Rehabbing WoD, but keeping it's spirit

[Whipstitch]

My position is that while the virtue/vice system was implemented poorly due to a combination of vagueness, simplicity and uselessness, its use of the cardinal and theological virtues and the seven deadly sins specifically was not a terrible idea in and of itself.

This is stupid and contradictory. I get that you're saying that Buddhism or Secular Humanism would have made for no better a summary, but that in no way excuses White Wolf for being dumb enough to think that the Cardinal and Theological virtues were adequate for what they were doing.

[Username17]

There's no advantage in there only being 14 virtues and vices. 14 is still far too many to write contingencies into spell effects or triggered clauses into NPC descriptions or whatever. Fuck, that sort of thing is a pain in the ass in D&D and they only have six alignment tags. Once you've more than doubled that, you might as well throw open the flood gates and have the list bloat up until it actually starts being able to describe peoples' characters.

However, if moving forward people insist on doing something similar to the Virtues and Vices, I insist that the categories be called "Turn-ons" and "Pet Peeves."

-Username17

[TheFlatline]

To begin with, the three physical disciplines of Potence, Fortitude, and Celerity should be available to all Vampires and not considered part of any clan's legacy. Every Vampire should start with a dot in all three, and if they want more they can buy it. No Vampire should find themselves physically outmatched by their own ghoul, nor should any Vampire ever make a Ghoul who acquires powers from their blood powers that their blood doesn't give to them.

Incidentally, in every oWoD game I ever played, regardless of who ran it, we encountered the "physical disciplines" houserule: Every vampire could innately train up the three physical disciplines. It's "in the blood". Most games left it at that, others admitted this fucked a lot of clans and made it cost I think new level x6 XP instead of new level x5.

But yeah, the only people who didn't think that was bullshit was the game designers.

[TheFlatline]

You know honestly, oWoD just gave people a list of religion agnostic "natures" and let people write up more if they wanted. That was fucking fine.

I get the vices/virtues bullshit. It was a carrot/stick attempt to get people to behave anti-socially and like a dick. Just the thing you want in a social game right? Explicit instructions that it's more rewarding to fuck the party over than it is to be "good". So even pulling the Judeo-Christian bullshit out of it it's the kind of mechanic that sounds great on paper but fucking rapes games if played to the hilt.

I did dig nature/demeanor from oWoD, but as a willpower-regaining mechanic it lacked. It wouldn't have taken much from that though to come up with a workable system.

[Prak]

Box, the problem with Gratifications and Torments is that it is specifically based on LaVeyan Satanism, and the things it exhorts and warns against. The kicker is that it is probably more inviting than the VVs, but it's still a hyper-specific "cultural" touchstone. So hyper specific that I have to put cultural in quotation marks because there isn't a satanic culture, so to speak.

[Prak]

So, wandering back to the general topic from the divergent topic of "how do we handle character personalities mechanically?"...

Started reading Frank's Ars Magica review, and it occurs to me that Mage should probably be a call back to that, at least somewhat.

So, spitballing here...

Mage:Culture War. Individualism vrs Orthodoxy.
(notably, there will not be an explicit bad guy and an explicit good guy group. Players can play the church backed Hermetics or the individualist mages of other traditions, and who they fight depends on who they're playing)

The modern panopticon of satellites and NSA surveillance has turned the world inside out. When you want privacy to do weird shit, you don't go out to the woods, because the actually unmonitored portions of wilderness are probably more than a day's car ride away, at least. Instead, you go deep into the city, and find a place that has been painstakingly protected from surveillance.

In Mage, you play a person with a twin soul that allows the use of magic. If you had your way, your day would probably be spend with coke and succubi hookers and a bed of literal money. Unfortunately, the traditions get in the way of that. Or rather, the Hermetic tradition got in the way of that.

The Hermetic tradition is the largest and most xenophobic. Having come out of Europe, it spent most of its time lending its power to the conquistadors that spent most of their time pissing on indigenous peoples. Understandably, the Hermetic mages have long ago bought into their own propaganda that they are the best and native traditions are heresy, and the traditions of other cultures think the Hermetics are a bunch of pricks.

Since that time, global diaspora has spread traditions far and wide, and a Hermetic mage and a Pagan Norse Sex mage may live next door to one another, knowing or no.

