Werewolf 2e Games?

[Kireek]

For those of you not immediately checking the OP's forums every day, it may come as a surprise that the Werewolf 2nd edition has come out of editing and gone into layout. That is the part where they decide where to place the art and replace all the refer to page xx with actual page numbers. (B&S had a rushed layout job as you can no doubt imagine.) Either way, Layout probably shouldn't take as long as editing, but conservative estimates put the release of the game at about 3 months away, maybe 4. It is not unreasonable however to expect the book out in Late January but again- thats a bit over eager and wishful thinking.

However, with the upcoming release, I now have to ask? Where can I no doubt play this game? There are a few games out there that I know of, but for the most I want to know- which games will be adapting it, or be released with it? It's shaping up to be either a really good book, or a particularly good marketing campaign. I know of at least a few people who are looking to dip their hands into the game as well.. so, getting a list of options would be more than helpful.

For those of you who don't keep up with the Updates, or just generally only have a passing interest in WtF, I'll spell some of the bigger changes out, in no particular order.

1. The Blood is infectious- It is now possible to become a wolfblooded through gameplay. IT is teased that it is theoretically possible for said wolfblood to become a full blown Uratha, but there is no confirmation if that is always the case. (I expect a side-bar on this). Either way, this is something that all games regardless of their adaption of the actual rules should adapt- nothing is more annoying than making a character to a completely new game- and than discovering- you get all your rp in the wrong sphere. At least now- you can start as a human and reasonably expect that- whatever sphere you get the most rp in? Whatever you enjoy the most at that particular game? Your human character can now fully join into.
2. WBs are now awesome. Crazy new WB powers, partial transformations? Transforming during certain nights? Combine that with the fact that being a WB is now infectious? Tons of fun can go on here, They get access to new powers, and are no longer just relegated to the role of breeding slaves- which they have a nasty habit of falling into.. However that is no longer a problem because...
3. Urihar are gone- It is no longer totally sacrilegious for 2 werewolves to knock boots together. There are a number of reasons to do this for gender reasons. Women get punished not once, but twice. The illicit implications surrounding it with regards to women etc etc... Thats all very nice, and important, but for the purposes of mushing, it gets rid of a certain type to of character. The WB Sex slave! No longer will you have to chose between getting laid or getting paid (in essence, I dunno, fuck it.) You can make the character you want.. and fuck who you want, and thank god- now people will actually make- ya know.. characters because they want to make them-
4. Clutches are in the core book. Do I need to beat the horse on this one? Probably not, I will say this though, I often times got a response that because it was in a supplement, a secondary book- it wasn't necessarily fitting in theme with the game. I can now say to that, bullshit, its core and central to the theme. No more hiding behind that as an excuse to avoid the problem that it requires actual work to run a werewolf Sphere- just as much as it should to run the Vampire sphere.

Anyway, back to the original intent of the post? Games? Who has the scoop?

Edit: On a unrelated note, I may or may not have made this post HERE (this subform) specifically to test out the front page layout and how it looks like- eh..
Edit 2:Oh I do not like how it is doing that numbering thing for me and I can't seem to make it 'stop'
Edit 3:I figured the numbering thing out... its really god damn picky. Its a bit bitchy of me, but I find it annoying that this is trying to replicate the feel of automatic for formatting that MS word is doing- but is less apt/user-friendly at being able to recognize when your trying to do it/correct it.

[Coin]

I'm working on a game that will have Second Edition Werewolf. I'm saddened that it might take MONTHS still to actually be available, especially since Onyx Path was just as deceptive with their promises of release dates as White Wolf has ever been.

In any case, there will be a place for it. We've got a grid, we've got tons of history for the setting; we're currently working on the wiki to make it presentable before we advertise; but it's coming.

[ThatOneDude]

I'm totally interested in WW 2E even if I'm not a game designer or the like. I'll keep an eye here for the TL;Dr versions of updates if they keep coming and hopefully for updates on games to play. Thanks guys!

