OK now that I read over what you list as the important parts I can see where we disagree the most the themes you want to emphasize are the ones I find very not compelling about it.
Even the non-werewolf media you list go to my earlier refrain of gang war with fur. Now I love me the howling flicks but if someone said hey lets rp something like them I would roll my eyes and decline. , hell I even love Ginger Snaps despite it being b grade at best. What i want out of movies and what I want out of games are two entirely different things, especially in an on-line text game where most of the time spent in character is spent talking, but even for a table top if you invited me to a werewolf game then in the start of the first session explained this changed I would politely decline and head home.
What you see as design flaws are not universal as this thread proves. I might spend two hours watching boyz in the hood once in a great while but to rp it for three plus hours a week in table top or even longer online?
And speaking of Ginger Snaps at least based on what I remember from a few years ago when I watched it, wouldn't Harmony and morality loss fit that story very well?
Werewolf 2.0 & Nine Ways It Could Be Streamlined
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OK now that I read over what you list as the important parts I can see where we disagree the most the themes you want to emphasize are the ones I find very not compelling about it.
Even the non-werewolf media you list go to my earlier refrain of gang war with fur. Now I love me the howling flicks but if someone said hey lets rp something like them I would roll my eyes and decline. , hell I even love Ginger Snaps despite it being b grade at best. What i want out of movies and what I want out of games are two entirely different things, especially in an on-line text game where most of the time spent in character is spent talking, but even for a table top if you invited me to a werewolf game then in the start of the first session explained this changed I would politely decline and head home.
What you see as design flaws are not universal as this thread proves. I might spend two hours watching boyz in the hood once in a great while but to rp it for three plus hours a week in table top or even longer online?
And speaking of Ginger Snaps at least based on what I remember from a few years ago when I watched it, wouldn't Harmony and morality loss fit that story very well? -
@Sunny said:
@crusader said:
@Sunny said:
@Arkandel said:
@crusader I don't think anyone here suggested your ideas are bad, or that a game based on them wouldn't/couldn't be fun.
Just that it's not nWoD, which I think is fair to say is accurate.
This. Exactly this.
You do realize, that I know the only reason you're here, is because of the level of hysteric offense you took, in the Detroit-related thread, where you were in the minority. You've already attacked me in another thread, when I wasn't even remotely engaged with you. But Ark echoed you there as well, and I guess you're repaying the favor.
Uhm. This wasn't an attack, actually. It was a compliment. Rage on, tiny zebra. I actually read all the threads on the site and was trying to figure out how to articulate pretty much what @Arkandel said. So I agreed. Because it does sound like good fun and something I would actually play. But it's not Forsaken to me and in my interpretations and for what I find fun in. It's just werewolf...and to play that, I really do think Cinematic Unisystem is a better idea.
Again. Please do me the courtesy I afforded you and Coin in the Detroit thread, and stop cluttering mine. You've already resorted to personal attacks out of the blue in another thread, so I don't really trust anything you have to say anyways. Clearly, we have very different ideas about werewolves.
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@ThatGuyThere said:
OK now that I read over what you list as the important parts I can see where we disagree the most the themes you want to emphasize are the ones I find very not compelling about it.
Even the non-werewolf media you list go to my earlier refrain of gang war with fur. Now I love me the howling flicks but if someone said hey lets rp something like them I would roll my eyes and decline. , hell I even love Ginger Snaps despite it being b grade at best. What i want out of movies and what I want out of games are two entirely different things, especially in an on-line text game where most of the time spent in character is spent talking, but even for a table top if you invited me to a werewolf game then in the start of the first session explained this changed I would politely decline and head home.
What you see as design flaws are not universal as this thread proves. I might spend two hours watching boyz in the hood once in a great while but to rp it for three plus hours a week in table top or even longer online?
And speaking of Ginger Snaps at least based on what I remember from a few years ago when I watched it, wouldn't Harmony and morality loss fit that story very well?I can totally see where you're coming from, and you're not wrong. But like I said, all those themes and inspirational media listed, are taken verbatim from the Forsaken 2.0 introductory chapter. So it's a bit dubious for some to claim who is more true to the game's main themes, when the Shadow is never mentioned in the above.