The Hermetics have only a small edge these days, but it's there. They, however, think they're drowning in a sea of heretics, and so crusade against the "aberrant" and "demonic" mages of other traditions. The other traditions must of course take care to not be found out by Hermetics, lest they be crusaded against.

[BoxCrayonTales]

Here's another idea from Malcolm Sheppard's blog if you're interested.

That a person exerts his will over another is instinct, but how he structures the act is technology, and his justifications? Magic. Therein lie the roots of the Hegemony: a network of Awakened who uphold modernist values – including those the great Masses, its protectorate, rarely speak of but firmly believe. The Hegemony is the Consensus’ guardian and shepherd, devoted to a Great Work that would whip and bribe Sleepers to the cusp of Ascension as clients, not creators. They guard the Pure Forms of ultimate truth from assault by anarchists, unearthly beings and other threats to the Great Chain of Being.

Part of the Hegemony is truly ancient. This Kyriarchy claims descent from ancient priest-kings and culture heroes: the first lords of fire, agriculture and medicine. They learned that true power lay not in discovering wonders, but capturing them within a structure of control. The enlightened deserved undiluted access to the source of power – everyone else lived to serve. Over centuries, lord and sacral officiant drifted into two distinct roles and the Kyriarchs diversified into numerous factions. By the Middle Ages their secret orders (In Europe, the Cabal of Pure Thought and the Sangreal) dominated the world in secret, acting through kings and bishops, soldiers and scholars. Serfs toiled, nations went to war and it was good.

As long as inventions and spiritual studies reinforced the Great Chain of Being, the Kyriarchy had no quarrel with them. If they challenged the order of things they deserved death or exile. Most renegade Awakened chose the latter, and why not? The world was vast, mostly unexplored and filled with spaces where sorcerers could study in academic covenants. Where magi and philosopher scientists could not physically relocate they hid among the people, fearful of exercising too much influence lest Kyriarcy warriors respond.

As the late Middle Ages bloomed into the Renaissance Europe brimmed with wild ideas and rebellions, challenges to sacral authority and rule by oath. The opportunity wasn’t lost on the exile wonder-worker, who plotted to expand long-constrained dominions. Behind a crusade against heresy, the Cabal of Pure Thought raised armies at Languedoc against Mistridge and Carcassone – an error, for the resident Hermetics and Artificers gave no thought to an alliance until a common enemy battered at both their doors.

The seed bloomed, attracting other covenants until a truly dangerous idea took hold: that a world without aristocrats and serfs could exist. At the Alliance of the Ivory Tower, dreams coalesced into worldwide ambitions.

This wasn’t the first time the Kyriarchy had faced this kind of challenge, so it used a practiced response: It bought half of the rebellion. In truth, it had long since seduced some of the newer mysteries – those of the merchants and explorers – to its side. It was easy enough to bring the majority of Artificers across with the promise of wealth, influence and the freedom to pursue their most ambitious projects. The life-scholar Cosians were already strongly associated with the Church, and were offered indulgences against all sins in perpetuity, and freedom against the earthly punishments they would normally demand.

Never numerous, the Solificati alchemists were offered nothing more than the opportunity to survive behind the promise that win or lose, the Kyriarchs would take pains to extinguish them utterly. Philosopher scientists from all factions switched sides, but the Solificati pretended to stay with the alliance until they opened the Ivory Tower to invaders, on the day of the Great Betrayal.

The Kyriarchy made concessions. It incorporated the technologists as equals and aligned certain occult ideas to match the newcomers’ obsessions. It didn’t matter. From the dawn of their order the Kyriarchs knew that bringing fire to the people was nothing without the power to deny it, to ration the merest sparks as rewards for obedience.

The Hegemony changed greatly in the intervening centuries, but it still reflects the unity of two former enemies that uneasily manage the world. The modern Kyriarchy and Technocracy are more ideologies than factions now, and adherents of both systems inhabit every Convention.

Conventions

The 21st Century Hegemony consists of:

The Cartel: They’re masters of economics down to its purest form, where value is relative, finite, manipulable and beholden to desire, not moral principle. The Pragmatists employ formulae that reduce everything to a unified abstraction and manipulates it to serve their wills. Cartel prodigies use Platonic-mathematic rites, economic power blocs and the social structures of sanguine utility made manifest.

