by Kabael
Well everyone, I’m back. I bet a lot of you didn’t even notice I was gone (I’ll punish you later), but I was. And in my absence a lot of things happened. I got three job offers, started playtesting for 3 different gaming lines, finally began the long, hard road of crafting a useful webpage (in progress now at kabael.8m.com and had to get a whole new slew of email addresses (my present one being kabael@yifan.net). Oh, and I moved in with my girlfriend, as seeing as I have no home of my own. Quite a lot, eh?
So, to begin the with the news. The great and wonderful people (for hiring me) at Eden Studios have given me lots of work to do. Not only am I playtesting on all of their Unisystem lines (those being WitchCraft, Armageddon and the much-to-fun All Flesh Must Be Eaten), but I’m also going to be writing for WitchCraft. I’m in charge of pulling together the sourcebook on the Twilight Order, a group of rather benevolent necromancers. I’ve also been hired by the Apophis Consortium to be an ideas consultant on their game Obsidian: the Age of Judgement, mainly because of a very negative review of the game I wrote on RPGnet. Lastly (at least in the business news), I’ve also been hired by Gamers.com, a site that intends to make a comprehensive list of all the gaming links all across the net. Right now the site is just up in preview, but I find it to be pretty nice-looking and useful already (plug plug).
That’s about it for the off-topic news that I just can’t keep to myself. Not my fault if I’m excited, right?
Anyway, on to this week’s topic: Neutering the Furries: ‘Fixing’ Werewolf: the Apocalypse. I thought that a column that is sure to piss off lots of people is just what I should write when I finally return to De Vita In Excessum. So then, let’s begin class.
Before we go full-tilt, however, I feel it necessary to state up front that Werewolf: the Apocalypse is, by far, my least favorite White Wolf game (repeat after me: Street Fighter does not exist, Street Fighter does not exist). Why is that? For many reasons, primarily among them is the lack of distinctive culture between the tribes and how the game really seems to lend itself to “Argh! I am angry! I rip your arms off and stuff them down your throat! Now I am happy and you are wrong!” Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t really like “Good ol’ hack-n-slash.” I never did. I’m not saying there is something wrong with people who do, or that anyone who runs out and plays some game just to rack up the kills is not a “real gamer,” I’m just saying it never appealed to me. It’s like video games that way. You can play whatever you want, but playing Werewolf just so I can rip 12 fomori a new asshole each round just seems really damned boring to me. Go figure.
So Werewolf always remained low on my list of favorite World of Darkness games. I really love so much of it (and damn if I ain’t a Bastet, laziness and all), but the rest of it just kind of drove me off (a situation similar to my love-hate relationship with Trinity). For a long time (and through flame-wars on the werewolf-l mailing list), I’ve said “Werewolf is broken!” but I usually just said “C’mon, just look at it! Can’t you tell?” so I’ve decided to sit down and try to lay this out logically. So bear with me and try to understand what I’m saying (and that I’m not saying it from above the business end of a flamegun), deal? Deal. Great. Let’s move on.
In broad, general statements, there are three major problems facing Werewolf, I think. They are (in no particular order) tribal homogeneity, an over-emphasis on combat and a disturbing clarity of purpose
(really, I mean that last one).
- When I say “tribal homogeneity,” what I mean is that I really think that there is much too little difference between the tribes. Sure, the Get of Fenris aren’t all lovey-dovey like the Children of Gaia, but beyond that, how much of a difference is there? For an even more extreme example, what about the differences between the Get and the Wendigo? I’m sure that any Werewolf fan is ready to jump up and count off lots of difference, but when you boil it down, they are more similar than, say, Sparta and Athens were, and the two tribes were supposed to have been separated from each other for millennia. Their Umbral cosmologies are almost identical! This makes absolutely no sense to me.
