So first drafts are rolling in and I’m working on them apace. It’s very interesting being back in this headspace after so long. In fact, it’s a slightly altered headspace, because there’s a certain level of Werewolf spirit that needs to be amplified from where I used to be.
Every author has an individual voice. You know this, most likely. Matt McFarland talks kind of like a teacher, conversational but still informative. Bill Bridges’ voice is sage and quiet, which pretty much reflects Bill-in-the-flesh. Brian Campbell has a quirky sense of humor that bubbles up here and there. Phil Brucato goes full-bore passionate even in emails! Coordinating these voices into a common document is tricky. Voices will vary, and they’re supposed to, as long as they all wind up feeling like Werewolf.
I admit that one of my own weaknesses on this project is that my own voice — and this bleeds through to development — is that I’m kind of a stickler for accuracy. I’m prone to put out conditional words a lot. I’m not the kind of guy to write “Fianna and Get of Fenris don’t get along,” I’m more the kind of guy to write “Most Fianna and Get of Fenris don’t get along,” or “Fianna and Get of Fenris usually don’t get along.” Now, the reason I do this is accuracy — of course there are going to be exceptions, and I want to acknowledge them first thing. But on the other hand, I don’t want Werewolf to read as wishy-washy, or bloodless. It’s a confident, emotional game.
So part of what I do, and what I encourage writers to do, is to bear this in mind. I worry to some extent about the balance of accuracy versus passion; Revised is an example of my kind of voice, but it needs to be fiercer than Revised’s voice. Part of what I’m doing as I go through here is encouraging more active verbs all over the place. I don’t want the majority of sentences to involve verbs like “is” or “has.” So I tweak voice, where the authors haven’t already. “Glass Walkers are adept urban predators” is not as aggressive as “Glass Walkers hunt through the city with practiced skill.” When we’re talking about Garou, it’s not about being, it’s about doing. Wherever possible, imply activity rather than passive being.
I know, it’s not a substantive spoiler of a blog post today. I can maybe get into some of the more details of mechanics in a bit, like a formal Gift count or what to do with Nature and Demeanor or talking about how to discuss the not-technically-innumerable-but-it-feels-like-it tribal Camps in limited space. Feel free to post requests on that.
But I’m also interested in hearing what you think about the voice of Werewolf. Not just in the old standards like the Prophecy of the Phoenix or the in-character highlights like Konietzko’s speech in Apocalypse — when we’re writing about the setting, describing mechanics, explaining Gifts. Clear but passionate: that’s the goal. Where in books have we sacrificed too much clarity in the interests of passion? Where did the passion get to a low ebb in order to present rules clearly? And do you want the same thing from every portion of the book? I know the authors and I aren’t the only people thinking about this. I’m curious as to your thoughts as well.
Four examples that stand out to me as “too much tone drowning the whole” are the Reviced Bone Gnawers book, and the Ratkin, Ananasi, and Mokolé beedbooks. The first two have the same problem; they’re the “angry but wacky” of the set. I attributed this to the difficulty of portraying the Ratkin owing to their ties to the Wyld, and the Bone Gnawer book just seems to have drawn too heavily from the Ratkin book. So when you open the Ratkin book, you’re not really getting so much of a Werewolf breed Book, as a text version of a Cartoon Network parody of Fox News, and Bone Gnawers just looks like that, with werewolves.
Come to think about it, Book of the Wyld was rahter weak too; it ended up more a “Monster manual” than a book that actually examined the Wyld and how to fold it into your game. So when your ST wants to throw you into the realms of the Wyld, you have to deal with The Cow. Yeeeeah, little bit tone-deaf.
Ananasi sort of went the other way. tip for future developers; don’t create splat types where the major feature is “devoid of emotions.” There’s really no way to make them interesting to play. And when you try to convey that theme through the book, what you get is a dusty PBS documentary about the history of buttons or something. It (and to a lesser extent, Bastet – but that’s ancient, so I don’t include it) has this whole “this bunch of types is ALWAYS this way, and our Lady Spider Woman Queen Thing will never let that change.”
(Nagah, on the other hand, did a very good job of conveying “emotionally detatched” without falling into the trap of being uninteresting)
Mokolé… Oh, poor, dull Mokolé. They’re the only bunch whose blurb in the Changing Breed book actually makes them MORE interesting than anything in the breed book. The Breed Book paints them as these do-no-wrong, martyred, dewy-eyed gurus who, if only the other breeds would listen, could and would save the world, gosh-darn-it! I mean you have this changing breed book about terrifying dinosaur-shifters, who suffered the most in a genocidal war and literally remember it like it was yesterday, whose kinfolk are almost universally endangered – both reptile and human – and now the world is ending and they have been caught with tjheir pants down… But you’d be hard-pressed to squeeze so much as a single drop of rage out of the Breed Book. The Guide to the changing Breeds conveys more emotion, more versatility, and yes, more Rage with a few lines than the ENTIRE BREEDBOOK manages. (This is even without considering that the “star” of the breedbook is a freakin’ Garou…)
Where did it “go right”? Both Red Talon tribebooks are magnificent. They have different “feels” – the 2nd edition is more like a primer on lupus life and spirituality, while the Revised is more directly about the tribe itself, but they’re still very good, and between text and art, accomplish exactly what they set out to do – portray a primal and dwindling tribe that’s on the edge – both on the edge of survival and on the edge of just totally losing it.
