more like Vampire, or maybe Changeling, giving everybody a weakness, but the problem with that is that you can join a tribe other than the one you were born into, especially for lost cubs. So many of them make no sense at all, and the Siver Fang one especially is irritating, turning the suggestion that the tribe is sinking into madness into “everybody knows the Fangs are crazy.”
3) I’ve heard that Mother’s Touch is switching from Medicine to Empathy. If it’s not, it should, as Medicine is an in-depth knowledge of the body that many characters haven’t trained for, only having high levels of this Knowledge for the sake of Mother’s Touch. Make it MEAN more to have Medicine, and give it over to Empathy, a better ability for such a compassionate gift.
4) Still never liked the Star Gazer defection. I think that having more who stayed behind would make sense. Would like to see more of the other oddities. In this day and age, even the Siberakh can’t keep in hiding, surely. Time for them to come out and play.
5) IF there is anything on the Fera, please please please help the Ananasi and Ajaba. The Ananasi have far too many uber-combat gifts and far too few geared toward stealth, deception, and infiltration. Little things like passing as a vampire. The Ajaba… well, their Auspices are poorly defined. Time to update them, flesh them out, and maybe even give them more of their own gifts instead of merely borrowing from the Garou, who let’s face it they don’t have THAT much contact with.
6) Black Spiral Dancers. They deserve a decent treatment. They’re THE big enemy, and we know so little of them. I was startled to learn that the best, most comprehensive info on them comes not from a TT book but from the LARP Book of the Wyrm, where they go into amazing detail about gifts, rites, totems, derangements, and more. It’s so much more vivid, it’s a wonderful resource for any ST to draw upon to really flesh out these quintessential foes. Also, more varied outlooks is nice; I always did like the old suggestion that some Spirals feel they ARE serving Gaia… by hastening her decay so that she can be reborn. Sort of like chemotherapy. There’s room for some wonderfully odd interpretations, and it stands to reason that not all BSDs will see eye to eye as a result.
7) It’s been suggested that starting homids off with 1 Gnosis is a bit on the thing side. I am inclined to agree, honestly. Going 2/3/4 might make things more balanced, especially given how many choose lupus purely for that lovely Gnosis windfall. The argument that lupus are automatically closer to Gaia doesn’t hold water when you consider that there can be homids aware of their heritage steeped in mysticism and magic throughout their childhood and lupus raised in small conservation farms or even zoos, kept fat and lazy. Yes, you can buy up your Gnosis a bit at the start to reflect such differences, but when you start at 1, it’s hard to do much.
8) Pure Breed. Figure it out. I’ve always felt that it’s a mixture of tradition and mysticism. We’ve seen how lost cubs can have high levels of it, harkening back to heroic ancestors, yet it’s also often been based in bloodlines. I think making it less tribal-based is also good. Don’t get me wrong, it should reflect your ancestors, but you shouldn’t lose it unless you sign on with a tribe that doesn’t acknowledge it, or where nobody else does. Join the Bone Gnawers after a disgrace? Your Pure Breed is technically still there, but nobody acknowledges it. This also means that kin can be poached, which is something that IS discussed in the books; Silver Fangs used to take the cream of the crop from other tribes all the time, a tendency which earned them no small amount of ire. This also can intensify territoriality, as tribes seek to protect their own… or offer interest political avenues with marriages and matings of convenience between tribes. Lastly, Silver Fangs. They sort of get shafted. You MUST start with at least Pure Breed 3, but it’s heavily suggested that PCs also invest strongly in Backgrounds. Thing is, 3 of your points are already tied up, no option. Any time you have a situation where characters MUST take certain traits, you’re limiting options. One option is to just give it to them, and perhaps offer the other tribes little givens similarly (Kinfolk for the Fianna and Gnawers, for instance?)
9) Spirit of the Fray. It needs re-vamping. It’s FAR too powerful. The way we run it is that it adds your rank in dice to your Init roll, and you take the best roll. So a Rank 3 character rolls 4 dice. Conversely, you roll your rank, since it IS a rank 2 gift.
10) This pertains to MET: for the love of all, fix the explanation of how frenzy and moon phases works. I figured it out, I think, but it’s REALLY badly written and worded, to the extent that I think most just don’t bother.
11) Points are made above how homids are supposed to be as they are. I agree. A Garou is part man, part wolf, part spirit, but no one of them rules fully. They are equal parts flesh and spirit, equal parts man and wolf. Some might embrace one more than the other, but that’s choice. Lupus-born aren’t wolves; homid-born aren’t humans. They’re a fusion, and this affects their thinking. A lupus-born is not stupid. It has the same reasoning capacity as a homid-born, it just lacks the years of experience a homid does prior to first change. It’s EASIER to think more like the wolf, but they can’t fully embrace it, because they’re not fully wolf, not any longer, and given time and experience they can challenge any homid intellectually.
1) I partially agree. However, all those Athletics 0, Dodge 5 characters didn’t make a lot of sense either. With the V20-version an ST can state, that to dodge you need to be athletic and if you just are not, then you better use Brawl or Melee to block. So, someone can still be a bad-ass fighter, with the need to only raise one ability, but dodging a bullet is out of the question.
2) I disagree. The weaknesses added something to the flavour of the tribes, but it was okay, to have them remain an optional rule over the editions, for they hindered the game in some settings.
3) I disagree. Sure Medicine is sorted under Knowledges, but it is also the ability rolled for all practical applications of healing, regardless if it is Voodoo, traditional western or traditional Chinese medicine, First aid or open Heart Surgery. Also, “Mother’s Touch” isn’t necessarily described as Faith healing or empathic healing. Also, you can also heal a person you hate. But I always imagined, the gift user would at least need to know what a emergency doctor or surgeon would need to do, too, for the gift to work properly. Also empathy is mainly a sensing talent and tied to several other gifts, it doesn’t need the extra attention, while medicine is gift-wise only used for healing powers.
Oh, many Posts.
I actually think a forum discussion would be more organised than comments on a blog post. Anyway, I had a long drive on Saturday, scouting locations for werewolf LARP and discussing W20 changes with a fellow-ST while en-route. We came up, with some additional Things:
@Knowledges
Law and Politics are pretty special. On the other hand, with diverse aspects of “engineered stuff” divided into Knowledges Technology, Computer and Science, there is still a a lack of general knowledge on the Character sheet. Something that would be akin to “Academic Knowledge” form Dark Ages. Meaning a kind of knowledge encompassing “The Arts” with rudimentary knowledge of and possible specialisations in Literature, Art, Psychology, civics and such. Law and Politics don’t encompass that and are from my experience not really used that often. Politics especially seems to be partly the Masqerade secondary skill “Intrigue”, which is only really helpful to Shadowlords (and Silverfang to counter act 😉 )
@Linguistics
Removing it from the Knowledges seems okay, but turning it into a Merit (combination) doesn’t seem that good a choice. Most Merits and Flaws are inherent characteristics of the person they are assigned to, not subject to change and possibly not even acquired before character start, but just inborn. Foreign languages don’t seem to fit there.
Werewolf (as opposed to Vampire) already had a system for “stuff a character had learned before the play started”: The Rites Background.
I would like to see Foreign languages to be a background. It just makes more sense than merits for me.
One could even argue that Enemy or Debt should be Backgrounds instead of Flaws, like the anti-Backgrounds that were once included into revised Edition Mage.
So, I hope this post is read by those good folks in charge, too, and not getting lost among the soon to be 100+ posts here.
Thanks,
Heinrich
“Politics especially seems to be partly the Masqerade secondary skill “Intrigue”, which is only really helpful to Shadowlords (and Silverfang to counter act 😉 )”
Slightly tongue-in-cheek response: I assume you don’t have dogs. Pack politics are enough to make a person wonder why Garou don’t wind up getting the first dot free.
Out-of-game I’m more of a cat person myself, although I do not like Bastet. 😉
Anyway, if politics is seen in this light, possibly the knowledge is unfortunately named. But even then such social dynamics I would have used primal-urge or empathy for.
So, I really don’t want to say, politics is useless. From my experience however, I find it unfortunate, that there are Law and Politics as seemingly specialised knowledges, but no ability seems to represent general knowledge outside the scope of Science and Occult, respectively.
Alrighty, here goes…
1) Abilities; Dodge into Athletics works fine, addition of Leadership to Talents is good. One suggestion; do not add Awareness. Have primal-Urge fill that role. Awareness, as-written in V20, actually makes a lot of Garou Gifts a little more superfluous (What makes Sense Magic special, if EVERYONE can sense magic?). Larceny as a skill worked great in Wild West, it’ll do fine in W20. The addition of Technology to Knowledges is great, and as mentioned, can replace Science or Crafts in a lot of Gifts.
On this train of thought, lupus restrictions on abilities are painful and annoying. Saying “YOU CANNOT HAVE THIS” is a bit overbearing. if there MUST be a restriction, then make those abilities cost double with “beginning dots.” Metis and Homids should have a few of these as well (if there’s no way a Lupus could know Etiquette, why would a homid know Rituals, why would a Metis know Streetwise?)
2) Backgrounds; Pure Breed needs a good looking-at. In every edition, it adds dice to “social and challenge rolls” – okay, what’s a ‘challenge roll’? For that matter, what IS Pure Breed? What does it entail?
Ancestors could use some work as well. The difficulty makes it unwieldy to use, especially if you only give it one or two dots. Bring it down to difficulty 6 or 7.
The Touched backgrounds (from Player’s Guide to the Garou) come in two flavors; completely broken beyond all belief (Wyld Touched) to wasted dots (Weaver touched) to instant character doom (Wyrm touched). While they are neat ideas, I’m not sure if there’s really any way to “fix” them. Might be worth a look into, but I don’t hold out hope.
2.5) Tribal background restrictions… These honestly give a lot of flavor to the various tribes, but some of them don’t make a whole lot of sense, and there’s definite imbalance between the tribes; the Red Talons and Silent Striders get nothing in their corner to make up for their massive restrictions, while the restriction-free Uktena and Black Furies are really bringing home the bacon on all fronts.
With the changes to Resources found in V20, I see no reason to remove the restriction from those tribes that have it; a character with resources 0 isn’t starving in the street. He’s JUST making ends meet and has no budget for luxuries or savings. When you’re the omega tribe, when you eschew human ways of life, when you ‘travel light’, and when you live in third-world countries within a first-world nation while trying to maintain a neolithic culture, you’re not going to be driving a Porsche and collecting iPhones.
3) Gifts. Oh boy, this is a tricky spot. Some groups just have it way way better than others. Due to the structure of the Gift system (As opposed to Disciplines or other progressive systems) of course some Gifts are going to be weaker than others at any given level. However, it should be that every Gift is USEFUL more than once per chronicle. for instance, the Wendigo Gift, Deadstick (PGttG). it tells you if your packmate is dead and if so, what direction the remains are in. How often are your packmates dropping dead far away that you need to learn this?
Some Gift lists need a total overhaul; The Silent Striders come immediately to mind. The Silent Strider Gifts work like this: “I run fast, I jump far; I run faster, I jump further; I run fastest, I jump furthest.” For being the tribe with probably the MOST detailed and thought-out backstory and “flavor,” their Gifts are awful and bland – and then you tell them hey can’t have Ancestors or Resources. Unlike the other “iffy” Tribal Gift lists (like Red Talons and Wendigo) even their Tribebooks haven’t really helped them in this regard; in fact the Revised Silent Strider book game them MORE running / jumping Gifts.
There’s also a curious power level problem that afflicts all the Gift lists; Level 2 Gifts tend to have a much stronger game impact than level 3 Gifts. A Ragabash learns Sense of the Prey at level 2.. .and then Open Moon Bridge at level 3? Woo hoo? Most of the level 3 Gifts DO have a good solid thing going.. .it may just be that some of the 2nd level Gifts are overpowered. In most games I’ve seen, Jam Technology, Sense of the Prey, Spirit of the Fray, and Luna’s Armor are absolute must-haves, regardless of if they’re “in-group” or not. As compared to things like King of Beasts or Dreamspeak…
And lastly, the sheer variety of Gifts leads to a twofold problem; players often tend to start piling on the Gifts, and this makes them “swiss army Garou” that can handle everything you could possibly throw at them. it sort of siphons away some of the horror of the genre. Imagine the Friday the 13th franchise, if everyone could sense Jason’s presence and position, his health levels, and then throw up three or four Gifts to make yourself invulnerable to chainsaws (Homid Philodox CoG? Jam Technology, Resist Pain, Luna’s Armor!)
4) Rites… Yeah, running the numbers for Rite of Caern Building, it seems that it might as well be impossible. Also some Rites are either too good or misunderstood into too-goodness… Primary examples being Rite of Cleansing and Rite of the Questing Stone. Being able to cure ANY taint in fifteen minutes is a bit… much. And Questing Stone seems to imply it’s a homing beacon, similar to the (also overpowered) Gift: Sense of the Prey.
What I’d like to see? More rites in all categories, with a more or less even spread among the levels. There are TONS of Mystic rites, but Punishment rites and Rites of Death are awfully slim (and in the case of Rites of Punishment, are generally so harsh that your average PC philodox will almost never get to really use them). More yummy, flavorful Minor Rites would be good, too.
5) Spirit combat works fine as-is. It illustrates the point that the umbra is REAL. it’s not some magical hammer-space astral nowhere; it’s as much reality as the Realm is. However, perhaps take a card from Changeling, and give each Auspice unique benefits in the Umbra. After all, the umbra is where the true nature of things come out. So yes, the Ahroun is the guy you go to to hammer banes into the dirt, but maybe the Theurge has a sufficiently meaty bonus in the umbra to offset that.
Fixing difficulty to damage at 6 works fine; However, one thing I’d like to see clarified… can Spirits Spend Rage like Garou? or Willpower? There are a few spirits that can frenzy, if I recall correctly, so it makes sense to me that they can spend these traits as well.
