Forsaken Friday’s back, everyone! And it’s a long one, to make up for what I’ve missed.
As you might have noticed, I’ve been a bit busy — both with the Deluxe Book of the Wyrm 20 Kickstarter, and with finishing redlines to pass back to the writers. Let’s get started!
What are Redlines, Anyway?
Some people who haven’t been following White Wolf/Onyx Path for a while might be wondering what I mean by “redlines”. It’s all part of our way of doing book development. Each developer is different, so this is more my way of doing things based on how I encountered them as a writer.
What happens for most books: the developer (me) creates an outline, hires writers, the writers write and turn in first drafts, I go through and mark up what needs changing in those drafts, then return them to writers so they can work on final drafts. That process of marking up changes are the “redlines” in question.
That’s not the full process, of course, but it’s the part that’s important here. I’ve flagged changes, and now they’re with the writers to implement. Some of them come from blog comments, some from playtesting, and some from keeping the system in my head and following links. Graph theory isn’t just recreational mathematics.
Scheduling
As redlines are with writers and much of what we see from feedback gets incorporated into finals, I’m going to slow down with these blogs.
Forsaken Friday is going fortnightly.
Partly, this is because I’ve covered a lot of what’s in the book already. Partly, it’s because I need to give the writers time to make any changes necessary in final drafts. Any further changes that come up wouldn’t get made until I have the final drafts back and am putting the book together for the editing pass.
I don’t think I can keep up a weekly column between now and the game’s release without repeating myself a lot. I could always ramble about my philosophy of game design, or how we make books, but that’s less Forsaken specific and runs the risk of being self-indulgent.
Fortunately, Dave Brookshaw has kicked off the development blog for the Fallen World Chronicle. If you’re at all interested in Mage: The Awakening — or you wanted to be but couldn’t get in to it — give that a look. He’s doing the same thing I have with the choice of topics, but he hasn’t started a playlist for the game yet. If nothing else, go pressure him into giving you music. Tell him I sent you.
Dave? Bet you twenty quid you don’t use Pilot’s Magic. Money’s on the table.
Merits
Of the last vote, Merits won out 36 to 18 — exactly twice as many votes as Hunting Grounds. So let’s talk Merits.
Merits are one of my favourite parts of the Storytelling system, particularly given what we did with them in the God-Machine Chronicle. They fill the space used by both Backgrounds and Merits in the classic World of Darkness, providing a range of things that define the character but that fall out of the range of other traits. Some of these tie her to the world at large, others reflect things that the character can do over and above the traits listed on her character sheet.
I won’t go on about the philosophy behind Merits, I did that already in World of Darkness: Mirrors. Instead, let’s look at what that means for Werewolf: The Forsaken.
Some of the Merits tie our werewolves in to the world around them. An Uratha might have a close relationship with one of her Touchstones, or the pack might have a dedicated Locus in their safe place, or their territory might include a human community that helps the pack despite not being part of it.
Some Merits reflect a werewolf’s renown. A werewolf known for her Cunning might naturall slip out of the notice of other characters. One known for her Purity can work out how the pack should work together. Whether these effects are supernatural in origin is left deliberately vague — does a Cunning werewolf have some kind of spirit magic making him fade from view, or is it a product of bitter experience? That’s for the players to decide.
Other Merits affect a werewolf directly, bolstering one or other of her forms, giving her deadlier natural weapons, or helping her stave off Kuruth.
Finally, some Merits represent how a specific tribe engages in the hunt. An Iron Master can isolate her prey’s Social Merits and close them down. A Blood Talon can identify the weakest member of any gathering — be that the least-skilled hunter in a pack, or the non-programmer at CodeCon.
The book also includes a number of combat-related Merits. While any werewolf can use some of these Merits, others require a certain level of Renown — it takes a certain amount of Wisdom to isolate an opponent’s Essence flow, and a certain amount of Purity to use Gauru to its full potential.
Here’s a first draft of some of the Merits in the book. It’s a first draft, changes may result from redlining. I’d rather hear about mechanical foibles at this point than simple typos.
Pulp’s Do You Remember The First Time, in addition to being pretty much their finest song, covers the sense of aienation that plays over a werewolf as she looks back on her previous life and the Social Merits she might have lost since her Change. At least, that’s my excuse. Mostly, I’m just amazed I went this long without linking Pulp.
In two weeks’ time, Forsaken Friday will cover Hunting Grounds, the losing option from last week’s poll. After that, you’ll get even more of a say in what you want to see, but I’ll explain how that works next week. For now, sit back and turn it up so loud your ears are bleeding.
Oh my god, I love tactical shifting so much!
Woo-hoo! I’m so excited. Forsaken Friday returns, the dawn of Supernal Saturdays is nigh (I can only hope), and all is going swimmingly. <3
Stew, would it be too much to add an additional disclaimer to Tactical Shifting to say that you may only use 1 shape shift per turn? Otherwise I imagine a scenario where you are 4th in initiative, shift down to avoid an attack from person 1, shift up to reduce damage from person 2, and repeat downshift on person 3.