The Curia: Descended from the Cabal of Pure Thought, the Curia applies moral absolutes in the name of a remote God, creating taxonomies of sin drive obedient behavior. The Exarchs rarely believe every value they insinuate into the populace – one law applies to the common Sleeper but another rules the Elect. Their theurgy, though subtle, still disturbs atheist allies.

The Illuminati: The Administrators overthrew the aristocratic Sangreal, replacing divine right with applied science and political theory. Still, many of their techniques are simply rituals and biases inherited from a world that believes in reason but doesn’t practice it, from cult-like managerial techniques to applied “evolutionary psychology.” Their Men in Black are some of the most feared operatives in the Hegemony.

The Ingenium: The Engineers concentrate apply physical science the problems of power. The Hegemony needs AI to monitor its possessions, machines to measure, move and work, and weapons to kill their enemies. Some “engineers” devote themselves to pure research, but the Convention’s primary focus is application in the service of the Hegemony’s agenda. The Ingenium possess some of the purest Technocrats: mean and women who believe that human destiny is best entrusted to scientific principles – and the fact that they create and interpret them is merely the advantage of superior knowledge.

The Progenitors: Despite reductionist efforts, living things continue to hinder the dream of a unified Enlightened Science, to the Progenitors maintain their place. They apply their particular expertise to drugs, genetic engineering and surgery to everything from human enhancement to agriculture, defining subjects by the most obvious potential in their genotypes. Deviation is disease. The Physicians will cure it.

[Orion]

there will not be an explicit bad guy and an explicit good guy group.

I call bullshit. The rest of your post reveals that you are fundamentally incapable of seeing the hermetics as anything but black hats, so just own up to it and go from there. It's not wrong to have a black hat team.

[Orion]

And of course, Aristotle's idea that only upper class people can reasonably expected to have moral understanding is rather at odds with modern egalitarian concepts.v-Frank

I don't think that's a fair reading of the Ethics. Aristotle would probably have agreed with that sentiment if you asked him (and explained what morality is), but you won't get that from the book. Aristotle has almost nothing at all to say about morality, or if he does I missed it. The book's title is the root word for "ethics," but that word is misleading as well. I find it best to thing of the Nicomachean ethics as a self-help book. The virtues he outlines are supposed to be a manual for living a satisfying life, and nothing more. He endorses behaviors we might think of as moral (sharing what you have with your friends, doing something for the poor of your city, and being prepared to fight to defend your home) because he recognizes that acting like a douche will make you feel bad. There's nothing about adherence to code, and none of the far-reaching moral goal of modern religion and philosophy. You feed the poor in your town, but the suffering of poor folk in the next town over is simply a non-issue.

When he looks at the lives of a hero and a statesman and concludes that in fact a philosopher has the "best" life, he's not saying that god wants you to be a philosopher or that philosophers are good for society; he's just saying that fucking around in your cottage all day writing down shit that sounds cool is a lot more fun than going to work in the morning.

What he's saying about the poor is that they're never going to be truly happy. He does ascribe this to a lack of ethical/behavioral education, but the "education" he describes is more like practice and training. He doesn't spell it out, but the implication is that a slave can't develop charity because they have no money to give away, nor temperance because they don't control their own food, nor courage because they're not allowed to join the army. The most satisfying things in life -- politics, academics, and philanthropy -- are only open to those who had the right childhood opportunities.

Tl;dr: Aristotle does say that the rich are better than the poor, but only because they can buy themselves opportunities for self-improvement. That's harsh, but it's not grossly incompatible with modern liberalism.

[Prak]

Ok, maybe I should have said that there will not be a "You can't play these guys" team that is later "Wait, we need to make more money, here are books for them." I may be incapable of seeing anything related to christianity as good, but the Hermetics would be treated the same as the traditions in so far as mechanics, and people would explicitly be allowed to play them right from the get go.

[Orion]

Ok, maybe I should have said that there will not be a "You can't play these guys" team that is later "Wait, we need to make more money, here are books for them." I may be incapable of seeing anything related to christianity as good, but the Hermetics would be treated the same as the traditions in so far as mechanics, and people would explicitly be allowed to play them right from the get go.

I find it difficult to believe you are capable of writing Hermetics that anyone would want to play, or even with a playable agenda at all.

[Username17]

Ok, maybe I should have said that there will not be a "You can't play these guys" team that is later "Wait, we need to make more money, here are books for them." I may be incapable of seeing anything related to christianity as good, but the Hermetics would be treated the same as the traditions in so far as mechanics, and people would explicitly be allowed to play them right from the get go.

