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I'm not even sure who these new oWoD games are even for. Pasty white nerds with nostalgia for their '90s tribal tattoos that made them so respectful? I remember copping a ban over rpg.net over the Beast clusterfuck back when and if anything it seems they're regressing even further.
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Jul 23, 2023 03:47
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I Am Just a Box posted:That sounds about right. Whoever pointed out that Muammar was happy to divorce tribes from their roots in real-world peoples when those peoples are marginalized but definitely wanted to pull on the Get being Nazis made it click for me that a lot of what is trying to be presented as accessible design in the new edition is, at least subconsciously, not really motivated in good faith. And having Justin Achilli's name on this product is feeling less and less like it matters in any meaningful way, except perhaps to reflect poorly on him. This is also probably contributing to the confusion. Tribes being a thing you choose rather than a hereditary thing now but still also carrying a lot of baggage from the cultures they're descended from. but honestly at this point who knows. A few months ago the Fianna were still the Fianna, and 10 months ago Achilli was saying it's fine to keep using that word because it's just a word and it's fine. but now they're the Heart Wardens. Are the Silver fangs getting retooled? Are the Shadow Lords? The Striders? Do the gale Stalkers still exist or were they folded into the Ghost Council? Maybe the Get are less a tribe and more the Thing you Join once you're too hauglosk riddled for polite society to go fight in until you die like a Dwarven Slayer.
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Jul 23, 2023 03:52
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For what it's worth, though I haven't been a big part of this discussion, the most impactful thing I took away from J.F.'s post wasn't anything about the Get, but the fact that as flawed as hell as the original Werewolf tribes were, having not only one but two of the major tribes represent different facets of people who come from similar native backgrounds meant a lot to them, and Paradox screwed the opportunity to do that potential a truer justice so thoroughly, right down to initial plans to erase Younger Brother entirely (one can easily imagine arguments along the line of "do we really need two native tribes?"). It would've been really cool to see people coming from places like J.F. get to shape this edition more, and instead the people who were fighting them are implicitly taking the credit for what little they got through that stuck.
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Jul 23, 2023 03:53
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Kurieg posted:This is also probably contributing to the confusion. Tribes being a thing you choose rather than a hereditary thing now but still also carrying a lot of baggage from the cultures they're descended from. but honestly at this point who knows. A few months ago the Fianna were still the Fianna, and 10 months ago Achilli was saying it's fine to keep using that word because it's just a word and it's fine. but now they're the Heart Wardens. Are the Silver fangs getting retooled? Are the Shadow Lords? The Striders? Do the gale Stalkers still exist or were they folded into the Ghost Council? I'll probably have similar feelings to when I read some of the early nWoD material, where it was clear they hadn't fully decided where they wanted to go. Like, none of the tribal previews they've showed thus far scream any particular culture/ethnicity, but on the other hand, the sample Black Fury sheet they showed on stream had a gift called The Curse of Aeolus. Sure sounds Greek to me!
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Jul 23, 2023 04:05
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They've scrubbed all ethnicity out of the Ghost council too but their totem is still Horned Serpent and their key art looks like this
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Jul 23, 2023 04:09
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Fuzz posted:Fair, though to me as a minority and what I assume the bulk of you guys are white, the focus drifting immediately to, "we are upset about the thing that pertained to white people," is sitting there in the back of my head as any discussion about the other stuff is just tabled or handwaved. I know that's not the case for the bulk of you, but that's how it comes across in White Wolf property related discussions, wherever they may be, since all of the games across both franchises have always been really heavily rife with racism, excused bigotry, apologism, and a general white european ethnocentrism. Nah, I get you. So to that end - the way they treated the writer is super hosed up and I find Muammar's petty little refusals to follow the goddamn style guide and basic rules of respect around capitalization perfectly sum up the entire problem I have with the new White Wolf: so much of it is actively wallowing in being racist, homophobic, and gross that I don't want a bar of it because there are better games written by better people out there. They'd rather be deliberately cruel and petty to Indigenous people who're there handing them solid gold out of the same passion and love for the setting that they say they have than show them even a scrap of basic decency, and that's what ultimately disqualifies them as worthy of my time, dollar, or good will - the petty, lovely perverse small-mindedness of 50-year old edgelords who have no claim to stay part of a hobby space that's grown and matured enormously since the 90s.