[Please Delete]

This post is deleted!

[Kireek]

Well again, I tend to be on the side of caution- I won't be suprised if its 2-3 months from now, I'm hoping its not though.

It went into post-editing and formatting on the day of December 1st.. so who knows how much work on it has actually been done.

Either way, I still want to know if anyone has any other games they know of or in the works that are out there? Again, got like 3-4 people looking to start a pack- working on everything and the more opportunities to shop and find a place to set down roots, the better.

[Coin]

Like I said, @Kireek, the game I'm working on is on the way, but what with the holidays and the delay from Onyx Path in getting Werewolf 2e out, it might be a spell yet. But it's a-coming!

[tragedyjones]

Reno will absolutely be adopting 2nd Edie but as stated, time is a thing. We need to have it released so we can read it and then make any code changes as well as do database entry and figure out how to retcon and respec.

[Catsmeow]

I'm not completely sure how this will transfer to a MU*. I mean it sounds cool for a TT of the game with these rules. However, when you have combat and blood; suddenly everyone is a wolfblood. That might actually make people less inclined to play with them, etc. Or it might not be an issue at all. It does seem very Anita Blake-ish.

Banging other werewolves would only be hard because for years in a player's mind it has been a 'law' breech. So that could have some weird drama on the OOC of switch over. Not that it matters as games have all the sex in all the places and all the taboos.

I do like more power. MORE POWER.

Just my thoughts.

[Chime]

@Catsmeow said:

I'm not completely sure how this will transfer to a MU*. I mean it sounds cool for a TT of the game with these rules. However, when you have combat and blood; suddenly everyone is a wolfblood. That might actually make people less inclined to play with them, etc. Or it might not be an issue at all. It does seem very Anita Blake-ish.

On Blood&Citrus (an Anitaverse game), this was sort-of a disaster. There's always a staffer with a Great Story that happens to turn someone fuzzy that didn't want to be fuzzy. Very much not worth the drama without some very clear OOC guidelines in place before hand.

Banging other werewolves would only be hard because for years in a player's mind it has been a 'law' breech. So that could have some weird drama on the OOC of switch over. Not that it matters as games have all the sex in all the places and all the taboos.

Mushers being mushers, I suspect that making it legal, accepted, and normal would probably decrease the amount of wolf-on-wolf TS.

[Coin]

@Catsmeow said:

I'm not completely sure how this will transfer to a MU*. I mean it sounds cool for a TT of the game with these rules. However, when you have combat and blood; suddenly everyone is a wolfblood. That might actually make people less inclined to play with them, etc. Or it might not be an issue at all. It does seem very Anita Blake-ish.

Banging other werewolves would only be hard because for years in a player's mind it has been a 'law' breech. So that could have some weird drama on the OOC of switch over. Not that it matters as games have all the sex in all the places and all the taboos.

I do like more power. MORE POWER.

Just my thoughts.

I'm not sure what you mean with the former. It's not that werewolves can now bite you and turn you into a Wolf-Blooded. The Lunacy has a SMALL CHANCE of doing so; and any game that wants to avoid pushing this sort of thing on people would probably just House Rule it to 'it only happens to you if you want it to OOC'. It's not a big problem.

[surreality]

@Chime said:

Mushers being mushers, I suspect that making it legal, accepted, and normal would probably decrease the amount of wolf-on-wolf TS.

There's a "when nothing is furbidden... " joke to be made here, but pretty much that.

Their reasons for changing it were sound, and it's something I support wholeheartedly, whether it results in more wolf-on-wolf action or not.

Personally, I can't really be bothered to care about anybody else's TS, so rules that make it less likely that anyone is supposed to stress about this on some thematic level? Pretty huge boon to werespheres everywhere, player and staff.

[Cobalt]

@surreality This exactly. I should not want to have to care about people's pretendy sex.

