The Werewolf Game That's Scared of Itself | Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Earthblood
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 พ.ย. 2023
- Continuing our break from D&D video games, today we're discussing a Werewolf the Apocalypse game from 2021. It's a World of Darkness game with a rich and storied IP to draw from.
Sadly, despite the triumph of Earthblood being the first Werewolf: The Apocalypse game to release - despite 25 YEARS of failed attempts - it's a very bad game. The problem? The game is clearly terrified of it's own IP and the controversial topics it covers.
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Surviving footage of the Dreamforge Werewolf game: • Werewolf the Apocalyps... - เกม
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You can certainly tell Hbomberguy's Deus Ex video was on my brain in the last third.
But I stand by my coverage - Earthblood was clearly a game that failed to realize it was supposed to be an immersive sim.
immersive sim ?
i personally solved this problem by not watching Hbomberguy's content anymore so please dont poach too much from him -- there was a reason for that.
@@mvrk4044 I don't think he was saying it negatively...
@@Razamaniacthink bioshock,deus ex or system shock
@@mementomori771 that would have been nice I suppose
Gaia: I shall create the changing breeds to be the perfect stewards of my world and it's greatest protectors will be the Garou, whose every power is literally fueled by rage.
Garou: *Murders everyone they were supposed to protect.*
Gaia: *shocked Pikachu face.*
They didn murder everyone. They just warred with all other fera, reduced Bears to two digit population, so they've gone to sleep in Umbra for centuries, reduced Grondirs aka Boars to statistical mistake, genocided the Bunyips to the last one, made enemies out of Bastet, murderated Camasotz by mistake, some may still be out there in South America, and are shunned by Mokole because they remember everything the Garou did. They are on neutral ground with the Rokea just by the fact that the Sharks dont go on land except to get it on, and even that is done at distance.
@@AlexKrossLore I dunno, boss. That sounds a lot like they murdered everyone.
@@AlexKrossLore Dont forget that they murdered the snakes so hard they are now a tale you tell little garou to scare them into being good little gaia soldiers.
I now feel nothing for them, they get what they ask for 😂
Original Gaias protectors, the first changing breed tasked with being warriors were Gurahl - the werebears however they got nearly completely wiped out so they begged Gaia for help. She had to make something with stronger teeth you know. Also since Africa is the one continent with neither bears nor wolves it has it's own special warrior species - Ajaba, the werehyenas. These guys were nearly wiped out by werelions though, so Garou are not the only fera(changing breeds/werethings) with war crimes on their paws.
it's a bummer the black spiral dancers don't look like black spiral dancers (werewolves who look like wolf-bat hybrid crinos dudes), and SUPER WEIRD that the RED TALONS were the 'sit back and let the world end cause what can we do' group in this game, since the Red Talons are actually the MOST actively violent destroyers of humanity's creations in the actual core roleplaying game.
wait.
WHY DO THEY NOT HAVE KLAIVES? Where are the super awesome WEREWOLF SWORDS?
@@hadeseye2297 Speaking as someone who hates everything to do with W5...TOUCH. GRASS.
Hard agree with Leiliel lol. I agree that a lot of adaptations are terrible cash grabs that disrespect the source material and the more modern versions of some companies can be kind of politically charged(not that they weren't in the past), but your post looks like the archetypal 'insane rant'.
i must have missed some quality response from this hadeseye2297 person. 😆
Hehe yeah it was deranged. Hilarious, but so 'crazed rant' that despite having a valid point, it made you think the opposite.
Bruh can't believe that people are doing the "hurr durr everything is woke" brainworm shit about Werewolf, the game that's literally about being ecoterrorists out to destroy capitalism to save the planet.
I'm so sad that Mage: The Ascension is like, the HARDEST system you could possibly design for adapting into a video game. The entire basis of how magic (or "Willworking" to use the technical term) works is so, SO dependent on the role-playing aspect that I feel like any sort of strict mechanicalization of the system would just completely gut it and turn it into D&D spells. But I ran so much more Mage than any other WoD anything in high school. Heck, I've probably made more Mage characters than D&D characters, including D&D video games.
Ascencion rules for spell casting are so convulated not even buccato himself can explain how it works in a 200+ page book, its honestly a hot mess
Both awakening and Ascencion are actually beginner manuals for occultists disguised as RPG books
How so?
Scibblenauts comes to mind lol
Not even Ars Magica (Which is basically Order of Hermes: Dark Ages) is straightforward enough for video games. Not without a true AI running it.
But all the rest of the WoD games would work perfectly. A good Wraith game could be AMAZING in fact, focusing on playing a member of one of the banned Guilds, tampering with the mortal world and the living, while constantly having to look over your shoulder because you're a criminal AND the big bads want you gone too, so there's no port in the storm.
Eh, you'd just have to make a game about a specific tradition. Son of Ether come to mind. Maybe order of Hermes with some stealth mechanics for casting. It would be difficult to do it right, and I don't trust modern AAA studios to put the effort in.
"...The first and last defence against the apocolypse." No thanks to the Garou themselves though, given how they massacered most of the other changing breeds.