6) There needs to be some way to differentiate the tribes beyond the Gift lists; this is the idea behind tribal weaknesses. However, this is problematic. Not all the weaknesses are equal at all; if you’re playing a Red Talon at all, “can only gain Gnosis in the wilderness” isn’t a big flaw, while Silver Fangs “YARGLEBLARGLE!” is huge baggage. The Black Fury’s “It doesn’t apply if I don’t want it to” weakness compared with the Stargazers “crap I’m useless now!” weakness. etc, etc.
I LIKE the idea of each tribe having flaws… I also like the idea of them having bonuses to balance it out, again much like Changeling and its Birthrights / Frailties thing. Don’t let these just be simple mechanical things – minuses or bonuses to certain die rolls. Make it more like actual merits or flaws. A Fianna might have a hard time reigning himself in (resulting in needing Willpower rolls to pull out of an activity, similar to the Toreador) but maybe his attachment to Stag also makes him extra fleet-footed, or makes it easier to regain gnosis, something like that.
7) Similarly, there’s a wide disparity between the various totems. The Tribal totems are for the most part, very weak, and not just compared to other totems; Pegasus gives you +3 Animal Ken… Oh boy? How does that fit the totem or even the tribe, anyway?
And when you DO compare them to other totems, there’s a definite power creep evident. Fenris is five points for your choice of +1 Physical attribute. Not bad, sure. But over here is Mammoth, who gives you +2 Strength, +2 Rage, and +1 Gnosis… for five points. Falcon gives +3 leadership, pretty neat… But for the same cost, Suzaku the Red Bird gives you +3 leadership AND +1 Pure Breed… and doesn’t require suicide missions if you lose honor.
And then you have totems like Lion or Rhino, who are so weak as to be embarassing (there’s also Bull, which is powerful… except he turns his packs into Thrall of the Wyrm death machines).
That some totems are weaker than others is a given. But it should be balanced in the cost; the totems in the Wendigo tribebook don’t give much by way of bonuses, but they ARE low-cost. Rabbit gives you +1 Athletics and the Gift: Camoflauge for a totem cost of 3… that’s not bad. it’s not GREAT, but, well, it’s rabbit, can’t expect big things.
Also, totem abilities need some tweaking. In particular the four-point “Pack communication” power.The Dark Ages book implies that this is not meant to be a “long-distance radio in your head” and I hope that sticks, because nothing removes tension from a game like the characters all being in constant perfect communication with one another.
8) Lastly… some of the tribes could use a little polishing. I have the Black Furies in mind here. What’s their “theme”? In 1st edition they were “here, your girlfriend can play this!” and they’ve never really recovered. Their themes seem a little scattered; are they ass-kicking badasses? Cloistered mystics? Socially-involved meddlers in human society? Where’s their role? They could use a little tightening-up, thematically. So could the Children of Gaia, honestly; the poor CoG, never had a good tribebook. or even a tolerable one…
Similarly, are Red Talons usable outside of the woods? How can we bring a Red Talon to the city and have more than one long frenzy? They are ultra-limited as written, and really need more flexibility. What, we can put a Wendigo in Australia, but a Red Talon in Miami is still nearly impossible?
Heh.
I think that the Children of Gaia Tribebook [1st ed.] is one of the best tribebooks ever.
Along with the Get of Fenris Tribebook [1st ed].
🙂
You are right about the lupus restritions in relation of the two other breeds. Homids and metis are assumed to get rituals/human skills in training, but lupus are somehow extempt from it? o.o
I think you hit the nail on the head with the point that not all gifts are created equal. What if, instead of a standard rank based cost, gifts had an individual value like totems. Obviously high rank gifts would still be better and cost more, but within a rank their could be a variant xp cost so that in some cases the least widely useful level 3 gift might cost less than the most valuable level 2. Then there would be some sort of multiplier on that value if you were buying outside of your own splat.
What does “Blut of the Milkey Eye” do, when anyone has Stealth?
What does “Persuasion” do, when anyone has Charisma/Manipulation?
Right, reducing difficulty. So, incorporating explicitly awareness-like perception into primal-urge wouldn’t be such a bad idea.
Having double cost seems not really applicable for “restricted” abilities. I think a clear mentioning of “should not possess” and “Storyteller approval based on background story” would be best instead of a “may not posses” ruling. However, I can think of several concepts, where homid would have one or two dots in Rituals or a Metis would have Streetwise (Bone Gnawer Metis hiding in the city from right after his birth, for example).
As far as gifts go, there is a whole lot, and I like that they are so many different and some gifts, that are nearly the same as another.
But there should probably be some rule-of-thumb on how many gifts of a certain level a garou should/could learn. That is especially if a ST uses the options from Axis Mundi to do not so much side-questing for gift learning, but moves on with his main story.
As for spirits is is stated, iirc, that they may not spend dots of Rage, Gnosis or Willpower. And since there are not Wound penalties for them, Frenzy or not seems kind of pointless.
As for the tribe rewriting. I fear, that the tribes loose their flavour. I strongly feel that there shouldn’t have Wendigo (or Uktena in number enough to hold a sept) in Australia (or Russia) in the first place. But bringing Red Talons to the cities isn’t helping that either.
“Also, totem abilities need some tweaking. In particular the four-point “Pack communication” power.The Dark Ages book implies that this is not meant to be a “long-distance radio in your head” and I hope that sticks, because nothing removes tension from a game like the characters all being in constant perfect communication with one another.”
From an outsider perspective, it can be damn cool. A pack of wolves, lounging and looking in different directions. Then one looks up and sees you. And then they all look up at you… went the players bought this power, they did use it as a selective mass-communication, and it made things easier on me — I didn’t have to spend so much time saying, “you’re not there, you can’t tell him that,” and if the characters were scattered I could get them reeled in for group scenes without much problem. And if I didn’t want it so easy… well, I made them roll for successful communication when under stress, or when their totem was busy or not feeling appreciated.
It was communication to the totem not to the other pack members. It goes like:
“Excuse me. I’m a spirit entity, the spiritual and moral guide who you pledged to follow. Sure you bought me that nifty power, that you don’t need to find my body in the Umbra to get my advice, but may use a simple prayer to reach me, but that doesn’t mean you should ask me to relay ‘Franky, dinner is ready’ each evening. If you want a totem to do this, maybe you should have pledged you service to Nokia. I, however do not approve, as you may realise through the insufferable pain you experience right now. Don’t call me again. FENRIS OUT.”
Besides that, I usually go with the option from 1st Edition ST Handbook. There it states, that it is okay to allow OOC talk among the players to coordinate, since their pack bond and instincts simply allow for one garou to react on his packmates actions and grant some timing, that humans would need planing and training for. So, as long as they are all on-scene, that is okay for me.
Not only are the “Touched” backgrounds awkward and overpowering mechanically and conceptually for a Background, but doesn’t the Wyld “Botch” rules use the 2nd Edition “Botching” rules where it was “More 1s than Successes” where Revised uses “You only botch if you roll NO successes and at least one 1”?
And one more thing, in terms of theme…
MORE BRUTALITY. Revised had this weird “Kumbuya, we’re all in this together, superhero army for gaia!” vibe going. Quite a different thing from 1st and 2nd edition with Mari and Albrecht kicking the hell out of each other, open intertribal warfare, and the like. Werewolves are MONSTERS. They kill things – and not always or even mostly “bad guys.” I’m not saying make them raving lunatics like badly-written Sabbat or something… but they definitely to have that “on the verge” feeling returned.
I know it’s fluff, not crunch… but fluff leads to crunch, ergo…!
I partly agree.
Especially annoying to me was the War of Rage and the Impergium descriptions in revised. The first was always depicted as “Our ancestors (of whom we are supposed to be proud off) were maniacs who slaughtered anyone out of hubris” while the latter was turned into “they killed and enslaved humans”. What the hell?
It should read “Our ancestors had to kill some Fera, because they did things that were against Gaia or simply fought them over hunting grounds, which is part of the natural order. Those killed were avenged from both sides, which was a wrong impulse, that our respective human side led us, too. Still, each person that lived in those times did what was honourable.” for the War of Rage and “Our ancestors occasionally killed the weak and the old, so the human population remained both healthy in itself and within a number, that the land could support. Of course most humans didn’t understand that balance and therefore a primal fear grew in them, especially the elderly. But doing so, was part of our mission for Gaia.” for the Impergium.
For stuff to feel sorry about, there already is the War of Tears.
Send to early, crap.
What I wanted to say, still, is that I feel that there is too much “political correctness” in the werewolf books. A kind of what was appropriate in a RPG-Book, that just doesn’t fit with what is appropriate in garou society.
While I do not really would like to have some outright war among the tribes, a greater focus on the rivalries some of them have, would be nice.
I honestly disagree. Let’s be honest here; the Garou DID slaughter their cousins in an effort to exterminate them from the face of the earth, an event that has demonstrably weakened Gaia – and the Garou themselves – into the present day. Saying “Our ancestors done bad” isn’t “OMG TOO POLITICALLY CORRECT!!!!!” it’s a simple statement of fact. And the same with the Impergium – perhaps a decent idea that got WAY out of hand, and is thus measured as a bad, failed policy.
However, a good “patch” for this? Well, Garou history is an oral thing, transmitted by memory through the Gallairds. The War of Rage and Impergium are events from what, nine to five thousand years ago? And with the busy lives most Garou lead, and all the tales of actual heroism and glory… well, who has time to really sit there and get all morose over the extinction of the werebears? it’s such a downer ANYWAY, and since they’re all dead, no need to make hash over it anyway, right?
The Garou nation, with the exception of the Wendigo and a few dedicated lorekeepers, largely forgot the history of the Wild west era. You say “Storm Eater” and modern Garou are going to go “I’ll bet he’s a Shadow Lord!” or something like that. This collective amnesia was easy to impose, because, again, the history is oral – just don’t tell the stories, and they vanish, as if it never happened.
So perhaps, too, the War of Rage and Impergium could be presented as something that VERY FEW Garou know about. The Fera come off as mythological beasts – if even that much, more likely reduced to elements of folklore; the Gurahl clan that Great-to-the-third-power grandpa Wind-Slasher slaughtered, are now just a minor footnote, where he killed some giants, or perhaps fomori bears or something.
That way too, when the Balam comes out of nowhere and sticks a maciutl through your head, you have absolutely no idea what it is, where it came from, or why it’s angry at you.
Good point here, I like the idea, that Impergium and War of Rage are obscure Garou folklore… and of course each Tribe tells the stories a different way: The Talons for example would likely romanticize the Impergium as a golden age or something.
I agree.
Also, garou saying they felt their ancestors messed up is not saying the ancestors were bad, just that what they did was the wrong thing to do.
Why? Because in the Last days, the effects of the lack of fera, the tribes hating each other and three of them dead, are showing. It’s hindsight they know their ancestors didn’t have, but it doesn’t make the modern garou life any easier.
Shouldn’t this be all of the above? Some tribes and/or Garou thinking their Ancestors were wrong and too brutal. While others paint their actions with the brush of tragic but necessary. We should see multiple views of ancient deeds.
Oh, did they?
Nagah Breedbook states that a rouge Nagah killed the leader of the garou. Other sources tell us, that killer was named Bubasti (which might mean he was concealing himself as Bastat). Also he hid among the Gurahl who the garou went to see in the first place. Rage turned this event into a slaughter not greed, hubris or general evilness on the garou’s part.
Ananasi Breedbook tells us that their Queen was held captive by the Wyrm and all Ananasi were blackmailed into worsening the conflict between the fera, making them selves targets as well as manipulating the garou and fera into conflict. Also they manipulated the garou into a (possibly high-loss) campaign to free the Ananasi Queen.
The second real campaign mentioned in the books was the Garous move to India to eradicate the Nagah, who they believed were instrumental in the rise of the Wyrm and pain to Gaia caused by humans (as Nagah Breed book tells us, the Nagah liked to live among humans and were honoured for bringing wisdom and medicine. Even today, a snake is part of most medical or pharmaceutical objects).
However Children of Gaia revised tells us, that the Children of those days did arrange one peace meeting after another, all to end badly due to one party raging (not always the garou part). In the end, the war abate, and the Children of Gaia realised, that trying to bring those together, again and again, who simply didn’t belong together was their horrible contribution to the War.
So, still the garou are victorious and the winner writes the history. Being proud of great-great-grandfather Genocite-to-all and his mother Kills-Indiscriminately-for-fun doesn’t make a lot of sense. Especially not, since garou can communicate more or less accurately with contemporary witnesses like Ancestor spirits.
For the whole background to make sense, there need to be plausible motives for the ancestors deeds, that the garou believe in (regardless if they are true or not).
Hubris, and the believe that one should rule the world, doesn’t fit. It is Mage-Stuff. It also doesn’t a world where Bygones still existed and other powerful crap like early gen Vampires and possibly Fomorians (those from Denizens of the Dreaming) were around. All more equally or even powerful then garou.
Sure, the garou today don’t know the details, although local history might still be evident in pictograms and such. Garou history isn’t all oral. For the most part it is, but there are the Silver Record lodges and the Cerscent Moon Caern’s escarpment full of garou history rock paintings probably isn’t the only one in the world.
So, a logical story would incorporate a scenario, where the garou today understand, the reasons their elders had for the fighting and, even though they aren’t valid any more today, they were justified then.
Revenge killing for a killed member of another breed is such an understandable scenario. As is fighting about land and food, just as predators are supposed to.
It is okay, if the garou today have approach that respects other Fera or that still feel they have to get some payback on the, just as it suites the character in question. But a general demonization of this area just makes all the garou today hypocrite in cherishing their elders and disapprove of their deeds (and therefore their renown) at the same time.
Same is true for the Impergiums newer description. Enslaving humans is wyrmish, if done to that degree, the revised book suggests. It doesn’t fit to the way garou are supposed to be and the garou should see their tradition and ancestors.
As for the Wild West backstory: It was retconned into Werewolf when Wild West came out and most newer books didn’t pay any attention to it. I vaguely even remember, that the American garou forbid to tell the stories of the Storm Umbra and Storm Eater to other garou, and that therefore the knowledge died out.
And, just to state it again, the garou have already the War of Tears as an example where they did something wrong, because thy were tricked, but anyway. So, for a Garou Nation wide Guilt, that’s sufficient.