- The problem of overemphasis on combat is simple one, however. Maybe it’s just me again, but I find the pages of combat moves in the basic book really boring. I’ve always been a proponent of freeform combat in all my games. Why should Werewolf be any different? I can understand why some people would want them, however, so that isn’t much more than a burr up my butt. Another problem, however, is the Garou’s bonuses to attributes, which border on the obscene. I would nearly half all of their physical attributes, bringing them a little bit lower on the whoop-ass-itude scale. I think that more information on the culture and traditions of the tribes would help this as well. The Tribebook: Wendigo, for example, was nice in that it showed a side of the tribe that had nothing to do with smushing fomori like bugs under their feet. The things like the rituals for purification and whatnot were great. I think that Werewolf needs a whole Hell of a lot more 1/2 point rituals, the kind that provide culture and detail but only the mildest of mechanical benefits.
- The “clarity of purpose” may be the touchiest of Werewolf‘s wounds, in many ways, because I hold strong to the idea that the world the Garou live in is almost completely black-and-white. It’s not really a World of Darkness, it’s more the World of Darkness – and I have a flashlight. The Garou are right. Their methods are right. They are fighting a war where any atrocity is justified because their enemy is that bad. On top of that, the entire Garou race knows that Gaia came down and said “Here, have a combat-machine for a body and go kill people. I’m God. If I say you can do it, it’s okay.” There are no sects to the Garou Nation (and the idea of a unified Garou Nation kinda bugs me as well) that question that. There are no renegades. There are no heresies. They get hunted down and killed. But that’s okay. ‘Cause Gaia said so.
Within this broad category of issues there are many smaller problems that rear their heads, from a lack of difference between the European tribes to a startling similarity between the Pure Ones and the Wyrmcomers, tribal culture is something that has plagued Werewolf for a long time.
Fie upon the Europeans! (and all the others) – Starting small and working our way up, let’s begin within the tribes. Many of the tribes, even when just taken alone, are bland and vanilla in many ways. For some reason, almost every tribe is directly tied to one Auspice or another, often making the Auspice pretty much redundant. “Get of Fenris Ahroun.” “Uktena Theurge.” “Fianna Galliard.” Doesn’t anyone else get bored of this? What’s the point of having a difference between tribe and Auspice when there pretty much isn’t one as far as the source material goes?
When I read the (horrible) Tribebook: Get of Fenris, I wanted information on Nordic magic and gifts and culture and Gods. I want to play a Get Theurge who is dripping so much flavor that he drowns small children if he stands in one place for too long. The Tribebook didn’t help me (except to decide not to simply buy every other Tribebook). The problem is that like many other splats (both from White Wolf and not), the tribes are much too narrow, at least within the source material.
How do you fix that? Research and ideas. If I had my way, each Tribebook would have been filled with tales and legends of the tribe, and then a great deal of information on how the Auspices work within the tribe, as well as how members relate to (and view) the various Incarna and Totems. I don’t think that a Silent Strider and a Fianna are going to call all the totems by the same name. The realization that each tribe has a slightly different “religion” is a late unto Werewolf, but it did appear in Rage Across the Heavens, and it was one of the reasons I loved the book so much.
Kill Whitey! (and the red-skin!)– Moving one step above each tribe, we reach the Garou nation. What’s the problem here? Look at Europe. Then look at North America. Look again. Get a better map if you need to, this is really important. Do you see the sheer distance between the two lands? Yes? Good. Why are the Garou pretty much identical on both sides of the pond? You don’t know either? Well I’ll be, ’cause I certainly don’t either.
I could understand this if Werewolf made specific mention of how the tribes used Moon Bridges to hop here and there and everywhere (we are the gummi bears!… ahem…), but I’m fairly certain it says the opposite, that they were not used to frequently cross the Atlantic and that the distance between the Pure Ones and the Wyrmcomers was part of what set the stage for the bloody conflict between the tribes that followed. Note: this is also what made Werewolf: the Wild West so absurdly cool. Screw the Apocalypse, gimme my six-shooter, pahtna.
So the tribes are separated by thousands and thousands and thousands of years. Yet after all of that, they still have the same society and the same cosmology and religion. Does anyone else find that hard to swallow? Don’t give me the “they’re actually right and the spirits in the Umbra told them about how everything really worked and stuff” excuse because that’s just a weak cop-out. I don’t want any group “really” knowing what’s going on. That just doesn’t fit the World of Darkness. It’s hard to retain ignorance when you can just steal the teacher’s cheat sheet, isn’t it? So why is it that the Pure Ones and the Europeans worshipped the same deities, had the same totems, and had the same cosmologies (as in the same lay-out for the spirit worlds and hierarchies)? I certainly can’t think of a reason.