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Jul 23, 2023 04:17
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Maybe they should make it so you only have five tribes with their larger themes and for cultural backgrounds there could be smaller more local factions. Kinda like lodges.
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Jul 23, 2023 04:27
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Fuzz posted:Fair, though to me as a minority and what I assume the bulk of you guys are white, the focus drifting immediately to, "we are upset about the thing that pertained to white people," is sitting there in the back of my head as any discussion about the other stuff is just tabled or handwaved. I know that's not the case for the bulk of you, but that's how it comes across in White Wolf property related discussions, wherever they may be, since all of the games across both franchises have always been really heavily rife with racism, excused bigotry, apologism, and a general white european ethnocentrism. MonsieurChoc posted:Maybe they should make it so you only have five tribes with their larger themes and for cultural backgrounds there could be smaller more local factions. Kinda like lodges.
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Jul 23, 2023 05:01
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Kurieg posted:They've scrubbed all ethnicity out of the Ghost council too but their totem is still Horned Serpent and their key art looks like this Which Heilung photoshoot did they trace this from?
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Jul 23, 2023 05:04
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so the get are all the ARGH MINE ARSE guy now https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zd7c5tQCs1I
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Jul 23, 2023 07:52
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Fuzz posted:Fair, though to me as a minority and what I assume the bulk of you guys are white, the focus drifting immediately to, "we are upset about the thing that pertained to white people," is sitting there in the back of my head as any discussion about the other stuff is just tabled or handwaved. As noted above, though, those outside discussions are largely “loving hell, it keeps getting worse”; our breaking point happened years ago, none of us are buying WoD 5e stuff, we all agree this is horrific and a sign our business is not wanted. It’s a conversation killer.
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Jul 23, 2023 09:42
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MonsieurChoc posted:Lol we’re getting Tribebook: Wayward. I wonder how God45 is doing in 5th edition.
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Jul 23, 2023 12:41
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Nessus posted:Yeah that is fair. I have no idea what those Discords must be like, my god, even for something relatively small like TTRPG it must be howling chaos It really would have been the best way forward, take an approach more like forsaken as far as tribes (the old tribes died in the pseudo apocalypse, whatever, just clear the board a bit), but keep the eco warrior, 'the world is being killed and even if you can't save it you can hurt the people doing the killing' feel of apocalypse.
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Jul 23, 2023 13:43
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Nessus posted:Yeah that is fair. I have no idea what those Discords must be like, my god, even for something relatively small like TTRPG it must be howling chaos The WoD Discord in particular is a howling void of weird diehards who insist Paradox can do no wrong, despite all the, you know, wrong it does.
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Jul 23, 2023 13:45
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I remember someone blocking me on the system mastery discord because he thought I was a diehard fan who didn’t want changes when my argument was actually that WoD5 wasn’t different enough.
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Jul 23, 2023 14:53
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Explodingdice posted:It really would have been the best way forward, take an approach more like forsaken as far as tribes (the old tribes died in the pseudo apocalypse, whatever, just clear the board a bit), but keep the eco warrior, 'the world is being killed and even if you can't save it you can hurt the people doing the killing' feel of apocalypse. Although this whole discussion has... complicated the urge to completely strip the stereotypes from games like WtA. Do things like the "I'm German" or "I'm a Greek Feminist" faction mean anything to anyone? No, they can get stripped out and no one would care. But then you run into stuff like the multiple Native American stereotype factions and people talking about how having that much representation was important to them despite how stereotypical they are, and... well, it's a tricky situation that can only be answered by letting the game be written by people who aren't incredibly white.
