Intro
I've been reading Werewolf: The Forsaken 2nd Edition lately, with an eye towards an upcoming tabletop campaign that I'll be storytelling. Even though I don't mush much anymore, I spent quite a few years playing and staffing at various places, so I can't help but think sometimes, how I'd handle house rules on a mush.
It's super long. So skip or skim at your convenience. I'm interested to know where you agree or disagree.
tl:dr version: The crux of my disagreement with Werewolf 2.0 is that it carries over too much baggage from the 90s owod cosmology and detracts from the theme of actually playing a werewolf. They have imported vampire concepts (who are thematically sympathetic to conspiracies, intrigues and factions) into a setting that should be more feral, and whose coherence is harmed by White Wolf's needs to do things in a White Wolfy fashion, whether it adds or subtracts to the experience.
Nine Design Hacks
- The Shadow and Spirits detract from the core werewolf experience
Issue: Spirit stuff is so prevalent that it detracts from the experience of playing a pack-oriented primal death machine. Very few of my regular players can be bothered to keep all of the lore aspects and terms in their head at all times (or even pronounce half of them), while also trying to stay in character as a supernatural werewolf! As both a player and a storyteller, I have rarely seen the Shadow done right, or spirit interaction (such as chiminiage) handled in a consistently interesting or exciting fashion. It also began to get obnoxious when their solution to every mystery was to ask local spirits.
Thematically, while lunar spirits, helions and possessed murder trains worked well enough in the old werewolf cosmology, they're an awkward fit in nwod.
Solution: I would excise this portion of the game and consider it no great loss. Inasmuch as references to the Shadow persists, it would be more mythological than anything else. All of the First Tongue terms which the writers are so enamored of, are instead treated as rare knowledge, known only to those steeped in mysterious and ancient traditions. Players are free to focus on wrapping their heads around just being a werewolf without having to do the equivalent of researching the hierarchy, beliefs, history and liturgy of the Armenian Orthodox Church..
This also removes totem spirits from the equation, and affects how loci/gifts/renown/auspice are handled. I wouldn't mind a 'totem like' teamwork merit that allowed packs to specialize. Loci, auspices, gifts and renown are treated below.
- Loci are a needless complication.
Issue: The concept of territory is everything to werewolves, and I find it uninteresting that it is basically boiled down to a spirit battery. It lessens everything else they might have claimed. Coded loci have never been done well on a mush (trust me, I would know) and they have never been clever or interesting. While the essence battery aspect can work on a tabletop where every dot of expenditure is micro-regulated, on a mush, it never seems to line up. On The Reach, loci accumulated hundreds of essence without ever being spent, which wasn't realistic. Furthermore, most staff never bother to make players defend their loci, so it gets taken for granted. There's also the various accusations of favoritism and the bullshit of handling when a loci gets stronger or weaker.
Solution: I would have werewolf packs generate a 'communal' store of essence at a rate determined by the size of the pack multiplied by the size of the territory they were able to effectively claim. They could acquire additional essence from forcing other packs to be their tributaries.
This simple hack loosens up the log jam of the loci issue exponentially. Every new shit-heel pack on the grid doesn't need their own loci anymore, which is never realistically managed anyways. It gives werewolves a built-in, automatic reason to congregate, and a vehicle for interesting conflict.
Gaining new members in a pack, guarding and expanding a pack's territory, and gaining a dominant position over other packs - that's what drives werewolf 'politics'.
- Auspices are a needless complication
Issue: Having people pigeonhole themselves into an auspice detracts far more than it adds to gameplay. I've often encountered situations where multiple people in a group wanted to be the same role, but felt weird or guilty about it, if someone else had claimed it. Often, I'll see the best players take the auspices they don't want, simply because they think they're doing the 'right thing' by the group.
Honestly, I find that humans as social animals are so compelled already to seek their niche within a group, that the whole auspice mechanic is completely unneeded. It's another holdover from owod.
Solution: No auspices. The terms still exist, but they have no game mechanic meaning. No one is 'born' a rahu or an irraka. You will be defined by how your character acts and grows as they gain experience. You could still introduce yourself as the group's rahu or irraka, but that would be more akin to claiming to be the pack's best fighter or its best sneaker. Which someone else in the pack might very well disagree with.
Mechanically, anyone can buy from any auspice gift list, provided they meet the renown requirements. They can't choose auspice renown as a free gift for acquiring renown, but can spend XP for it. I'll discuss XP more below.
There are no auspice skills. You can decide that for yourself by the specialties you choose. I would probably add each of the auspice abilities (such as the Irraka's 'closer than you think') to the auspice gift list and make them once a scene, since per-chapter restrictions are hard to enforce on a mush.
