So, here’s an example of how we’re looking at changing format. Take a look at the following tribal spread, one featuring a tribe near and dear to my bloodthirsty heart. There’s a slimmed-down Character Creation section that incorporates Background Restrictions, Appearance has been trimmed of talk of human ethnicities, and we folded Kinfolk and Territory into one paragraph. Minor tweaks, but they could add up. Let me know what you think of the changes!
Get of Fenris
In a race of warriors, the Get of Fenris are the most warlike. The Fenrir, as they’re also known, value a glorious death over a peaceful old age. They wear their scars with pride, howl the glory of their victories, and revel in the fear that they spread among the minions of the Wyrm. To the Get, compassion is a luxury, not a virtue – the greatest virtues are valor and strength.
The Fenrir have their origins in Europe, where they once called Germanic tribes and Nordic raiders Kin. Yet even the most brutal and violent sagas of the regions pale before the lore of the Get. Their Galliards (or skalds) joyously recount grim tales of bloody death against impossible odds, of the eternal glory to be found on the battlefield. They have told stories of Ragnarak, of the Apocalypse, for millennia – and they are ready for it.
Blood alone doesn’t make a Get of Fenris. A cub could have the finest Pure Breed, but if he can’t make it through the bloody tribal Rite of Passage, he’s of no use to the Fenrir. Some cubs don’t even survive that first test. Harsh as it is, the Rite of Passage reflects the grim and fatalistic nature of life among the Get. The battles against the Wyrm will be no gentler – and the Fenrir never run from battle. Every child of Great Fenris, no matter his or her auspice, must be ready to die gloriously for the Mother. This creed often seems contradictory to lupus cubs, who are used to survival as the first and most pressing mandate. But enough wolf-born find their Rage that the Get haven’t fallen too far behind in their ratio of homid to lupus members.
To make matters worse, many Get of Fenris embraced very elitist attitudes not just to strength and valor, but even to sex and ethnicity. This has been a source of internal conflict within the tribe for many years. Although modern Get are less prone to outright racism and sexism, the old prejudices against weakness run deep and take many forms. These haven’t done the tribe’s reputation among the rest of the Garou Nation any favors.
But although they’re not easy for outsiders to see, the Fenrir do possess admirable virtues beyond their courage. There are long-standing traditions of females doing as well as males in many Get septs – they frequently have to work very hard to earn respect, but this struggle is part of what earns them their status. Metis can excel as well, if their deformities don’t impede their actual strength – one who’s ugly as sin and has a terrible speech impediment will still earn much glory if he can fight to the tribe’s exacting standards. Many Get also care very deeply for their Kinfolk, taking family ties exceptionally seriously. This is a double standard for the Kin, of course: their werewolf relatives hold them to brutally high standards, but also defend them with great passion.
At every level, tribe society idealizes strength above all. Fenrir leaders, or jarls, must earn their position through grueling physical trials, and be prepared to hold them in the same way. Tribal moots are full-moon affairs, beginning with a vicious gauntlet-running to determine who’s worthy to participate in the rites of the tribe. Rites of Renown entail bloody runes carved into werewolf hide; even mystical rites dealing with spirits involve ritualized combat between ritemaster and spirit as often as not. Even their belief in an afterlife reflects the concept of Valhalla, a grand battlefield awaiting its heroes.
And for all their faults, the Get of Fenris produce many heroes. Their creed of strength is simple, but not simplistic – it teaches many Fenrir to master their Rage, to serve as examples of courage to the rest of the Nation, and to win battles that others would lose or abandon. They are remarkably loyal to those who earn their respect, and their harsh standards encourage other Garou to fight harder if they want to keep the Fenrir’s allegiance. With the Apocalypse at hand, no tribe is more ready to tear the Wyrm apart no matter the cost.
Appearance: Strong Fenrir blood manifests as huge gray wolf forms with broad shoulders and vicious jaws. There are precious few Get whose hides aren’t marked with scars and tattoos. Some even brand their fur or carve runes ceremonially into their flesh.
Kinfolk & Territory: The Get of Fenris claim their oldest homelands in Europe, ranging from Scandinavia through Germany. They have followed their original Kin throughout many lands, and adopted new bloodlines wherever the local human population produced strong children. They favor rural territories, particularly where the weather is harsh, and are involved in more territorial conflicts than any other tribe. Their largest protectorates are in the Black Forest of Germany and the wilderness of Scandinavia.