Also, it's a massive shame how Paradox's decisions have soured by view of the IP's in general. Some really tasteless shit in the 5e books, as well as treatment of writer's work and views.
Oh, how bad is it? I've heard 5e released but that's about it
@@shards-of-glass-man 5e is complete dog shit with absolutely nothing whatsoever decent about it. Seriously. It's best to just pretend 5e doesn't even exist. Every release is a continuous dump in the face of the IP.
@@shards-of-glass-man well, I haven't seen much else but shortly after 5e released one of the guys on the writing team (J. F. Sambrano) came out abt the Discriminatory and dismissive treatment they and others on the WtA5e writing team received from the employees at White Wolf and paradox.
there was also a pre-release controversy around the likeness of Maori activist Tame Wairere Iti being included in the book but that was resolved shortly after it originally sparked and it was removed from the book
5e WoD books suck because they make complete departures from the themes and tones of WoD that made it great to begin with. The changes they made to the lore and the weird political crap they put in made everything much less interesting. They killed off some of the most interesting factions in the game (the Sabbat) and didn't put anything new in to replace them. They really just dumbed everything down. (Even the Nosferatu aren't nightmarish freakshows anymore because they didn't want to offend anyone :((()
I also just don't think WoD will ever work in a modern setting beyond the 90's/early 2000's. The gothic-punk/metal tones of the setting were designed with that era of the world being the backdrop. The cultural inspirations of that time rang true in the WoD, and it kind of feels like WoD is out of place in the 2020's/late 2010's. Everything was kind of ramping up for Y2K or Gehenna, and when that event just doesn't occur (for the sake of profits, of course) it makes everything feel like a lot of the lore went absolutely nowhere. Its all basically one big anti-climax. @@shards-of-glass-man
@@roberthartburg266I'd like to see some sources for your claims.
The Get of Fenris situation was always bound to happen in the story. Or rather: it was always clear that either the get or the fangs would would lead to the downfall of the garou nation and/or fall to the wyrm. Only question was when. The stories and lore were quite clear on that.
Wait, the pack of "Let's hang back and just try to survive" Werewolves led by Onawa are... Red Talons? What? It would make much more sense lorewise if they were Children of Gaia (or maybe Elder Brother), but Talons? The "We never breed with filthy humans" tribe? The "The only mistake about the Impergium was ending it while there were still humans alive" tribe? (As I remember them from the previous editions at least, maybe they completely changed it in 5th...) This game sounds like it could have had so much potential to tell interesting stories, to ask uncomfortable questions, all squandered it seems for the sake of mediocrity...
+1 to this. Unless the Talons had been corrupted or fallen to the weapons-grade depression that Garou get, they'd probably be dead already having expended their lives fighting, or harassing the facility nonstop. Though that totem spirit looks pretty fugly, so I'm wondering if they are tainted somehow.
(Not too familiar with 5E, but AFAIK the Get are NPC antagonist only - they fell to something called Hauglok, which basically made them into dangerous fanatics that are as much a hazard to the Garou as they are to anyone else.)
Now I understand. See, here's the thing about big game companies nowadays: they are scared of telling thought provoking stories. Best example of this would be games like Watch_Dogs Legion, Tom Clancy's The Division, Saints Row 2022, all of those games has little nuggets there of something bigger and thought provoking going on in their stories yet are discarded due to corporate greed going "wait, no, we can't let our players think! It's gonna make people who are against the stance this game gives to hate us! Problem tho, World of Darkness is a very thought provoking series, you can't make World of Darkness games without delving into these things.
In W5 they tuned down a little the Talons hatred for humanity but not completely they accept hominid garou in their ranks now, but they still kill and eat humans a lot the last part still being against the Litany but that doesn't stop them.
In the game, they hate people, they attack people who help us, their abnormal behavior is caused by the fact that the servants of the Wyrm desecrated their totem spirit, another thing is that in the game it is very poorly disclosed (Mainly through notes), this is generally a problem of the game, due to difficulties during development, most of the interesting ideas are implemented exclusively in the form of notes (The game as a whole did not come out what it was supposed to be, it was conceived as an RPG, not a beat em up ).
@@funnydreadking9237 I was getting that vibe with the design of the spirit, but thank you for clarifying. Yeah, that's a huge **** up on the game's part.
There was a lore explanation about Kinfolk and the Dilerium. It checks against a stat that wasn't actually present in Bloodlines. All characters have a Willpower score between 1 and 10 (3 is normal for a human.) The higher your willpower, the less the Delerium affects you. To the point that characters with Willpower 10 are completely unaffected (and, actually slightly unnerve most Garou.) All kinfolk have increased resistance to the Delerium. Going from memory, completely forgetting the incident stops at Willpower 3, at 4, they'll rationalize it away. At around 6 or 7 (which is fairly rare in the general population), they'll remember enough that they're prone to seeking out and trying to expose (or hunt) werewolves. Humans in this range can be genuinely dangerous to the Garou, as a result. IIRC, most Kinfolk are assumed to resist the Delerium as if their score was 8 or 9, but I can't remember the exact value.