So before people claim that I am taking the game in a non-nwod werewolf direction...They should really read the nwod werewolf 2.0 book. All I've done is streamline it by removing a single layer of the overall experience.
The design flaw, as I see it, is setting up those expectations, and then losing courage and diving back into the owod cosmology. But I totally get where you're coming from, and I've played countless Forsaken games that were steeped in the Shadow. I was just hoping 2.0 would go even further than it already has in de-emphasizing the Shadow (you can't cross over at loci anymore), and not cling to it mainly for nostalgic reasons, and giving werewolves monsters to fight.
The duality in werewolf nature is Man and Eight-Foot-Killing-Machine. Not Eight-Foot-Spirit-Killing-Machine and Eight-Foot-Half/Spirit-Killing-Machine.
Shifting the focus onto Man and Wolf-Man, is keeping with the same general structure of the game. Just without some of its balconies and penthouses.
(And BTW, Harmony and Morality loss would work very well in the kind of story you mentioned. Especially tabletop. But 2.0 overdid the Harmony rolls, which if you've read them, your eyes will pop at how common they are...and on mushes, it's always a source for conflict and Kantian arguments.)
Part of the problem is in that 2.0, Harmony is different than in 1.0. It's more about trying to stay at 5-6, and away from 1 and 10. But so so many things can raise or lower you. So there are dozens of rolls a session, with a pack. And in the end, it's fairly simplistic to return to the 5-6 range. (Okay, I'm low Harmony? I'll screw that chick and keep screwing chicks till I fail rolls to get back to 5). It becomes meaningless, when staying in the sweet spot is fairly effortless to begin with.
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@crusader said:
Again. Please do me the courtesy I afforded you and Coin in the Detroit thread, and stop cluttering mine. You've already resorted to personal attacks out of the blue in another thread, so I don't really trust anything you have to say anyways. Clearly, we have very different ideas about werewolves.
No, what you're asking for is not a courtesy. First of all, the thread in question is not mine, nor does it have anything to do with me save that I was participating in the discussion. That I disagree is not actually a personal attack, no matter how many times you say it is.
Removing what you're proposing to remove with this takes away a significant amount of what makes up the 'the Forsaken' part of the Werewolf game. I maintain that what you're looking to play is actually done better in another system. That's not an insult, it is an expression of my opinion. I would be perfectly happy with #4 and #5, because changing them doesn't change what I feel are core concepts of the game.
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@Sunny said:
No, what you're asking for is not a courtesy. First of all, the thread in question is not mine, nor does it have anything to do with me save that I was participating in the discussion. That I disagree is not actually a personal attack, no matter how many times you say it is.
Removing what you're proposing to remove with this takes away a significant amount of what makes up the 'the Forsaken' part of the Werewolf game. I maintain that what you're looking to play is actually done better in another system. That's not an insult, it is an expression of my opinion. I would be perfectly happy with #4 and #5, because changing them doesn't change what I feel are core concepts of the game.
You've now said this, three or four times.
Unlike you, or most people in this thread, I've listed verbatim what the authors of Forsaken 2.0 write in the introduction as the most fundamental themes and most relevant media. Nowhere is pseudo Native American cosmology given pride of place. Not even in the media section.
In that sense, I think my fixes bring the game more firmly in line with the writer's own stated aims and themes, and ditches more of the owod cosmology. The flaw, is them lacking the courage to take their paring back of tribes and shadow more than halfway. I simply take it all the way. Auspices are nothing more than a chargen mechanic.
If you don't like that. That's fine. We're all entitled to our opinions, and currently you're quite invested in an owod game, so I'm not surprised you enjoy the themes.
It is however, a bit audacious, to claim I'm taking significantly away from Forsaken, when what I'm taking away, doesn't even appear to the original authors as a fundamental theme.
Also. I don't equate disagreement with personal attacks. I equate personal attacks with personal attacks, and it was made in the thread before you jumped on this one. You've now expressed your opinion (and apparently didn't follow your own advice by ignoring the post addressing it) four times. What else do you have to offer?