I already mentioned how Nagah “gets it right,” as well. The writers took what might have been the worst of the fera ideas, and turned it into something that actually MAKES SENSE for the game line; and managed to polish out all the scratches that messed the whole idea up, to make them less about “badass assassins” and more about “doing what has to be done, and trying to not lose your own soul in the process.”
The tone of the Mokole Breedbook was particular strange in light of one little Merit that showed up within it – Veiled to Garou. There’s really only one way something like that can show up, and it isn’t by being peaceful.
The Gurahl suffered from this a lot too. “Oh poor wise Guralh, the garou are all so stupid for not hearing, oh my.” I know they aren’t warriors and all, but it seems the some other breeds (guralh, Mokolé, Nagah) are ALWAYS wiser and more benevolent than every garou ever born. I think equilibrium is the key. The Beast Courts adress this rather well, but i find it hard to believe the garou can find the other Fera “alien and strange” having to deal with diplomacy with this very creatures in the last millenium. The war of Rage only happened on the West, but the East is just as Milenar and they managed to stay in good terms. Some better ideas should explain this in the game other than “That’s what the emerald Mother dictated”, because, after all, She could dictate that to the garou as well. 🙂
I liked the Best Courts, because they showed that garou COULD deal with Fera well. The West’s state I think has to do with a lot of factors.
First off, when speaking of the ‘west’, we often mean Russia,America and Europe. America seemed to have okay fera-garou relations before the whites came, but Russia and Europe in general would not have had as many fera and garou kin living near one another.
Ratkin, corax, cecilian bastet, guralh and once upon a time Grondir would have shared space with the garou. But wolves eat rats, cats and boars and are ok with raven. Only predator they would have to compete with would have been the bears. And I think this explains why western garou would have not had such good relations with other fera. With guralh ‘gone’, the garou had no other predator fera to compete with.
Notice how in areas where there are other big predator fera, the garou do behave much better than in europe. Most of the garou tribes are also european, and there are total of 5 (7 if you count the two fallen ones) tribes from elsewhere. This shows that in places where there is competition with the kin wolves, the garou generally aren’t around.
And, look at the Ahadi. It was formed in africa, where there again are more predator species that are tied to fera.
So, garou can behave. They just need to have lived in a place where they don’t rule.
True, but that just needs another explanation for the paralel, but geographically close cultures. What happened is that the Western setting was created in the full and THEN the Beast Courts were added on the Year of the Lotus, which accounts for the settings discrepancies. The movement and moon bridges allow a lot of cultural mix, which would dull a lot of the ‘oh the fera are so strange and alien, i never even heard about them’ feel that they had to the garou up to the second edition.
The Beast Courst had the War of Shame to counterbalance things, though. The Nagah actually look on it as even worse, because it wasn’t caused by overlooking a traitor in their midst – it was pure selfishness and greed. And then the Wan Xian became Wan Gui.
Before I start, I’d like to state that my POV is that of a LARP-ST, who manages 30+ werewolf games over a whole weekend every other month and coordinates with the other LARPs in the country for combined play. So, I realise, what I expect from the books might differ from the needs of a table top ST or player. I do play table top, too, though, but usually irregularly and usually one-shots with different people in the troupe, each time.
That said, the Tone of Werewolf, or WoD products in general, has always been a huge topic for me. With the german translations limited to a few choice books, many players read the English material and often didn’t get certain slang, figures of speech and such. For WoD books, especially tribe&clan books that are written In-Character, that posed a huge problem because players assumed to be on the same page, but were not.
To compensate that, I rewrote my fair share of werewolf rules and setting, creating our own non-MET rules, and filling a wiki that allows for players to get info about the game world. Doing that, the other STs and I realised, that often the reasons for certain statements were missing. To use Ethan’s example, the book read “Fianna tend not to like Gets” missing the “for several reasons, like the fact that Gets and their kin clashed with them over territories on the British isles (see History section X) or that both tribes tend to self-adulation regarding their warrior traditions.”.
Especially when a certain topic is put in question by players without background knowledge of the game, as is often the case in LARP with cubs as a starting character concept, as opposed to the table tops cliath starting.
For example, the there is written that a number stories exist, explaining a tenet of the Litany or show in an example why it is a valid and important law. Such stories might be locally different. No example is given, though. Sure, that is background a ST might have to flesh out for themselves, but I often feel, they are left out in the cold with is. Not that Werewolf would need more fluff stories, but a couple of headwords, to have a starting point to come up with one’s own ideas and to get started would be nice.
Also, what I always felt was not helping was fluff that did incorporate exceptions or did contradict rules in some way. Like the short fluff with the abilities in revised core. That was a nice touch, but with the rituals knowledge there was something that seemed it was appropriate the dedicate cloths “on the fly” within mere seconds, with assumed permission of the person the clothes are dedicated to, while on stake-out, as opposed to choosing the stuff one wants dedicated, instead of “the stuff I just happen to wear when I meet someone who can perform the rite” or the 10 minute duration that the rule of thumb of rites tells us about.
That said, I’m a huge fan of, and with my own Werewolf Texts am a bit infamous for, wordings like “usually” or “generally” to leave certain options open, but describe how the world is supposed to work. In regards to the setting description (tribes and such) I hope such words are found often, to provide freedom while still bringing all players/readers on the same page about how things are supposed to be.
So, I hope I made understandable, what I wanted to say.