So how would I fix this one? I’d come up with broad, continental cosmologies (because remember, each tribe should have a different spin on it) that are different from each other in as many ways as possible.
In generalities, I would give the Europeans a much more structured view of spirits and the Umbra. Complicated hierarchies and specific regions of the Umbra would be in order. A spirit’s brood would be very important, determining just how the theurge should interact with it. For the Native American tribes, I think that a much looser, symbolic organization would work well. Sometimes their classifications of brood would differ greatly from those of their European brethren and questions like “Can you draw me a map of the Umbra?” would be met with blank stares.
Note: I just did this with the most cursory of thoughts. This is obviously a stereotype on both Europeans as well as the Native Americans. That’s what research is for, however, to provide that extra detail that takes it beyond stereotypes and into something both useful and cool.
It’s a good thing Gaia left this-here book of short-cuts to reality – Argh. This ties in directly with the problem of Werewolf being much too clear about nearly everything, but is more of an effect of that than a root.
For some reason, Werewolf, the World of Darkness game with the most potential for rich, unique cultures, seems to have the least amount of it. In Werewolf, things that should be central to each character and caern are left as afterthoughts and add-ons. Totems should be like personal Gods. Imagine how much it would affect your life it you could just say “Hey, God, Can I ask you a question?” and you hear a rumbling voice that says “Sure, why not? I kinda like you.” How would you react? As far as I can tell in Werewolf, most of the Garou react by turning their totems into nifty slaves to do their bidding. That says something about humanity’s relationship with their Gods, I’m sure, but that’s another game. For some reason I’m not able to fathom, the Mokol&cute; are able to have a more distinct culture between their “streams” than the Garou do between their numerous tribes – and the Garou don’t have an over-riding racial memory to tell them what do. Breedbook: Mokol&cute; really did a good job with the Mokol&cute;, the kind of work that should have been done on the Garou from the beginning.
Much more energy in Werewolf should have been spent in defining their culture, providing holidays, superstitions, minor rituals, religions, heresies (such as were
mentioned in Breedbook: Ratkin) and whatnot instead of Rage Across East Bumfuck. The tribebooks should have been filled with sections on cosmology, religion and heretical sects. Like Clanbook: Assamite, most of the tribebooks have astounded me with their ability to be completely empty.
So what about the “overemphasis on combat?” What do I mean by that? Well, maybe it has something to do with the obscene combat abilities of the Garou, but that might just be me. I have to wonder why the special Werewolf dice don’t have upwards of 20 dice in there. Some characters need that many dice, even when down due to wounds.
Sure, the Garou are Gaia’s warriors and pledged to defend her and yadda yadda yadda, but do we need to make every Garou a ginzu-fighting machine? When you start out as a death-dealing god, it’s hard to have some feeling of progression, you know what I mean? Even without Gifts, Garou are monstrosities, giving new meaning to “handfuls of dice.” With Gifts, they can just get disgusting, and I’ve seen many Werewolf games devolve into “Ayaih! I can do more aggravated damage than a sun going nova! Wahoo!” That’s not really that fun, I don’t think.
So just what do you do about that? Surprisingly little, actually. Drop the attribute bonuses a bit, cut some of the more outrageous combat Gifts and replace them with something else and have lots and lots of material on how to bring the game away from being that red in tooth and claw.
Like I said, this is a relatively minor and easily fixed quibble, but it’s one that I’ve seen ruin many a game, sadly.
Now is the time for my biggest beef with Werewolf, and the one that is the hardest to fix, because it lies at the very heart of the game.
So what is this Big Nasty Bad Thing? The fact that the Garou have no reason to doubt that what they are doing (and how they are doing it) is right. They have no reason to feel guilty for committing murder (or even mass murder) on a daily basis. I have to say that there has never been a game more in need of being played within Powerkill – it’s the best way to show just how absurd and immoral the Garou act. Even the token nod at accepted morality that the Children of Gaia are doesn’t help much. They are just too “nice” and set into the fringe.