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I have a question, wouldn't it by definition be not a Forsaken game? the actual term Forsaken comes form the whole murdering Father wolf thing. With out hte Shadow and spirits just way would they be known as the Forsaken?
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@ThatGuyThere said:
I have a question, wouldn't it by definition be not a Forsaken game? the actual term Forsaken comes form the whole murdering Father wolf thing. With out hte Shadow and spirits just way would they be known as the Forsaken?
Probably not.
But it's worth keeping in mind, that the authors devoted pride of place, to what I listed above, and didn't get into why Forsaken are called Forsaken, until quite a ways in.
In the end, if we have New World of Darkness, Werewolf and Forsaken on the table, and you had to prioritize one over the other, I would order them as New World of Darkness -> Werewolf -> Forsaken.
I'm not saying my way is the only right way.
I'm just saying it's perfectly keeping in line with New World of Darkness and Werewolf concepts, even if it ditches much of the Forsaken cosmology, or further de-emphasizes it into a mythical/legendary realm.
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@crusader said:
Hardly anyone in this thread seems to understand Werewolf: The Forsaken theme.
You haven't the authority to make this claim, and you haven't demonstrated any sort of expertise that would make your understanding any more valid than another's. I don't accept this premise.
The problem that I have with your analysis is that you have hooked onto one potential element for role-play, and crowned it as the most important. I don't see any reason to believe that playing a game where Werewolves adhere tightly to their spiritual aspects is any more or less acceptable, reasonable, or desirable than a game where that aspect is set aside in favor of a primal pack aspects. That the spiritual aspects complicate, add flavor to, or enhance the game beyond mere survival seems to be lost in your analysis.
Frankly, I don't think any of your "flaws" are, in fact, "flaws." They appear to be aspects of the game that you think are either unnecessary or irrelevant to the style of game that you want to run. Unlike many others I can accept that, but like many others I probably won't be playing with you. I would probably find your setting/game/theme shallow.
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@Ganymede said:
Frankly, I don't think any of your "flaws" are, in fact, "flaws." They appear to be aspects of the game that you think are either unnecessary or irrelevant to the style of game that you want to run. Unlike many others I can accept that, but like many others I probably won't be playing with you. I would probably find your setting/game/theme shallow.
I think you have badly misunderstood a few key points.
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It's not my authority. I wrote the themes nearly verbatim from the book itself. I'm not pulling it out of my ass. If you don't like those themes...fine. But they're at least as equal in importance to the Shadow, which people here claim to love.
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While you might find it emotionally cathartic to believe otherwise, I have nowhere claimed that any other way of interpreting the game is less acceptable or valid. I have only defended what I find acceptable and valid.
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I've already acknowledged that the title could use improving. It was done in a slap dash fashion. I'm not perfect. There's no need to keep retreading it.
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What I took issue with, was the barrage of comments that it was in violation to the 'spirit' (no pun intended) of the game. By way of response, I've fallen back on the authority of the original authors, as to which themes they gave pride of place, to show that is not the case. The people who seem to have the biggest trouble with this, are those that have pontificated the most, while later admitting 'they don't even like werewolf' and have probably never even read the theme section of the pdf.
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In the end, werewolf is more than any one theme. It's a constellation of themes. The pseudo Native American cosmology aspect of it is just one theme, and it's the very last theme they introduced. It's just one layer of the setting.
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So please, scale back some of the high and mighty tone about authority, or what rights I have to declare good fun or bad fun. I'm not making any such claims.
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My only 'claim', is that Werewolf 2.0, stripped of the Shadow component, makes it even less like owod werewolf, and more in line with other nwod themes of horror and the human condition. That's why I found Theno's comment that it would be more combatty to be ludicrous, since the Shadow only exists to provide an owod-type avenue of mega battles against various monsters, like Claimed/Fomori, or beshilu/banes.
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What makes a setting, game or theme 'shallow', isn't something so ridiculous as to whether or not the Shadow or spirits are involved, or what the tribes are called. It's how the story is told. I'm surprised you of all people, can't acknowledge this. My greatest beef with the Shadow is that it's handled in such a shallow manner by so many people, and of which there is really no way around without expecting an unrealistic level of familiarity with the subject matter from all players.