I find it difficult to believe you are capable of writing Hermetics that anyone would want to play, or even with a playable agenda at all.

In the original World of Darkness, they didn't have a playable agenda. Almost anyone who wasn't Bill Bridges could make an agenda for the Hermetics that was more playable than what was written in Ascension.

-Username17

[Omegonthesane]

Ok, maybe I should have said that there will not be a "You can't play these guys" team that is later "Wait, we need to make more money, here are books for them." I may be incapable of seeing anything related to christianity as good, but the Hermetics would be treated the same as the traditions in so far as mechanics, and people would explicitly be allowed to play them right from the get go.

"Black hats" does not mean "NPCs who we later make playable". Your writeup has the Hermetics do nothing but persecute other traditions for "fuck knows what reason", and that makes them black hats. If you can't have a Hermetic in a "normal" party then they aren't a player option.

[Prak]

Ok, continuing my stream of consciousness spitballing-

Almost everyone wants to improve the world, and for most people, that means crafting it to be closer to their own ideal world.

This is the primary difference between traditions--their ideal world.

Given that this is supposed to be a world that is recognizable as our own, at least for the most part, and that few would be willing to give up their computers and flush toilets to return to a state of nature, we'll assume that the traditions do not want to deprive people of modern technology, and those who do want to replace it with analogous magic. Individual practitioners can be bugfuck crazy and want to return to the trees.


And some think that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.

So the primary source of conflict is that the hermetic traditions want to increase the order of the world and it's dependence on a central authority, generally something related to a global (christian/abrahamic) church, while the other traditions have completely, or at least, significantly, different ideas about the best way for the world to work. The Asatru tradition doesn't explicitly want to magi-bomb everyone back to the Iron Age, but they do like the general idea of smaller tribes of merchant-raiders with a close connection to the Asa (norse gods), numbering not much higher than one person could reasonably exert governance over. The Hekan tradition agrees with the Hermetics that a single global empire is awesome sauce, but they do think it should be closer related to worship of Horus, or at least Atem.

The problem, of course, is that the hermetics have a slim majority over the other traditions (what with the christian history of conquering and enslaving people from non-christian cultures), and they think that magic is really bad unless you spout heavenly names like an esoteric tourette sufferer while doing it, so they are the entrenched temporal power, have the easiest time getting away with shenanigans in public (remember the Starbucks Exorcism last week?) and they believe that magic from other traditions is sinful.

So the Hermetics go around looking for other mages and telling them to convert or being removed from the picture. The other traditions hide from the hermetics and have huge blow out battles with them when they're away from sleeping eyes.

Better? Or are my personal biases still making the Hermetics sound unappealing to play? (Or is it too much politics for people to give a shit to play?)

[Mask_De_H]

Your personal biases are still showing, because the Hermetics are an oppressive Christian/Abramic goon squad. Hermeticism does believe that God gave man theology, but it's a shared theology throughout all religions.

Your Hermetic goons are more Celestial Chorus than Order of Hermes, to put it in oMage terms.

[Username17]

Basically the bottom line is still that Masquerade is the World of Darkness, and everything else is a distraction. Masquerade is the big draw, the money shot, the headliner, and the main attraction. All the other lines were just weird experimentalist shit trying to move in new directions and show how they didn't have to just play their hits every gig. Well, that was bullshit. You do in fact have to play the fucking hits. That is how it fucking works.

So if you want to get to the bottom of World of Darkness, and you want to make it "work," you start by making Masquerade. You reboot it of course, you strip some of the bullshit out. I'm pretty sure that you don't have the Inconnu or True Hand in there, and a bunch of bloodlines are probably going to get the ax. You'll likely rebalance the clans and improve playability and presentation of the sects and so on and so forth. Then, after you have Masquerade firing on all cylinders, you add stuff to Masquerade.