Also, the other changing breeds (with the exception of the Rokea (Weresharks)) have reduced delerium tables. A wereraven might freak you out, but it's not going to produce the same kind of pants shitting terror that a werewolf in war form will.
From the sounds of it, hybreeding in other World of Darkness content would result in stuff like Hunters having that super-high Willpower stat, whereas ironically stuff from Vampires might hit a 5 or lower
@@gratuitouslurking8610 It depends what you mean by Hunters.
Imbued (player characters from Hunter: The Reckoning) have normal Willpower ranges, but they also have a stat called Conviction. Spending Conviction to activate "Second Sight" (an ability every Imbued has automatically) gives them a lot of immunities to supernatural effects, including The Delirium. It also makes them completely immune to Domination, and Arcane (a Mage background) no longer affects them. More than that, if you try to use one of these effects on them, and most of the time Second Sight will activate automatically. (It's actually an interesting power, because a Hunter with Second Sight active can actually identify supernatural creatures, including Garou in their human forms. A lot of creatures in WoD have methods of identifying other supernatural creatures on sight (though, they not know WHAT they're looking at, and it's never a basic power every creature possesses), however, Imbued only appear supernatural to these powers while Second Sight is active. If they turn it off, they become indistinguishable from a normal human.)
With some creeds of Imbued (basically, their classes/factions), you could pretty easily run mixed Werewolf/Hunter campaigns. It's not going to work if you have any of the more militant creeds, but Creeds like Redeemers, Innocents, Visionaries, and even Defenders or Judges could work with Garou, if they were able to avoid killing one another on first contact. (This also depends on the Werewolf Tribes, like a Glass Walker or Bone Gnawer might have an easier time dealing with a Judge than a Red Talon, for example.)
If you mean normal hunters, then, yeah, they tend to come in a couple flavors, but a lot of them need high willpower. The big reason for this is, in contrast to anything they're fighting, they are extremely fragile.
It's also worth knowing that most supernatural creatures aren't affected by the Delirium. So, Mages, for example, can see a werewolf transform without incident. (Then again, Mages tend to have extremely high willpower because that is a major part of how their magic works.) It shouldn't be surprising, but Fomori and Banes are always immune to the Delirium.
Also, not that it matters, but it's not possible for a Kinfolk to become Imbued. And generally, directly hybridizing supernatural creatures is officially impossible or creates something entirely new (as with the Tremere.)
I did find the Delirium table though, and I'd misrembered a few details. One big error was that up to Willpower 6, characters will forget. Willpower 6 will actually try to talk their way out, trying to plead and bargain for their lives. At 7 and 8, they will remember, but will try to rationalize the experience, however, Willpower 8 characters will actually get curious and investigate the werewolves after the event is over. Willpower 9 provokes an instinctual drive for retribution against the Garou for the Imperium, and they will remember without issue what happened. (This accounts for about 1.5% of the general populace.) Willpower 10 (0.5% of the populace), have no reaction whatsoever (as mentioned earlier.)
White Wolf gave percentages for each Willpower score in the general populace, and 48% are between 1 and 3, while 7-10 accounts for about 14%, which does make wolfing out randomly in public a much deicer proposition than it initially seems.
@@StarkeRealmAnd when you take the whole WoD into consideration, the risk of a MiB, Iterator, Flambeau, militant Chorister, or Euthie being in those crowds spikes it from dicey to 'completely not worth it'. Unless you're using certain Uktena gifts, there's no way to know if that high WP human is just stubborn, or thinks reality is just a suggestion and that your nose is actually on fire.
About humans that do not suffer delirium: some humans related to the Garou are called kinfolk - humans that did not inherit the fear humans have of the werewolves. The Garou bred kinfolk from humans kind of the same way we bred dogs from wolves, and now they surround themselves with kinfolk as their main contact with humanity. So it is quite possible that the humans supporting the Garou in the videogame are actually kinfolk (but I'm not sure if that is the justification in the game, since I didn't play it)
Yep. Kinfolk, Ghouls (including Revenants), Kinain, Hedge Mages, Awakened Mages, and whatever mortal proxies the demons use are free of Delirium, though most of them will still react with panic because /it's a 900lb killing machine fueled by concentrated supernatural rage/.
yeah I found it odd he seemingly didn't know about them tbh
ALL of the Garou's non-Garou relatives are kinfolk. It's also extremely common for kinfolk to have no idea werewolves exist, much less they are descended from them. When one of these wayward cousins breeds a true Garou who goes psychotically furious and shape shifts into the Crinos Warform towards the beginning of puberty, it doesn't tend to end well.
@@lichlord9838And let's not forget the absolute worst case scenario for everyone, the Danislav Revenant family (which is virtually extinct in modern times). Nothing like a whole family of kinfolk superghouls that very rarely produces a werewolf superghoul.
@@lichlord9838 and breeding with kinfolk over regular wolves/humans raises the chances of shifter kid but still if I recall 1 in 10 on shifter/kin pairing
"White Wolf doubled down in a very different way," is like... the perfect summary of all the in-house issues with a lot of the World of Darkness content. XP
Thinking about it, a werewolf game styled off of hitman could be pretty sick. Becoming more wolf like for better navigation, with hispro for a mix of combat and maneuverability, with human form for hitman style sneaky gun combat, glabro being for combat and limited stealth, and kyrnos for going ape shit.