My impression from 2nd edition was that the winners “wrote” history by declaring that all those animal-human hybrids were evil Fomori and needed to die, justifying their genocidal rampages. Really, humans go on genocidal rampages constantly, it’s not hard to believe that Rage-filled monsters would do so too. And Garou aren’t the only ones, either — look at the Endless Storm!
Ugh, we need a forum where we can edit posts.
What I’m saying is, that Garou are often jerks and it’s a little schizophrenic between editions where 2nd has them happy the Fera died and wanting to finish the job because “Fera are of the Wyrm!” and Revised having them realize it was a mistake. I’d rather that the mainstream opinion was the ignorant assumption that Fera are Wyrm, with Children of Gaia, Silent Striders, Kucha Ekundu, Stargazers, Golgol Fangs-First, and a few Black Furies being the exceptions, not the norm.
I didn’t see that as “schizophrenic” so much as, at the end of the 2nd Ed Mokole book, Progenitor Wolf showed up and said “Stop it. Stop all this nonsense.”
The Garou tend to listen to that guy.
No, the ending of Mokole’s plot was just bad. The Red Talons portrayed were nothing like Red Talons. And I’m told Progenitor Wolf was entirely the wrong color, too.
You say “it doesn’t fit the way the Garou are supposed to be.” and, well… yeah. THAT’S THE POINT. if the Garou were always living up to what they’re supposed to be, the world would be a great place. The problem is, they’re not perfect, idealized ciphers. They’re men, women, wolves, and whatever metis are. They screw up. And they’ve screwed up BIG TIME through their history. Each tribe has these big screwups in their past – the Shadow Lords “finished off” the Camazotz, the Silent Striders never once spoke up when they saw the other Garou going down a wrong turn, the Croatan let Cahokia spread, the Stargazers’ thousand-year exile from other Garou… It’s the screw-ups that really make a lot of these tribes what they are.
The Impergium and War of Rage just happen to be giant mistakes shared by all tribes (or perhaps proto-tribes).
At the end of the day, it WAS the Garou who initated the war against the other Fera (as pointed out in the Bastet breed book – it started with one Silver Fang in the Middle East deciding to kick the crap out of any Fera who didn’t kiss his ass properly) and it WAS the Garou who did their best to exterminate these other breeds. And thousands of years later, it was the Garou who made the first moves in the New World, slaughtering the last of the Camazots, nearly obliterating the Nuwisha and Bastet of the New World, and driving the Mokole into the farthest reaches.
That is to say that the onus of the whole deal really DOES fall on the Garou. yes, the other guys fought back – what else can you do when someone’s trying to wipe you out? Just as any real-world genocidal conflict, it’s not about land or resources or anything. It’s about the “fact” that your existence offends me. All the other stuff conjured up is just me excusing my genocide.
As for the Impergium, a big problem with it was that… well.. it wasn’t the Garou’s job. They decided the Ratkin were “doing it wrong” and took over. What happens when a layman takes over a job best handled by a professional? They screw up and the job gets botched.
It’s funny to me that you think the War of Rage and the approach to it is “too politically correct” but then stand by the War of Tears. As-written, the Bunyip’s ONE AND ONLY reason for having ever existed, was to get slaughtered so the white Garou could feel guilty about it. THAT is a glaring example of “political correctness run amok”
I suspect W20 will not be taking a “rah-rah genocide” tone, considering that the entire point of the Impergium and the War of Rage as things-in-the-game is to demonstrate points in time when the Garou fucked up on a massive, massive scale– with repercussions they have to deal with now that the Apocalypse has arrived. The humans are still running away from the deep dark woods, and all the allies that should be standing by their side are dead (by their hands), terrified, or resentful. That’s the bill for their previous betrayals of their mission.
I guess what I’d like to see is a balance. The Garou should be flawed, horrific, brutal, Raging monsters, but they should also be heroic warriors who really are trying to save the world, and willing to die for that. That has always been one of the differences between Werewolf and something like Vampire: your character really is or can be a hero, more than just a horrible monster who evicerates humans and other werewolves (not dissing Vampire, but it has different themes). I don’t want it to be so awful that the Bastet and Ratkin are justified in stating that every Garou is untrustworthy and Gaia would be better off without the lot.
But I don’t want too much “Kumayah, we’re all friends, all of us want to make peace with the Fera!” because… well if the Garou suddenly tried to make peace en masse, the Apocalypse becomes rather less of a threat. I like a little hope (Revised is OK with this), but an apocalyptic horror game can’t deviate too far from the doom-and-gloom.
I don’t want the other Changing-Breeds to be faultless, either. But as Rusty said, Garou are the ones who went out and deliberately genocided entire Breeds. The primary onus is on them.
There is a difference between, “our ancestors were homicidal maniacs” and “they did what was honourable and in the end it still turned out bad”.
In the Dawn Times, when the world was vast and uncharted, it doesn’t make sense, that all garou form campaigns to kill other beings in parts of the world they never ever heard of (possibly because they never were named in the first place). An era, where garou, humans and fera alike had to fight for their habitats and food, when “sentient life” or life at all, wasn’t considered worthy, because death and birth happend constantly, makes more sense.
In that era garou did what their instincts told them, as did the fera. It was what they were supposed to do to maintain a balance and not become a burden to gaia, just as the humans did, starting with the Impergiums end. Also, that all the news that travelled among the garou or fera were subject to ‘Chinese whispers’-effects paired with Rage-induced misunderstandings.
Acknowledging that is was unfortunate, even wrong, but still respecting the motives and reasons that lead to the bloodshed as honourable and justified regarding the circumstances and extending this acknowledgement to the Fera ancestors, too, that is what garou history for modern humanistic educated homid born garou should look like, so they can still be proud of their cultural history.
Besides that, a “All Fera are evil” approach isn’t really justifiable, unless some author comes up with “garou legends” as silver records did, when it explained the vampire orign in a story. For, some stuff the fera do is respeced, while other stuff is not.
Bastet – are rivals, not enemies. They are territorial like garou and surely there is some fighting for land among the fera. They try to spy on garou, so that, too is a reason to drive them off once seen. And if the bastet dies in such a conflict, be aware that others might come to take revenge, but that doesn’t make them enemies either.
Corax – Garou of various tribes have a good relationship with them. Sure they gossip and you never should tell them anything for you never know who’s taking advantage of that later, but still.
Gurahl – Also competitors for food and land, although not that numerous. Besides that, surely some Gurahl refused to grant new life to the murders garou hero, although garou legend tells that such was the right the garou had in reference to Wolf’s sacrifice for gaia. Gurahl tend to think of themselves as wiser as anyone else, but that does only make discussion with them hard, not turns them into enemies. Sure, they have a tendency with their mentality.
Nuwisha – They trick an betray. If you find one, you drive him off violently, because nobody enjoys their company, although they believe they were funny.
Rokea – Never had any conflict with them and vice versa.
Ratkin – Today they indiscriminately spread death and sickness and therefore misery in the world. They are also crazy. That are deeds of the Wyrm and today we might have to stop them, if their doing does more harm than help.
Ananasi – Given the fact that they actively heated up the War of Rage, it is okay is most garou consider them enemies. Also, while not an a mission by the Queen, they do as they please, which might be in favour of Wyrm or Weaver, so it is fair to assume them as enemies.
Ajaba – Aren’t they kind of like the garou of those areas of the world where no wolves live?
Nagah – Legend tells, that they corrupted humans from within. Their need to control and educate them moved them away from gaia’s natural way of life. It is fair, that we eradicated them.
A “all fera are bad”-approach is stupid, since there is evidence that clearly states otherwise and player’s and characters alike tend to question such motives, if they have no real foundation (and White Wolf fails to deliver actual stories that back such enmity).
However a “Our Ancestors have done the worst thing ever” while aiming to achieve their greatness, is also schizophrenic.
The only solution to this trouble is to have way to justify the ancestors’ deeds by still acknowledging that it didn’t turn out a good thing in the end.
Children of Gaia TB revised did that very nicely for the Children of Gaia.
Many humans in many societies have, and continue to have, the opinion, that “all of nation/religion/ethnicity X are evil.” Humans are that xenophobic quite destressingly often and since wolves are territorial and social in a way similar to humans, I see no reason that it’s unrealistic for Garou to be just as stupid, judgemental, xenophobic, and blind to reality as humans. I expect most shapeshifters to be roughly as messed up as humanity, or worse.
@Erinys
True. But usually no culture regards their own religion, history etc. as evil, just others. And sure, there should be some, possibly the majority of the garou dislike most Fera in general, as Fera would dislike them.
But, there is a mythos, to most Fera, that they were created by Gaia/Luna/Helios with a purpose, and without reason founded in their religion and history, garou have a hard time explaining to their kids, why to be xenophobic or even opposing to them. Especially since revised has a lot of “we killed most of them, and that was bad”-stuff.
Xenophobia and bigotry is often the unholy spawn of ignorance. I imagine that what few Garou have a clue that, say, the 8-foot-tall lion-thing is a actually a werelion shapeshifter that claims to be a creation and servant of Gaia has a harder time explaining why it deserves to die on general principle. But Garou haven’t talked to the Fera in a while, and the winners/perpetuators of the War of Rage may have “edited” history a bit to make their actions more acceptable. How many Garou today know that much about the Fera? And even knowing that, a really hardass bigot could make excuses about them “obviously” betraying Gaia or something.
If you watch said werelion frag 16 Fomori, it’s a lot harder to call it an evil Wyrmspawn than if you just run into it in a back alley, especially if it happens to be a hairless or horned or hooved or two-headed Metis, and it attacks you on general principle because it hates werewolves.
So, I imagine the more informed Garou being a lot less likely to call them Wyrmspawn. And Bastet who’ve met a Garou who isn’t racist would be less likely to call them all evil, likewise.
Sorry for the double-post, can’t edit.
I also imagine there’s a lot of middle-ground between “all Fera are Wyrmspawn/Fomori and must die” and “We should all be allies again, the War of Rage was an atrocity.” Some Garou might recognize Bastet, Ajaba, and Nuwisha as being similar to Garou while mistaking the bizarre dinosar/dragon/snake/bird monster and unidentifiable shark-man-thing for Fomori. Others might agree that most or all Fera are Gaia’s creations, but still consider Garou superior and deserving of their obeisance and submission, and maybe within their rights to demand obedience from “rebellious” Fera, even if killing them *all* wasn’t the best method. Yet others may agree on general principle that Fera are Gaia’s servants but find the local Nuwisha and Bastet infinitely annoying (who wouldn’t?) and a big trigger for Rage, and want to punch them out. And some could consider them technically of Gaia but inferior, untrustworthy, traitors, culturally backwards, or whatever.
Well, I don’t believe, that most garou would not know about the Fera. I mean the Dawn Times and the “War of Rage” are legends that can be told in an hour and are maybe told to each cub a couple of times before the rite of passage and are occasionally retold or referred to at moots and other gatherings.
So, simply naming the Fera and their supposed duties to Gaia isn’t a knowledge that is lost really.
*cont*
“I do accept your point, particularly with regards to Theurges. Maybe they need a flaw that expresses their disconnect in a way that doesn’t relate to Gnosis?”
The Rusty’s post had an execellent point about lupus being screwed over in terms of character creation compared to homids and metis. Homids can get Rituals, which are essentially your knowledge of garou life. Metis can get skills that CLEARLY require them to have had their first change. While lupus are forbidden from getting skills like etquette or crafts.
So, instead of having lupus being unable to buy these things, all breeds could have abilities they have to spend to points on to buy.
Homid could have: Primal-Urge,Rituals and survial.
Metis: streetwise, politics and computer.
And lupus what they all ready have.
Then it goes 2/3/4 (or 2/4/3) on top of that? And metis are deformed in exchange for always being able to regenerate? I kinda like it but I’d want a bit more on top of it as well…
You’ve got a good point about the inconsistency there. But don’t disallow Survival for homids. Humans can and do learn how to survive in the wilderness, and knowing Kinfolk parents could deliberately teach them or put them in training for it.
I was going for a theme of ‘less likely to survive in the wild’ that lewis suggested. Maybe replace it with animal ken?
For for inconsistency, it really is something that has bothered me for a while. Out of all the non-homid-breeds, lupus should get the basic human-behaviour lesson the most. They have no idea of the veil like the metis have, so they are very likel to be ignorant of how to fit in. And let’s be honest, MOST games will involve the city, so the lupus can be a walking veil breach.
It also gives off an image that garou do not teach lupus anything beyond the basic garou stuff, while metis and homids get it.
Also, the renown chart punished homid of not acting like a wolf… and lupus for trying to act like a human. So yeah, odd.
I like the 2/3/4 idea.
Thanks, the point is to make the difference between homid and lupus less drastic and therefore more useful for the homid player. And lupus less twinky.
I’ve come round to 2/3/4. Which is an important lesson for me in how to react to any proposed changes to what I’m familiar with.
My opinion to the things, that came up here…
1.) Ability Changes
I like merging Dodge with Athletics – other WW Games like “Scion” already did that and it worked well in my opinion. We have to remember that abilities are meant to be somewhat broad categories of things you can do. Therefore, while I like the inclusion of Technology and Larceny, there also should be a Academics Knowledge, as some of the people here said before. I always found that lacking… Law works fine as something, that one can have access to by either Politics or Academics respectively, but Academics offers things like art and history knowledge which is very important for Philodox and Galiard. Also, I think that Primal-Urge should be kept as a intrinsic talent of werewolves, but the write-up should make clear, what it is about: Shapeshifting, accessing your inner Rage, wolf-stuff like hunting or something like that. On second thought, abilities like Survival and Awareness already do that, but I also think Athletics would make a poor replacement regarding shapeshifting… it’s not like it is an athletic process – if primal urge would be dropped, I’d rather base shapeshifting on Rituals or other garou-society-stuff.