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A story is hurt when not all of the players are on the same page in understanding its very various elements. Whatever idealized opinion people have of nwod werewolf, the fact is, most every nwod werewolf sphere has sucked, and been anything like what the original writers could have intended.
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Totem spirit demands, loci maintenance, and gaining gifts from spirits has always been ignored and handwaved (95% of the time) so how central can they be?
In any case, I've made no secret of the fact that I've chosen to de-emphasize one aspect of Werewolf's theme, to better emphasize three or four others. That's all it really amounts to. And I haven't made any pretense otherwise. There's no need to make up straw men that hold some extreme argument that makes for an easy target, which I don't even adhere to.
At the end of the day, the only nwod werewolf sphere I've seen semi-competently run, was AQ's when Haunted Memories first started, and it almost killed him. I've never seen anyone since put in even half the effort to fully engage with and tackle the subject matter. There's clearly too much there for the average MUSHer to cope with or keep in their mind.
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People need to be realistic with themselves and ask a few key questions.
How many scenes have you run where a spirit had to be tracked down to be taught gifts? How many scenes have you run where a werewolf had to perform the ritual to go track down a spirit animal and eat it for essence? How many times have you involved a pack's totem spirit? How many times have you run a plot about maintaining a loci? How many times have you done something that going by the rules, would have required a Harmony or Morality check, but you ignored it? How many times has a staffer had you make one that felt unfair?
I could go on. Virtually all of this, absent that one special exception I'm sure someone is dying to share, gets handwaved or ignored on a mush.
On the Reach, gifts, Essence and Loci are all automated more or less (and poorly at that). There's no spirit interaction. No totem spirit has ever meant anything. So Theno for example, is pretty hypocritical to defend a system that is such a pain in the ass to keep track of, that his code more or less ignores them. Essence on the Reach is basically infinite. You can have whatever gift you request.
If all this stuff gets handwaved or ignored, how important can it be? Forsaken 2.0 scales back the Shadow to where the majority of wolves never enter it. It's not a sacrilege to scale it back even further into the realm of legend.
If you don't like werewolf, don't storytell werewolf, and you don't play werewolf, then fine. Although, I find your presence in the thread perplexing. Much of these issues won't matter. But I would really want those that do to be honest with themselves.
I would contend that if you only want a boring retread of the owod experience, where you kill formori/claimed and pain spirits/banes, while spending most of your time in dalu or urshul, or whatever, then you should do yourself a service and just play owod where the cosmology and the umbra is done much better. At least there, you can stay in crinos, instead of using dalu/urshul as a substitute crinos.
If you want to actually explore werewolf in a nwod setting, with nwod themes, then I think my fixes - while not right for everyone - is a good step in the right direction.
I'm surprised more attention hasn't been given to the Dalu/Urshul removal. Which is another owod holdover.
It's refreshing when the Man to Wolf-Man dynamic is more powerfully emphasized. The game's whole setting and feel becomes much more dramatic, when you have to time when to throw the 'kill switch' and go Eight-Feet-Killing-Machine. It more starkly highlights the theme of self-control, as mentioned above. It made several players genuinely fearful of giving into violent solutions, given what might happen if they accidentally went berserk. Combat, when it happened, became much more exciting.
How is that more shallow?
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@crusader said:
I am compelled to address your post point-by-point for the sake of clarity, though I am loathe to do so. (I hate writing piece-meal, but there's no other way to get through your response cogently.)
- It's not my authority. I wrote the themes nearly verbatim from the book itself. I'm not pulling it out of my ass. If you don't like those themes...fine. But they're at least as equal in importance to the Shadow, which people here claim to love.
That wasn't what I was talking about. I said you haven't the authority to claim that few seem to understand the game's theme. You haven't the knowledge or expertise to make that claim. Regarding the second part, my previous post is premised on the conclusion that all of the themes raised are equally important.
- While you might find it emotionally cathartic to believe otherwise, I have nowhere claimed that any other way of interpreting the game is less acceptable or valid. I have only defended what I find acceptable and valid.