You could be graded based on how much delirium you caused and how indiscriminate you are with your slaughter, like, high delirium high slaughter actions might lower whatever support you get and make later missions have more security, while low delirium low slaughter results make it so you get more outside support and keep the enemy from ramping up their security resources.
Could be a ploy about a bone gnawer or glass walker systematically assassinating and sabatoging corporate Raiders and worm servants
The werewolf videogame I used to dream of back in highschool always had a good bit of Mirror's Edge DNA in it, lots of urban traversal with some superhuman physicality, lots of evasion where combat is usually just speedy takedowns. Until SHTF in a big way like getting surrounded or cornered, and the only way out is the good old "RIP AND TEAR."
Ideally those situations would also (usually) be avoidable if the player was careful or observant of the surroundings.
Did you just discribe Dishonored: Werewolf?
Honestly that would 100% work yet people would focus too hard on the story and ignore making the gameplay right. Personally It would be nice if different factions would have different in mission goals. So people would be rewarded for their gameplay style in and out of missions. Red Talons are kicking all sorts of ass, Ghost Walkers are gathering all the mystical intel they can get, Those Bone Gnawers would be infiltrators while Glass Walkers would be defenders
I loved the opening bit...
(Also as a lore note, werewolf kinfolk are not subject to the delerium, don't know how that works for the non relatives though)
I'm vaguely of the understanding that as a non-kinfolk human comes into contact with Garou in their "full glory" more and more, they become decensitized to Delirium. The veil of self-deception eroding, until the person sees the werewolves as they truly are. (I'm also fairly certain most supernatural characters, or "Night Folk", gain a chance to resist the Delirium simply from being already exposed to the existence of things outside mortal ken).
@@Bluecho4 if i recall correctly the specific rules regarding this have to do with their willpower rating, they shrug it off if their willpower is bonkers high, and then the threshold gets lower and lower the more they're exposed
@@Bluecho4High willpower humans can also respond violently or with obsession
I'd argue the Warriors of Gaia would be wildly successful if they just put on those light-up fairy wings. We'd all be like "Who's a good Warrior of Gaia?... You are, yes you are!".
I would be willing to sew a hot dog costume for a warewolf in war form.
With how much my buddies and I played Changeling, I was legit taken aback to learn that it wasn't part of the "big three" alongside Vampire.
Changeling is too weird to be one of the big three
I adore the Fae in WoD, probably because I worship them IRL.
Probably the "4th biggest" game, but Changeling isnowhere near as big as the "big 3". Better than Wraith or Mummy though, nobody is playing those games. I've only seen them in mixed World of Darkness campaigns where people can play vampires, werewolves, images, etc.
Im so here for more nonD&D stuff on the channel. Don't get me wrong, i love D&D games and history, but it has such a stranglehold on the scene that its always nice to see other games get attention.
I've always said that D&D is the most popular RPG because it's the most popular RPG. Normally that would be a paradox, but D&D was the first and immediately became the Band-Aid of RPGs, so nothing else has ever really had a chance.
One of the biggest missed opportunities for this game was only including stuff from Werewolf. Werewolf is also very much connected to Vampire The Masquerade, Hunter The Reckoning, and to a lesser extent Wraith The Oblivion.
Imagine adding in Kindred as special enemies. They move faster, hit harder, might even inflict status effects on you from Dominate. Or an entire boss fight against a Lasombra or Ventrue, since both are intertwined with a ton of big corporations.
Hell, there could be a plotline where you actually team up with some vampires, maybe Anarchs. You wanna fight against the Wyrm, they just wanna fuck up some Cammies, so for the time being, your goals are aligned. While Garou are very conservative in their traditions and usually kill Kindred on sight, shit's changed, they're going extinct. If it means winning, who cares how it's done?
Hell, the entire OWOD is about exploring the duality of humans-turned-various-forms-of-monster. Like William was saying, the Werewolves only have a chance if they get better as people. Christof and Ekaterina's party want to bring back the enlightened vampire/human society. Hunters just want to keep humanity safe from the predators. Werewolves themselves share half their blood with their supposed enemies and were intended to be their shepherds, not their jailers. There's potential for some big experiment for a better world, even if it would have to be doomed by canon I think it'd be a fun idea to explore.
@@featurelength5086 Yeah! Not all Hunters are zealots. Most just want to protect people, and if one were to find out Garou aren't just mindless beasts, and their attacks have a purpose, they could work together. After all, I'd rather deal with werewolves keeping to themselves in the woods than the five hundred year old vampire CEO who's draining people by the dozens.
I mean, you're not wrong, but majority of the player base and the writers hated the idea of crossovers and blending the lines between the games. Stuff mostly stayed in its own silos and was never intended to blend. Oddly, Pentex and Wyrm source material were the exceptions - they tended to have vamps and mages pop up pretty regularly.
Solid basis for a campaign to GM. Go for it.