2.) Backgrounds
I couldn’t agree more on what Lewis and Belial said about background restrictions: As Matt put it: Options are better that restrictions. I think it makes perfect sense for Bone Gnawers to have Ressources or even Pure Breed… as there is always the option not to be born into a tribe but to be chosen from the tribe’s Totem. I see room for suggestions like “The Get shun Contacts because…” or “Bone Gnawers tend to have no higher Ressources value than 2…” but it should be marked as an exception, as the tribes are I think a lot more versatile than their stereotypes might look like.
Furthermore, Pure Breed stands out as quite confusing. I think Pure Breed of something as Reputation based on your blood-line. Who were your father and mother and who were theirs and who were theirs and so on, right to the First Pack. And as some tribal books (like “Glaswalkers Revised”) suggest, there IS a tribe stereotype for those tribes and so members of it CAN have Pure Breed. I once played a male character with Black Fury heritage, who ended up with the Glasswalkers, but had pure Fury blood nonetheless… what I am about to say is: It is perfectly possible for Garou to have Pure Breed for another tribe… if we see Pure Breed as a social bonus system, the Garou in question could get the bonus when dealing with people of the tribe he is pure-breed with, not the one he is a member of. Also, the Pure Breed Background could also be a disadvantage in situations, where tribal feuds matter: A traditional Get might dislike a pure-bred Fury and a Wendigo chieftain might dislike this Pure-bred Fianna, whose features show the line back to the english settlers who took the lands of the natives. So I think it is important to link Pure Breed to a characters heritage, wether it be a tribal one or not.
So, if we want to keep the tribal background restrictions, we can perfectly fit them into the tribal weakness category…
3.) Tribal Weaknesses
Please, either dump them or at least revise them: Some things were never quite clear to me. The problem with the weaknesses is, that they are not inherited in the way the vampire clan weaknesses are: Malkavians are mad because their blood contains the madness. But as there are tribes, that accept Garou exiled by other tribes, the reason why the weaknesses are there can not be inherited. So, does this mean each and every Black Fury will be easier provoked by males? Or each and every Silver Fang will become mad? Or every Glasswalker out there can’t regain Gnosis in the Wyld, even if he spend his past mostly on some bacteria research center somewhere in the hinterlands? I’d say: No. If we wanna stick with the weaknesses (which really should remain optional), there has to be a much better justification for them than “You are a member of the tribe, so you gained the weakness magically at the moment you were accepted by your Tribe’s Totem”… of course, this would work, but only if the weakness would be spiritually bestowed to each and every member by the Totem itself. Glasswalkers cannot regain Gnosis in the wilderness, because Cockroach doesn’t allow them to and blocks the connection. Same goes for the Talons and Griffon. And Pegasus and the Furies, as the tribe’s totem brings forth the hatred of the Furies for men by visions or some spiritual feeling or the like. But even then, the weaknesses need much work to fit a “every tribe member has this”-scheme. I remember there was someone on the internet swapping the tribal weaknesses for tribal taboos that were linked to the totem spirit of a tribe. I found this to be much more fitting for the Garou.
4.) Spirit Combat
I’d go with some of the previous speakers: Spirits should not be treated much different than regular foes, the difference beeing their ability to empower their actions with their spiritual strength of Gnosis, Rage and Willpower. I think it would be okay to give them Physical, Social and Mental values, and making their Willpower their health levels. Rage is for extra damage and actions, Gnosis for Charms. That is it.
5.) Gifts
I agree, that redundancies in Gifts should be removed wherever possible. On the other hand I am against a reduction of the number of Gifts. I always thought them of beeing a great way to customize and thus individualize characters, something Vampire did not make possible in such a way. And as the V20 has all disciplines from level 1 to 9 inside: Will W20 include more Gifts than the ones from the Core Book?
I’d highly recommend that, as I loved the possiblities to have a bunch of Homid Fianna Theurges for example to have very different Gifts. I’d say it would be great to include at least some of the Gifts from the Tribebooks (regular Gifts, not some associated with the lodges), the Book of the City, Guardians of the Caerns and the Book of Auspieces. I’d even think some of the Wild West Gifts would work with some tweaking, at least the homid ones. I understand, that W20 will not include every Gift ever printed in Werewolf, but I also would like to have a somewhat bigger pool to chose from, at least at lower rank levels.
6.) Rank and Renown
I also think there have to be rules for this whole witness thing… I think it’s a perfect way to give the Galliards some spotlight. There is a german roleplaying game about intelligent rats in a abandoned mall called “Ratten!”, where the player characters (basically, well… rats) only get there prestige and reknown after they told their adventures before the elders. This should also be true for the Garou, so after each adventure the pack goes to their sept and then the Galliard tells the story. He can also skip parts that he or the others do not want reknown for, and such… This should be a contest so that a lying Galiard might actually cost his pack reknown, should the truth come out.
7.) Rites and Totems
One further thing: I always thought of pack totem spirits as individual parts of a totem incarna, so they are somewhat different from each other. The rules should mirror that and give players the option to customize and tweak their totem a bit (not concerning the taboos or benefits, but concerning it’s powers), more than it is possible now. I also think that the shared Totem background is the first step towards other shared Backgrounds as found in “Dark Ages: Werewolf”.
Also I always liked the Minor Rites too, but they have to be explained more mechanically and maybe some more added for falvour. But maybe it’s just me.
Greetings,
Jiba
It’s difficult, for us sitting in the real world, to say whether or not shapeshifting is an “athletic” process because it doesn’t happen in real life. For Garou, however, it could very well be that it’s akin to stretching and contorting, which would make it an athletic process – just not one that can be accomplished unless you happen to be half-spirit and touched by Luna’s mad conception of the universe.
Obviously more of my opinion, but to me, shapeshifting results in something physical, but it’s a physical manifestation of something quite spiritual and primal. I mean, after all, with one’s mass more than doubling, it’s a bit more than just turning one’s self inside-out. Tapping into that primal energy requires a certain level of skill, and that is what Primal Urge is helpful in–And Primal Urge is the personal skill that has been practiced, or honed and used for a great many things that relate to those primal instincts. That is my opinion, at least.
Yeah, I think that being half-spirit is what allows them to pull their alternate forms out — they’re accessing them from their spirit half, almost from the Umbra, and bringing them into physical form in the Gaia Realm. It should be a spiritual process, at least as much as a process of getting in touch with one’s body.
Spirit and body are as one for the Changers, though. It could easily be classified as an Athletics task that only they can accomplish because of this state of being.
I’m not much of a crunch player and as such not a very good commenter about mechanical things. So I’ll put here some of the few gripes my 7-years old playing group of 5-8 members has had over the years with old system WW-games.
First is the combat. IT TAKES WAY TOO LONG in oWoD.
I know its addressed in nWOD to some degree but really, at least some helpful tips to speed things up would be nice. it really isn’t fun to just roll the dice for hours when you have 7-8 ghouled baddies with machine guns vs 6 vampires.
The second gripe has already been addressed by earlier posters and that’s the balance in Werewolf’s spirit combat. I once had a Hengeyokai game where my 6 players had to kick some Mukade’s back to hell. Now I’m not sure if it’s actually meant to be like this but they and few other wyrm-beasts seemed way too tough to be “mook-type” enemies as they were illustrated to be in the setting books (I’m looking at you Srag with your 10 rage)
The third is the not so nice little fact that not everything that was important carried out to revised. Leaving you as an ST with the only option of buying both revised & 2ed Core books to be sure you had all the important tribe fluff & rules, which led to redundancy & conflicts. Here’s hoping that the W20 would solve this.
My third gripe isn’t with the core rules, but with the book of weaver and its funky gadgets. While those things we’re great in putting ‘metal to the pedal’ for personal horror & “WTF am I looking at?”-type stories. The tecno fetishes themselves were in very poorly executed form by the in-game mechanics point of view. To this day I’m still unable to clearly determine just how much awakened plastic & metal can be put into ones body before the sorry sod loses it and what benefits & disadvantages you get from such activities. It would be nice to have at least short note for ST & players at the fetish section about this.
Then again cybernetic stuff never felt thematically very Werewolfish and as such they were almost never used or even came up as an option in my group’s games.
The fetish & Talen creation-rules could use some minor tweaks as whole anyway.
The Scrag’s Rage was errata’d on the old FAQ, I believe, so that should definitely continue into W20.
I say dump Tribal weaknesses. They encourage stereotyping all members of each tribe a certain way, instead of encouraging in-depth character creation and roleplaying. Not all Black Furies are man-hating misandronists, for example. Add in that tribal affiliation is often chosen rather than inherited, and shoehorning them into the Vampire Clan model just doesn’t make sense.
What I can see is each tribal totem imposing a totemic ban on everyone it accepts, different from the ban imposed on a pack that takes that totem. But only in some cases should these be the same as the old tribal weaknesses. For example, Owl demands tied up rodents from its packs, but demands that Silent Striders do XYZ for her instead. A Strider whose pack follows Owl gets both bans. Breaking a ban results in loss of totem favor, so the spirit brood is mad at you until you atone (your tribal Gifts and Rites get harder?) or something.
I don’t think all the Backgrounds restrictions should go, but they can be soft limits. Even Silent Striders can get Ancestors, though I think that requires a special Merit. Wendigo shouldn’t be restricted on Contacts and Resources. Bone Gnawers should be able to get 1 dot of Resources. Restricting starting Resources for BGs makes more sense than restricting any Resources they later gain. (But I have no idea how V20 changed the Backgrounds’ basics.)
I agree with Heavy Arms’ suggestion to replace/lump Law with Academics. When I learned that other games had that Ability, I was puzzled why Werewolf doesn’t. Yes, knowing the law in detail is important for Garou if they want to interact with legal issues, but just as Science and Craft have subdivisions, Academics could too. I do think Politics (the practical skill of navigating the system and making changes) and Science (not social sciences? this should be clarified) should be separate from Academics (a sort of “liberal arts” if you will).
I prefer Primal-Urge over Awareness, though. It can be used for the same things that Awareness does in other games, but it does have other uses (shapeshifting) and has a more applicable name. I roll my Awareness to shapeshift… my awareness of my bodily processes? It just looks wrong.
I think that thematically, it makes sense for some Gifts to be learned at different levels by different groups. It’s a matter of what esteem the spirits hold different groups in, or how easily different groups come to the needed spiritual understanding. But I have no head for the math of it.
I am against removing/collapsing Gifts that overlap or are similar, unless they’re both available to the same Auspice or Breed or Tribe and both at the same level, or are almost identical already. Otherwise, the differences between what different characters can accomplish is nice and reasonable. Gifts weren’t created to be an efficiently divided, systematic approach to the War. They’re favors negotiated, one-at-a-time, from the spirit world, by different individuals with different needs, abilities, and relationships with the spirits, over thousands of years. It makes sense for the system to have overlaps, gaps, and oddities.
Re: Rite of Caern Building, it does seem that the number of participants scales the ease rapidly. But then maybe that’s the point: the slow slide to extinction is one of the major problems facing Garou. Finding five more Garou in a depleted area, and convincing them to work with you, is itself an adventure (as Guardians of the Caerns describes in detail). However, if the Rite is rebuilt from the ground up, then the level of the new caern should be derived from the Gauntlet, which should be modified directly from the Gauntlet that was already there. That way, it’s noticeably harder to create a Caern in a more calcified area, and reflects how the spirit and material worlds have drifted further apart over time. Maybe the starting Gauntlet should influence the starting Difficulty of the Rite.
Pure Breed is confusing. If I was born with Pure Breed 4 but I’m a male homid born to Black Furies, what if anything do I bring with me to the Children of Gaia?
Changing the starting Gnosis spread to 2/3/4 seems OK, but I don’t think it should be any more even than that.
I always figured that both Pure Breed’s “crunch” effect, and the tribal weaknesses, stem from a Garou’s connection to their tribal totem. So the PB4 Black Fury boy certainly LOOKS like a Fury… but it’s never properly “charged” by being acknowledged by the totem. This also helps do away with the idea of cubs or even pre-change Garou being able to throw their breeding around to get results.
The tribal weaknesses could also stem from this – and to be honest, I’d LOVE to see the tribal totems get a little more push in the game line. As it stands, they’re just pretty animals your tribe makes noises about on occasion.
Plus, well, this is a bit odd, but the Ananasi book mentions that the Garou have “distracted themselves” by effectively following false gods rather than Gaia; tribal flaws stemming from the tribe’s totem could be a manifestation of this.
As for Gnosis… I really see no reason to fiddle with it. Now, maybe if ALL kinfolk across the board have Gnosis 1 and Homid Garou have Gnosis 2, it might work, but if it’s stuck to just Garou, then there’s no real difference between Gnosis 1 and Gnosis 2, and Gnosis 4 is just as much as Gnosis 5.
Speaking of.. .is there any way to make Kinfolk more interesting? All the other Year of the Ally character types have some perks, but Ginfolk are just “Joe, the guy next door” who happen to be related to werewolves.
Kinfolk can get limited Gnosis and Gift access. Choose your few Rank 1 Gifts wisely and contact the appropriate spirits to help.
I prefer most of those tribe-specific things to be linked to the totem, although some tribal weaknesses would need to be replaced with more ban-like ones to use that theory. If they won’t eliminate tribal weaknesses entirely, I hope they replace them with totemic bans.
But how would Pure Breed be linked to tribal totems?
1) Computers should be folded into Technology. I think it fits the attempts at making W:tAs lists have a broader field. I also think that the nWoD version of Physical, Mental and Social skills should be used, or at least drawn from for inspiration, instead of dividing categories into Talents, Skills and Knowledges.
2) Bone Gnawers, in my opinion, should have a cap on Resources. Only 1 dot for any Bone Gnawers, maybe, as I believe 1 dot is around the poverty line in game terms.
3) nWoD’s system of handling spirits via Power-Finesse-Resistance? The most brilliant way of handling spirits I’ve seen. Willpower, Rage, Gnosis and Power, in my opinion, should be separate stats for the spirits, but maybe with less emphasis on them if they’re NPC-oriented. That being said, if you guys do write up a supplement on PC spirits, I would buy it in a frikkin’ heartbeat.