[Kireek]

Aye, its a boon in so much as that people can just come outright and acknowledge the roleplay that is happening. No need to worry about becoming this huge social pariah for ya know.. not keeping it in your pants. The problem is that at least with WtA, the result was a metis- so there was something at least kinda cool, both thematically and just.. generally about the whole thing, but in game everyone still pretended it didn't exist.

The Urihar.. didn't add nearly as much to the game as a Metis would, which magnified the problem a lot I fell.. All the downsides, none of the up.

As for the WB phenom? I've noticed this to be true as well, a lack of social pressure to create one or hte other means you'll get people more comfortable with their roles instead of making sex dolls who happen to pretend to be half decent at combat. It is of course idle speculation at the end of the day, but.. hopefully things will get a bit better.

Either way, I blame TR/HM for babying the shit out of people with events. Oh your not okay with this suddenly going south because you acted like an asshole? Well thanks for the red tape.

[Kireek]

Double posting- but Frack it. For those of you who don't go digging through the White wolf forums, I'll post some of the previews that were not included in forsaken Fridays- but on the forums themselves. The gift lists are- Elemental, Dominance and Gibbous Moon- they were written at different times of the development process, so keep that in mind.

Elemental First
Acrozatarim said:

So, the Gift of the Elementals

As we've said several times, I did something a bit experimental with this Gift. First up was the way the old Elemental Gift did the thing where it had a set element for each step, but tucked away in the blurb at the beginning that you could legitimately come up with separate Elemental lists for each one. I specifically didn't want to do another Gift list where the first dot was Water, the second dot Earth, etc.

Secondly, back when we were discussing the new Gifts system and how we wanted to do it, I mooted to Stew the idea of Gifts that would give Influence dots to werewolves. In the final drafts I've submitted, werewolves have several ways of accessing Influences - certain Rites, Fetishes, and Talens. Also, the Gift of the Elementals.

Four of the Elemental Facets give Influence. Cunning's Facet is Breath of Air; Honor is Flesh of Earth; Purity offers Tongue of Flame and Wisdom is the Heart of Water. Each of these gives the werewolf dots in Influence for the relevant element equal to her dots in the corresponding Renown. An Uratha with Purity 3 and Tongue of Flame has Influence (Fire) 3. Each also specifies the dice pool that the werewolf uses for that Influence in place of the usual Power + Finesse; Heart of Water is Manipulation + Occult + Wisdom, for example.

Then there;s the Glory Facet, Catastrophe.

Catastrophe doesn't do a lot by itself; if you just acquired Catastrophe and none of the other Facets from this Gift, then you're immune to the Catastrophe-enhanced Influences of another werewolf but that's all. However, you can use Catastrophe whenever you use one of the other four Facets' Influences. Catastrophe turns the Influence use into an extended action and eats up a huge amount of Essence; you'll actually need to be a fairly high Primal Urge to get the higher levels of use out of it. However, its effect is to take the Influence you're using and make it affect an area of miles in radius equal to your Glory Renown.

This, obviously, can be rather devastating. Even just Strengthen, the first dot of Influence, can cause fires across the area to blaze out of control or winds to whip up into a howling gale. Manipulating Earth lets you tear avalanches down from the mountains. Create Water for mass flooding. Etc etc.

Gibbous Second

Acrozatarim said:

Ok, ok, since it was neck and neck between Rahu and Cahalith til the end, here are the first three dots of the Gibbous Moon Gift, but that's all I'm givin' up for now

War Howl (•)
The Cahalith howls her defiance and spurs her pack to greater heights of violence and fury.
Cost: 1 Essence
Dice Pool: Presence + Expression + Glory
Action: Instant
Duration: 1 turn per success
Dramatic Failure: A single enemy who can hear the howl regains 1 spent Willpower point.
Failure: The Cahalith's howl fails to inspire her pack.
Success: All members of the Cahalith's pack within earshot gain +1L rating on their Brawl and Weaponry attacks for the duration of the Facet. This bonus damage is always lethal, even if the attack deals bashing damage.
Exceptional Success: The Cahalith gains the Inspired Condition.

