#w5

[songoftrillium]

Cracking the Bone 22/22

Trigger Warnings in the tags

Werewolf: the Essentials launches on Storytellers Vault November 30th!

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

Why the Apocalypse in the title matters and how W5 fails to address it

Even if it is by this point a joke, all WoD games have a title what creature it lets you play and then one of the core elements of it.

Yet, it is odd that a werewolf game puts the end of the world as one of its most central concepts. After all, werewolves aren't really associated with the apocalypse in myths. The closest is Fenris-Ulf in Norse myths, but Fenris was a monstrous wolf, not a werewolf. Shouldn't Changing or Fury be a better descriptor?

Well, WtA's werewolves draw from older material than the movies and the focus is not on being a werewolf. The focus is on the state of the world, the way nature is being destroyed and such. In the game, being a werewolf is more akin to a spiritual guardian than a cursed being.

The Apocalypse in the title not only refers to the literal end of existence but to the little apocalypses happening every year. Species dying, people losing touch with their ancestral cultures, etc. WtA is about looking at the state of the world and feeling the horror of just how hard it is to fix it if not impossible. Never mind the sadly now very real horror of greed over care and ennui towards your fellow humans and nature.

This genuine approach and call to action has, of course, created an opposite reaction that calls WtA's tone childish. More recently, as we actually start seeing the effects of climate change, the reactions have also become ones of denial, apathy and fear of doing the wrong thing.

It is the latter that W5 shows the clearest in its depiction of the apocalypse.

The apocalypse in W5 is invisible to normal people and other supernaturals. At most, it is the fall of the garou nation as the climate change happening in the real world. Despite this, W5 is very clear about discouraging its PCs from taking action further than locally.

In effect, W5's apocalypse and what it wants the players to do about it is toothless. The game spends page space detailing what not to do, but very little on what to do and what the apocalypse looks like. Because it is afraid to take a stand, instead focusing on passive-aggressive remarks here and there.

W5, despite its blurb stating it is about striking back at pollution, isn't willing to have its PCs be eco-terrorists (though some do slip through) and actively calls direct action the wrong method.

It isn't just what W5 tells the PCs shouldn't do, it is also how much the PCs don't have to do. It's the end of the world as we know it and you can still go to McDonald's in peace. The world is lost and you still have to go to work. If we weren't told the apocalypse was raging, we'd assume it was still in the future. The game is, intentionally or unintentionally, saying that there is no need to do anything. Even if the world is ending, it won't inconvenience you.

To put things plainly, W5's apocalypse is the way it is so there won't be paid sick days for the employees. It is an end that preserves and protects the status quo.

Of course, an apocalypse that changes nothing is not really an apocalypse. Indeed, W5 wears the apocalypse label more out of legacy than any real intention of addressing it. It wants to focus on werewolf packs and caern tending, not something as serious as the fate of the world.

In fact, I'd say W5 doesn't want to be about the garou at all but instead about werewolves. It wants to be Werewolf the Fury.

[wolfhidewinter]

A snippet of a piece I'm working on for an awesome project for an indie RPG model of Werewolf: the Apocalypse by https://www.tumblr.com/songoftrillium. If you're interested in the project read more here! Can you tell who I got tasked with drawing? hah

[findingtarshish]

God I fucking hate what they did to Stolen Moons in W5

"They're FALSE werewolves, all EVIL and DEPRAVED people who STOLE our rightful divine nature, ALL GAROU HATE THEM and THEY HATE US and they can never be anything but antagonists because theyre UNNATURAL"

Like... are you fucking hearing yourself, Paradox? Jesus fucking christ.

[oldshowbiz]

1975.

The CTV program W5 is still on the air.

[lord-soth-dk]

Well, at least they fucked up every other Tribe, not just the Fenrir

[thecyberrecord]

Werewolf: the Apocalypse 5th Edition and the Anti-Indigeneity in the Gaming Industry

[gnost-stories]

Werewolf: The Apocalypse 5th Edition is an edition of Werewolf: The Apocalypse I can actually show to my friends without accompanying it with an asterisk for each chapter. The Tribe renames actually serve to make tribes more global and reduce the actual limitation of tribes to certain ethnicities or national identities.

Not to mention the Tribe now called Galestalkers used to be named something you're not supposed to say according to the First Nation it is from.

It's not as if the renames are eurocentric in nature either, because even the Hart Wardens got changed from what they used to be.

The removal of the crinos-born means there's no longer in-universe Proof That Eugenics Is Justified and they're no longer using the name of a marginalized group that's frankly been through enough bullshit in 500 years.

Thank Gaia for Werewolf: The Apocalypse 5th Edition.

[chunkleosteus]

Picked up Werewolf 5th and in love with my anxious son.

Here’s all of his forms!

[mystickingstuff]

So. The werewolf tribes in w5 are like the vampire clans? Or are they sort of an affiliation? Or some sort of philosophical group?? I get that the auspices are what you get born as, but I really didn't got the tribes? And how does the packs get with more than idk five garous from different tribes? How does it work????

[songoftrillium]

Happy Halloween!

As a November treat, we're going to be releasing pages of the Werewolf: the Essentials comic Cracking the Bone every day! Look out for our book release on Storyteller's Vault, coming November 30th! Writers: Me, @wolfgirlbites @excelgarou @balthazarslostlibrary

Art: @mekanikaltrifle

Proofreading: Me, @balthazarslostlibrary @bekandrew

Enjoy!

1/22

Trigger warnings in the tags

2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

W5: Oral histories are bad

For an edition focusing on being more aware of different cultures, W5 sure does spend a lot of time hating on oral histories; NOTE: LONG post and critical of W5, don't read if you like it.