Actually 🤓
While there were vampires, hunters and mages confirmed in each WoD games it was never started they were the same monster from the other games
NwoD was the one built with letting all splats interact its why they all have the same power stat (blood potency, gnosis, wyrd, etc)
One thing that set the W:tA books apart on the store shelves in the 90s was the extensive use of die-cut covers. Each tribe's splatbook had that faction's clawmark glyph cut out of its cover. However, those glyphs were not designed with the idea of making die-cut negative spaces that were still reasonably sturdy, and sometimes whole sections of the cover would just get folded back and eventually torn off out of normal wear and tear.
So no joke, I started playing this yesterday and after 2 hours? It's fine? So far there's some interesting ideas but just a minute into the video, we already agree on a few things.
Also, this is already rated M or 18 in Europe. It is very bloody but the lack of full-on gore is baffling on a game like this.
That's identicle to where my head was at when I was around 2 hours playtime. Game was fine, not great, but fine - and it REALLY seemed like the interesting ideas were going to go somewhere.
Except then they don't.
@@WilliamSRD Depends how seriously you take it. Sometimes the best way is just to stop thinking and go with the flow.
@@diamondhamster4320When it comes to something I've paid good money for thats a quick way to wind up broke.
@@LiterallyAWesternHognose Then don`t pay good mone for it a only get it on super sale for 1 to 5 USD???
@@diamondhamster4320 Fair enough point taken.
The idea of a World of Darkness MMO just seems so weird. Like a lot of people have repeatedly pointed out, World of Darkness really isn't about the mechanics. It's not really about combat or getting new powers or anything like that. It's not about acquiring new magical items and equipment. I mean those things happen but they're very much secondary to the rest of the game.
I'm not saying it couldn't have been fun. But. I just don't see how the setting really fits the mmo, log on and do the same fight over and over for loot, etcetera gameplay style that almost every MMO embodies.
I mean yeah you can point at Eve Online but that's a starship simulator game. You have a whole universe to just be a sandbox for people to run around and do their thing and form alliances and all that.
Like just imagine a city where thousands of vampires are all just running around. It just really doesn't make a whole lot of sense. You really need a human storyteller or three to even keep the feeling of the setting coherent in a LARP of a dozen or two players. I don't think a computer game could possibly manage that for players. Especially not over a significant period of time. It just seems like a doomed project from the start.
There was an official World of Darkness MUD run by White Wolf. I missed the official sign off due to other obligations.
I'd argue in the sense of an EVE online (choose your path to success) and Second Life where it's just run by players, an MMO WoD game could work IF there were enough servers to make it so a city wasn't over popped by Vamps. It would also be interesting if the game got large enough that they expanded it so there were more than one city you could go to.
However I think the real way to make it work is limit the server size to be similar to that of survival games like Conan or Enshrouded. You have NPC's holding the positions of power in the sects until there are PC's that can take those positions. Then when they do, it becomes a PVPVE game where most of the sects are run by actual players, and the consolidation of power is done mostly through social political stuff, so you couldn't murder hobo. Unless you were in the Sabbat sect which there would be mechanics that made it so you couldn't just start killing whenever you want. So instead of running into people and fighting on sight without having to initiate some in game thing to allow PVP to begin with, there are designated times/prereq's that have to be met within the games system through the player controlled mission giving so that eventually they could earn a position or kill somebody. Since a lot of stuff is done in the style of corporate espionage (at least in the cam) it would be less direct PVP and more just sending assassins after people or shit like that I suppose. As for the "VE" part, that would just be Hunters and the occasional werewolf I suppose.
Permadeath would have to be something strongly considered due to being able to actually rotate players in power. Every server would probably need a ST or three to run it or maybe the Primogen council and the Prince would all just be ST's that give missions to their clans and anybody that wants to gain boons across other clans. I feel like the physical combat of the game would barely take place between players save for specific situations though that probably the ST's have to allow. I can see that being a problem for the selfish players that refuse to give up their turn on the seats of power but playing the game and being the ST's are too very different experiences. Hell, the ST's can be playing a completely different game as the Elders that are directing the Neonate players. Their own intrigue/Jyhad. It would be difficult, but I'm sure it's doable.
Being honest, I clicked on this video mostly to see if you'll mention the Heart of the Forest. I'm glad that you liked it. It would be great if you'd make a video dedicated to it. I think this game is underappreciated.
As for Werewolf: the Apocalypse in general, I kinda personally prefer the lore of Werewolf: the Forsaken (the New Word of Darkness equivalent of Apocalypse). In this system, werewolves are all about keeping a "balance" between our world and the world of the spirits and the diferent sides of their own nature, while trying to satisfy their territorial and hunting instincts in constructive ways (there's also a millenia-old basically religious conflict between 'the Forsaken' and 'the Pure', but that's a whole another convoluted thing). The environmental themes are not in the forefront by design but they can be easily emphasized, as environmental degradation negatively affects the spirit world.
I don't like that in the Apocalypse a significant part of the blame for the global environmental crisis can be put on one super powerful megacorporaton, which serves an evil eldrich god, and actively strives to destroy the world. Also, all this is happening in the same setting as VtM, but barely mentioned in Vampire lore. Despite the fact that many vampires are actively involved with great corporations, even controlling them. One could think they would be aware of Pentex and at least a bit concerned. I think this is a bit silly.