But Mage, Werewolf, Hunter, Demon, Wraith, and Changeling do not get to have a share of the setting. They do not get to dictate cosmology or even compromise on cosmology. They are fucking expansions to Masquerade. They get to use Masquerade's cosmology or they get to shut the fuck up and not exist. Because Masquerade is fucking Yellow Submarine and Octopus' Garden, while the other games are Ringo's solo career. You do not cut Yellow Submarine for anything from Ringo's solo career. You just do not fucking do that. Demon gets to have a hell for Demons to live in because the Baali and Sabbat Infernalists have a hell to summon things out of. Wraiths get to have a land of the dead to mope in because the Giovanni have a land of the dead to summon things out of. But the Mages do not get to have a supernal world and the Werewolves do not get to have a spirit world. If some setting wants a universe that Vampires don't use that is tough shit. Because you do not cut Yellow Submarine to make room for Ringo's solo career.

-Username17

[Prak]

Good point.

I'm going to try to read up some more on Masquerade when I'm not trying to stay focused on something on three hours of sleep, and see if that's really what I want to do, or whether I want to just do an urban fantasy heartbreaker that takes some notes from OWoD.

(ok, ok, we all know the answer to that. Let me at least dream about being the person who made OWoD playable as a setting for a little bit.)

[Orion]

I disagree with Frank. I strongly recommend that you do not base your game on Vampire. There are several reasons for this. First of all, the rehash of Vampire has already been written, and it's After Sundown. After Sundown is a game about "special" people forming large numbers of interlocking cliques that periodically have turf wars, which are of limited scale and intensity because they're all trying to avoid human notice. There are many ideologies and groups claiming long and noble histories, but most of them are mere body paint on naked power grabs, and the rest has long since wandered away from their founder's purposes. That right there is everything people liked about Vampire, as far as I know. I'm no expert, but I don't think there's much of value in the various apocalyptic prophecies, the sleeping elders, the world-spanning conspiracies, and all that. After Sundown is scooby-doo meets scarface, and that works. If you ripped out the 18 monsters from the After Sundown book and put in 10 kinds of vampires, you'd be 90% of the way to a revise Masquerade. I don't recommend that you try to write a gray hat setting. Frank was able to populatte After Sundown with groups you might be willing to hang out with or willing to shoot in the face because he knows a lot about a large number of real-world ideologies, and also because he lacks strong religious or ideological pre-commitments that prevent him from giving certain groups a fair shake. I don't think you meet either of those conditions. You have strong convictions that are always near the front of your mind and that you frequently want to share in social discussions here. Your game is your chance to express your values, so go ahead and pick some anti-hero factions and some villain factions, give them something more important to fight over than a few human victims, the end of the world, or a barrel of cocaine, and go from there.

You seem to really like werewolf. You mentioned it in the first post, and it's the only tier-1 series you've written anything at all about. Well, you wrote some stuff about "mages" but they had 0% relevance to either White Wold Mage game, so that doesn't count. I went through the thread and made a list of the things you wrote that I didn't hate. All of it was about either werewolves, humans doing spirit magic, an alternate plane with sprites and elementals, or more stuff about werewolves. Fairies, elementals, and spirit-talkers all seem like things that could happen in a werewolf game. Whether they can go in a White Wolf-esque werewolf game, I don't know. The only White Wolf specific lore-concept I've seen you say anything positive about is the Wyrm/Weaver/Wyld trinity. So: I recommend that you start with Werewolf, the wyrm/weaver/wyld war, and an Arcadian plane the werewolves have access to. Build everything else out from there.

[Lokathor]

Yeah, a game that is focused on werewolves above vampires but doesn't have any squicky bullshit about dog sex would be pretty damn sweet.

While Frank is correct that World of Darkness is pretty much all about vampires (and a somewhat specific kind of vampire at that), you could just make a game that isn't World of Darkness and do the werewolf thing really well and turn that into an amazing game.

[Username17]

I'm definitely not saying you can't make a game about Werewolves that would be cool. I'm not even saying that Werewolves can't be cooler than Vampires. Heck, if you decide to see one recent movie about North Americans dealing with classic horror monsters in France told using a partially found-footage format and having a climax where the classic horror monster tears through a bunch of French police as seen through the eyes of worn cameras, then you should see Wer and not Afflicted. Because Wer has good characterization and tight pacing and keeps you guessing without violating its own presented magic rules and Afflicted... doesn't.

What I am saying is that if you want to make something that is literally a World of Darkness reboot, then you need to start with Masquerade. Because Vampire is Yellow Submarine and and all the other oWoD titles are songs from Ringo's solo career. You don't even do an After Sundown where you set things up kinda like Masquerade but make room for other creatures - you fucking make Masquerade with 13 clans and a fucking war of ages and you fit in other kinds of creatures if and where you have room for them.