Disclaimer: I have never played Forsaken.
I don’t see an issue, unless spend limits for Essence change dramatically most Werewolfs (Urge 5 and less) won’t be able to use more then two shifts in a turn since each shift costs Essence. Yes more experienced Werewolfs will be able to “chain-shift” in combat, as will those who have trained to shift without cost, but Werewolfs are monsters, Right?
Due to the new Harmony rules, it seems possible that reflexive changing won’t cost essence for low Harmony werewolves. In addition, based on Blood and Smoke it does seem the Essence per turn may increase.
About Merits, I certainly look forward to seeing the book. The drawbacks are a neat touch and perhaps it’s just my further experience with World of Darkness since I first played Werewolf, but given this “standard” of merits it seems easy to make your own.
How much you can shift per turn is a function of Harmony — whether it’s an instant action, reflexive but limited by Essence (thus implicitly to your Essence/Turn), or free reflexive (in which case shift away).
Nowhere to Run looks really cool, I like its drawback a lot. I’m pretty sure “bolthole” is just used in the colloquial sense to mean “place people hide in,” but my Storyteller for Demon wants to know if it would apply to more magical hideouts (I suppose a changeling’s Hollow would count too, depending on whether that concept changes if a Gentry Chronicle surfaces).
I have a simple question of my own: what does it mean to gain an Initiative bonus for one round? Do you have to announce you’re shifting before your turn comes up normally to benefit from it? Does the benefit occur the next round if you do it on your turn, or do you just lose the benefit if you do so?
Resonance Shaper has me wondering, will resonance have new effects in the Chronicles, or is it just a narrative justification for plot elements?
Question: Five dots of Living weapon ignores non-magical armor, whereas three gains two dots of just ‘armor piercing”. Does that mean three dots (and above) will still ignore at least two points of magical armor, or does armor piercing only affect mundane armor inherently?
Fading seems a bit either broken or hugely powerful if used with a crowd.
Each person who fails to spot you imposes an additional -1 penalty for others to spot you. Do a stealth roll and walk down a busy high street and you’d get a dozen or more characters who will likely to fail to spot you. Almost no one is going to beat a Stealth roll with a -12 penalty. Are Chance Dice what you expect/want for this power?
Or should it be a cumulative -1 penalty for each ROLL not each CHARACTER that fails?
The wording is tricky. I expect what is intended is “per character” (so a single character failing multiple times doesn’t stack), but with the understanding that it’s more per *significant* character – a named NPC or an entire crowd, not Tom, Dick, Harry and George walking past you on the street.
Those look awesome, I specially like Spiritual Blockage.
Tactical Shifting makes all kinds of nice scenes come to mind, like a werwolf in human form starting to run and then shifting to wolf for a sudden sprint, or an uratha being grappled by various people that suddenly are thrown away as it get into Gauru.
Cool stuff.
This is pretty much perfect for me. Proceeding to gush with a friend.
I don’t like Nowhere to Run as written, honestly. Safe Place is already a really tricky merit. A lot of players, especially coming from old Vampire, Mage, etc. will take it without really thinking through what they want from it. It’s numerical, indicating that it works on a chance to fail – but when you, the storyteller, call it into play there’s probably not much interesting in rolling (either you want to invade their safe place, or have them be visibly protected by it). The only time it really shines is when the players actively go and hole up in it, which PCs do not, ime, tend to do.
And Nowhere to Run just up and up punishes its use. In the words of Lumpley it makes me think: “Don’t chisel, don’t weasel, don’t play gotcha.” Your safe place merit should not put you in danger.
I might like it better with a couple of adjustments – first, flipping it around. You know about all their little boltholes with scrutiny; their safe places require a roll, penalised by the safe places merit. Make it feel like their safe place is protecting them, not endangering them. Second, rework that last sentence to more like “This can be subtle as a scent, but the prey will notice it if he returns, and might know it was you.”
yeah, i have a lot of feels about Safe Place apparently
These merits are fantastic. I’m so excited for the ability to expound upon a werewolf’s supernatural abilities beyond just Gifts and Rites. I cannot wait for this book!
I’m a little confused about Sounds of the City. Is it a supernatural power, pulling on some old pact between the Iron Masters and city spirits – or is the Iron Master just leveraging his own resources to tie up the target’s – and if it’s the latter, isn’t the Merit in question just representing something you can roleplay doing?
Yes.
Whether it’s something that’s supernatural or just because the character is awesome is up to the player. You could role-play it out, but you’d need to devote your own Merits to closing off the opponent’s, or make a number of tricky skill rolls. This is a flat-out “Nope.”
isnt there a figthing style in the forsaken translation guide that is like tactical shifting
Enh. Kinda. Kailindo is the shapeshifter martial art from Werewolf: The Apocalypse which is pretty badass and which I ported to Forsaken in the Translation Guide. But it’s got its own hang-ups and specific style, whereas Tactical Shifting is more something anyone who can shape shift might develop when they stop to think about the interaction between sudden changes of size & mass in conjunction with trying to kill things.