My problem here ties in with the first issue I dealt with, that of culture. Werewolf needs more cultural deviation, but that is kinda hard when the book comes right out and hands you the objective truth and says “That’s okay, I’ll do the thinking for you. Go kill the baddies for Mommy, ‘kay?” Again, not really my kind of game. I do not like anyone in the setting of a game having a direct “in” on how everything works. The Garou know they’re right. They know that they are justified in committing murder.
People have argued with me saying “How can you say that they aren’t right in fighting ecological destruction?” I can’t. But does that mean every Garou can’t either? There are people in the world who could care less about the environment, or to whom other things take precedence. Why should the Garou be any different? Why don’t we have more focus on how the Bone Gnawers have turned to helping the down-trodden man, or how the Black Furies have tried to change society and help women?
Le sigh. Let me try to rephrase. Werewolf (and Kindred of the East and Land of Eight Million Dreams) suffers from a clarity of vision. The “right and true way” is much too obvious in the setting, it pretty much over-rules everything else. That is a bad thing, in my opinion. Sure, the fight against the Wyrm is damned important, but so is world peace, and how many people really work towards that? It just seems unrealistic to have so many people so intently focused on one thing. It’s hard to have a character who just wants to have a good ol’ life breaking the law when he’s abandoning the War. You can’t say “Hey! It’s my life and my decision, ain’t hurtin’ nobody else if’n I wanna live here and hunt ‘coons.” It is, because the Garou were so obviously created for a purpose. I don’t like that restriction on characters.
A friend of mine (hey Joe!) once told me that he thinks Werewolf is too subtle. At first, I was confused by what he said but after he explained it, I have to agree. In many ways, Werewolf is a game about just what it means to be evil and the role of religion in our lives. Unfortunately, the fact that the Garou are themselves racist, callous hate-mongers with “IMPULSE CONTROL PROBLEM” tattooed across their forehead is, generally, completely missed by the players, as is the religious side of the game, because it is relegated to just what each totem provides you and how many background points it costs. Don’t bother with worship or veneration, you paid the points… right?
Werewolf tries to show the horror that man can be by having the players take on the role of horrible monsters that have managed to rationalize all their atrocities until they think that they are holy warriors fighting for their God. The problem is, almost no one reads the fine print (written in the blood of innocents that just happened to “be in the way”) and instead of making the players ask themselves “Just how far is too far?” the game says “Yes! Step right to be decapitated!”
I don’t like being spoon-fed myself, and I’m in the “if you answer it yourself, you’ll remember it better” camp myself.
Not by a long-shot. There are other problems I have with the game, like the mere existence of the Veil (argh! I hate it!) and the proliferation of boring Gifts, but those are problems that are solved even easier than that combat situation. Just cut them right out. Simple.
So those three major problems are what I see as Werewolf‘s major elements of gimp nature. Those are the things that keeps the game from being the best damned shamanistic spiritual horror game out there. I mean, it’s Call of Cthulu meets werewolves, or at least it could be.
In the ideal, Werewolf: the Apocalypse would be a game that is just as philosophical as Mage: the Ascension (just what is evil?) and as much about personal horror as Vampire: the Masquerade (screw “lest the beast I become,” you already are the beast – what does that mean?). Spice it with Call of Cthulu and Kult (so I like “your life is a lie” kinds of games, so what?) and you have a winner. A game that makes people go “You play Werewolf?
Wow…..”
But again, that’s just me…
I’ll try to be back next month, ain’t that great! What will I be doing? I haven’t the faintest idea, really. Please, send me your comments and suggestions – that’s why I do this column, you know, for the response mail.
Some people liked the character idea column from long ago, maybe I’ll continue that. For the non-Camarilla Clans or for a new game line? Maybe I’ll look at Changeling: the Dreaming the same way I did Werewolf this week. I know that there has been some really nice work done on the web with Changeling.
Wait! I know! I’ll do a special column looking at resources on the net for the World of Darkness. What I think was good and bad and what I have links to. That sounds good to me, but if someone has a better idea, I’m all ears… :)