Tribal Totem: Fenris, the Great Wolf, one of the mightiest of war totems. Other spirits allied to the Get include Aegir, Hrafn, the Norns, and Surtur, spirits both warlike and wise.
Character Creation: The Fenrir naturally stress combat and survival Traits. They almost never purchase Contacts: they want true friends, not associates.
Initial Willpower: 3
Beginning Gifts: Lightning Reflexes, Master of Fire, Razor Claws, Resist Pain, Visage of Fenris
Quote: “Pain is my lover. Death is my sister. Gaia is my Mother, and Great Fenris is my Father. You have NOTHING for me to fear!”
Stereotypes
Black Furies: A warrior is defined by fang and claw and klaive, not by a womb. You want respect? Earn it.
Bone Gnawers: You can run at my back if you’re too afraid to take the lead. But if you abandon me, I’ll carve you apart like the dog you pretend to be.
Children of Gaia: You think you were given these teeth, these claws, so you could sit about and talk of dreams of peace? Fight, you sheepfuckers!
Fianna: Your ancestors were almost as strong as ours, and you’re almost as strong as us. What? It’s a compliment.
Glass Walkers: The old ways are hard and painful and merciless. Not surprising that cowards will find any excuse to disdain them.
Red Talons: I admire a wolf who picks a war because he feels it must be fought, not because he thinks he can win.
Shadow Lords: Their schemes against the other tribes are treacherous, which is why they are not friends. Their schemes against the Wyrm are brilliant, which is why we haven’t cut them down.
Silent Striders: They remind me of the ravens: keen-eyed and clever, but better at scouting than fighting.
Silver Fangs: Speak with the voice of a true king, and we’ll follow. You’re too weak to be worth it any other way.
Stargazers: You want to master your Rage by avoiding battle? Why not master fire by eating raw meat all your life while you’re at it?
Uktena: Our ancestors found dark things in their lands when we were at war. Was binding these things the only way to stop them – or a way to keep them in reserve?
Wendigo: You still want to fight us over the deeds of our ancestors? There are more productive ways to commit suicide.
I laughed, specially at the Stargazer bits. I think the format is working well enough, even if i still think it doesn’t show that get also consider wisdom a type of strenght, specially at the elder level. A simple phrase would solve this, or else it would be easy to think that the tribe rewards the meanest bully, not the greatest warrior.
Other than that, i think the stereotype sections are great.
Ethan, i wonder if you already playtested the rules changes on character creation? I am starting a werewolf game next month and i was hoping to test the new skill meshings and other things. The starting numbers on garou will still be kept in place as 13/9/5 on skills even if some skills are folded into each other?
The Abilities will still be symmetrical: same number for each category. If we fold one Skill into another, it’s to make room for another Skill as to keep things even.
That was absolutely brilliant. All the important element of the tribe I could think of was mentioned and then some. That is probably the best description of the Fenrir I’ve ever read. All the way down to the breed perspective which I find to be brilliant sumarized while remaining very helpful.
Love the stereotypes on this one too. They have a very flavourful bite to them. I really like the one on the Red Talons.
I think the new format works too. It could be just a feeling, but it seemed to me like it allowed for more information to be there.
This write didn’t feel like it had less words than the Black Furies, which I suppose makes it a success.
I like the fact that the Get’s own terminology is used, but I wonder if just using a few without mentioning that there’s more to it. (“Their Galliards (or skalds)…” … “Their AhrounFenrir leaders, or jarls,…”)
Maybe a brief “The Get of Fenris take their culture quite seriously, and even have their own terms for even the most common Garou terms.” Or something along those lines, so that someone New to the Get of Fenris don’t think that Skald, or Jarl are the only changes in terminology that they use. Again, the trick would be to do this with limited word count, and slip it in where it reads naturally.
I think that it reads rather well and gets the point across as it should, given the restrictions of the pages and word count.
Something I noticed is that rather than having a “restriction”, it states “They almost never purchase Contacts: they want true friends, not associates.” Now, Black Furies didn’t have any restrictions before, but can we correctly assume that “almost never” means that either “restricted” Backgrounds will cost extra (AKA “out-of-tribe-cost”), or even just not restricted at all mechanically?