I’m looking forward to actually see drafts in open development and contribute and comment on them. Not that I would want Ethan’s job as editor, but if I could have it, I’d put in a request for a sabbatical with my boss in no time.
I’m going to use Player’s Guide to the Changing-Breeds as my example because each chapter had a different author and tone, and because I love the Fera and have fairly strong opinions about how they were handled in this book.
Worldwalker’s Treasure: This story felt very kumbayah everybody-is-friends to me. Yes, of course things were much, much more harmonious before the Wars of Rage. And of course it’s a fable. But it just felt kind of blah and pat. Each character has exactly one useful thing to do, even the spider and the shark.
Introduction: This is more of a technical how-do-I-fit-these-in-a-chronicle thing than a set of fluff. That may be the point. Not much to say here.
Chapter 1: This has no specific Fera perspective, by necessity, and feels like it. But it isn’t dry and technical like the intro.
Ajaba: I didn’t really like the new reasons for the Ajaba-Simba warfare, but that’s not a question of tone. This is a strange chapter that doesn’t burst with the Rage I’d expect from the nearly-extinct werehyenas. Yes, Kisasi and the Ahadi are rays of hope and that is good to emphasize, but I feel like that could have been left to the Ahadi chapter, letting this one focus on the Rage and pain of losing everything in the massacre. That emotion just isn’t there.
Ananasi: This one is a technical manual about Ananasi abilities. There’s really no “voice” even in third person. It describes the game rules, not how Ananasi think and live.
Bastet: Ah, my favorite Breed. The tone here is a gigantic improvement over the I-don’t-give-a-shit-about-Gaia-but-look-I’m-sexy-and-hawt attitude of the Breedbook. Chris Campbell gave the cats a wonderful facelift that made them more than just lazy, useless lumps of flesh. But he did not write them with Rage. “The Wars of Rage left deep and horrible scars” on their psyches. Just saying that isn’t evocative. Show it! How does their skin twitch and their blood boil at the very sight of the wolfskins, how do they long to sink their claws in lupine fur to avenge their ancestors? This chapter lacks the Rage, and it lacks the predatory, hungry, fierce, confident, arrogant killing-machine vibe that any feline race should evoke. It lacks the feel of something that slides quietly through the shadows, furiously erupts to tear something to shreds, and then slips away. This chapter conflicts me because it’s so, SO much to be preferred over the Breedbook, and yet it could have been even better with some more attitude thrown in.
Corax: I like the way this is written in-character. Corax don’t have a ton of Rage and aren’t made to fight, yet there’s much more than just a technical list of abilities here.
Gurahl: It’s kind of weird that bears, of all things, are so much calmer than wolves and cats. I’d prefer to think of their Rage as low, smoldering coals that constantly burn, rather than fires that blast through like lightning. This chapter isn’t emotionless, but it feels more technical than I would like. I’d expect some Rage and a great deal of depression from these guys, but I don’t really feel it here.
Kitsune: Perhaps it is because they have no “purpose” for Gaia that their personalities weren’t ever really made distinctive, or maybe that was just the way Hengeyokai’s written. This chapter is similar to the Gurahl in being somewhat technical, not totally dry, but not dripping with the arrogance with overtones of Rage I’d expect from werefoxes.
Mokole: I have strong feelings about this one. I like the Breedbook. Maybe that’s because I’m a fantasy fan before a horror fan, because Rusty is right about the empty spot where their all-consuming Rage ought to be. It’s true they should have tons of Rage, and should not be perfect saints. But I did not like their Revised portrayal at all. It makes them utterly evil things, that care much more about wiping out humanity than doing crap to help Gaia. The Ahadi chapter did better, though it said little about them.
And the crap about mitochondria and “genetic madness” has got to go. Please! Werewolf should not be The Phantom Menace. We don’t need midichlorians and shapeshifter genes and chemistry here. There is no scientific explanation for dinosaur-dragon shapeshifters that fly around in the Astral plane and have racial memory, so why does this chapter try to make one up? I hate it. I’ll be honest, whenever I see “shapeshifter genes” junk in Werewolf books I want to hurl, and this chapter is the worst offender by far.
Mokole were made to be passive memory-collectors by Gaia, in a past age when other Changing-Breeds were not needed. They should be alien, a bizarre combination filled with Rage and infuriatingly passive, genuinely concerned for Gaia (and especially their nearly extinct animal kin — you’d think that would impact their survival chances?) but not convinced they can do much because they were supposed to be a library for other Breeds, not an independent Apocalypse-prevention unit. There should be debate among them: is this just another Wonder-Work, or is the Mother actually in danger of permanent death? Another thing Memory should do is not just preserve experiences, but emotions as well. How much more Rage would you have if you remembered the accumulated Rage of generations of ancestors? This chapter also claims Mokole were the only shapeshifters in the Age of Kings and of Sleep, ignoring the existence of Rokea and Ananasi. Wut? The one part of this chapter that doesn’t bug me is making the Mnesis less-than-reliable. Even if it was reliable in principle, the Wonder-Work should have messed it up badly. And not every Mokole character has 5 Mnesis, so why does all fiction depict them as universally remembering the Kings?
Nagah: This chapter was fairly well done. A little stiff, but like the Corax chapter, I have no complaints. I’ll add that I don’t have the Breedbook for comparison here.
Nuwisha: I don’t have any idea in my head what Nuwisha should sound like, and they have no Rage, so I can’t actually form an opinion about this chapter.