"A history of the Garou is both impossible and reductive. The stories of the past that werewolves tell are oral histories, part legend and part reality, revised, reinterpreted, and redone, according to the needs of the generation doing the telling. They contain multiple narratives that are all considered to be true. The finer details, locations, and players in these grand dramas may shift with the times, and with the storytellers spinning the tale for those listening to them. " - W5 core, p.22 "The Garou Nation, as it was known, existed for a brief period of relative success, but even there, its actual duration is unknown and varies by who’s reciting the history. Was it decades? Centuries? Millennia? Because the historical events involved in it date to various times across myriad locations, to say with any certainty is impossible, and even spirits speak of it in terms unsuited to the physical world. " -W5 core, p.37 "Much of the Garou’s history is oral, more within the realm of legend and even self-mythology than a true history. Given the animistic perspective of Garou, when one says, “the mighty Silver Fang rode upon Falcon’s back,” that might literally mean a werewolf rode an enormous falcon in a legendary time, or it may mean that a falcon-spirit carried the werewolf, or even that Falcon himself transported the werewolf through the Umbra.

So it goes with the Litany, a code of Garou custom that’s equally as impressionistic and open to interpretation as the animistic lens through which werewolves see the world." -W5 core,p.46 "The Litany is an imperfect set of rules by which to wage a guerilla war of resistance during an ongoing Apocalypse. Those rules mean different things at different times to different werewolves, and the oral tradition of the Garou is rife with the Litany being used to justify self-dealing or even atrocity. " -W5 core, p.47 "Above and beyond the tribes and the septs, there used to be something called the Garou Nation. It was understood that all Garou were united in their war against the forces of the Wyrm.

Some dispute whether this was ever really true. Were the Garou of old really united in a global nation in the mythical prehistory of Garou legend at a time when humans had barely managed to get from one continent to another" -Shattered Nation, p.37

"The Garou are creatures of the present, their traditions built on oral storytelling. This means that factual accuracy is often not considered particularly important as long as the broad outlines fit what the crowd at the moot wants to hear. The stories of Garou from the '80s and '90s are already ancient history, having happened before most Garou today were even born.

Garou legends are notoriously difficult to date accurately. When was the War of Rage or the Impergium? In the Middle Ages? In the Stone Age? Who knows, and the spirits are no help either. Their sense of time is so different that it’s impossible to translate into human reckoning."

-Shattered Nation, p.40

I apologize for the paste spam, but I wanted to show you that this is not a one-time thing. This is constant. This is not that the books are saying that the garou specifically are bad at keeping histories straight, it is saying that with oral storytelling, it is impossible to tell when things happened. Which doesn't pass the smell test even if we focus solely on Europe. People have, for generations, kept information up through oral histories. Minor things might change, but the core details are there.

Think about it, how many of your family histories are written down? Most likely they are told orally a put into memory. And the time these events happened is usually a big part of it. Those of you with immigrant backgrounds will know why your family left, what kind of journey it was and when they arrived. It gets even less acceptable once we get to Indigenous people. Australian Blaks are very strict about accuracy and so there is no drift in stories over the centuries. Most Native American nations told their histories orally, maybe using metaphor but still recalling exact details over the centuries. W5 says that garou don't know when the Garou Nation existed. Given the former silver fang king is alive, it is clear it was within living memory. Yet the book still paints the garou as ignorant of their own history, the origins of their laws and so on. What is worse, is that this is often contrasted with written history being accurate. Essentially implying that the correct history is only found in books. A VERY Western European take if I ever heard one. Let's remember that, according to W5, any tribe can be found anywhere. So those garou found in mostly oral cultures just failed to record their own history? Writing like this, in a work with heavy animistic inspirations from Native American cultures and other animistic cultures, is insulting because it suggests only the western method is accurate.

[redratt]

Bro forgive me but there's something very sad about seeing what felt like essential parts of werewolf be stripped and celebrated. The Umbra. The Nation. The changing of the Black Furies' Patron. The Glass Walkers have no ambiguity now. They've got Spider. The Garou-Born are just... gone, and as a dyke with disabilities I loved them dearly. Younger Brother has been named in a way that just ignores the winter of them, the cold rage, the refusal to assimilate.

And, of course, once again the Stargazers have been removed, because I guess the writers can't write an Asian tribe of Garou without being fucking racist, so they just cut it entirely.

Worst of all is the attitude of "oh well the war is lost actually :)"

Like... fuck off, very sincerely, with that.

[perfectly-generic-url]

By join I do mean you become one and are given a motorcycle

[findingtarshish]

aaaaand that's a wrap for the Patrons! 105 of the damn things...... (Take that W5, you only gave players fucking 11 to choose from)

If folks would like, I can share some of the ones I made! (only 12 options, so I'll make two polls and share a couple from the top results!

In addition, if you have a favorite patron from the legacy editions of the game, let me know and I'll let you know if I've made an updated version!

[syntheticmortal]

wait what did the wolf-born have in older editions that they don’t have know?

They had their own Gifts! The 'Native Gifts' of W5 are a replacement for the 'Breed Gifts' of before. Homid-born, Lupus-born, and Garou-born all had their own distinct spell lists

There was also a mechanic called Gnosis which, to maybe oversimplify it, was kinda like a spellcaster's mana pool. Lupus started with more Gnosis than the other breeds (and Garou-born started with more than a Homid), so they were inherently more prepared to deal with a spiritual world

They also had their own societies, 'Camps', within a handful of the Tribes - plus the Red Talons used to be hardline no-Homids, as opposed to W5 where some will join