Voice of Glory (••)
The voice of the Cahalith is powerful, reassuring and inspiring. She holds audiences in thrall to her words, both her allies and hapless prey who don't understand the threat she poses.
Cost: 1 Essence
Action: Instant
Duration: 1 scene
The Cahalith adds her Glory Renown to her all dice pools for Expression and Persuasion. If using this Gift when meeting someone for the first time, the Cahalith automatically improves her first impression (p. XX) by one step. If she is attempting to inspire or incite violence and aggression, increase her impression by another step.

Dream Hunter (•••)
It doesn't matter that the prey hides behind thick walls. It doesn't matter how many guards and traps they have set between themselves and their hunters. When they sleep, when they dream, it is then that the Cahalith comes for them.
This Facet can only be activated when the Cahalith gains the Siskur-Dah Condition.
Cost: 1 Essence
Dice Pool: Manipulation + Empathy + Glory vs. Composure + Primal Urge (when invading the prey's dreams)
Action: Contested
Duration: The full duration of Siskur-Dah
Upon activating this Facet when a Hunt begins, the Cahalith becomes attuned to the waking state of her prey. Should her prey fall into deep, dreaming sleep, the Cahalith immediately becomes aware. She may attempt to fall asleep naturally, meditate herself to sleep or spend 1 Essence to immediately slumber. She then tracks down the prey's mind in the moonlit dreamscape that her dream-self prowls.
Roll Results
Dramatic Failure: The Cahalith loses herself in strange, alien dreams of sky and moon, gaining the Exhausted Condition when she wakes.
Failure: The Cahalith fails to track down the dreams of the prey, and awakens. She may not try again until the prey has woken and then returned to sleep once more.
Success: The Cahalith follows the dream-spoor of her prey into his subconscious. The prey experiences this as a terrifying wolf that flits through his dreams, and he will remember this when he awakens. The Cahalith may choose one of the following effects:
• Dreams become predatory nightmares, forcing the prey awake. He regains no Willpower from resting, and gains the Exhausted Condition.
• The Cahalith maintains a distant but unnerving presence that plants the seeds of fear, inflicting the Paranoid Condition on the prey when he awakens.
• The prey's dreams are shaped with Essence, rendering him an inviting target for spirits. He gains the Open Condition.
• The Cahalith hunts through the dream for fragmentary thought-beasts and figments, discovering one of the following about the prey: roughly where the prey is in the physical world, his Blood and Bone (or Vice and Virtue or other equivalent traits), any steps he is taking to try and protect himself from the Hunt, an impression of his immediate surroundings.
Exceptional Success: The Cahalith awakens refreshed and reinvigorated, regaining one spent Willpower point.

I'll get around to finding dominance- though dominance is probably the most interesting of the rewrites. There is also a weather gift that was just teased at within the past 2-3 days that I'll add

[ThatOneDude]

@Kireek I think I'm in love... But this is good as it matches power with things like Blood Sorcery and new disciplines in Blood and Smoke. I'm digging the direction they went in with that book and am super excited about werewolf.

@Kireek said:

This, obviously, can be rather devastating. Even just Strengthen, the first dot of Influence, can cause fires across the area to blaze out of control or winds to whip up into a howling gale. Manipulating Earth lets you tear avalanches down from the mountains. Create Water for mass flooding. Etc etc.

[Cobalt]

@Kireek said:

Either way, I blame TR/HM for babying the shit out of people with events. Oh your not okay with this suddenly going south because you acted like an asshole? Well thanks for the red tape.

Can you explain how these things are connected? It seems like a serious leap to go from "HM/TR is too easy on people in +Events!" to "Red tape!"

[Kireek]

@Cobaltasaurus
Well, they are not directly related at first glance- but using one the above reasoning- I shall elaborate.