Ratkin: I like this chapter. I don’t have the Breedbook, again. Unlike the Revised Mokole, Ratkin have an actual reason to want to kill most (nto all?) humans. They’re frenetic, frantic, jittery, insane things and perhaps that is emphasized more than Rage (except in the opening fiction) but this chapter is pretty good.
Rokea: This chapter is for the most part pretty good. The sentence could perhaps have been shorter, but there’s a fine line beteen simple language and simple thoughts. Rokea think and live simply, but of course aren’t stupid. I do think that Turna’a should have had more than 2 paragraphs: the near-extinction of the species deserves more than 1 sentence, and the loss of the elders should have been mentioned. That Sea refuses to say anything about the Betweener War was kind of too important to leave out. OK, that’s more a matter of content than style.
Chapter 3: A crunch chapter, so I wouldn’t expect lots of attitude.
The Beast Courts: There’s not much Rage evident in this chapter. Hengeyokai are simultaneously a single society merged since millennia ago, and half a dozen separate Breeds that will never truly understand how the others think. Maybe a single voice isn’t possible.
Ahadi: Mostly I like this chapter. It’s filled with great emotion in some spots and awkwardly, but stiffly phrased in others (2nd column on p. 209, in particular). This is the chapter about hope, with naturally less emphasis on Rage and how much everybody hates each other, so the emotional tenor feels alright to me. Putting this chapter in-character with one narrator was well done, and worked to solve the multiple-voices, multiple-cultures problem without being a technical out-of-character textbook. On the other hand, the narrator isn’t the one feeling the Rage of, say, the Ajaba and Simba in their wars, so that Rage doesn’t really show through much. Like the Bastet chapter (same author I think) this one isn’t emotionless, it’s just stiff in a few places.
Well, that’s an interesting one:
I think both things need to be in the book. We need the passion to come through. The book shouldn’t feel wish-washy. I think making sure the wording uses lots of active verbs and more predatory language is a good thing. At the same time WtA has (and I know this has come up a lot) a bad history of getting lost in the writing. There’s too many points in the game with evocative writing in places where the players and STs need clarity (ex: my favorite whipping boy, the Totem write-ups) and too many places where the writing can get dogmatic (the Tribal ethnic stereotypes).
The best idea I can come up with is, basically, WtA needs more than one voice. Sort of like when the Litany was explained with a Philodox and a Ragabash both telling their side of things; though in this case more of a Philodox/Galliard dynamic. If you only hear one of those two voices, you can’t really get a grip on what’s going on.
I’m not saying that the book should literally be written as a conversation between two characters (though parts of it could be), but if the book is mostly written with the Galliard hat on, the Philodox hat needs to come out for sidebars, pure rules text, and the like.
Judging by the description provided above I think there’ll be no problem with W20’s voice. The Revised edition of WtA is my favorite one since it managed to be both informative and passionate at the same time. I especially liked the various “cliffhangers” spread throughout the text, not to mention the vivid descriptions of Gifts that made writing cool and/or chilling scenes easy. Hope you’ll manage to pull off the “being, not doing” thing: sounds like it could be great to remind everyone that WtA is a VERY primal game at heart.
P.S. Ethan, don’t worry that this blog post is about “fluff” (or its presentation) rather than “crunch.” They’re both important (especially to us, the fans! After all, we’re talking here about our beloved game!) and need to be discussed. Without “fluff,” “crunch” is just a pointless excercise in dice rolling. Plus, I’m sure there are others who will appreciate getting an insight into what (and how) you guys are writing over there!
Ooops, I meant “doing, not being” thing. Sorry for the confusion.
I think what could happen is to make the edition “Modular” in terms of mood. The 2nd edition mood is radically different than 3rd edition. The W20 should be a ‘timeline neutral’ game on that regard. Perhaps the authors could all small boxes of text for the several incarnations, allowing individual storytellers picking their preferred eras/canon events to set their moods. Half a page would be enough to highlight the differences. For an example, a box on the “Anthelios Rising” era, a box for the Wild West, Another for the Dark Ages. All are important to the Werewolf setting develpment, but would leave more open space to crunch (desperately needed on a book like that) and summarize the themes of each particular situation.
I think many voices is a good thing for each book. It does bring variety. And it would bring lots of creativity and ideas that aren’t explored by one voice. However this can be a bad idea. Like anything on the flip side, the only problem, is that if you don’t have an individual keeping the multiple voices or ideas on a compromising front, it won’t work and chaos results. So I believe there has to be a balance somewhere. Or duality if you will.
I think a few ideas could be presented a little differently, or possibly introduced.
1) Nuwisha: With the coyotes IRL being able to survive more and more, in this ever changing world, it would be interesting if more Nuwisha were starting to populate because of this. Just a potential hook there.
2) Gurahl: Although the ability to play as a Gurahl was cool, and the different culture was interesting, although for healers, they seemed to bitter and angry. As a healer, I know I would want to worker together, rather than apart, to stop the world from ending. Then if there was still bad blood, it could be settled then. But hey, I am not a Gurahl either. 😉
3) Kitsune: The kitsune legends being used are cool for the Kitsune, but there are foxes all around the world. I would like to see Kitsune of different cultures and ethnicities. But hey, if it doesn’t print, there is the Golden Rule. 😀
I prefer depth and complication in my games anyway. It’s kind of annoying when things are black and white, simplistic and superficial as opposed to what they are (IMHO). Everything is in a shade of grey. Or a balance of good, neutral and evil.