I find cathartic release in very little these days, except for a good bath and a friendly rub. You very clearly described your interpretation, and have gone to great lengths to defend it. This can be reasonably construed as considering the same interpretation more acceptable than another, if we are talking of interpretation. If otherwise, your point does little to undermine mine.
- I've already acknowledged that the title could use improving. It was done in a slap dash fashion. I'm not perfect. There's no need to keep retreading it.
If I cannot express an opinion based on the words, language, ideas, or conclusions you've previously raised, then there's little more to talk about.
- What I took issue with, was the barrage of comments that it was in violation to the 'spirit' (no pun intended) of the game. By way of response, I've fallen back on the authority of the original authors, as to which themes they gave pride of place, to show that is not the case. The people who seem to have the biggest trouble with this, are those that have pontificated the most, while later admitting 'they don't even like werewolf' and have probably never even read the theme section of the pdf.
If you take no position as to whether your interpretation is more or less acceptable than another's, then you must accept that others validly believe that your fixes would violate their interpretation of the spirit of the game. There therefore should be no need to defend your point. Yet, here we are.
- In the end, werewolf is more than any one theme. It's a constellation of themes. The pseudo Native American cosmology aspect of it is just one theme, and it's the very last theme they introduced. It's just one layer of the setting.
I concur.
- So please, scale back some of the high and mighty tone about authority, or what rights I have to declare good fun or bad fun. I'm not making any such claims.
I am writing clearly, and pointing out what I believe to be flaws in your logic, reasoning, thinking, argument, position, and writing. That I write bluntly is for the sake of parsimony and clarity.
If you don't like it when some people infer your absence of knowledge, experience, or authority, then you should stop making claims as to others' knowledge, experience, or motivations. In short: don't tell me whether someone understands something or not. I can make that evaluation on my own.
- My only 'claim', is that Werewolf 2.0, stripped of the Shadow component, makes it even less like owod werewolf, and more in line with other nwod themes of horror and the human condition. That's why I found Theno's comment that it would be more combatty to be ludicrous, since the Shadow only exists to provide an owod-type avenue of mega battles against various monsters, like Claimed/Fomori, or beshilu/banes.
Yes, removing the Shadow would make the game less like OWoD Werewolf, which I enjoy for different reasons. However, I disagree that doing so would make the game more in-line with horror and human condition themes.
Your concept of horror may be different than mine. I enjoy many different kinds of horror stories, but I lean towards classic horror, and most of those stories involves spirits, supernatural creatures, and other things that might lead to what you might call a "mega battle." That said, I rather prefer simpler stories of personal, human horror, but that doesn't mean I'd prefer to pull the Shadow from my Werewolf campaigns.
- What makes a setting, game or theme 'shallow', isn't something so ridiculous as to whether or not the Shadow or spirits are involved, or what the tribes are called. It's how the story is told. I'm surprised you of all people, can't acknowledge this. My greatest beef with the Shadow is that it's handled in such a shallow manner by so many people, and of which there is really no way around without expecting an unrealistic level of familiarity with the subject matter from all players.
First, just because a set of rules is handled poorly by ignorant or lazy players doesn't mean that rule-set is bad. To wit, Wraith: The Oblivion.
Second, you are proposing to remove parts of the game that could add other levels of horror to a game. Auspices can provide a lot of potential for horror: what if a pacifist discovered she was a Rahu? Or Tribes: what if an Iron Warden were forced to hunt down and kill her own mortal family?
I think that a skilled GM can use these elements to create stories of horror and the human condition. And I'd rather have more tool-sets and potential around than to pigeon-hole a campaign.
- A story is hurt when not all of the players are on the same page in understanding its very various elements. Whatever idealized opinion people have of nwod werewolf, the fact is, most every nwod werewolf sphere has sucked, and been anything like what the original writers could have intended.
Again, dumbing things down isn't the right answer. I didn't find the systems presented in NWoD 1.0 or 2.0 Werewolf particularly difficult to get through (unlike Mage -- holy fucking shit). I don't equate shitty execution and understanding with a shitty game.