The “Beginning Gifts” still leaves some room for confusion, but it is how it’s always been labeled, so as long as the statement “Choose one Beginning Gift” is easily read in the character creation rules, there’s no real need to change it (my previous suggestion was to label it “Beginning Gift:” with an “or” before the last gift, but again, that was just my suggestion to clarify.)
Good eye on the Background Restrictions. We’re essentially easing up on the social ones, but not the mystical ones: Bone Gnawers still won’t have Pure Breed nor Silent Striders Ancestors, but if a Get wants to buy Contacts that’s fine. The rest of the tribe just looks down on him a little for being bad at friendship. (Which itself has no mechanical enforcement: it’s up to the ST and player to decide just how much they care to make an issue of that.)
I’m glad. I think that’s the best way to do background restrictions.
This is exactly the kind of Get write up I wanted. No, seriously, it has ALL the parts I felt make the tribe interesting.
I have to thank you for addressing the Gets’ training so throughtly, especially the fact that everyone starts at same level in it and gets the same hell. Metis are given a chance to be equals, as well.
Though, I think the appearance section could just be called purebreed.
It *could*, but we have a section for the Bone Gnawers, too. Lemme dig it up…
Appearance: Bone Gnawers’ wolf appearance is ragged, often mismatched or particolored; some can be mistaken for dogs at a distance, though even a Gnawer who looks something like a yellow dingo is clearly an animal that was never tame. Their blessings as Garou make them surprisingly healthy by compare to impoverished humans: most have strong (if crooked) teeth and wiry muscle under the dirt.
You see, we want some guidelines in place even if Pure Breed is a restricted choice for a tribe.
Ah, that makes sense.
Although, if you have the space, note on purebreed if they have it would be good.
But, I am happy to have this version. You managed to get details for non-homid breeds in without too much hassle, and give a nice three dimensional look at the tribe’s weaknesses and strenghts.
So, thank you ^^
Usually if the tribe has Pure Breed, that’s what we’ll focus on in the Appearance section. It’s mostly the Gnawers and the Glass Walkers who deserve a “here’s what they generally look like” that isn’t tied to that.
Good point. I was on board with naming the section Pure Breed, but I hadn’t considered the tribes that don’t have it.
I think it should be mentioned that the Gets also value cunning and some level of self preservativeness in their warriors.
If they wouldn’t they’d be called White howlers and we all know what happened to those guys…
This one is great.
It describes the tribe perfectly and even mentions their concept of an afterlife, as I always wanted.
I like it very much.
Excellent!!
I think it does a great job of showing the focus on strenght but also shows their own special take on equality.
it makes them less like muscle bound idiots and more like self sacrificing warriors who fear nothing and expect the same from others.
High standars applied first to themselve and then to others, and once you’re through you`re family.
also loved the stereotypes.
Aww my whole post got deleted! Booooo. I don’t like this format for commenting.
OK what was my post…
I like this writeup. It has a lot more “punch” than the Black Fury section, and the stereotypes section doesn’t feel as generic. I like the newly trimmed version of the kinfolk, territories, appearance, character creation, and backgrounds sections, and I am glad to see that “never” was changed to “almost never” on the background restrictions. It looks like you’ve already incorporated a lot of the suggestions and ideas from the Black Furies spread feedback.
I remember reading somewhere, maybe in a stereotypes section in one of the books, this quote (not exact): “It would be easy to dismiss the Get as nothing but over-violent thugs. But when they say they’re willing to die to the very last to save Gaia, they sincerely mean it.”
It’s easy to hate the Fenrir for their prejudice, hyper-narrow focus, and elitism (although aside from the stereotypes section this write-up pushes me towards liking them, as a tribal spread should) but I think the above sentiment should be in this book somewhere — either in a stereotypes section, or in this write-up — if poosible.
This definitely feels like a step in the right direction. It has more of a “show, don’t tell” feel to it.
I’m saddened to see some of the heroism established in the Revised Tribe Book being parred away, but I can understand why it was done. It still feels more like a 2nd Edition description.. but again, with limited word count it’s hard to convey a whole lot of details..
Combining Kinfolk and Territory really works well, since a Tribes Kin generally comes from their Territories.