4) The Possessed should get a mention somewhere. Kami, Gorgons, Fomori and Drones were a fascinating aspect of W:tA, but I don’t think I saw anything other than Fomori really elaborated on. Even now, most fansites on W:tA seem to focus on Fomori.
5) Kinfolk. Kinfolk kinfolk kinfolk. I want to seem them delved more into, like what TheRusty said.
6) I still think that the Gnosis levels are too high. 1/2/3 is what I’d go for, but if not that, 2/3/4 as mentioned earlier.
7) Could Rage possibly be revised that maybe you have to make a Rage roll if you want to spend more than one point of Rage per turn, or something? Rage was always something I found confusing to handle.
I’m reading through an old thread on ShadownEssence and came accross a few issues that other posters had mentioned:
The Gift Burning Tumbleweeds. Rank 3 and very weak.
Another is Metis sexuality. It doesn’t seem to be mentioned much in the books. If they’re constantly frustrated because the fertile Garou don’t want them “wasting” the kinfolk, then their frustration, Rage, and unhappiness about that should be mentioned.
The tribal stereotypes, and especially the ethnically-associated tribal stereotypes (drunken Fianna, neo-Nazi Fenrir who think of Shadowlords as “backstabbers and moneylenders,” etc.) need to go out. And I know the Wendigo are quite rightfully bitter and likely obsessive about Pure Breed, but… in real life Native Americans, um, aren’t all racists. And Evan would not be the first person of Native American descent and identity to “look like a white guy,” whether or not the Great Wendigo has ever accepted one before. Really, all the ethnic portrayals should be carefully vetted by people (not just one person) of the respective ethnic backgrounds who can point out any flaws. Likewise, any mentions about Australia should be newly researched and written, not copied from Rage Across Australia.
Galliards being the ones sent to deal most often with humans (revised core p. 66) despite having Rage second only to the Ahroun… I know Garou are impractical and illogical but they know the Curse happens.
And Pure Breed again. The pure-bred of each tribe don’t look like natural wolves. Changing that would invalidate a lot of good artwork, but there needs to be some explicitly spiritual, non-genetic explanation for this, and agknowledgement that lupus will probably be ostracised crom their packs for looking utterly weird. Plus the camouflage issues of being all-black in a desert, or black-and-white piebald anywhere.
Lastly, please remove all mentions of the “werewolf gene” from whatever text is adopted from previous books. It should be consistent that shapeshifters are spiritually created, not genetically created, beings.
Building on Erinys’s suggestion, I think the role of werewolf genetics should be kept, but I have an easier explanation for it that makes much more sense biologically.
For the purposes of this post, let us refer to the werewolf gene as “Wewo”. For all intents and purposes, I suggest the gene should be co-dominant, meaning that some effects of the gene are expressed, but two copies of the gene are needed for a full “effect” (similar to recessive genes, if I recall correctly). Kinfolk carry one copy of Wewo, expressed as Wewo/wewo, which allows them to channel Gnosis, learn gifts and see through Lunacy. This is where the spiritual element kicks in, as there is a metaphysical part to the Wewo gene that the writers can have fun trying to explain.
Now, a werewolf with Wewo/Wewo, that is, double Wewo, is a true, shapechanging, Rage-ripping werewolf. However – and again the writers can have fun with this – there is something about expressing two copies of the Wewo gene that makes werewolf wombs unsuitable for carrying Wewo/Wewo children born of two Wewo/Wewo parents. I don’t know enough about genetics to get into the specifics of why it happens, but for whatever the reason, the womb of a Wewo/Wewo werewolf carrying offspring of two Wewo/Wewo parents is prone to vicious, irreversible mutations and defects, which is why Metis end up with at least one physical, mental or spiritual deformity.
As for Galliards…no, for reasons listed. Philodoxes and Ragabashes? Definitely sounds like a better plan. Ragabashes make excellent recon, Philodoxes are diplomats by nature.
And finally, FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD AND HOLY, please, please, PLEASE go with the suggestion to make sure every tribe is written sensitively and realistically! No more Werewolf ’90’s-era stereotypes, PLEASE!
That is, having the actual ethnic and cultural groups give their opinions and subverting and deconstructing those stereotypes, to use TV Tropes grammar.
Well, in real life, Indians also aren’t psychotic, xenophobic wolf-monsters who are patronized by a terrifying spirit of ice and cannibalism. Or, if we are, it’s never been mentioned at any meetings I’ve been to… (Granted I’m low on the totem pole. Ba-dum-TISH! Thank you, I’m here all night, try the salmon.)
I think there can be a balance maintained. After all the tribes are… well, they’re TRIBES. While technically you CAN seek membership in a tribe other than that of your ancestors, the fact is, most Garou DON’T. The tribes are, for most purposes, fourteen distinct ethnic groups in and of themselves, that happen to have absorbed quite a bit from nearby human cultures. Attempting to wash that out would do a pretty big disservice to the game, I think.
The important part is to avoid portraying the “stereotypes” as either stemming directly from a human culture, or saying that all members of that culture mirror the stereotype of the Garou tribe in question.
Honestly, though, if you look at the Wendigo and come away with the assumption that all Indians are whitey-hating spear-toting tipi-dwellers, that strikes me as a problem at the user end, not the source.
The problem is, a lot of people, even today, aren’t familiar with those cultures, and the Werewolf game line just takes too much liberty with the stereotypes. At least, that’s my take on things.
Moreover, I think you might be right with your argument concerning Tribes like the Furries, the Fianna or the Get, but other Tribes like the Glaswalkers or the Children of Gaia and even the Uktena are ethically quite diverse. I see the point, that a whole lot of Garou choose the path of their ancestors, but I also think that many do not, even if they happen to are pure-bred to their mother’s or father’s Tribe.
Going into detail about the Kinfolk — and I hope the book has plenty about them and rules for playing them — and showing how they differ significantly from their changing kin would help. If a chunk of Wendigo kinfolk quietly (when the raging wolf-monster folks aren’t in hearing range) ask each other why the Wendigo are all such uptight jerkwads, and hide their cell phones and other “evil white man things” where the werewolves won’t see them, that would help make clear that the human kin aren’t all that similar to the Rage-filled psychotic wolf-monsters.
Because as WtA Lurker said, most white folks here seem to be VERY ignorant about any group besides their own, especially about folks like Native Ameircans and Australian Aborigines, and if Wendigo and Uktena and Bunyip are their main “exposure” they’ll probably have quite skewed ideas.
I’ve also seen complaints not just about the portrayal of Australia (which I’m told is really awful) but also about how some Scandinavian countries are portrayed. And also about the Fianna being nothing but Irish.
And not always the most subtle of Irish representations either. Wasn’t their tribal weakness alcoholism or something? Kiss me, I’m a nine foot tall killing machine with sick in my fur.
From Finland here. finland, which the books have unanimously labeled as a frozen tundra where only the hardy survive.
Yeah. Not the finland of women’s rights, not the finland of high social security and medicine.
Also, the ‘Get are vikings!..so they are from german families’ amuses me. Most scandinavians families have lived in their countries for ages. While my country had a deal with germany, we don’t think ourselves as germanic. But finns.
So the Get being treated as germanic rather than nordic, when the north IS their home.. is kinda silly.
I agree with Ana Mizuki. If one takes time to research, Nordic, as a whole, refers to places like Finland and Sweden as well as Germany. Heck, there were Vikings as far east as Russia!
I think if we assume the werewolf culture is *that* much different from the human culture it’s centered on, we have to question how garou that were raised human for most of their formative years suddenly make this huge cultural change. If the wendigo kinfolk are all hiding their cellphones and How I Met Your Mother DVDs, then that includes the young people who eventually become the wendigo.
Nothing you said is actually found in the books. Well, maybe in 2nd edition, but the revised stuff really cleaned a hell of a lot of that up.
The Wendigo for instance; The Wendigo don’t just go at it with ANY Indian. Their kinfolk really don’t have to worry about “hiding their cell phones” because the sort of Kinfolk the Wendigo choose to keep in the tribe would probably eschew them ANYWAY. Basically just because a person is an Indian most definitely does NOT make them a “Pure One” in the eyes of the wendigo. That comes through a way of living, and the Wendigo book even mentions there are non-Natives who are closer to the “Pure One” ideal than actual Indians are, and that despite the racism in the tribe, these people sometimes DO become part of the kinfolk of the tribe.
Revised Fianna goes out of its way to explain why the Irish stereotype exists (it’s because ireland was the only place in Europe where hte Fianna didn’t have a lot of interaction with other Garou tribes) but also goes out of its way to explain that the tribe is most definitely NOT “Irish” – They’re Pan-European, as well as Pan-American, and have telling presences in southern Africa and Latin America as well.
The Revised Get book does the same thing in explaining that no, the Germanic peoples are NOT braided, hammer-swinging people with horns on their helmets, that get of Fenris culture PREDATES the human cultures of the region, and so on. Granted some of the geography is weird (White Wolf apparently believes Finland is a frozen tundra) but yeah, revised cured a lot of the ills of 2nd edition there. For instance, gone is that “Mixed Heritage” flaw – the Get of Fenris will take ANYONE who can meet their demands for a warrior lifestyle. A black kid who’s been toughing it out in South Central and undergoes his change is going to rate much higher on the Fenrir-o-meter, than some blonde, blue-eyed kid named Stenson who’s lived a life of X-box and hot pockets.
One, you can’t operate on the assumption that your audience are a bunch of blithering idiots who are going to take your fiction as historical truth. Two, if they do, again that’s a user error and not a source error.
And yes.. .the complaints about Australia are valid. THAT is a perfectly valid example of your complaint; “The aborigines lived in an idyllic blissful, peaceful harmony with everything, and then white people killed them. let’s shed a tear, then move on to the pregnant metis Black Spiral nun.”
However, by far, most White Wolf material is nowhere near so idiotic.
Anyone who uses the setting of the World of Darkness as a true representation of our world needs to get a grip.
The World of Darkness takes any and every stereotype, enhances it, makes it supernatural, and throws it to the wolves with everything else.
From why the Middle-East is full of “crazies” to Northern Eurasia being a frozen wasteland of vikings, to inbred hillbillies of the US, and so on. No group goes without some sort of “exploitation”. Should I be upset that “white men” are “Wyrm Bringers”? That my analogous breeding is from drunken tale-tellers and from crazed barbaric warriors? No. Because it is a fictional world based on the most absurd stereotypes.
I don’t believe that there is a vampire in Jerusalem that is making everyone crazy, I don’t think that the Croatan and the Eater-of-Souls were the reason for the destruction of Jamestown, nor any of the other absurdities.
If someone takes offense that their RL group, or another has an analogous group in the World of Darkness that is based on the worst perceptions of that group, then it has done its job.
EVERYTHING is worse in WoD. Civilizations, Governments, Monsters, Religions, Environments, etc..
So I say, don’t be ashamed to make each group as terribly stereotypical as you can, because I expect it from every group in the World of Darkness. And anyone who takes that too seriously likely isn’t prepared for the treatment of the people themselves as lambs to the slaughter (or worse) in the rest of the game.
((Hey, White Wolf even turned that same vision on themselves. In The World of Darkness, gamers who play Black Dog Games are homicidal, suicidal, crazed kids who play devilish tabletop roleplaying games that actually taint their souls by both playing the games and absorbing the tainted ink through their skins as they read the books… and that was BEFORE Columbine.))
“Werewolf gene” hasn’t actually been used since second edition. Revised notes that there are markers that can indicate someone with Changer heritage, but that they’re the same for the Changers and their kinfolk. Also, cloning a Garou gets you a kinfolk human or wolf… and is impossible for metis, resulting in a stilborn corpse. Kin and Changer may have the same markers, but the kinfolk don’t have the merging of spirit and flesh to work with, as this happens through a mechanism that only Gaia really knows anything about.
Player’s Guide to the Changing-Breeds has that genetic nonsense too — the Mokole chapter goes on and on about the Mokole genes and their mitochondria — and I think I saw the words “werewolf gene” in Guardians of the Caerns, too.
Just the fact that Garou breed true with Kinfolk 1/10th of the time, that not every kin/human or werewolf/human union produces kinfolk, that kinfolk and even Garou are occasionally born from totally human parents, and that several other Changing-Breeds have different chances of breeding true or even fertile Metis… really, I strongly dislike the genetic explanations. They’re half spirit, it should be spiritual. Besides, genes cannot explain a wolf/human hybrid Metis having horns or hooves, because neither species has genes for such things.
Especially annoying is that some books are explicit that it’s 100% spiritual and that the inheritance is ultimately at Gaia’s whim and doesn’t always make sense at all, while other books are equally explicit about the genetic thing.
The problem with ditching the “partly genetic” explanation is that it makes the antagonist group Developmental Neogenetics even harder to believe. And I love those guys so much. Crazy scientists trying their damnedest to go through the logical contortions to make werewolves make scientific sense while also doing everything they can to “cure” the condition? Love.
Well maybe there’s an *epi*-genetic component, but how it gets inherited is determined solely by spiritual factors, confusing DNA to no end. They can clone the epigenetic material, but it still doesn’t give them actual werewolves.
I agree on the epigenetic part. If that was the case, it would totally add another layer to the Werewolf mystique, and raise some interesting questions about the limits of the Weaver. Plus, couldn’t it be a way to sneak in some nifty technofetishes that someone track or do damage to those with werewolf DNA?
That section of the PGttCB seemed to just be throwing around those words as adjectives willy nilly, though, so it’s not really a deep endorsement of things that the rest of the line said no to. Also, Guardians of the Caerns was a late second edition offering, not revised.
Just had a thought to solve the problem of kinfolk with more than one Changing Breed gene: having more than one species of Changing Breed makes them sterile, unless it’s something closely related, like a coyote and a werewolf kinfolk.
Well then they’d have to retcon away the kinfolk-sharing that supposedly took place before the War of Rage, and the kinfolk-poaching that (I think) sometimes happened during and after.
I’ve always figured that you would just have a small chance to be one Breed while being kinfolk to another. But if two shapeshifters of different Breeds mated their offspring would be kinfolk, or stillborn.