I think that in some Mage books about technocracy there were mentions about wyrm-corrupted corporations and that is a very cool connection. All the great scientists of world of darkness and people who brought about industrial revolution were mages so it kinda would make a lot of sense if Pentex would be lead by enlightened mages (technocrats/artificers). Making world of darkness magic for NPCs isn't as big of a hassle as with making it for players. Also one of the very cool features of Mage series is that the main antagonists - the Technocracy are heroes in their own eyes and they do have some neat reasons for thinking so. That nuance could be extended to Pentex but no Werewolf writers never went into that direction. Technology changed human life for the better after all and people are no longer killed by werewolves on regular basis. It could be an interesting observation that it's not just that evil oil companies are ruining the world, the work of oil companies helps make our civilized world with all the conveniences that we have, and other things that human like such as books, computers or video games.
@@AleksoLaĈevalo999 because the group that represents the good side of technology are the Glass Walkers tribe not Pentex
@@AleksoLaĈevalo999 also after humans stoped being killed by werewolves they started killing the planet and each other
As much as I did like Apolcalypse I have to say that I was never able to buy the Pure. I've always thought that thousand-year grudges were more the area of vampires instead of beings with moral life spans.
Your comedy and presentation gets better with every video!
Also, excuse me, WE ALMOST HAD A BLOODLINES WEREWOLF GAME!? AAAAAAAAAAA
The Gilneas music did not go unnoticed and it did not go unappreciated good sir
Also thank you so much, my friends like VtM a bunch but we've never really ventured out into the other WoD TTRPGs and now I am aching to play Werewolf the Apocalypse it sounds fantastic!
I think the biggest problem with werewolf the apocalypse is that it's core lore basically requires you to be so utterly misanthropic because the lore and goals of the protagonists is just straight up misanthropic to a ridiculous degree
FINALLY someone mentions Heart of the forest! That one game with werewolf setting is actually good.
Kinfolk - non-werewolf offspring of werewolves - are immune to delirium.
I stand by Werewolf: Wild West being a fantastic game.
5th Edition Werewolf can die by the talons of the Get of Fenris, though.
I'm a bit sus on the "historical settings outside of vampire didn't sell well" claim. Some like Wraith Great War, sure I don't think those were huge hits, but ones like Sorcerous Crusade were definitely popular.
Wild West was not a good game. Werewolf 5E is fine, its just not WtA. Which, is also fine. Cause WtA is an awful game that hasn't aged well.
But you're right about Kinfolk, they are immune to delirium. i didn't want to bring it up again if someone already had.
@@talsine Horrible take about werewolf the apocalypse, while some things haven't aged well, the game's overall nice
@@terrariangolden6985 its not. Its the worst kind of PETA's style pro Ecoterrorist nonsense, full of Noble Savage, White Savior, FemiNazi, Orientalist nonsense. There isn't a single tribe that isn't an awful racist or social stereotype of some kind. W5 is bad because instead of realizing it just needs to raze it all to the ground like WtF did, it tries to "fix" it, and thus pisses off the fans that don't care about any of the shit above, and the ones who will not be satisficed with anything other than the complete destruction of the original
@@terrariangolden6985
I’m curious - what hasn’t aged well?
What I know about Werewolf the Apocalypse is that its Too Dark. For example the Get of Fenris are werewolf-Nazis basically. All the Werewolves look down on humans and in some cases want to kill about 90% of humans, with the 10% left used for breeding more werewolves. Every playable faction is a mess, attacking their own kind and have succeeded in committing genocide against their own allies in the past. Theyre supposed to the the heroes. The Apocalypse the playable werewolves are trying to avert is inevitable because of this.
Vampire the Masquerade was a huge boom and created a culture of vampire roleplayers. Mage the Ascension made people love playing "the Bad Guys" by making their antagonists 3 dimensional with positive goals. Werewolf the Apocalypse is about dysfunctional characters fighting cartoonisly evil villains.
Found this channel through a friend and I've been going through everything up to now, massive props for it all! I got my start with Chronicles of Darkness and have yet to get a group together for World of Darkness, so videos like these are incredibly fascinating especially as I see the parallels between the two settings. Wishing the best!
The worst part is that heart of the forest has all that earthblood lacks, a competent character development system, a deep personal story and good writing.
Earthblood was just sneak, fail, slaughter everything, with a last second stupid moral choice.
The kinfolk background undo the delirium in normal humans. Maybe they have a relative or their descendants of werewolves.
There are also Pentex drugs that would counteract the delirium.
Was interesting seeing the breakdown of this, and the HYPOTHETICAL game you pieced together does sound a lot more fun.
And I could absolutely see a story where you are ROUTINELY put to the question of "when will you rage?" And that this question can't all be one or the other. Sometimes, you do need to just be sneaky, sometimes you should just talk it out. But also, sometimes, you need to BREAK SHIT. And it's not always obvious which is which.