Other than that, I really enjoyed the books. Never had an issue, and if there was one, you would use the Golden Rule.
Two of my favorite Werewolf books were Rustin Quaide’s Garou Saga and Brian Campbell’s Ratkin (and also Bone Gnawers Revised).
Why?
Because the writing was good in the sense that it made us plunge into the imagined world of Werewolf.
I have to agree about Mokole: the writing, the style was more hazardous.
I loved the Player’s Guide for the first edition. A very good mix of precision and mood, much like Werewolf 2nd edition corebook. The Bastet Changing Breed Book was also full of mood, and good style, but sometimes quite fuzzy about practical details, but the first aspect overrode the second one.
That’s how I love RPGs: when they enable me to feel, to believe in the worlds they are building. Because that’s the point, isn’t it?
So, the voice for me? I’m going to list my favorite books/stories and explain why they hit the mark. And some things that I felt stalled the game.
Favorites;
Tribe book Get of Fenris (revised edition); I’m from Finland, so I’m quite used to seeing my country and its neighbours be portrayed very shoddily. The lack of understanding of the northern culture, and the pretty heavy nazi tones in the 2nd ed tribe book did not help either.
But revised Get fixes so many problems about the tribe, and even made it my favorite. The focus was on the tribe and their history, even history they only had amongs themselves. However, what made it good was the way the IC narration was done. The Get were not ragefilled or angry, and there was an actual discussion going on. The theme of strenght was always there, and how the Get strive to be better. It is because of that theme that I really liked how they handled the nazi issue in this book, the Get actually suffered from the nazi ideals some of them had. And how they got their rights back by hunting down those garou.
The book does not present them as flawless, but the focus is not on race or breed or auspice or gender. It is on how one betters themselves, so their own jabs at each other make sense. One cannot become strong without understanding where weakness is. The book in general has a much more european tone to it as well. It focuses on garou who lived and died here, not in the US. And for an european fan, this matters to me a lot.
Tribe Novel: Red Talons; This is an odd choice, but I found this novel had one of the best takes on the lupus in general. While the events of the story are about forming of the Silver River pack, the story itself is more about Storm-Eye’s inner struggles to understand herself. It all starts when Storm-Eye makes her kin brother kill humans and die in the process. To her, a garou, it made a noble death. However her brother’s pack does not agree and treat her like an outcast. To a Red Talon this of course makes her both angry and afraid. It does not help that that other Red Talons agree with the kin pack. So Storm-Eye is driven into a striggle with herself, both physically and mentally.
I like this novel, because it portrays Storm-Eye not as an unthinking brute relying only on her instincts, but as someone who build herself up to be something. But finds out she is not what she thought she was. She dreams through the novel to return to being a wolf again, and how simple it would be. However, when given the chance, she find herself seeking back the garou mind. To protect her friends and fight the wyrm. The way this novel takes time to establish that a lupus is not a simple wolf, but a garou among garou, is good. It shows struggles with accepting the role realistically and without relying on human conventions. And how a garou, even a lupus, must do their duty. Because that is who they are.
Tribe Book: Silent Striders (revised edition); This book gets a lot of attention. And for a good reason, as it takes a mysterious tribe and explains them so well. The book details the curse not as simply the Tribal Weakness, but as something constantly bothering the tribe. They travel, because their curse drives ghosts to them if they stay in one place too long. This explanation is simple, and it also ties the ghost and vampire hate factors into the tribe neatly.
The book does not go about trying to be mysterious. Instead it is very open about Strider culture and their ties to their former homeland. The narrator sound believable,too.
And then the negative things I’ve noticed. I know I mention this a lot, but so many books outside tribe books and novels, outright tell the players that lupus are forever stuck in the same spot in regards to learning as they are when they start the game. Players Guide to Garou has many good points, but it too hints that lupus cannot get much forward in learning about things. Ways of the wolf, while old, generally assumes lupus cannot even think clearly in their birth form. My problems with this take on the breed are threefold.
First off, it is very ignorant of an actual canine mind. Wolves may be nephobic, but they are also curious. These are animals that learn a lot from their parents in regards to behaviour with other wolves, the best way to hunt and how to do things like mark the terrotory. Yet the the game books assume wolves are not but their instincts and senses., which is very far from the truth.
Second, it makes the lupus seem quite rigid and unsuitable for any other game but wilderness focused. Some books even paint lupus as refusing to shift to homid, which of course is harmful to the veil in cities. And the general attidute towards thisis that the lupus is justified in refusing to take the human shape. Now, the Wild West gift mentioned in the gift thread would support this ideal, but it is only a wild west gift. Due to this stereotype of the lupus being unchanging and hard to play, added with their high gnosis, very little places allow them to be played.
And third, it is ONLY the lupus who have this problem. Anansi crawlerings adapt to human life just fine, so do the Rokea, Mokeole, kitsune, Bastet, etc. Even ratkin rodens have less trouble learning than wolves. Why this is quite ironic, is because wolves and humans are very similar in so many ways. Yet everything else adapts to shifter duality better, than the animal one would expect to have he easiest time.
First, I am going to look at this issue from a different perspective: Pacing.
I think that pacing can make the difference between an excellent product and a poor one.
The book will be relatively short — you cannot belabour any point (such as happened with the setting in the story of Baghara) If you do, you sacrifice the feel for the clan to the mood of the story.