The bottom line of course is that Prak doesn't personally really want to reboot the World of Darkness. He wants to write a game that's about werewolf spirit cops that hopefully manages to not have the dog rape of Apocalypse or the complete lack of PC motivation of WTF. But if you you were making an actual WoD reboot, you'd have to start with Masquerade, because WoD is Masquerade. Masquerade is the game that was the #1 game in the world for several years. Not Dreaming, not Ascension, certainly not Oblivion, Masquerade.

So if you wanted to reboot World of Darkness, your big questions would be:

• With 13 Western Clans, 10 Blackulas, 10 Kuei Jin Dharmas, and countless Bloodlines to choose from, what 13 clans are you going to put in your reboot?
• How are you going to balance the clans you have?
• How are you going to change power access so that people can actually play Dracula if they want?
• How much of the stupid are you going to grandfather in?
• How are you going to make the players care about the War of Ages?
• What sects are you using, and how are you handling sect relations?

And then you'd ask yourself questions about if and where the other supernaturals fit into the picture only when you had working answers for those. But if you're planning on making a game about werewolf spirit cops, then you don't care about any of that shit - you're just looking for ways and means to handle conceptual space limits in a game where you spend a lot of time dealing with the spirit world.

-Username17

[Orion]

If not literally re-writing the content of W:tA, is there anything in there worth stealing? I haven't read any of it. "Wyrm, Weaver, Wyld" are awesome names, and the idea of divine triality which has both become out of balanced, and whose imbalance is being fought by werewolves who are themselves out of balance, at least sounds like it could be cool.

[Username17]

If not literally re-writing the content of W:tA, is there anything in there worth stealing? I haven't read any of it. "Wyrm, Weaver, Wyld" are awesome names, and the idea of divine triality which has both become out of balanced, and whose imbalance is being fought by werewolves who are themselves out of balance, at least sounds like it could be cool.

We say bad things about Werewolf: the Apocalypse for a lot of reasons around here, one of the biggest ones is that part of chargen is that you have to select the sexual deviancy of your mother, one one of your options is "dog raper," another is "cousin fucker," and there is only one other option. So that's... terrible. But to be honest, there is actually a lot in Werewolf that's evocative and pretty cool.

The first thing is your Auspice. As a Werewolf, you get a special moonsign, and the closer that is to being a full moon the more Rage you get, while the farther from being a full moon the more "tricksy" you get. So you get to be a Coyote-style trickster by having a new moon auspice or a Hulk-style murder machine by having a full moon auspice, and you can do something in between with the three other auspices. I mean, I have never ever in my life seen someone choose to play the gibbous moon auspice, but four out of five ain't bad.

Second, there are your enemies. They are R-Rated Captain Planet villains who have 80s style radiation mutants with murder penises that serve them called Fomori. Now, I won't say that isn't stupid, but it's awesome. As black hat villains go, that's more memorable than most.

Thirdly, you have a Pack Totem. That's like a spirit badger or spirit quail or something that gives cryptic advice and mission briefings to your team in visions.

So you put it all together and you're a handful of moon-themed heroes who all have a wolf form and at the beginning of the episode a talking animal shows up and tells you that the bad guys have erected a toxic rain machine that makes toxic rain for no damn reason and you have to stop it. So you go there and tell them to shut it off, but they refuse and the workers turn into melty-face monster mooks and the main villain turns into an even bigger monster of the week and you throw down. So it's exactly like a late 80s cartoon except that some of the melty-face monsters also have spiny tentacles coming out of their pants and when the heroes deploy their claws and swords they rip arms off and blood spurts everywhere.

So it's basically Robot Chicken: the Game. And that is awesome.

-Username17

[TheFlatline]

I mean, I have never ever in my life seen someone choose to play the gibbous moon auspice, but four out of five ain't bad.

*sheepishly raises my hand*

Guilty here.

The way it was originally pitched to me, was either like a samurai warrior-poet caste or a D&D bard with balls.

That kind of appealed to me. Though after reading more I found the auspice kind of identified closer to say Croaker from The Black Company. Soldier sure, almost as nasty as the full moon furries, but still there as a keeper of the annals as it were.