PGttCB seemed to be working hard to portray the Mokole as primordial atavisms and mutants… which is honestly a big step above the sinless saints and dewy-eyed Gurus the breedbook seemed to cast them as. And it’s hard to convey that sort of thing WITHOUT throwing in genetic jargon. Toss in the notion of Mitochondria effectively being traceable in near0-identical form through thousands of generations, and you’ve got a little tie to Mnesis; Cellular memory is pseudo-science, of course, but when you’re talking about weredragons, I suppose the “pseudo” part doesn’t matter so much.
DNA can still exist as an antagonist – like I pointed out above, the Garou tribes ARE effectively ethnic groups; the kinfolk of the various tribes are going to share a lot of the same genetics, just by virtue of being, well, kinfolk – literally, family.
It’s just that DNA GETS IT WRONG in assuming there is a “changing gene” – what they’re doing is dangerous enough without such a thing, anyway.
The “pseudo” part definitely still matters, because we don’t have quantified head shapes ruling personalities in this game, and for that, i’m thankful. ^VVVVVVVV^
There could be more care applied to the “nightmare monster that mammals piss themselves at the sight of”. Just referring to the Mokole as “the creature” in the Gift text gave me a stronger feeling of this approach than the hosing down of imprecise terms and information that the intro used.
I think the simple idea for using Gnosis in spirit combat is to give the combatant some type of die bonus or something like that per two gnosis…
Remove both tribal weaknesses and background restrictions, instead each tribe has a taboo/ban inspired by their weakness/background restriction but similar to the level of a totem ban.
Pure Breed should be a form of status based on your lineage, not your deeds. And is probably better off as a merit that grants status to such situations rather than a background. (Similar to prestigious sire).
Kinfolk background is another one that I don’t see the need to keep since they could be covered by Allies, Contacts, or Retainers.
Two things, mostly concerning fluff, but the first has some guts talk.
Lupus are a hard breed to play, not just because of their origin, but also because of few uncertainties attached to them. First of, development of lupus beyond their cliath years has not really been written about much. This might seem like a minor thing to ask clarification for, but it has been argued about a lot wether lupus can ever even try to fit into the human crowd in homid and learn some ways of their homid cousins as they get older. Some claim that lupus are akin to feral children, and that they are stuck unable to even learn human speech correctly. While some older canon gave lupus ability to magically learn the language of their country after the change.
Why this is important is to make the breed easier to play for more people, because at this moment they are considered a sort of a ‘special’ type of character and not often accepted in games. Even Stargazers are accepted more. Adding to it is the high gnosis (discussed above) and restrictions which actually do not curb the twinking at all. After all, someone picking Lupus Stargazer Ahroun for powerplay will not care for social stats much.
It would be great, if the breed would be more open for intrepentation, than the current revisited books sometimes make them to be. After all, lupus are found in most tribes, EVEN among Glass Walkers and Bone Gnawers. And those two hardly have lupus who can’t fit in well.
Second, the dreaded Bunyip. As The Rusty above said, the War of Tears was kind of a mess, because the garou tribe of australia had one problem.
They did not DO anything.
No, really, in the only book that goes in-depth on the Bunyip as player characters (Wild West companion, which BTW has other cool garou oddities as well) their purpose is not said at all. The Bunyip are said to just roam australia, visiting the -naturally occuring- caerns of the island and live almost solitary lives. They have no riviliaties with the fera, no true purpose given as a tribe. They just chill in the australian soil until whites comes to kill them off.
And that is really not working for me, in order to feel sorry for them, you have to know what and who they were. With the present canon painting the tribe as nothing short of sacrificial lambs in every section on them ever, it just makes them seem dull. White Howlers and the Croatan had history, they had fault and strenghts, and a solid reason why they fell. Bunyip did not, other than add to the garou angst.
Oh, I could go on about Australia. Like why there were no Ratkin, Corax, or Camazotz there until whitefella arrived, despite the native rats (yes, native rats), ravens, and bats.
And the Bunyip, what were they doing while their thylacines were going extinct over the entire mainland and New Guinea? What was their reaction to the humans burning down the whole landscape and wiping out the megafauna? (Depending on the interpretation you want, but given this is WoD I’d blame the humans.) Australia wasn’t an undamaged paradise. And heck, I’d be perfectly happy if Bunyip were retconned into a Breed of Fera with no Garou origins. Australia lacks hyenas, aurochs, cats, wolves (dingoes didn’t arrive until 4-5k years ago), boars, bears, and coyotes. There’s plenty that a Fera Breed could do there for Gaia besides wolves’ work.
On Lupus, again revised cleans a lot up; particularly the Red Talon book. yes, they CAN learn to mesh into human society. They’ll probably still have that “weird foreigner” vibe no matter what… but the same can be said of a homid interacting with wolves.
The speaker in the tribebook talks of his Red Talon packmate who was a good dancer, could argue logic in perfectly good english, and was by no means at all :”unintelligent.” She preferred lupus, of course, but wasn’t afraid or hesitant to shift to homid when the need arose.
True. Tribebook Shadow lord revisited also had a cool section on lupus, dealing with a young ragabash pondering of Lord view on dominance. It even had a homid elder think lupus work by ‘alpha and omega’ laws, which in the text is pointed out to be grossly inaccurate.
However, those are tribebooks where I think most won’t go looking for hints about playing the wolfborn. Books like Player’s guide to garou seem quite intent in stating the complete opposite of the Red Talon book, lupus are unable to learn to speak and learn to hate humans. That is why I made my point.
I’d suggested on a thread over on Shadownessence that as more and more stuff comes out on how thylacines actually functioned, they seem to have same ecological role as the fox, not the wolf.
Make them Kitsune. They got there with the Mokole. That explains some of them being identified with water. Bunyip are seen near water as they’re seeking the counsel of the Mokole. (or a little help on breeding since the Mokole apparently have the “swap what species you mate with” rite)
The overall description of them in WoD being largely solitary and not having big caerns and septs jibes as well.
Hostile foreign Garou turn up “why, yes, we’re Garou! we have this all tied up. you can leave.” and then get stuck pretending they’re Garou for awhile until the Garou get too suspicious (with some prodding) and repeat the War of Rage.
Probably. All the apparent creepy haunting that follow the invading Garou around may just be remaining ones taking their revenge on the Garou. and letting them think they wiped out a GAROU tribe might teach the lesson… if the Garou aren’t too dense.
Ehh the Kitsune were very recently created, separately from other shapeshifters. I like the rest of what you suggested, but if WW is willing to retcon the “Bunyip as Garou tribe” idea then they should just be their own Breed.
Theylacines are comparable to both foxes and cats but they were still neither. And as far as roles for Gaia, Australia needed several things, in addition to just warriors, that placental mammal shapeshifters provided elsewhere. Kitsune don’t have a purpose for Gaia, and Garou can only do the warrior thing. Gaia honestly needed the Bunyip to do more than that, unless Australia was so “special and pure and inviolate” that it had no supernatural problems. Which would be rediculous.
I can’t say just how much Kitsune changed between 1st Edition and how they were developed in Hengeyokai.
The Ajaba got a pretty major overhaul between “Bastet” and “Player’s Guide to the Changing Breeds”. And there’s plenty of other examples of major changes to Breeds and such over the years that weren’t just mechanical, but in theme and concept as well.
However, the Bunyip, both who they were and what they represent is a pretty ingrained part of the W:tA story. So, I don’t see them being turned into “Non-Garou” for W20. I think that’s likely to be just too major a change to make for this sort of “Tribute to the fans who’ve stuck it out with us for 20 years” project.
I have not read Rage Across Australia, nor do I remember more about them, or the specifics of them, I’m afraid. So I don’t know just what is missing, what has been implied, or what can be expanded upon. So my remarks on them are completely blind, and I apologize for that.
I do like the idea of expanding on the Bunyip, and maybe some hints as to their “difference” making them untrusted by the Garou Nation somewhere in the subtext. The W20 Companion, or a “The Fallen Tribes” supplement would be good places to give the information in full.
But, again, I don’t think anything that completely re-writes the Bunyip in a way that makes them something besides “Garou” will be seen in W20.
But, then again, who knows. That’s the W20’s team’s call. 🙂
Yeah, I know it’s unlikely, and I agree that W20 isn’t the place to make such sweeping overhauls to setting pieces. But I had to mention it.
Guts Talk: I’m sure I’m not the only one who would be grateful if you could find a solution to one of WtA’s oldest problems: how to make Frenzy and Thrall of the Wyrm fair in case of players with permanent Rage ratings lower than 6? As long as someone has permanent Rage rating of at least 6 everything is fine, but the problem is that the current solution presented in WtA Rev (p. 190)(i.e. “increase permanent Rage rating for that character’s Rage roll to a value determined by the Storyteller”) can lead to potential confusion and abuse (by both STs and players), not to mention at time being unfair to other players. How about changing that rule a bit by setting a dice pool of 6 as the “default” Rage roll for characters with Rage lower than six and using their permanent Rage rating for things such as The Curse and Gifts requiring Rage to work? It would reinforce the setting’s assumption that EVERY Garou is a powder keg ready to explode (and sometimes in a Wyrmish way) without giving the low-permanent-Rage-rating players an advantage over the high-permanent-Rage-rating players. As for players with permanent Rage ratings higher than 6 and their Rage rolls… well, they knew what they were doing when they were spending those experience points, right? 😉
Speaking of stuff needing clarification…
A nuclear P-Plant is of the weaver but radiation & nulear byproducts are of the Wyrm?
And the spirit of plutonium is Gaian ( a mineral)…
There’s a lot of such inconsistencies in the material. I hope some of these will also be looked into
—-
Btb I like your idea about Rage having standard diff. of 6 Evolved Lupus. As it stands now its very rare for a Garou with rage less than 5 to actually “fly off the handle” in combat or have bad rep with humans & animals (their usual wp is 2-4) which kind of waters the whole “furry engine of death” aspect. Speaking of which. I think that the general amount of wp among humans should be between 3-5 and animals around 2-3. Garou would naturally have less than average Joe at the beginning because of RrrrAGee making the already hormonally confused teenager not quite reasonably whole.
Don’t want to sound pedantic, but I was referring to Rage roll dice pool, not difficulty. Difficulty (as set by the current phase of the moon, being in Crinos form or having one’s auspice as the current phase of the moon as per WtA Rev. 190/1) is fine as it is, the dice pool isn’t. But thanks for your support of the default Rage roll dice pool.
BTW, your example is with a nuclear P-Plant is a great illustration of the setting’s point: that it isn’t easy or sometimes even possible to say what is DEFINITELY Wyrmish, Weaverish, Wyldish or even Gaian because the world, created and shaped by the interactions of members of the Triat, not to mention Gaia herself, make everything a combination of dynamism, stasis, entropy and that Gaian “special something” (of course, sometimes these being way of proportion). Therefore, in my opinion, we shouldn’t nail the “Triatic allegiance” of every being, object or concept because, if we do that, we’ll fall into a trap of dividing the world into “black and white” sides with no “shades of gray” and that would dilute the uncertainity inherent in the Garou Nation’s fight for Gaia (think of how all those Glass Walkers and Red Talons disputes would go down if we were to reduce the Triatic allegiance of “city” to one simple answer) not to mention making the setting look shallow to those who don’t know it well (on the other hand, don’t they think that way about WtA already? Nah, their loss.). I don’t say some things shouldn’t be marked as REALLY Wyrmish (like Banes and Fomori) or TRULY Weaverish (like Pattern Spiders and Drones), just that the description of the setting should allow for some vagueness.
Hope I didn’t discourage you with my humble opinions. 😉
Yeah, my point was that for some auspices it was near impossible to enter frenzy and most calming fetishes & gifts saw very little use.
Alos keeping some grey areas in the game is good. It gives freedom for players to intrepid & extrapolate the world to their own liking.
The major issue seems to be that some of the auspices CAN’T frenzy at all with base Rage.
You could probably jigger it around by changing how frenzy is rolled.
The difficulty is always the same, regardless of moon phase. The phase of the moon adds AUTOMATIC success to the frenzy check. New Moon is zero, full is 4.
Other circumstances can still adjust difficulty, but its always base of 6.
You lift the successes needed slightly from 4 to 5, and from 6 to 7 for Thrall.
Then even the youngest Ragabash can frenzy under full moon… and Ahrouns are ticking time bombs under the Full Moon. (and gifts to calm rage become a lot more useful!)
1) Abilities:
Talents:
Dodge should be merged to Athletics just as in V20.
Primal-Urge should act as Werewolf version of Awareness, basically absorbing awareness in addition to it’s basic functions in how in touch you are with your animal senses and instincts as well as shapeshifting.
And finally Leadership should take up the space released by the removal of dodge.
Skills:
Larceny should replace the now removed Leadership in here.
Talents:
Enigmas should be replaced with Academics, because apart from the Lupus both Homids and Metis likely have something of an education.
Linguistics should be removed and replaced with Finance, useful for any urban Garou not only Glass Walkers to whom it is an essential knowledge.
Rituals should be removed and it’s functions absorbed into Occult.
The space formed when Rituals was removed should be filled with Technology.
This would also help to make all of the abilities more uniform between game lines for those of us who love our crossovers, it is a World of Darkness after all.
2) Tribal Weaknesses
I’d suggest handling these, even if left only optional, like the House flaws were handled in Changeling the Dreaming. Basically to be accepted into a tribe your either born into it, with the Tribal Weakness already in place, or your later accepted into it needing to go through a Ritual where you take upon yourself the Tribal Weaknesss to bear as a show of allegiance to the Tribe and it’s Totem.
Basically this would mean that only the Metis bear the inborn Tribal weaknesses while the rest gain theirs through the mystical rite, or perhaps as a side effect of it, of joining the Tribe.
In other words the Weaknesses should be made into mystical once’s enforced, or inadvertently caused, by the Tribal Totems. It might just be part of the Totems nature to affect it’s chosen thusly or it might be a ban or a mystical show of allegiance that inflicts the weakness upon the members of each tribe.