On the other hand you must be thorough. In the Hengeyokai I felt that the terms were often not clearly defined. For example there should have been a blurb of explanation about yin, yang, and yomi in the umbral worlds’ pages. Especially explaining how the shifters made it to the yin world and how that compared to wraith.
In summation; we need a taste of the world. Write just enough to make us hungry, but not so little that we find it flavorless.
Fluff vs. crunch… let’s see.
One of my favorite books in terms of balance between the two was the Book of Auspices. The Ahroun section in particular I thought was extremely well done, with a gripping narrative that made me look at the auspice as a whole very differently, but it was also prefaced with a warning that the speaker was dealing with a great deal of shame over his tribe’s actions in World War 2. The context, the tone, and the fact that it was specifically mentioned as a perspective, not the party line, made this incredible. The Theurge section was well done too, and overall I think the Gifts and Rites were well-flavored throughout.
I agree too with Ana about the Get of Fenris Revised Tribebook, though both leave one thing as a question in my mind; what’s the deal with Ymir’s Sweat? This camp was hinted at, and got a tiny blurb, and then *nothing*, just a cut-and-paste Wendigo Gift or two. I would have loved to see a little more about them; while most camps didn’t receive too much attention, this one is almost more of a bloodline, and I feel the description was too short and very matter-of-fact.
Lastly, the Fianna’s connection with the fae doesn’t seem to have very much behind it. Sure, there’s a camp, and a few Gifts, but given the prominence of fae in Celtic culture, I expected a little more on this. How does this interaction (and even occasional interbreeding) flavor the tribe, or the fae they deal with? Are the vanishing fae a reminder of all that the Garou are losing, or do they inspire the already passionate Fianna even more? It seems in printed material that this is just some sort of quasi-alliance, almost akin to the Glass Walker/vampire non-aggression pact in some cities. A cautionary tale about trusting the fae too much, or a story of a plucky Ragabash and a fae trying to pull a fast one on the other could help flesh out this relationship, and add a slightly different tone to the Fianna.
The Caliban have the opposite problem — they seem so tied to the fae — yet nothing they have crunch-wise has ANYTHING to do with them; no chimerical damage, no blurb saying they are easier to affect with glamour or even the silly fianna summon fae.
[it’s silly because the fae come a’ prancing along to help and see a werewolf and essentially run away in terror because it’s HUGE and they’re weak.]
“it’s silly because the fae come a’ prancing along to help and see a werewolf and essentially run away in terror because it’s HUGE and they’re weak.”
I object to this on so many levels. Weak? On what scale? a Troll can have Strength up to 6 or 7 depending on age in the waking world more in the dreaming. Even a werewolf has trouble even attacking an angry or impassioned Sidhe, needing a wp roll to even do that. Satyrs are as tough as most werewolves, stamina up to 6. etc. And this is without accounting for their magic or Treasures.
I myself never even used the Fae much, even with Fianna Players. The full Revamp the tribe had from ‘the drunken tribe’ to the revised tribe was great. As the new books are less concerned with cross-overing than the rest of the line was, it’s better to leave the Fae as distant, bizarre, and unpredictable plot device than to compare them to garou or ‘Stat them up’. I enjoyed that in several endings of the Apocalypse book, no help from faerie came to help the Fianna. I like the ideas of a few gifts that reflect the ‘fae blood’ on Fianna’s bloodline, but that’s it. Garou should (and have to) rely on themselves first and foremost, or else the feeling of ‘we are loosing the war against the end of the world’ is a bit lost if news allies can show up from the woodwork.
trolls have at best a +2 (against a stam +3 I think) AND a dex – modifier (difficulty not dice if I recall)
OVercoming the enraged sidhe isn’t a massive roll (maybe dif 8)
To get 1 round of extra attacks takes a fae a round and by that time they’re taken down.
Many of them have melee to high levels (but chimerical swords)
To have an offensive bunk is vs. banalaty.
So I will reiterate Fae= weak (in compairison to Were’s)
aye. and their powers don’t stack up well with Gifts.
as for the cross-over being more mild, and especially if the fine folks at White Wolf decide not to re-release Changeling (and for the record, of the new WoD products, Changeling: The Lost was far and away the most dramatic improvement, and my favorite to date). Having the fae be distant, ambiguous creatures out of myth (like the Tuatha de Danaan are nowadays) might work much better; ties to ‘older’ fae could lend more flavor, less cross-over, and dispel the awkward “do we let faeries into the caern because we’re Fianna?” question. So, flavor wise, how about this becomes more of a lost, fading connection to something wonderous but terrifying, and is poorly understood today but often pined over in song? A fading of savage beauty in the world, as the last scions of this bizarre coupling strive to keep the same beauty alive through story and song against the darkness.
instead of alliances with sidhe and trolls that aren’t really touched upon.
The Fianna Tribebook had references to the Fae, but IIRC having obligatory crossovers was discouraged. I’m not sure how the fae could have been more embedded into the book without importing Changeling systems, House this and Kith that. Similarly, without the Fae being revisited in 20th fashion, it might be difficult to do much except give hints that Storytellers can build on if they choose.
While in our Fianna games the Fae were pretty common, when Dark Age: Fae came out the Changelings were out the door in a heartbeat. They were sometimes allies, sometimes adversaries, and often added the consideration of territory to the game (will doing our thing step on the toes of some goblin? Will a faerie lord step on ours?)