Firstly- When a scene happens that players either do not like, or do not wish for. (Basically causing a stink)- there are a number of ways to resolve it- however- one of these ways is to go to staff and have them either approve what happens or knock it out.

Than we get to the second part- regardless of how staff ruled in the incident in question- staff will automatically begin searching for a way to remove the threat of this happening again. This is needed for a few reasons- one for players to feel more safe in the environment, two, to control theme, and three, to give the appearance of impartiality in all future incidents.

Thus- as time goes on, what is permissible as danger in events will slowly be stripped down and down until your limited to.. rank 2 spirits without three different sets of approval from your sphere head, the spirit head and the players in question who you are supposed to be surprising with a fun and dangerous plot in the first place.

I'm not saying its indicative to just HM/TR, but it is likely the most obvious and apparent candidates- Nor am I saying such regulations are unimportant or unneeded.. just that they exist. I could probably substitute DM for HM/TR and you wouldn't question that statement at all I bet.

[Kireek]

I'm a terrible person, doing it twice in one day, but I've got what I've been looking for. I'm not going to append a huge 2 page post onto a small response I have for cobalt.. soo.. here ya go.

Acrozatarim said:

Well, Hunt of Fire and Ice has the win!

HoFaI is one of those Weather Facets that directly affects the local weather. It has a high Essence cost and using it is an Extended action but, if it's successfully invoked, you can look forwards to it holding effect for hours. The Facet affects a large area, the exact size of which scales off your Wisdom Renown. What it actually does is straightforward - it slaps either the Extreme Cold or Extreme Heat environmental Tilts down.

For those of you who need a refresher on what those Tilts do, they prevent natural healing and slow supernatural healing, inflict a cumulative -1 penalty to all rolls each hour, and once it hits -5 start inflicting Lethal damage. A foe facing a wise Uratha wielding the Hunt of Fire and Ice will find the world itself becomes a hostile place, slowly weakening them even as they desperately try to keep ahead of their hunters. Of course, finding shelter might offer respite, but the wise Uratha knows exactly that, and uses it to herd the prey and drive them precisely where the pack desires...

Next is Dominance Gifts- this one is perhaps the least fleshed out of them all- and only talks about the impression that the author wanted dominance gifts to get in. This post was made during the redline stage of the book too- so lots of things could of changed

Acro Said:

So, those thoughts about the Dominance Gift...

The 1st edition Dominance Gift list had the much-maligned targeting restrictions, but it was also already rather narrowly focused. Three powers that amount to 'shout at someone to get them to do A Thing', one minor defensive buff and one to strip Willpower off a target. What you could inflict on a target with the command Gifts was extremely limited until you got to the fifth dot. Low-dot Dominance was also extremely costly to use due to being fuelled off Willpower. To me, it was an underwhelming Gift list until the 4th dot, providing an overly complex system for achieving relatively minor control capabilities over very limited periods of time.

So, when looking at redoing Dominance for 2nd edition, I knew I wanted to significantly change the Gift up.

Before setting to work on the 2nd edition Gifts, I spent some time mulling over the new Blood & Smoke Discipline write-ups. It was useful to gauge what sort of changes had been made, how they had been empowered, and what stuff vampires had that I specifically didn't want to then cover with Gifts. I knew already that I didn't want Dominance to just be Werewolf Dominate and, as I read over them, it was clear that the vampiric 'social' Disciplines do a particular thing where they offer an end-run round the social system. A Ventrue with Dominate or a Daeva with Majesty just twists a victim's mind like a pretzel. For the Gift of Dominance, I wanted something that took a different approach - to have at least some of its Facets work within the new social manoeuver system rather than bulldozing over it.

To lay out the obvious, Dominance should be about asserting dominance, not about mind control.