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Jul 23, 2023 15:19
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Lurks With Wolves posted:Although this whole discussion has... complicated the urge to completely strip the stereotypes from games like WtA. Do things like the "I'm German" or "I'm a Greek Feminist" faction mean anything to anyone? No, they can get stripped out and no one would care. But then you run into stuff like the multiple Native American stereotype factions and people talking about how having that much representation was important to them despite how stereotypical they are, and... well, it's a tricky situation that can only be answered by letting the game be written by people who aren't incredibly white. It is a situation where I don't know that it's possible to thread the needle. It would be very strange to have some generic groups and then also the native american groups, but as you say representation was one thing that they managed to sort of do, in a very 90s way, with the original. I am pretty sure finding a good option is not something new white wolf can do, which is a shame, I mean, there's a lot of reason a climate apocalypse sort of game should resonate just now.
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Jul 23, 2023 17:49
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Traveller posted:I'm not even sure who these new oWoD games are even for. Pasty white nerds with nostalgia for their '90s tribal tattoos that made them so respectful? I remember copping a ban over rpg.net over the Beast clusterfuck back when and if anything it seems they're regressing even further. I dunno, oWoD was fun and I don't think the average player was into it for the goofy racist poo poo, they were in it because of the goofy superpower poo poo. Its a bad idea to try and bring it back without immense changes to the setting because of the 90s racist stuff, but I don't really see the point in trying to pretend that everyone who goes, "Oh neat, VtM is back," is a racist white guy.
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Jul 23, 2023 18:34
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I think that the tribes in Apocalypse, much like the clans in Vampire and the various mage squads in Ascension, provided the opportunity to brace your imagination and emotional attachment to an imaginary society and its subsidiary groups which vibed with you, or which a particular character concept vibed with. Your character wouldn't just be a werewolf who was scrappy, spat upon, and always picked the most Communist line possible: you would be a Bone Gnawer, which would have other story/world vibes and social connections. Giving these groups historical/ethno-regional qualities in Werewolf was a limitation, even if it had some backswing benefit (the above comment on seeing Native representation, however problematic, in having Younger and Older Brother be two of the thirteen core groups). But I imagine that was the real reason it stuck in so many people's heads, because it was a substrate for imagination.
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Jul 23, 2023 19:18
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Nessus posted:Giving these groups historical/ethno-regional qualities in Werewolf was a limitation, even if it had some backswing benefit (the above comment on seeing Native representation, however problematic, in having Younger and Older Brother be two of the thirteen core groups). But I imagine that was the real reason it stuck in so many people's heads, because it was a substrate for imagination. Yeah, when you say 'I'm making a Homid Silent Striders Ahroun' you've covered a lot of ground already.
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Jul 23, 2023 20:12
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Whirling posted:I dunno, oWoD was fun and I don't think the average player was into it for the goofy racist poo poo, they were in it because of the goofy superpower poo poo. Its a bad idea to try and bring it back without immense changes to the setting because of the 90s racist stuff, but I don't really see the point in trying to pretend that everyone who goes, "Oh neat, VtM is back," is a racist white guy. At some point a passive acceptance of the wildly racist, unprofessional and hostile bullshit that seems to swarm around the V5 editions makes that argument kinda thin. Knowing the type of person they have committed to keeping on staff, why support it unless they make staffing changes?
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Jul 23, 2023 21:07
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Pakxos posted:At some point a passive acceptance of the wildly racist, unprofessional and hostile bullshit that seems to swarm around the V5 editions makes that argument kinda thin. Sure, I also agree that you shouldn't pay for any of their books until they boot these guys, but I do think that a lot of, for lack of a better word, normies aren't actually aware that any of this stuff is going on. They just see V5 in the local bookstore or gamestore, get it because they enjoyed old VtM, and that's that.
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Jul 23, 2023 21:35
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Whirling posted:Sure, I also agree that you shouldn't pay for any of their books until they boot these guys, but I do think that a lot of, for lack of a better word, normies aren't actually aware that any of this stuff is going on. They just see V5 in the local bookstore or gamestore, get it because they enjoyed old VtM, and that's that. If wasn't old enough to be a Goon and still look at the forum I certainly would have never known. Most of my rpg friends have never heard any of this stuff.