My biggest gripe is the inclusion of Surtur as an associated Spirit. Surtur was supposed to be one of the forces to bring about Ragnarok in Norse mythology, why would the Get revere that? They abandoned Odin in the Dark Ages because a Vampire was pretending to be him, but follow a Totem representing one of the primal forces of evil in Norse Myths?
Good point. I had that gripe myself. If I may attempt to explain with a theory:
Surtur comes up and blankets the entire world under a cleansing fire killing all and making place for new life. After the purge, life resumes and humans grow again to prominence led by Baldur in a new world devoid of Gods. Modern westernisation sees the titans and giants as evil (Wyrm) because we need to see things in black and white. Norse and Werewolve see them as forces of nature (wild) neither good or evil. The Surtr are sided with the Fenrir and have been for a long time (at least revised, may be earlier, I don’t have the book to confirm) and if you look at the closest thing I can think of in the WOD, I’d point you out to the fire spirits in the Book of the Wild who do exactly that, cleanse by fire to make place for new life.
I beleive that would be enough to explain it, if not, heck, their Totem is a wolf so big that when his maw is open the lower lips touch the ground and the upper one touched the sky. It’s brother, Yormungandr is the World serpent, laying in the depth of the sea where his body covers the entirely of the world. Both are destined to rise and strike during the ragnarok and kill a major Gods each. So, from there… seriously, whatever human myth says, I think the Fenrir have a completely different version.
The heroism should still be there, but yes, it’s intentional that there’s a 2nd edition feel to this as well. The Get are at their most interesting when we’re open about their flaws as well as their strengths.
The spirits that are listed under the Totem section are basically taken from Axis Mundi (which was for 2nd ed.): they’re established members of the Brood of every given tribal totem. And yes, Yiodan has the right of it: the Get of Fenris are not pious Aesir-worshippers, as is evident in their name and tribal totem. As is typical for World of Darkness games, sometimes humans get stuff wrong, or demonize things that aren’t demons.
I wouldn’t expect the Get of FENRIS were ever followers of Odin or his Aesir. They’d be more likely to be friends with Loki (if the Fenrir can respect any trickster spirit, they’d respect one who’s also a warrior).
@Erinys: I completely agree with your logic, but according to Revised (and my potencially faulty memory) Loki was also an enemy of the Fenrir. He played the werewolf and Odin against each other and that led to the loss of the most important caern in the entire history of the Get.
Tyr was a werewolf who got turned and betrayed the Get which led to the capture of Fenris. And that’s pretty much all it says about Norse Gods.
Personally, I try to go with this rule of thumb to fill in the gaps:
Easir = Enemies of the Get (mostly vamps)
Vanir = Allies of the Get (mostly… things like elementals, fae, etc.)
I know this is alittle off topic, but I thought of it because we’re talking about Get.
Can you balance the power level of Totems? Like Fenris is so weak compared to alot of other totems, yet he should be one of the strongest Totems imo…
The text as a whole is spot on! Plus, I really like the way their Background restriction is handled (as explained by Ethan) and how you handled merging Kinfolk & Territory sections without feeling it forced.
“Fianna: Your ancestors were almost as strong as ours, and you’re almost as strong as us. What? It’s a compliment.”
Bloody brilliant 😀
I found out that WtA will have a new edition… Man, it’s a great day! And I love WtA and here it’s something for you, guys: http://andreibressan.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d395qf9
The tribe’s quote is my favorite, reminds an invencible warrior, armed with fangs of steel and claws of fire, unstoppable, the incarnation of the rage itself. Willing to die in battle for life’s sake.
Fenris’ not doing this only for glory, but also for the preservation of the Tellurian and life. For Gaia and Fenris, the only flaw of the tribe is to not perceive the importance of balance, which are the flaw of every tribe in its own way. The Garou need to find balance within them before bringing it out the their Fera brothers, maybe they won’t be the cheering friends after all the past, but at least, realize why the Great Mother gave birth to them and then, only then win the Final Battle.
“FERA, FIGHT TOGETHER OR DIE ALONE “
“
The leaders of every race shout this while roars, howls, growls of every shapeshifter blast the air in the final battle while the unbalanced wyrm, weaver and perhaps even wyld forces tramble for what is about to come…
Werewolf, the RPG that owns my d10 world