I went through the existing Dominance Gifts to see what I might want to keep and what to get rid of. Warning Growl - a low worth combat boost that's basically a speed-bump. Combat Dominance should be about putting the other guy or girl right in their place with a display of power, not making them a bit nervous. Cut. Luna's Dictum, Voice of Command and Tug the Soul's Strings - just ascending forms of a command power that take a massive amount of word count for little worth, and I don't want such blatant 'mind control' in the new Gift with all the accompanying verbage and wrangling about what you can and can't do; I'm happy for that to remain more of a vampire thing. Cut. Break the Defiant - the only one I actually seriously think about keeping, but for various reasons to do with Willpower in the new edition I decide it's better off gone. Cut.

So... having at this point decided I'm binning the entire existing mechanical structure for Dominance, I have to rebuild it. With 2nd edition, there's the added wrinkle that there need to be five distinct powers that are not inter-reliant, each reflecting a different Renown and each as viable as the others - they don't all need to be specifically balanced in 'power' compared to one another, but they all need to be desirable to at least some characters.

When I sit down and sketch out what I have in mind for new Facets, some are straightforward and come quickly to mind. Two that are enhancements that work within the existing social manoeuver system - one for the alluring and sexy predator or the charming wolf-in-sheep's clothing, an easy fit for Cunning, and one for the dominating, snarling in-your-face werewolf that slots into Purity nicely. Both help you get what you want, but they're both short-term. The Cunning Facet works smoothly as long as you don't push the prey too hard and make them realise your true nature; Purity just goes full speed ahead, damn the torpedoes and any consequences of getting what you want right now. With the former, they might never know they were even prey; with the latter, there's no mistaking their place in the chain of dominance.

I knew I wanted a solid combat-useable Facet that lent itself to the sort of physical challenges that Uratha tend towards - a genuine social attack, dominance through raw violence. Assert your superiority through hammering the other guy's head against the wall. Into Honor this one goes.

Thing is, Dominance Through Violence (or, as the Facet is actually called, Lay Low The Challenger) might seem to fit better in Glory - and I do have a system for how I place Facets in given Renowns - but in this case, I had two solid reasons for it going into Honor. One is that it does serve as a tool - a violent tool - for asserting position and status within pack organisation; the other is that I already knew what I was going to put into Glory. Some Facets play around with Lunacy, custom-tailoring it, and I had one in mind for Dominance. After figuring out exactly what it did, it was obvious that Glory was the slot for it.

One left - Wisdom. A few possibilities here, but some crossed over too closely into Inspiration territory. In the end I went for something a bit different - a more beneficial take on dominance, one that fiddles with the boundaries of the pack and is more about allies than intimidation.

Five Facets in place, then; Purity is the closest to the old Dominance powers, but the whole Gift gives several tools for approaching social situations, violence and the pack. The most niche is probably the Wisdom Facet, but that's ok - there are still characters for whom it is a solid choice, especially as it offers some serious synergy with other Gifts and Rites.

So, I go over the list again, tweak it, adjust powers, make things a bit more streamlined. The Purity Facet gets a dice roll element removed so that it just gives the benefit if the price is paid. The effects of Lay Low The Challenger get modified several times as I seek the right balance so that it isn't just a no-brainer combat choice for every werewolf, but remains an actively useful tool in both violence and social actions. Glory gets poked with a stick a bit but basically does what I want it to do quite well. I've torn out the old Dominance limitations on targets, and nothing in rewriting or playtesting makes me feel like there's any reason to put it back in.

End result - a Gift of Dominance that has none of the old powers in it but, to my mind, offers the key features of what dominance should include - not control via carefully chosen words and directions but rather power through violence, through raw force of personality, through sex and through glorious terror.

[tragedyjones]

Just to keep those who do not compulsively check theonyxpath.com, Werewolf is fully written and edited, and is only awaiting art and layout.

[ThatOneDude]

@tragedyjones said:

Just to keep those who do not compulsively check theonyxpath.com, Werewolf is fully written and edited, and is only awaiting art and layout.

Hellllls yes!