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Jul 23, 2023 21:45
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I don't really care about "normies" (what?) that purchase a game off the shelf, though. If you're putting in casual racist bullshit in your game that you have been informed is casual racist bullshit, you're both an rear end in a top hat and trying to attract a specific audience. We don't give a pass to '90s White Wolf for the "Roma are ~magical~" sourcebook, we certainly shouldn't give it to current WW whatever a perfectly spherical consumer may do when seeing a book cover at the FLGS.
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Jul 23, 2023 21:49
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I thought V5 wasn't doing in store books, that it was all online purchases with on demand printing?
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Jul 23, 2023 22:11
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Soonmot posted:I thought V5 wasn't doing in store books, that it was all online purchases with on demand printing? Nope. My local game store carries some of them at the very least.
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Jul 23, 2023 22:48
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Soonmot posted:I thought V5 wasn't doing in store books, that it was all online purchases with on demand printing? You might be thinking of Onyx Path, who mostly depends on digital purchases with POD if I'm not mistaken. They have a deal with Studio 2 so game stores can order hard copies, but I'm pretty sure most of their sales are on Drive Thru. WoD5 is all in on a full in-store print book run, which is why New White Wolf and eventually just Paradox proper had partnerships with Modiphius and then later Renegade, because they had a dedicated traditional publishing pipeline up already. Pre-orders are always for the same hard copies they'll make for a in-store run, with PDFs only really being a pre-order bonus with a separate release much, much later down the line. If you're a person looking for WoD books in a brick and mortar store, chances are good the shelves are going to be stocked with WoD5 products (and whatever CofD 1e and older WoD edition books the store still has since whenever the store first came into existence, from my personal experience).
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Jul 23, 2023 22:59
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Lord_Hambrose posted:Nope. My local game store carries some of them at the very least. Yeah. We had Vampire and Hunter. Some supplements too but the days of giant shelves of RPG books are long gone so even just having the new Chicago by Night and whatever the book on vampire cults was called is still pretty good.
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Jul 24, 2023 00:23
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Dawgstar posted:Some supplements too but the days of giant shelves of RPG books are long gone so even just having the new Chicago by Night and whatever the book on vampire cults was called is still pretty good. Some places still have them! It's half D&D of course, but it's fun to thumb through Blades in the Dark or Fallout D20 and imagine having a regular group.
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Jul 24, 2023 00:51
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I must have been confusing them with CoD, but I swear I was remembering it as core launch books.
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Jul 24, 2023 02:07
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Soonmot posted:I thought V5 wasn't doing in store books, that it was all online purchases with on demand printing? WoD20 was (mostly) like that, but V5 definitely got the full-court press. Every book gets LGS distribution. I’ve also seen some Æon/Trinity in stores, too, but only the main books + screens.
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Jul 24, 2023 02:20
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I really wanna support the Trinity Continuum books cause they rule, but Onyx Path not paying writers is stopping me.
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Jul 24, 2023 03:23
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AmiYumi posted:WoD20 was (mostly) like that, but V5 definitely got the full-court press. Every book gets LGS distribution. I’ve also seen some Æon/Trinity in stores, too, but only the main books + screens. V5 is mostly being traditionally published thanks to White Wolf, I mean Modiphius, I mean Renegade…whoever. Maybe some of the stuff produced third-party for it by Onyx Path is PoD, I'm not sure. Trinity and Scion, formerly White Wolf properties, are now wholly owned and produced by Onyx Path ever since one or the other of the murders and executions of the White Wolf brand. And OPP's business model is almost always tradprint core books and sometimes certain supplements through Kickstarter and then release follow-ups just through PoD.