Maybe there's an early encounter where you're dealing with an utter POS sheriff, they're objectively aligned with the Wyrm. But if you bust them up, it makes a later encounter worse because you showed your hand too early.
Or a protest group that you COULD just sneak past, avoid an otherwise costly engagement, but if you do jump in and wreck house with your Big Boy form, you cause utter chaos and a lot of harm on all sides. But if you play it cool, just jump into the fray in human form and help the protestors, you gain an ally that makes a later situation easier or maybe prevents a bad thing all together.
And other choices that iterate on the actual in game final choice: Save Allies or Kill Enemies. And have that one be a bit more one sided. At the end of the day, saving people is the whole god damn point. Punishing the bad guys has to be second order priority.
22:19 So, werewolves have a whole range of transformations from human all the way to full wolf. Several of these transformations cause delirium with their half-man half-wolf (called Crinos) form causing the strongest reaction. Basically, the other forms can be explained away as abnormally large humans or wolves in the human brain, but a full-on upright wolf is just too much and that's when humans will just completely shut down and forget they saw anything (particularly willful humans can resist this or might attack in a panic.)
Most humans can interact with werewolves in their human forms and wolf forms without any trouble. Y'know... as much as humans can and will interact with wolves. Humans with werewolf ancestry, but don't have the gift themselves are called 'kin' or 'kinfolk' (they can also be wolves, but let's not get into that) and they are all immune to delirium. This is the one gift that pretty much all kin have while others might have the ability to use the werewolf version of magic.
Oh, also I think humans who have made pacts or are influenced by the wyrm can resist delirium to some extent, but honestly it's been a while since I played the tabletop.
I wish Werewolf: The Apocalypse and the other World of Darkness settings got more games in comparison to vampire but I am glad at least there are attempts. Sort of why I am excited for Werewolf: The Apocalypse - The Book of Hungry Names, a sort of choose your own adventure text based RPG made by Kyle Marquis, the same guy who did Vampire: The Masquerade - Night Road, which in my opinion is probably the best world of darkness adaption near Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines. I really recommend Night Road if you never tried it, it really sticks to table top rules with stats and all, it also lets really customize your vamp the way you like with the most amount of playable clans that each have some cool narrative difference in the story, plus its just overall really well written. That's why I'm excited for the Werewolf: The Apocalypse made by the same guy. Either way great vid hopefully we see more world of darkness stuff down the line in terms of games.
Happy to see more people talking about WoD! I got into the game through VtMB in 2014 and only got into the TTRPG in 2018 just in time for the reboot. By this point I've run my own games and have a big collection of v20 and v5 books. I don't agree with every change that has happened but I always wish for WoD success. It's my favorite world for a ttrpg and I love to see more and more content. I wait with bated breath for bloodlines 2. Hoping for the best! Looking forward to more WoD videos from you!
I feel like the developers just watched "Reign of Fire" when they made the main character model.
Werewolf Deus Ex would still be way less interesting than Vampire Deus Ex. You keep talking about the topic of eco-youknowwhat as if the topic has any narrative depths that it can really explore when we all know that it's "nature good, corporate greed bad, do the right thing even if it means giving up on comfort". I don't think Werewolf is a mistake as a setting, but I do think that expecting a Werewolf game, even if it were better in terms of quality, to resonate with people the way Vampire does because Vampire is a lot more versatile because it's about people and the eternal struggle of trying to be decent in a fallen world, while Werewolf is ultimately always kind of going to be the R-rated version of Captain Planet.
His wife is Kinfolk and theyre immune to the delirium as far as I remember.
More of a VtM fan myself, but I gave WtA - Earthblood a chance because of its part in World of Darkness. The game wasn't great, but I did find the Black Spiral Dancers interesting, and that inspired me to check the setting more closely. I even ended up buying a couple of rule books from the '90s.
Fun fact: I recall reading somwhere, I don't remember where that Black Spinal Dancers are completely friendly with Baali.
As someone who grew up playing VTM in my friend's garage, the metaplot was never a problem. You could always create a character without knowing anything and it would be fun. In fact they had a lot of ways for people with no setting experience to join in like shovelheads with the Sabbath or ghouls. The problem also wasn't an investment in supplements for less popular lines. They definitely took a hit on a few of those, but they did have the effect of propping those systems up and providing material for use in other settings. Crossover of game systems was quite common and also one of the really neat things about the setting. One of the worst things they did was end the metaplot. So they basically nuked a decade of their material and said here is Requiem now start over. And Requiem came out with homogenized systems and no Mind's Eye Theater (LARP) book at launch, later using a system of number guessing that ditched the paper rock scissors which the player base had grown accustomed to and was easier to teach to new players. Like try explaining to someone that they need to guess a number and then show the number they guessed with their fingers at the same time as the other person and the storyteller running the scene and then the difference from the storyteller to the player is successes or something like that. Like just roll dice at that point lmao. Anyway, the death of their decade old IP and the poor reception of the reboot really hurt the brand more than anything. If they had made "after the end times" books and continued the 90s storylines, it would have been so much better than chronicles which took years to find its footing and still is less popular than the original VTM. Then CCP happened and I remember being at the convention in New Orleans and seeing the panel and realizing that the CCP devs hated being there and did not seem to like the IP. Still was hopeful for the MMO that got canceled. And then the assets got flipped and some of the gaming community actually pooled money to purchase the IP and self insert their characters doing incredibly important world changing shit which was.... Neat. Anyway, Requiem/Chronicles killed White Wolf but the World of Darkness lives on
I brought a copy of How To [Love and Cherish] A Pipeline to a larp with WoD Werewolves a few months ago, lmao
I actually just started my first playthrough in almost a decade of Bloodlines after watching your last WoD video... I'm hoping you cover it at some point because I'd love your take.