[Mask_De_H]

So if you were starting from Masquerade, what would be the cosmology you kept? Shade worlds, the Underworld, what else? And more importantly, what would differentiate this from After Sundown outside of the IP scrubbing?

[Prak]

I mean, I have never ever in my life seen someone choose to play the gibbous moon auspice, but four out of five ain't bad.

*sheepishly raises my hand*

Guilty here.

The way it was originally pitched to me, was either like a samurai warrior-poet caste or a D&D bard with balls.

That kind of appealed to me. Though after reading more I found the auspice kind of identified closer to say Croaker from The Black Company. Soldier sure, almost as nasty as the full moon furries, but still there as a keeper of the annals as it were.

I'm reasonably certain I played a galliard at least once. It's kind of "the cleric" of WtA in that groups feel they "have" to have one, but it's not a hugely necessary role, or at least not a role that needs to be protected.

I mean...

Ok, so if I were to do a Gaia's Protector's werewolf game that stole liberally from the WtA well, I would redo renown a bit.

For those who don't know, the werewolves of WtA had ranks, and ranks dictated what level of gifts and rituals you could learn. So if you wanted stuff like "summon spirits so you don't have to wander around looking for them" and "shove spirits into items to make magic items that aren't one use," you really care about your rank.

The way you gain rank is a multi-step process (at least the way my group played. I do gather that my ST made it a bit harder than it should have been):
Step 1: Go do deeds
Step 2: Go to a moot (party/meeting with other werewolves from a bunch of groups), have stories told about what you did.
Step 3: Elders recognize your deeds through the ST handing out Wisdom, Glory and Honor, depending on whether your deeds were Wise, Glorious, or Honorable. Oh, and your renown points can be revoked because your Elders say that you acted unwisely, shamefully, or dishonorably.
Important Caveat: Apparently werewolves aren't supposed to boast. You have to rely on others to tell your deeds for you, because you don't get points for shit you say you've done.
Step 4: Accumulate 10 points of temporary Honor/Glory/Renown, and ask to be recognized for your Honor/Glory/Renown. IF the Elders don't hate you, they will ask you about what you've done that you should be recognized for. This is your chance to boast. Assuming your ST feels you've rambled on about how such and such was very wise/honorable/glorious, you will be recognized, allowing you to turn those 10 temporary points into a single permanent dot of the appropriate renown.
Step 5: acquire the right number of dots in each category for you to hit the next rank according to your auspice. Ragabash don't care about categories, they need raw dots, Theurges (shamans) care about Wisdom, Ahrouns (warriors) care about glory, and Philodoxes (judges) care about Honor (IIRC).
Step 6: Ask to be recognized for your new rank. The Elders then lay out challenges for you that are supposed to show that you're an awesome enough warrior/judge/shaman/storyteller/trickster to be the next rank. Expect the dice gods to taunt you.

So, let's say you're a Ragabash, because then we don't give a shit about categories. A starting rank 1 ragabash starts with 3 dots of Renown they can arrange as they like. To become rank 2, they need a total of 7 dots of renown, meaning they need to accumulate a total of 40 temp. points of renown and be recognized by their elders 4 times. All the other auspices need a total of 6, but they need to make sure it's in the right categories.

For reference, the highest value on the Sample Renown Awards chart is 7, for stuff like "defeating a very powerful threat," "sacrificing oneself to save a caern (werewolf holy site) and it's defenders," "enduring torture to protect fellow garou (werewolves)," "discovering an ancient caern that was lost," or "discovering or creating a new gift." Mind you, the self-sacrifice one is on there twice, for Glory and Honor. So... if you get your ass killed to protect a werewolf village, you get 7 points each of Glory and Honor, post-humously. Whoop-di-freaking-do. Keep in mind- there is no reincarnation or resurrection in WtA--at least not that I'm aware of. And if there is, you can bet your ass you'll lost honor for not staying dead.

Also keep in mind--you have to bust ass to not have to go through multiple moots to actually get the permanent renown to rank up. Usually, a moot happens maybe once every ten sessions or so? So while it's possible that, if you're a Philodox, you have 10 points in each category and are just waiting to be recognized when the next moot comes up, if you're any other auspice, you're basically guaranteed to have to go about 20 sessions before you hit rank 2, because you can't save up 20 points in a category, and most auspices will need 2 dots in a category before they can hit rank 2.