To me the editions have always felt something like this:
1ed -grim and mysterious world filled with shadows
2ed -long march to Valhalla
2nd revised -the end game before apocalypse.
One of the things which I liked about the new ed. of WW was that focus was more clearly on the cities and suburbs.
While I’ve enjoyed all the editions, I’ve found the first ed. books to hold my favourite “flavour”.2ed felt as if it had gone a bit over the edge. I hold third as the best over all. I might be a little biased as I’ve mostly played with revised rules, having started playing WW-games shortly after the revised.
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Now I know this should prolly go into some place else but would it change the game flavour too much if the starting points in gnosis, wp & rage were more like: Lupus would have the highest gnosis(5) but lowest WP(1), homid would have the highest WP(5) but lowest Gnosis(1) and Metis would have them at the middle(4) tribal wp score should then be modified ofc by tribe. Something like -1 or +1 that would add to breed score.
Reasoning being that a starting Lupus is highly unlikely to have learned restraint any more than an average animal would had. The homid would have the highest wp out of necessity as well being generally “raised as a rational moral being”. One could also tweak WP to cost a little bit more as in current system its all too common that players pump up their wp up to 7-8 with freebies and never touch it again during chronicle and thus making it almost a static stat.
I’ve been looking over werewolf book (mostly 2e) again and I keep getting confused about honor (is it permanant or temporary?) This confusion dilutes the feeling of the book.
If the rules are unclear it blurrs the setting’s power. (unless the lack of clarity IS the feel see mage spheres)
Need to add a link to the RSS feed for the blog on the main page – it does have one at http://whitewolfblogs.com/w20/feed/, but I had to guess at that, rather than finding a link on the main page.
Also, now that I think about it?
First Edition. I have that floppy paperback on my shelf with all the others, and this is going to sound really weird… but I think it might be my favorite book, tone-wise. For this exercise, let’s just pretend that 1st edition had no art, because… yeah. Sometimes you hit, sometimes you miss, and, that art was… Anyway…
First, the Garou themselves. You have thirteen tribes, three breeds, and five Auspices… And none of them get along with the others. Homid and Lupus can barely function together due to generational misunderstandings, and both hate the Metis, who are off plotting their spiteful revenge as well. The Auspices don’t trust one another, and tend to clique off to do their own thing – the Ahroun are over there talking war, the Ragabash have snuck off to plot who knows what, etc. And then the thirteen tribes are, for the most part, openly at war with one another. Black Furies and get of Fenris are killing each other, the Red Talons lash out at the “homid” tribes, and the Wendigo are happy to let the Wyrm eat the other “good guys” without ever lifting a finger to stop it.
That lack of trust, that fist-in-your-mouth attitude, was muted in 2nd edition, and utterly stripped from Revised – In Revised, it seems the only meaningful difference wound up being just what Gifts you had access to.
But wait, there’s more! There was the generational conflict, too. In 1st edition, the elders of the Garou are presented as being DELIBERATELY oppressive to the younger generations. it’s the eve of the apocalypse… and the elders see that their kids and grandkids are going to outshine them because of the greater challenges they will face. So the elders are, essentially, hoarding their own glory. They ruthlessly enforce “The First of the Kill” and “Honor your Elders” in order to preserve what laurels they have left. Unlike the generational conflict presented in Vampire, it’s not a case of “elders are just spiteful bastards, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” In 1st edition werewolf, the elders are afraid of being overshadowed and forgotten… and not without reason. They use their clout to enforce the “traditional way” of doing things, even if that traditional way is dysfunctional in the face of modern threats.
By contrast, Revised werewolf inverts this – the elders are suddenly the cutting-edge vanguard and the younger characters are basically just grunts who mostly trip over things. While this has its perks as well, it does strip some of the “tribal” feel of the game. Imagine one of those tribes still in the Amazon, faced with the threat of modern encroachment – the “Big Men” of the village know they need to do something, but they don’t actually know WHAT to do… But without their guidance the whole society would basically fall apart. In Revised, “elder” is less a title of something a character has earned through age and experience, and is instead simply the “General” to the Athro’s “Colonel.” A military rank – which leads to the “army of Gaia” problem, where the werewolves are… Well, a superhero team.
And then you have the bad guys. First, the spirals. 1st edition didn’t try to tart up these guys. There were none of the suave, debonair-but-evil sort of characters like we can find in the tribe novels. The Spirals were, essentially, what would happen to ALL the Garou, if they ever stepped away from the Litany and tradition… Or at least, that was the assumption. They were the Garou, stripped of restraint or morals, a mad pack of flesh-eating, elder god-revering, grimy ugly bastards.
And then 2nd edition decided they dress as nuns and their metis give birth and stuff…
Where 1st and, honestly2nd edition shine is the treatment of Pentex as a legitimate antagonist. Maybe more in 1st edition, where you know less, so Pentex is this looming, faceless THING that is pulling strings to serve the Wyrm, but you don’t know where, and you sure don’t know why. It’s the power for the “punk” portion of the game to rail against. 2nd edition sort of lampooned the company – Silver tent spikes, really? – and Revised couldn’t make up its mind if it wanted to forget the whole thing, or play it super-straight as a “what would a company like this really be like?” – which again had its perks, but kind of dulled it down a bit.
the world presented in 1st edition was a much grimier, uglier place than in the later two editions. You really got the feeling that the Garou – even the Glass Walkers – were really living on the fringe of society, skulking through dirty alleyways, and with gross stuff constantly embedded under their nails. It presented a world that was already in a state of dystopia, decaying all around the protagonists… and the thing that fueled their rage was that, as far as they can tell, they were the only people who NOTICED. Things are falling apart, and the humans – the homids, as they were called, distinct from Homid – couldn’t care less. Short-sightedness and apathy made them as much an enemy of the Garou as the Wyrm. One of the angles was that maybe the Impergium WASN’T a bad idea – but it’s too late to try again.