- Totem spirit demands, loci maintenance, and gaining gifts from spirits has always been ignored and handwaved (95% of the time) so how central can they be?
Once more, I don't place a value on a part of the system based on others' incompetence or ignorance.
At the end of the day, the only werewolf sphere I've seen semi-competently run, was AQ's when Haunted Memories first started, and it almost killed him. I've never seen anyone since put in even half the effort to fully engage with and tackle the subject matter. There's clearly too much there for the average MUSHer to cope with or keep in their mind.
AQ was never good at delegating.
Frankly, I've found that Werewolf tends to attract a certain kind of player that lends to eschewing the complex in favor of the simple. That's fine, to a point. To me, as a GM, I would find it very frustrating if my pack of PCs ignored the demands of their other nature.
On a personal note, Changeling is a fairly complex game too. I play a Changeling on TR that leans more heavily on the human side for reasons that include her choice of Court (Winter) and low Wyrd score. Note, however, that I chose this path based on how RP shook out. I still would not advocate for removing all of the Hedgespinning and Token-Making mumbo-jumbo that I don't deal with regularly. And if I were staffing the sphere, I would make a concerted effort to please people by drafting and enforcing rules related thereto.
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@Ganymede said:
a bunch of stuff
Fair enough, Gany. You've made some good points, and cleared up some things. I do place a great deal of importance on a game being understood and grasped by the most casual denominator, because that's who I've had to deal with the most in spheres and tabletops. Allowing for that, we're actually not far apart.
That said. I still don't quite get the crack at my authority, knowledge or expertise. Because it's not rocket science, and it doesn't actually require any deep insight, to read the game's own introduction and theme on chapter, and realize that the whole Spirit/Shadow aspect is just one of five or six major themes and it's actually the last one introduced.
It's perfectly within my expertise, to point to that evidence, and say that others, who by their own admission do not like werewolf much and probably haven't read the 2.0 pdf, are incorrect in placing such a great importance on the Shadow as the end-all and be-all of the werewolf experience...To be fire and drinking blood to a vampire, or ghosts to a geist.
For example:
Blood-drinking and ghosts, are given pride of place in the Vampire and Geist intros and thematic chapters. The source influences and inspirational media are absolutely chock full of blood-drinking and ghosts. The Shadow/Spirits is barely mentioned in werewolf's intro, and doesn't appear at all in its source influences or media.
I don't see where I'm overreaching. I guess if someone put the Shadow on a pedestal, above all other themes, I could be perceived as overreaching. But then I'd be right in saying they probably didn't read the original author's own take.
And again, most spirit aspects of werewolf are handwaved or coded out anyways, without people batting an eye. (Essence regaining, Loci management, gift learning, etc). So I guess I find its ardent defense a bit disingenuous.
I can't conceive of anyone putting more effort into a sphere than AQ, without making it a full time job. You're right that he didn't delegate, but there really wasn't anyone he could delegate to, that could maintain his extremely intricate vision. He must've put thousands of hours into that sphere. That's just not realistically sustainable. And even he could barely acknowledge which packs had which loci or totem spirit.
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To move onto a slightly different topic:
In one of our tabletop games, with the 'owod veteran' group of players, we did a highly Dog Soldiers influenced version of a campaign. (They were a Blackwater-esque team in the Middle East) If I can dig it up, I might post the intro materials I used to that game, and the character creation instructions I gave players. Consisting mostly of people I grew up gaming with, the group was much more rules/combat wonky than your typical crew. This was the first campaign I ever took Dalu/Urshul away from them. (It was also the first WoD game we'd run in a while, though we had a years long owod werewolf focused campaign in the past). If I can't find it, I'll try and recreate the instructions I gave to the best of my memory.
They were basically Ghost Wolves, without access to Dalu/Urshul. Also, we never got into the existence of organized tribes or lodges (though it was vaguely alluded to). The Shadow etc, still existed. Spirits still played a big role.
The absence of Dalu/Urshul turned what could have been a kill fest, Fomori-esque First Team game (which we've also done before) into a surprisingly restrained and controlled descent into the horror of war and cultural isolation.