This would also make it easier to handle those cubs given away, like the Black Fury male cubs, and why they do not have weakness of the original Tribe. This would mean that the Metis could in some cases bear two weaknesses though unless the rite of joining another tribe would cleanse them of their inborn weakness as it imposed the new one. But then again Metis are an abomination upon Gaia and so it might actually fit.
3) Spirit Combat
Spirits may use spirit stats, Rage, Gnosis and Willpower to do their things, at the standard difficulty, but the Garou should use their normal stats no matter where they are. It just helps to keep the system cleaner and simpler.
4) Background limitations should be reviewed for reason repeated many times over in this thread already.
5) Black Spiral Dancers should get at the least same amount of attention as any Gaian Tribe as they are the largest Tribe, almost equal in numbers to the Gaian tribes combined. This does mean splat treatment and Gifts and Rites of their own in W20. They are more than mere antagonists and do not deserve to be only briefly mentioned in the antagonists chapter.
Well that’s it for now. I can hardly wait for this thing to roll out of the printers.
I agree BSDs should get equal page count and gifts, or perhaps even more pages than any one tribe so their unique mindset, and their disturbing reverence for hideous atrocities, can be described for STs. But they should not become a playable character option.
I don’t like the idea of removing Enigmas. I can see people’s points about Rituals, though. I’ve never fully gotten why there’s a Rites Background and also a Rituals Ability. Yes, you roll Rituals + Attribute to use those rites, while Occult covers human superstitions about the supernatural, I guess. I can see both keeping and merging Rituals.
Perhaps the book should just have some secondary or additional “primary” Abilities written up, so they are available for use, with rules for how secondary Abilities work.
Rituals is supposed to serve as a garou knowledge stat originally.
Well I may be slightly biased about the BSD’s since the last three, I think, werewolf games I have ST’d have been either about Garou succumbing to corruption and Dancing the Spiral of their own volition or about lost cubs discovered by the BSD’s who naturally put them through the Spiral.
As for Enigmas, it just seems so secondary ability to me to be almost a perfect example of a secondary ability. The humans most likely to possess it are either bored retired people who spent their days solving crossword puzzles or actual professional codewriters/breakers so how many would actually possess it? Why does it need a whole ability dedicated to it? Wouldn’t solving riddles and such be better folded into Academics for example?
I had the impression Enigmas was the sort of thing that would come up in the Umbra.
Enigmas always seemed to be a hazily defined anomaly on the sheet, to me. Something that really didn’t have much bearing or connection to… well, anything at all. It was just kind of there, and you might use it at some point, but for what, who knows.
Imho Enigmas was/is meant to be used when travelling at the Umbral realms and solving spiritual and/or mundane puzzles.
Enigmas was also supposed to be THE stargazer thing.
With some judicious tweaking you get a dice pool of 25 for enigma rolls for Stargazer elder.
Blue Fox wrote:
“Imho Enigmas was/is meant to be used when travelling at the Umbral realms and solving spiritual and/or mundane puzzles.”
I know but the question to ask is if Enigmas as a knowledge ability is truly something normal wolves or humans would put as much effort into learning as going through Med School, Medicine, or whole school system in general, as per Academics. Is Enigmas truly strong enough to stand as a whole actual Knowledge Ability?
I think not. Like said to stand alone as a full ability it should be able to compete with Occult, one of the harder things to truly study as the field is littered with misinformation, Academics, for which our whole schooling system exists, or Law, which is mostly studied in expensive or just hard to get into schools and take several years to learn.
So ask yourselves is Enigmas as an Ability really worthy to stand in this company?
Spiritual puzzles, that is puzzles regarding the Umbra/Spirits should be folded into Occult while mundane riddles should be folded into Academics.
Naturally this is merely my opinion and take on the matter.
Well I do agree that Academics should be in there, I just don’t know whether Enigmas is the thing to drop.
Backgrounds:
I’d be in favor of ditching them as restrictions, but giving the compelling reasons (incl. the defenses others have listed here) why a particular tribemember might lack a given Background. This provides guidance to players at character creation without hampering their concepts.
Weaknesses:
Not necessarily a bad concept, though I tended to play them subtly in my NPCs. Fine as an option rather than standard. I’m better with a more obvious Totem-inspired ban, as has been suggested previously.
Totems:
Totems were a very big deal in my setting, and always kept in mind by the packs. I agree that they tended to be somewhat arbitrary at times. Perhaps a guide to building totems would be useful to standardize the costs/benefits. Also, a little more detail on the relationship b/w totem and pack would be useful.
Rites:
Rite of Caern Building — I’m all for making it difficult to create a caern. However, given that some GMs make Garou rarer than hen’s teeth, 40 participants plus packs of guardians would be impractical regardless of diplomatic efforts. Perhaps an option for that case would be to allow modifiers for spirit intervention, which would require more diplomacy. Another option would be to be able to perform the rite on an extant caern in order to enlarge it. Put restrictions on this — can only be done every 13th moon, or after an increasing amount of gnosis has been sacrificed there, or some such.
Or, if you decide to rebuild it from scratch, I’m fine with that too.
Rite of Cleansing — I agree with a previous post, it’s too all-encompassing. In my game, it could help the little stuff, but some of the big nastiness needed bigger rites, special fetishes or trips to sacred places to cleanse.
Abilities:
I rather like Rituals as pertaining to werewolf rites which deal with particular spiritual energies; someone dedicated to these tasks is talking with elders at the caern and won’t necessarily be reading quaint and curious volumes of forgotten lore that would suggest Occult to me. But then the skill lists of any games beyond, say, GURPS, have struck me as terribly over-simplified and general, so I understand striking this one.
In terms of general “make a roll” situations (not something prescribed to activate a given Gift, for example), we used Enigmas pretty heavily– far more than Occult. I’m in favor of keeping it. I’m also good with adding Larceny, and I like Academics. On the other hand, Linguistics has always been problematic to me. How about switch rolls in Linguistics to Academics, and if someone wants to learn languages, make that a Background (or — heaven forbid — a stat-less notation on the back of the character sheet?)
I also always used Enigmas a lot, much more than occult. It should be near impossible to navigate the more distant umbral realms without it, because it is all build in metaphor (which is personal and changeable) other than constants (that are catalogable and fixed in databases. Occult should not help you in interpretations, only in recognition of specific knowledges, like the way academics works), in my opinion. Should be a skill in itself.
I’ve been reading and commenting here for awhile now and was musing some more wishes, questions and answers to put here… And I remembered something about the old WW books which always annoyed me.
The rules -They were literally all over the place. Especially in Werewolf revised. I guess it doesn’t come as surprise that I’m not a native English speaker(and likely many other commenters aren’t as well) And since my playgroup isn’t as well. The last time played ww-games I translated the base rules into A4-sheets which took about 40 pages with the tables and such from the books.
The trouble wasn’t the translation but the fact that one part of the rule was at page 90, one was at 176 and the third part was at 250 or so and sometimes they were embedded in text block of another rule. Incredibly annoying to say the least. Boy I’m glad we’re finally getting rid of that with W20.
FBM:
I don’t think they should get rid of enigmas all together as it’s not clearly useless like for example appearance-trait is. Besides if they did they’d have to revamp a whole bunch of rites, fetishes, totems and gifts or leave them out.
I may be a bit late, but i’d love to pitch in. The changes seem interesting and a lot of the other posters have talked a lot about their impact, however the thing that bugged me the most is that Science/Technology/Computers may have a bit too much of an overlap if we have all three on the sheets. Are they all necessary or could they be rolled up into two skills?
I feel that an Awareness stat isn’t required for Werewolf, while Primal Urge is an essential thing for getting around as a beastie.
I love that the background restrictions will be worked around while still keeping true to the spirit of the Tribes and what they cannot have plotwise.
As a number of contributors mentioned, the frenzy and low permanent rage thing needs to be addressed. I’ve usually ran the game with temporary rage being able to go over your permanent rating and you rolling temporary rage for frenzying… that worked out fine.
One of the key issues i’ve had with gifts is when and how long do Gifts work? Are they reflexive? Do they take actions? Could this be clearly delineated? And while you’re at that, are gifts that use rolls for activation (or attributes + something as difficulty targets) based on physical traits rolled by human attribute or modified for shape attribute (i’ve always ran with human, as the other form modifiers made some gifts insane… i.e. Trollskin for 10 bonus soak dice :P)
On the topic of rolling, how is the difficulty 10 going to be handled? Will it be like Vampire 20th with 10 being 2 successes at 9?
Is there any chance to remove the rolls for regenerating lethal damage in combat? One level a turn won’t usually save you, and it tends to slow down fight resolution if every character has to roll at the beginning of the round.
Starting stats for Characters were always rather unbalanced, causing players to always spend on raising certain characters or picking combos with insane starting stats (Stargazer Lupus Ahrouns). Is there any chance to normalize this a bit?
Another point, this time a bit closer to the topic;
Should purebreed looks be included in the descriptions? If we are going to have each tribe with different looking purebreed, it would be nice to know the colours etc. of each type.
And fix the Wendigo one, because white haired,blue eyed and ice clawed native american who has AURORA around them in crinos might not be the best take on that tribe.
TB’s usually had pure breed traits listed.
If I remember it right they are:
Glasswalker = black (DA)
Bonegnaver= NA
Silver fang= white/silver
Black fury= black
Stargazer= black with green eyes
Children of gaia= brown/earth
Silent strider= jackal like, black (anubis)
Shadow lords= black
Uktena = Grey
Wendigo= brownish
Fianna = reddish brown
Get of fenris = Grey
I know, but each tribebook goes more in.depth of how each PB appears.
The wendigo one just is so facepalmy.
And Black Spiral Dancers = White
Pure Breed changed a lot from edition to edition. However, each change had it’s own potential to improve the stat. It was, I think, too-broad reaching, yet was written in a way to over-simplify it.
It has a lot of potential to interact with various skills, abilities, and social-involvement. So why not make it a stat of it’s own, much like Willpower, Gnosis, and Rage were crafted? Give it “spend” power, “roll” power, and the ability to add to rolls much like the other stats were set up.
Also it needs to be better defined. Many of the different perspectives of it could be integrated. Not just make it a “spiritual only” thing, but a spiritual, physical, and social thing. The rules for it, and Kin PB would most assuredly need streamlining.
I like the idea that Kin PB might be universal in a sense for producing Garou (mathematically speaking). But I think the Garou’s own PB should come into play as well (again mathematically speaking), perhaps with a contested dice roll involved. I suggest this because of how genetics works.
Ex. My Nephew, and my son look like me. I share a very strong family resemblance with my dad. My dad, his brother, his male cousins, his father, his father’s brothers, and some of his and my female cousins look a lot like each other. However, not everyone in the family looks like a “Bryant”. My niece looks like her dad, my daughter reminds me of my paternal grandmother. Most of my family is “stocky”, tall, broad shoulders, and pushing 6 foot or taller, with light-dark brown/ blonde hair with red/blond highlights, and blue, hazel, or light brown eyes.
I have been asked by random strangers who knew my grandfather if I was “Gill’s granddaughter?” It’s rather disturbing sometimes. 😉
~~~~
That tangent aside, aside from the Garou’s PB interacting with a Kin’s to create the child’s PB and it’s Tribal affilation (this could go for Metis as well, unless you are revamping that too), there is another way of perhaps interacting with Pure Breed.
Cubs that reflect a Pure Breed cannot use it socially to benefit them against any Garou of Rank. They might be able to use it against other Cubs (at half “power” maybe?) This is based on the idea that Cubs are not “chosen” by a Tribal Totem, so it has no heavy spiritual umph. However, there might be a residual spiritual “tingle”.
It also could have other social, rp-based, ramifications instead? Ex. As they would be “expected” to join “their” Tribe it would be an imperative for Rank’d garou to Jockey to teach them about “being” of that Tribe. There could be the retained stigma as well (social negative modifiers) for being of a different Tribe’s Pure Breed .
I could see a silver fang or say a get not being exactly welcome to shadow lord only sept (purebreed or not) and likely even less welcome the higher the trait.
A couple of things I’d like to throw out there, and please forgive me if I’m repeating someone else; I’m jumping in a few days late, and didn’t read the other two hundred some-odd posts.
As a quick aside, Werewolf is my favorite gaming system, and I’ve played many… but I’ve played this one a *lot*. I won’t gush on and on, but please bear in mind that I offer these suggestions with love for this game, and a desire to see it be as magnificent as possible in its new incarnation.
That being said…
Backgrounds – As a ‘fix’ for Pure Breed (since five social dice is INCREDIBLE out of the gate), why not ‘cap’ it at Rank? You can start with five dots, but it won’t get you anywhere until you’re an Elder. A Cliath would only have an effective one; enough to let people know he’s well-bred, but not enough to let him brow-beat his elders.
As for Past Lives/Pure Breed restrictions, how about having a Merit concerning fosterage from another tribe? If I recall, there is a canon Bone Gnawer who was born to Black Furies and given to Rat on account of being a man. He had Past Lives however (or Pure Breed, I can’t remember which). This could add flavor elsewhere, but specifically for Bone Gnawers or Glass Walkers, it could give them a viable option for jumping into these Backgrounds.
Rite of Caern Opening – I remember in one of the earlier editions, it mentioned that you could only perform the ritual at night… which was *generally* eight hours, though a quick Google-fu maneuver will show you that if you wait until winter, you can get a solid ten. Not to mention the possibilities close to the Arctic Circle… perhaps, though, there should be more to it? A quest, or preparatory Rites, or just a simple system for the raw potential of a future caern site (Manses/Demesnes, for instance?) Obviously having everyone and their uncle make a Rank 5 caern is completely ridiculous, but there should be *some* chance for success.
CROSSOVER! Just a teeny bit. Nothing crazy, mind you, and I think that some Tribes fared rather well against vampires, but could we get a little more insight into Garou/Mage interaction? Countermagic was something I swear I had seen for the Uktena, maybe. Even a quick blurb on True Magic in the werewolf religion (and how they can potentially stop/resist it; Revised Mage made the lawnchair maneuver harder, but still.)