Now, sure, it's totally possible that you can average 3 points of renown per session and be all good to rank up at your first moot.

It's also entirely possible that you'll end up like me and in five years of playing Werewolf only get 1 character to survive long enough to accumulate those points and hit rank 2, only to die because someone in your party is a douchebag who doesn't listen to what others are doing.

Even assuming that you don't go through characters like cartons of milk... Let's say you're playing an Ahroun, because you probably are. There were times when my ST had to say "raise your hand if you're not an ahroun" because that would result in fewer hands being raised at the table.

A rank 1 Ahroun starts the game with 2 Glory and 1 Honor. To hit rank 2, they need 4 Glory, 1 Honor and 1 Wisdom. So they need to accumulate 10 Glory, be recognized, accumulate 10 more Glory and be recognized, and, oh yeah, accumulate 10 Wisdom.

The Sample Renown Award page isn't so helpful. It doesn't say what constitutes a minor/average/strong/very powerful threat. But lets say that your first session you challenge another rank 1 ahroun to a sparring match so you both get a feel for things. That can give you 1 Glory point, if the Galliard remembers to mention it the next time he talks to the Elders. Then you might go off with your pack to deal with a lake that's oozing black shit, and find it's a couple of fomor hunters pissing in the lake. So you take out two shmucks with shark mouths and shotguns. I'd call that a minor threat. There you go, you get 3 temp Glory in your first session.

Let's say you're interested in having some utility and also have a mind for tactics, so in the first part of the session you go learn Rite of the Questing Stone from a Theurge so that you can magic up a tracking device in case you need it, and then you tell your pack "Hey, we're werewolves and all, but how about we ambush those guys when they're not hunting and don't have guns in their hands?" It's good advice, because you're less likely to lose someone or have someone need to be healed because fomor are in on the secret and could be prepared to fight garou. Those two things (rite and advice) could net you 3 Wisdom. Congrats. Keep up that rate, and you could easily expect to get recognized for Glory and Wisdom in ten sessions when the ST decides there's a moot. Hell, you might not even need to worry about renown (other than losing it) after your fourth session if you can manage to get 3 points of Glory and Wisdom each of the first three sessions.

Now, after that moot, go get ten more dots of Glory. It's totally not impossible. Of course, now that you've been recognized for Glory, you do have to step things up. If you want Glory from challenges, you have to take on tougher werewolves, and come out on top. If you want Glory from missions, you need bigger missions, or you need to be taking on opponents with less help. Maybe you're saying "psh, it's two fomor shmucks with rifles, I'll take this." and you go rip their heads off and come back for a beer. Maybe you're getting in fights with optimized brujah or fleshsculpted bodyguards. Or bears, fuck, whatever.

It's still waiting twenty sessions. If you're playing a Philodox (read, the guy whose auspice only matters when a) you need to figure out whose head to ripoff, or b) you need to mete out punishment to someone who fucked up), you just need to average 1 point in each of Glory, Honor and Wisdom over your first 10 sessions to rank up at the first moot. That's cool and all, but I still wouldn't call it easy, given that the suggestions for 1 point of Honor on the Sample Renown Award page are "Help defend a caern" and "perform regular duties and chores for the sept (village around a caern) for a month." On the upside, those just challenges you do to get 1 point of Glory are good for 2 points of Honor, as is protecting a helpless human.


So... one of the things I would change is that boasting should totally be good for points. You cannot rely on the Galliard to remember every fucking thing, even if he talks to the elders on a cellphone at the end of every session. You just can't. When I played Galliard, I took notes and I still missed shit. Then there will be people who are just jerks and want to rob you of points.

But werewolves are big burly blowhards. Why does "Ok, dude, this one time-" not get you points? I'm not saying it should be equal, but waiting for your turn in the moot to speak and saying "Larry's a great galliard, but he forgot the part where I ripped the head off of a minotaur, it happens" should be worth some number of points.

I would also try to condense the number of sessions it takes to get rank. You should be getting renown points every session or two (we did), and there should just be more points being handed around. It should totally be possible (I mean, it is, but it should be on the sample award page) to get a dot of renown in a single deed. Single-handedly fighting off a significant threat after your pack's been dropped, or to let them get away, should just give you a dot of Glory, no recognition ceremony necessary. The elders immediately recognize you for the badass motherfucker you are, even if they could have handled the thing themselves, because you're a pup and damn.