One of the players, who was always incredibly twinky, and always built combat monsters, got wrecked when he went death rage and accidentally slaughtered a Pashtun family that had been sheltering/hiding him, while separated from the others. It happened, because he'd been forced to go gauru in order to fight off some attackers who'd discovered him. In games past, he'd have shifted into Dalu/Glabrus or hispo/urshul, inflicted Lunacy, and ripped them to shreds without any significant risk at losing control. He was more affected by it than I'd ever seen him before. He's the kind of a player that when growing up, if his character lost an arm, he'd shrug and replace it with a buzz saw or such. This really floored him.
Ironically, that campaign (I haven't actually done a Forsaken chronicle since with those players, as I've moved away), remains the least combat-focused and the most introspective we ever had. The group I storytell for now, which has more girls, has a much different dynamic. None of them grew up playing owod.
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I feel the need to address something, because I feel you're placing more importance on this than anyone that did the writing or editing for the books did.
The order in which themes are enumerated in the book does not always equate to the level of importance the writers place on those themes. It's just as likely that the people who wrote the book simply put them in the order that the themes were suggested and agreed upon. Or some other completely random reason. Numerical order does not equate to importance.
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@Miss-Demeanor said:
I feel the need to address something, because I feel you're placing more importance on this than anyone that did the writing or editing for the books did.
The order in which themes are enumerated in the book does not always equate to the level of importance the writers place on those themes. It's just as likely that the people who wrote the book simply put them in the order that the themes were suggested and agreed upon. Or some other completely random reason. Numerical order does not equate to importance.
That could be true, but it also means they're probably not a professional writer, or have never taken a creative writing course.
Actual writers and authors know, that when dealing with a new audience, you front load and emphasize the most important themes right off the bat, to draw people in. Not unlike a thesis statement.
Typically, professional writers do have reasons for where and when they present content that is not completely random. It's usually quite calculated.
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I'm confused why it matters which order they're in? All the themes together make up Werewolf. You can slant in certain directions if that's your gig, but all of them prolly ought to be there. Why worry about what order or importance they have?
ES
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@EmmahSue said:
I'm confused why it matters which order they're in? All the themes together make up Werewolf. You can slant in certain directions if that's your gig, but all of them prolly ought to be there. Why worry about what order or importance they have?
ES
You are right. All of the themes together make up werewolf, (and there are about five or six major ones, of which the cosmology represents only one), and people can and should slant or emphasize as best fits the situation, and which best suits the majority of their players. I completely agree.
That said. Professional writers who typically expect casual readers to get distracted or put the book down at any moment, do front load what to them is most important or exciting to them, in order to hook the reader. It's like how a lot of movies start out with an action sequence. Writing a splat, or a research paper, is not dissimilar.
I do a lot of writing in my job, where I have to break down accounting concepts to more or less ignorant clients, and it's really not entirely dissimilar from explaining an RPG rules system to a complete newbie,.
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It's cool that's what you do, sounds like it ought to be something done more often. But common sense is rarely actually common.
We have no way to know if that's how the WW writers meant this to be done, so we shouldn't assume it's the case. Better to go with 'all equally important' and let it go, since arguing about this particular point isn't productive. Any ST/game-runner can then add their own personal weight as above, no harm no foul. In this instance, what the writers intended is not germane because we don't know what they intended.ES
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@EmmahSue said:
It's cool that's what you do, sounds like it ought to be something done more often. But common sense is rarely actually common.
We have no way to know if that's how the WW writers meant this to be done, so we shouldn't assume it's the case. Better to go with 'all equally important' and let it go, since arguing about this particular point isn't productive. Any ST/game-runner can then add their own personal weight as above, no harm no foul. In this instance, what the writers intended is not germane because we don't know what they intended.ES
I have no problem with that.
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Also, I have no interest in playing what the writers "intended." I don't think of them having authority I need to respect, unless it is precisely to know what it was that they were thinking. I do know that large efforts like these leave a lot on the floor, and effort may or may not reflect what they thought was important either.
So I go with the whole of a book, and of course head off into the areas I think are most interesting. I have yet to find any of the offered fiction interesting, nor supported by the actual rules or guidelines presented save "have fun" maybe.