The unique auspice-inflicted conditions would be applicable to anyone, depending on the method of hunting chosen. I'd probably associate each condition with a specific roll, like the Irraka's 'unaware' being a Finesse Attribute + Stealth, etc.
- Gifts are too tribe/auspice dependent
Issue: Many times, I've seen a player have a great concept sketched out in their head, but they weren't able to make it work because they felt like they were gimping themselves by taking an out-of-tribe gift, that cost more XP to acquire. Or they were trespassing in the niche of another. Instead of creating more diverse characters, or by making a simpler system, the gift restrictions actually hurt casual players.
Solution: I would give everyone access to every gift list. However, excepting the Wolf and Pack gift lists (quite a few of which I would add to/remove/change anyways), the other gift lists like Weather, Dominance, Strength, Shaping, etc, would be purchased at Out-of-Tribe costs. This is because while I want everyone to build the character that feels right for them, I don't want accumulating reams of supernatural gifts to supersede other aspects of character development. Werewolves are already immensely powerful.
- Current Renown expectations are unenforceable.
Issue: Renown is silly. I've staffed (even head-staffed) both owod and nwod. Owod renown accumulation was retarded. Nwod renown accumulation is even more retarded. It works all right on a tabletop, but it fails on a mush. It's either unfair or it's gamed, and no one can ever agree on who deserves what. Show me someone with the audacity to walk around with 5 Honor, and I'll show you a half dozen other people claiming that guy's a twink prick.
Solution: Renown is by nwod 2.0 standards fairly expensive. Raising Renown costs the same as raising an attribute, like Strength or Composure. Furthermore, there are five Renown categories. I would completely divorce Renown from the spirit aspects (theoretically spirit 'rank' wouldn't mean much). I would reduce the cost of Renown to 3 XP, but I would remove the free gift that comes with it. For a werewolf to raise Purity, Cunning, Wisdom, Honor or Glory would be less a testament to their greatness and more a lifestyle choice of the virtues they want to embody, the effort of which is contained in the XP spend. Just like spending XP to raise your strength, composure or whatever.
Will there be assholes who don't especially RP a very 'honorable' creature despite say, investing in Honor? Sure. But I would treat it as no more exceptional a problem than the people who don't RP the various attributes on their sheet very well. The important thing, the whole judgment component of Renown gets thrown out of the window, when it essentially becomes a personal lifestyle choice.
You want really powerful Purity gifts? Fine. Invest in Purity. Although Renown would cost less (at 3 xp instead of 4 xp) it would actually rein back werewolf power. Paying 4 XP is a bargain, when it comes with not only a free gift but increases the potency of all your other gifts.
- Tribes are a thematic atavism from the 1990s (Lore Hack)
Issue: I find tribes to be entirely uninspiring. They're another relic of owod's slightly corny approach to things. I also find them unrealistic, and even White Wolf does too, given the way they twist themselves up to show how the tribes are universal, or how they've changed with the times (Glass Walkers in owod being a good example).
Tribes only exist because of the White Wolf paradigm of doing certain things a certain way no matter how silly. Otherwise, I don't know why in Nwod, we're still stuck in pseudo 90s-era Native American cosmology, with Brother Wolf or such and tribal ancestors. However, what's most damning about tribes is that humanity itself subscribes to thousands of major creeds, religions, cultures and societies. How is it even remotely possible that werewolves are restricted to five, eight or thirteen tribes? How do these world-wide tribes sustain any meaningful coordination? How have they maintained such cohesion over the centuries?
Forsaken 2.0 did its best to work around this issue by associating tribes more with the prey they hunt as some universal constant...But I am unconvinced by the effort, which was half-completed at best.There's still a ton of baggage associated with the tribes, and they don't meaningfully enhance RP. Lodges are slightly more realistic, but they have never existed easily with tribes...the tribe and lodge dynamic has always felt like an arbitrary mirroring of vampire bloodlines.
I would contend that Forsaken tribes are so uninteresting, that if Ghost Wolf characters were allowed to pick their own Gifts and weren't penalized a renown point, there would be far more Ghost Wolf characters than any other tribe.
Solution: There are thousands of werewolf tribes, as richly diverse and geographically spread out as humanity. In fact, I would think of them as more akin to Lodges. I don't need to describe every tribe in the world. I would set the game in a sensible geographic area and identify them as made sense according to location and ethnic/economic strata.
The irony of Forsaken is that it thematically goes out of its way to claim that werewolves are MORE human than the owod incarnation, where you had metis and lupus characters (and we're well rid of them). But mechanically, and lore-wise, it shoves the human element of these stories under the rug of its fairly boring, convoluted, Native American inspired cosmology. Think of all the werewolf movies you have seen...what themes did they explore, and would info-dumps about Storm Lord Cahaliths have improved that movie? Or would it come across as corny and stupid?