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Jul 24, 2023 05:41
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Apropos of nothing in particular, the best thing I've come up with for my Mage game is a psuedo-Euthanatos tradition (uneasily positioned between the Chakravanti and Celestial Chorus) of Scottish Presbyterian justice-and-death mages.Take your grim-faced preacher of a highlands kirk, give him the ability to bend the odds in his favour and to speak to the dead, and boom: Britain's own home-grown Euthanatos faction.
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Jul 24, 2023 07:34
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I know people love archetypes but I think Ascension suffered from the template deployment of them. imo only the Technocrats should have formal, world spanning orgs like that, everyone else should be disparate groups, perhaps with common ancestors and styles but each evolved into their own thing. Small t traditions, rather than Traditions
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Jul 24, 2023 10:49
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:I know people love archetypes but I think Ascension suffered from the template deployment of them. imo only the Technocrats should have formal, world spanning orgs like that, everyone else should be disparate groups, perhaps with common ancestors and styles but each evolved into their own thing. Small t traditions, rather than Traditions They sort of try that with the capital-D Disparates in M20 which were a collection of oddball Crafts and ex-Traditions and focused on much smaller groups (some of them way too cultural appropriation-y, as is WW's historical wont) but like a lot of things in M20 it doesn't work as well as it wants to because they just turn into 'the Traditions but right.'
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Jul 24, 2023 13:34
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Dawgstar posted:They sort of try that with the capital-D Disparates in M20 which were a collection of oddball Crafts and ex-Traditions and focused on much smaller groups (some of them way too cultural appropriation-y, as is WW's historical wont) but like a lot of things in M20 it doesn't work as well as it wants to because they just turn into 'the Traditions but right.' Also if you try to explain what the Disparates are doing right that the Traditions are doing wrong, it's hard to come up with an answer that's not "the author decided he liked them better."
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Jul 24, 2023 13:56
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Rand Brittain posted:Also if you try to explain what the Disparates are doing right that the Traditions are doing wrong, it's hard to come up with an answer that's not "the author decided he liked them better." Yeah. I'm guessing the book is trying to convey they're more motivated to fight the Technocracy* but it's not like the Traditions as portrayed are any less so, so it really does feel like Brucato read a book about Polynesian religious practices and wanted to make a Craft out of it although I do think most of the Disparates are pulled from elsewhere in the game line. *And boy howdy does Phil go hard on 'The Technocracy has been corrupted by the Nephandi' which is... fine, I guess, but very boring.
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Jul 24, 2023 14:37
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I broadly agree. I think a lot of it could've been avoided by presenting the Traditions as purely political blocs of often radically distinct groups, which the Revised books did their best on but really needed to be baked in from the start. Its part of why I've got the Scots 'Euthanatos' in here - they don't consider themselves Euthanatos, the Euthanatos barely recognize them as legitimate, the Choristers are very much uneasy about the 'I will execute great vengeance on them with wrathful rebukes. Then they will know that I am the Lord, when I lay my vengeance upon them' vibe, and so while they're broadly understood as part of the Council they're not really comfortably anywhere. I have a few more I can ramble on about too for the same effect of this idea that the real unifying factor of the Nine Traditions is actually that they're just shifting alliances of convenience in an ongoing struggle for resources, power, and security.
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Jul 24, 2023 14:38
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Dawgstar posted:Yeah. I'm guessing the book is trying to convey they're more motivated to fight the Technocracy* but it's not like the Traditions as portrayed are any less so, so it really does feel like Brucato read a book about Polynesian religious practices and wanted to make a Craft out of it although I do think most of the Disparates are pulled from elsewhere in the game line. The Disparates were all just straight-up pulled from the Book of Crafts and similar sources of disparate smaller factions, all of which were basically originally distinguished by how they were too small to really be movers and shakers in the Ascension War, and Revised often just folded them into the most similar Tradition. And fighting the Nephandi… look, Phil, buddy, Mr Goat Man, they’re just not that interesting. The contradictions of the Technocracy are way more interesting when Always Chaotic Evil magical serial killers aren’t secretly behind it.
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Jul 24, 2023 15:35
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