While I wouldn’t necessarily say 1st edition was a better game (it wasn’t, honestly), it DID have a very distinct vibe and feel to it, and it did a very good job in conveying the hate and anger of the werewolves, as well as their enemies. it also left a good many mysteries hanging for players and ST to gnaw on – and a mysterious world is inevitably a more frightening one.
The problem with a mood that dark is that it makes the game look and feel hard to play.
I want a get, you want a fury, somebody else wants a talon. The three of us spend the whole campaign sniping at each other and wondering what’s up with the elders and don’t wonder why we failed; it’s obvious.
I agree that the option has to be there for all that conflict — strong and clear. But playing a disfunctional family only goes so far for many players.
Look (but don’t fully base) on the GNS theory. Focus a lot on the NS — it’s your strength. If the Garou detest one another one wonders from the S perspective why they haven’t already died off and from the N perspective how to make a reasonable game.
I agree that the Revised edition, by the time it came out, had squarely depicted the werewolves as the only good guys left on Earth (despite their flaws) who had no good reason not to be working together. I remember, too, how the first edition made you a paranoid closet-case within your own pack and sept (and gods help the poor player who tried a metis), but I agree with b goldstein, it was *too* dark, and it was a wonder that the werewolves got *anything* done.
Maybe there should be a compromise; just like the Traditions all agree that they want to awaken humanity but can’t agree on how to do so (and sometimes fight as a result), maybe the ways in which the tribes feel the Apocalypse can be won/averted should be drastically different enough to spark more conflict? If a Get feels that a Big Bane needs to get torn to pieces to prevent a Blight, but a Child of Gaia wants to divert Garou to spiritually cleansing the area and using community outreach to change peoples’ attitudes and weaken it, and a Glass Walker says “Why not calcify it? It’s in the heart of a city, and that’d be easy AND spare Garou time and lives”, that could escalate into a conflict. Having tribal golas with regards to the coming Apocalypse, or even just theories and preventative measures clearly outlined could sow the seeds for a lot of their conflict AND make it seem legitimate. And if a Stargazer thinks that the Glass Walker plan is only going to help their true enemy, and the Glass Walkers won’t listen to reason…
I have to ask to, when the grittiness of the world is being discussed, how important of a factor is crossover? The world of 1st Ed was pretty awful, but seemingly incongruent with the Endless Nights of the Masquerade. Sure, it was fine for a werewolf-centric chronicle, but ANY attempt at crossover hit a major hurdle here; Revised was much friendlier in that regard.
My concern with using active voice pervasively is, unfortunately, whatever is written is gospel to many. If you say Fianna hate Get, then anyone who creates a Fianna who has no distaste for the whole of the Fenris Tribe is clearly not portraying genre correctly.
Also it ends up in contradiction with any place where a ‘sometimes’ was used…
Sometimes there are also problems caused to fluff vs crunch even in crunch areas, such as gifts. The description of the gift was vague. Eye of the Cobra is a good example.
“With but a look, the Garou can attract anyone to his side. A snake-spirit teaches this Gift.
His side is a location thing, but it rolls a gift based on the Appearance attribute, so it is a social, seduction like gift? And when the target arrives, it is free to do as it pleases. Does he/she knows how it happened? How does it feel? Coming to your side is quite ambiguous phrasing, nice to write, but bad to use on a game. That kind of sutuation happens a lot on gifts, where the description promess a cool trick in a world of awesome, but the system is not up the description.
We have made a fansite on Facebook which is slowly getting more likes.
If people wish to join:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Werewolf-the-Apocalypse-20th-anniversary
While everyone loves flavor, please try to be clear in what you are saying as well. A great deal of time is spent in many a game arguing over “what the books says, or what the books mean.” Especially in Larps.
While certainly keep the tone and feel of Werewolf, also try and make sure you are clear in what you are trying to say. If that means saying it twice in some places, then please do so, especially when it’s something important.
Also there are times when flavor text, and rules text tend to mesh, and the rules part of the text will contradict parts of the flavor…if you could please try an make what are rules and what are flavor alittle bit more clear and separated in this new edition that would help alot too.
My major gripe was the idea that there are no Nagah or Ananasi/Yahwie in Australia.
Douglas Adams (of the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy fame) put it best when he said…
“It is true that of the 10 most poisonous arachnids on the planet, Australia has 9 of them. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that of the 9 most poisonous arachnids, Australia has all of them.”
So why oh why don’t we have Werespiders?!?!
The same can be said of Weresnakes. King Browns, Red Bellied Black Snakes, Taipans… And yet we don’t have Weresnakes… Why?
I always thought that the Mokolé’s term, ‘Bête’ was more appropriate for the Natives of Australia, and ‘Fera’ was a better term for the non-indiginous Shifters: Bastet, Gurahl, Nuwisha, etc…
Well to fix all the errors and gonzo-stuff to be consistent with later editions, the whole rage across Australia should be completely re-written.