There's no reason why werewolves shouldn't be identified with the ethnic/geographic/cultural strata of humanity they emerged from. There's a lot more that can be said on the subject, but not in this post. (There are plenty of creative ways to handle werewolf politics, depending on the kind of game you want. Protectorates, Storm Lords and Tribes don't make much sense in a 'American Werewolf in London' or 'Dog Soldiers' type story.)
- Primal Urge should be more of a 'way of life' and less a power stat.
Issue: I don't like the baggage that comes with players bitching about someone raising their Blood Potency or Primal Urge, how they justify being a Blood Potency 5 neonate, or Primal Urge 5 teenager. People seem to get distracted or fixated with it, like it's something they MUST raise.
Solution: I've already enacted this rule in my tabletop games. Primal Urge is simply a lifestyle choice. The XP spent represents the effort you've put towards expressing yourself in such a capacity. It was the same with Blood Potency...where for our vampire game, Blood Potency was treated not as a mark of age or strength, but as an indicator of your diet. A 'neonate' could be Blood Potency 6 if they only fed on other vampires, and an elder could be Blood Potency 1-2 if they only allowed themselves to feed on animals, owing to some moral conviction.
To make this clearer, a higher Primal Urge essentially shows how committed you are to the supernatural/feral aspects of your existence, with all its attendant bonuses and complications for your human side.
This rule had more of an impact on vampires, but it works philosophically for werewolves as well. Also, when players view it in such a fashion, it becomes more of a 'choice' than something they're compelled to do. It also leads into my next point:
- Harmony (and Integrity/Humanity) is a needless complication (Morality Hack)
Issue: Anyone that has played or staffed on a mush, should know that Harmony/Integrity/Humanity etc, is always a huge pain in the ass. It's either ignored, or it's abused, and it always pisses people off. It's also not very cinematic. It's basically a bad system, that works best when mostly ignored. If you're extremely conscientious about it, it tends to stifle and leave RP stilted and lawyerly. If you have ever seen a +job or a tabletop debate that devolved into some Kantian circle jerk about the ethical dubiousness of an action taken, then you know how soul killing this horrible system is.
Specifically in Werewolf 2.0, Harmony is so badly handled as to make nightly sessions an exercise in accounting. There are so many things that can raise or lower you, that dozens of Harmony rolls a session are called for. I've always seen this atrocious game mechanic left by the wayside in tabletop. I've never understood why it persists on mushes, where logical enforcement is even more lacking. And again, if you've never had an infuriating +job related to a Morality argument, then you are truly fortunate.
Solution: I don't use Harmony, Integrity or Humanity in my games. Inasmuch as the game mechanics call for it, I either houserule those, or in the case of Harmony, I assume it's a base level of 6. If it would be higher or lower for any significant reason (perhaps related to NPCs), I will adjust it accordingly. In a werewolf 2.0 game, all wolves would be considered in the 4-6 range.
In our tabletop game, I associated Humanity with Blood Potency. Blood Potency 1 vampires had the game effects of Humanity 10, and so forth, going down the list. Blood Potency 2 = 9, 3 = 8, etc.
- The terror and thrill of shapeshifting is diluted by too many forms
Issue: Dalu and urshul forms detract from the visceral impact of shapeshifting and the contrast in a werewolf's existence between 'normal' and 'ultra violence', by giving vaguely understood intermediates that are mostly used for either twinking or confusing new players. I've run tabletop werewolf games for many people, and while human, wolf-man and wolf comes naturally to them...They always have trouble with dalu and urshul. Especially older players who tended to exclusively build those forms into combat monsters, and new players who would often stay in hishu or urhan to their detriment.
Furthermore, by making Dalu or Urshul so superior, it detracts from the experience of being in Hishu or Urhan. I've seen many, many games that basically revolved around those two forms with the occasional jaunt in gauru. This was more prevalent in Forsaken 1.0. Forsaken 2.0 balanced the forms a bit better, but MMO-style 'class' balance does not make for an engaging roleplaying experience.
Solution: In my games, there are only Human, Wolf-Man and Wolf forms. I buffed Hishu and Urhan to compensate. Hishu regenerates as Dalu, and has Defense vs Firearms and a permanent +1 Stamina. Urhan gets improved as well. The Badass Motherfucker and Weaken the Prey abilities are unused, but may show up in some houserule format.
There are Wolf Gifts that can simulate Dalu or Urshul, such as by inflicting Lunacy with one's eyes, or by growing claws.
Thematically, werewolf is all about the potential to unleash terrifying violence on a hair trigger. When players had access to dalu and urshul, they could muscle their way through situations. When they had to choose between staying human or turning into a rampaging death machine, I saw them approach situations with* much* more finesse and creativity, and made violence, when it did happen, that much more cinematic and meaningful.