Starting Gnosis: this one is tricky. I get that humans are removed and all, but a difference of 1 to 5!? With lupus, you get four extra Gnosis, leaving you with eight freebie points you didn’t need to spend to get there. Which can buy five dots in Ancestors, making up for your lack of skills… which you still get, just in other things, like Brawl. Or you can dump the eight points into forbidden skills. All of the sudden Homid looks like an idiot’s choice, particularly for Theurges, and you might have a disproportionate number of lupus running around. Could I suggest closing the gap a little? Maybe a 3, 4, and 5 spread for the Breeds? Or, introduce a Merit or even a Background for Homids to give them a boost; ‘groomed for First Change’ or something similar. With a Homid only Background, you could represent pre-Change training, and as it scales up you could add a little Gnosis, knowledge about Garou society, etc. Sure, they should never eclipse the intense connection that wolves have, but throwing them a bone wouldn’t hurt. It’s not like Rage, where too much is a hindrance (and it’s cheap anyway)
Willpower. Tribes start with 3 or 4, one (or two, counting the Croatan) start with 5; why not set a minimum? Mages start with 5, after all, and yes they bend reality with their minds, but vampies have an edge here too. Getting through your Rite of Passage could signify some manner of Willpower; I would respectfully suggest that you set starting Willpower at 5 for all Garou and be done with it. It doesn’t do much to define the tribes otherwise, and just leaves me scratching my head.
Healing Touch (lvl 1) i think should be limited to a number of times a day equal to the casters Gnosis. I remeber having that house get introduced to our table pretty early due to its rampant use.
Oh and more rites!!! Pad them out in W20 with ones that appeared in later books, Make the act of learning a rite be intresting rather than something you just “do” between stories and give me a massive ton of choice as to what I can learn.
Late in getting this out but I almost figured that in the 230+posts that my concerns might be touched upon…. but here it goes:
Backgrounds:
Ancestors: Diff 8 for a pool capped at 5 dice with a botch that pretty much equals loss of control of your character for the scene (which makes blowing a WP on the roll almost a must) is kinda steep even if the benefits are great.
Also channeling a specific Ancestor could use a bit more fleshing out.
Kinfolk: This background really kinda lacks umph. It would be nice if it could technically be used as like a water-down version of most backgrounds (“I know a guy who knows a guy”). Also it should be clarified if they all have to be of your tribe or not, at higher levels this might be more important.
Pure Breed: Alright trying to keep to the points that haven’t been really covered. If PB is something granted by the Tribe’s totem then how come it has no effect with the Totem’s brood? Also it effects all Garou equally? Even BSDs, Ronin and Skin Dancers. Also the fact that BSDs can only get PB 5 or 0 kinda makes no sense… X reborn can happen but long descend of X or whatever can’t?
Rites: Alright this is where I have my biggest beef. As it stands this background is way overpriced. 1 dot per level, plus the fact that you need Rituals at least as high as the level of Rite you wish to have. Then there’s the fact that Rites are ‘free’ to learn in-game AND garner Renown (yes there’s the time factor and convincing someone to teach you). Unless you need the rites right off the bat, those background dots would be better invested in Mentor (considering that it can reflect a pack all the better). Plus at 1 dot per level the chance of folks picking up rites for flavor is rather slim.
Making Rites cost XP to pick up in game isn’t the fix as it does make the problem of picking up rites for ‘flavor’ over practically not go away.
Guts:
The Rule of 1: (1s take away successes)
After playing systems where the Rule of 1 was only about Botches, I’ve found the ‘gritty’ Rule of 1 rather annoying, but I can cope. But really it needs to be clear-cut what it applies to as I’ve been in several games where by certain words being perceived a way making different outcomes. So just having everything laid out clearly would do wonders to stop those kinda arguments.
Kinda a pipe dream here, but I feel like conversion to the tick combat system would be awesome (perhaps a later expansion book?) Seeing that combat is a bigger part of WtA than the other cWoD lines it would be nice to have. Playing on online venues, the turn system really drags things out (reverse declaring, folks typing speed, hoping they’re not distracted by their multitasking). Even if DV and passive soak weren’t factored in like they are in the newer systems I feel like getting rid of reverse declaring would help expedite some things (although not having DV does make some complications when it comes to defense, how would you know to split to defend? And it feels gimpy to do it all the time and then poof rarely get attacked). But like I said before, pipe dream.
I like it but I agree on social restrictions being weird. What if a Glasswalker decided to set up a Bone Gnawer friend (the Urrah gotta stick together) with a mutual fund and their own personal banker or something? Sure the background could belong ultimately to the Glasswalker but it stymies roleplay.
Maybe set up social restrictions as character creation only issues. For instance, to use the Gnawers again, Bone Gnawer characters cannot -purchase- resources at character creation but can earn them as play progresses. And so on.
Mostly my concern is totems.
Cockroach is a technology totem? Really…? Why…? And why are there only two vague wolf totems mentioned at all…? Coyote stands alone as a totem, but Wolf does not? In a game about werewolves? That never made any sense to me at all. I always figured the Red Talons should have had Wolf as their totem.
That’s what I’ve always done when ST:ng.
I:E Allowed char creation backgrounds to be raised in game via Rp, except pure breed which by definition is something acquired when papa met mama and ancestors for the tribes who can’t/won’t have them in fluff.
And cockroach is a very modern insect, in fact one of the first reported computer “bugs” was either a moth or cockroach stuck in a computer rele at the -50’s and reported as “bug in rele” at the log.
The reason for there not being one single wolf totem was explained somewhere in the books.
I’d like to chime in with my support on easing the social restrictions for Backgrounds as well. For the Bone Gnawers and Resources, maybe a cap would be more appropriate. It makes sense for the Red Talons not to have any I suppose, but the Bone Gnawers of Australia especially are described as a rugged working class; a Resources 2 shouldn’t be unreasonable. The Stargazers are another tribe; banned from starting with fetishes yet they have tribal fetishes. It makes little sense.
As for some of the more vague Gifts, could Totem Form, among others, get a little better explanation? Storyteller’s discretion is much harder to balance on the fly at higher Rank Gifts.
Gift interactions should be dealt with as well. My sister and I managed to figure out just over chat today how to get Garou into the triple digits in strength with just a few Gifts. Addressing how the penalties from Might of Thor might impact bonuses from other Gifts, or whether Gift of the Giants erases physical penalties when used, makes a big difference.
I apologize if some of this as already been said. There’s just too many replies to read it all.
Ability Changes: Most of this makes total sense to me, but I have strong reservations on removing linguistics. Any game set in Europe and which deals with politics will have an insane amount of linguistics rolls in it (like the LARP i’m running now).
It also managed the amount of known languages, which is not that important when everyone is Garou, but when Kinfolks and Fera get into the frey it start being critical in Europe. It’s not as rare as one might think when considering breeds like the Corax in relation to tribes like the Fianna, Get and Shadow Lords for exemple.
Finally, it’s easy to forget, but the Garou Glyphs are instinctual only to Galliards who may read complex stories and messages. The other auspices may understand the basic glyphs, but when they are combined to create new meanings, most Garou stare puzzled. Enigma may help, but linguistics also makes a lot of sense to me.
Backgrounds:
I think it needs to be reworked quite a bit. For exmeple, shadow Lords may not have a lot of real friends, but they have to cultivate allies and contacts by the dozens for their various plots to work. Even if they end up losing them by backstabbing on any such, they still need to have them in the first place. This was resolved in the tribe book which created an all new background combining both into one.
Gifts:
I have little qualms with the gifts as they are, but some have associated dice pools which may need to be revisited.
Rites: Go ahead in redoing the caern building, I don’t mind at all.
What I would like to talk about is how the lupus characters are handling rites. A lot of rites (and indeed most of the books) feel very Homid centric and people who love to play lupus (like me) often struggle to find info on how the lupus do things. It may be only my impression but the rites in particular, cultural nexuses that they are, seem to be main culprits. I know I’d appreciate it if the lupus perspective of things was expanded more in such things.
An easy exemple is that a lot of lupus are incorfortable to take the forms beyond Hispo and Lupus and would seldom consider using or handling objects with they hands. I understand several would realize the necessity and do it anyway, but Red Talons in particular would have found a Wolf-friendly alternative to several common rites.
Spirit Combat: I agree with the changes, but would like to point out that the concept of Rage setting the difficulty for the damage roll made the most frightening banes very dangerous and actually fightening. Garou needed to move with a plan as no one wants to attack a Psychomacinae blindly. Many players I know tend to attack with complete confidence in their survival all the time. After fighting a few strong banes, the lesson can be learned fast enough. It then becomes possible to scare players who now actually fear for their character’s life. May be it could be possible to keep this handy tool in the storyteller’s hands somehow while still implementing the suggested changes?
Thank you.
Oh, and since you also asked for our own observations of the system, so I’ll post here that your entire system is based on a maximum of 10 dice. Stats+Stats, from 1 to 10 dice. But, you sometimes gives rolls that don’t enter that scope and yet is still kept inside the same 6+ difficulty range. For exemple, ancestor, is just ancestor, which is 1-5. In table top, it’s not that bad, but a LOT of LARP games I know ditch the rock-paper-cisors system for various adaptations of the NWOD LARP system in which 1-5 max dice pool is a HUGE difference. Obviously, these are somewhat extreme circonstances, and not a priority, but I know it would still make a lot of LARPers happy to get the full 1-10 range on all rolls. If anything else, it’s inconsistent.
Good points Yiodan. Especially the Lupus part about Rites.
Thank you. And might I say I also agree with several of your own points. Especially the one about rules being literally all over the place. Rage, frenzy and Remaining active being one particularly strong example. I keep having to re-read it all because it’s very much all over the place and bit here hint towards cer tain answer and then another says something else and when you finally find the exact rule it’s something else entirely. Another one I find is the statistics related to forms, being included in text form in the physical description of the shapes. When I look for a “+1 to bite” stat on my Hyspo form, I’m assuming it’s going to be separated from the huge descriptive paragraph and put in a field reserved for derived stats and advantages of the forms. Due to that, I forgot about this advantage for the longest of time and only recently one of my most dedicated players insisted that the bonus existed and had me re-read my shapes’ description (something I hadn’t done in YEARS) to prove his point. I’m glad he did since he was right, but I think stats and rules should be much more clearly separated from descriptions much quicker to find.
SPIRIT COMBAT:
I could see using Rage for damage/strength, Willpower for actions/dex and Gnosis for soak. In order to scale it better, you could add +2 (or some set bonus) to each category for the rank of the spirit (jaggling, gaffling, etc.). Or even set up a 1-10 ranking for spirits below incarna (spirits actually feasible for players to handle) and that 1-10 increase Rage, Gnosis, and wp by 1 each. With that increase comes the increase in essence (so +5 to each would be +15 essence if I recall correctly). If you wanted to be really mean you could have spirits spend Rage for extra actions too. Given that they have rage, and will likely be fighting werewolves, I almost feel like they should be. Or at least gives spirits the option to increase their Rage/Gnosis/WP pools by 1 per essence spent for a turn (or action). This would allow more powerful spirits to always be a threat.
Abilities: No opinion.
Backgrounds: As tl;dr’d in another post, I firmly believe the taboo of ‘no contacts’ or ‘no resources’ is stupid for characters above rank 1. We’ve seen people able to access Ancestor Spirits by way of grand quests, and Pure Breed is a pseudo-spiritual trait. Freebie Points should be able to buy most anything, but I believe some tribes should have an easier time of this than others. Even if you mandate that Bone Gnawers need to spend 10 Freebies in 1 Pure Breed, or Glass Walkers need to spend 15 on Ancestor Spirits.
Gifts: Re-evaluate what you want Gifts to do. Some are barely used. This is tricky, because they’re aysymmetrical, but balance fluff and art Gifts with functional crunch Gifts.
Rites: Re-evaluate Rites. Elaborate on ways they might participate in-character without doing weird dances or chanting, or whatever. The Rite of Caern Building is a neat idea in theory, but in practice, it’s still hard as balls to produce. You don’t necessarily have to make this easier, but more mitigating circumstances. Such as, lowering the difficulty by using the Totem as a way to somehow.. bring down the level of successes needed, or the difficult involved. We’re talking a ritual that’s like communally giving birth to a new nexus point on Gaia. This goes way beyond human civic construction, this touches on their stewardship of Gaia itself. Going through it without putting all their ducks in a row and ensuring even if the Wyrm itself dropped a nexus crawler in the middle of it, that it wouldn’t be ripped asunder by SOMETHING, is asking for trouble.
Hell. Everything I’ve read that talks about it makes it sound like the Wyrm storms places trying to build a caern, weakest pulled over first. So, why not.. I dunno.. purify and feed the corrupted spirits/meat to Gaian totems that can convert destroyed wyrmspawn into raw Gnosis/Essence, and feed it to the Caern?
Speaking of Caerns and totems..
Caerns: There could be, and are, books entirely about the stewardship and improvement of Caerns. But, we could use them in this big book. From their patron totem and appeasing it, to properly maintaining them and nurturing the sorts of spirits there, to even getting the Caern to “level up.” More clear specifics about what caerns can do for you and how to make them healthy and strong.
Totems: You know, it’s funny. This is a very subversive topic that seemed to escape much notice in Revised, but we really could use more Totem talk in 20th Anniversary. How expensive a Totem is to raise with experience points, when it’s appropriate to permit the raising of the Totem background with experience points, and even if the Totem shouldn’t just be its own trait, no different from Gnosis, Willpower or Rage.
Theoretically with the rules for Totems written as they were, to my understanding, a person could’ve had a connection with their totem, personally, that would’ve had Zhyzhak’s envy. A huge EXP dump? Yes. But the benefits of a Theurge helping their pack access a very powerful Totem may outweigh the expense. Better clarified rules for the significance of, the limitations of, and the benefits of, your personal Totem rating and your Pack Totem rating. A person with a 15 Totem might even be able to woo such nebulous and theoretical beings as the anthropomorphic personification of Space (no different than Gaia or Sea, or Luna.)
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