I couldn't even put words to how much I loved the game and how fond my memories of it are and while I still think it holds up I just keep coming back to how empty it is. I can't think of another way to put it... I get into a room waiting to explore and find items and and and.... There won't be anything in the room. No flavor text. No junk items. Nothing. And I'm finding that over and over again. It's like the game was Deus Ex in my memory and a choose your own adventure in replay...
Anyway, love the content keep up your hard work. I can't wait to see what you do next!
it had mood, it doesn't need to be GTA or ubishit trash with a million crafting items popping up and quest markers annoying you every 3 seconds. Don't be zoomerbrained
I spent *hours* reading over my father's old Werewolf the Apocalypse rulebook growing up, but never got the opportunity to play it. I saw this game not long ago, and I was *this close* to buying it, but I'm glad I ultimately decided against it. I hope someday the Werewolf series gets the high budget game it really deserves.
It’s been a long time but I think Kinfolk, humans with werewolf ancestry that aren’t werewolves, are almost always immune to the Delirium.
Wraith is the depressing game of personal oblivion after death. Nothing good can come out of Wraith for your personal part, everything holding you from destruction will fall apart no matter how hard you work to maintain it.
I thought part of Werewolf was that the tribe would include werewolf-related humans who could tolerate knowing they had werewolves in the family, but maybe not watching them ape out in their war form. Werewolves trigger human panic the most in this state. You could have humans as contacts and allies, but your werewolf PCs are always the heayv hitters of the tribe.
Furries join the chat:
This game had potential until the devs said you couldn't create your own character. The moment they announced that, I knew it was gonna be awful, because they essentially sucked out a vital element of the game. Worse is that they didn't even implement the most important mechanic of Werewolf, the addition of pack mechanics. They could have easily did co-op similar to Unity and implement far greater quests. Then there's the issue that they didn't really give us the ability to explore and experience a true WoD story that we got to choose, and the devs proved they are incapable of handling such an ip.
I love how you used music from Gilneas, like hinting at the similarities with the Worgen 😊
This game is like if a twelve year old made a game based off of reading the back of the actual table top book and nothing else
I was a fan of VTM as a kid and I didn't realise that the cancelled game at 9:28 was connected to the World of Darkness! I just thought the animation for it was amazing and way cooler than the Oblivion werewolf mod videos on TH-cam at the time.
I really *love* WoD, and my favorite scenarios are Werewolf and Wraith. Vampire comes third. It's such a shame that Earthblood isn't good. I think three forms are enough, but you gave a very good suggestion of how to implement the two forms not used in this game. Thanks a lot for making this video! Much respect, and please come to Brazil.
Kinfolk are immune to delirium... and I'm pretty sure Ava actually is NOT a garou.
It would have been nice to have a little more focus on the Umbra and interacting with spirits - talking to your pack's totem for guidance and gifts, getting aid and information from spirits, even fighting banes to make a fight in the physical world easier.
After being a Vampire only fan for awhile when it came to World of Darkness, the recent text based game for Werewolf, The Book fo Hungry Names, really made me fall in love with the IP and what kind of stories it can tell. If anyone enjoys great story, fun characters, and awesome role play, I seriously recommend The Bookn of Hungry Names.
Part of the problem is we technically got a World of Darkness MMORPG, but it wasn't from White Wolf. It was from Funcom. The Secret World mmorpg is basically "You are chosen by Gaia to fight back and save the world." except your not a werewolf, think a mix more of mage the awakening and hunter the vigil.
All while in tune to a modern day style game with horror from various different aspects like vampires, werewolves, eldritch horror, bug monsters, spirits, serial killers, wendigos, a literal corrupting force of black ooze, demons, mummies, and so much more. In addition the idea the player was part one of three government organizations (templars or dragons or illuminati). And at the time this was all in tune to the, at the time, craze of 2012 and the mayan calender and the apocalypse the calendar would bring.
At the time it wasn't a bad MMORPG. However after the main game and a few mini expansions were finished, called chapters, the head writer quit, the ceo embezzled funds and left the company high and dry. And so with limited funds and devs working on it, the subsequent content took a massive nose dive.
The last real notable things about it, are it had spin off titles that take place in the same universe. Also it kickstarted and got a 5th edition D&D book out there. Essentially regressing back into a ttrpg.
EDIT: I say its a problem because as I think, William, you illustrated that very problem with Old World of Darkness, that is of setting the world in the modern day. Unless the world constantly gets updates and its narrative lines shift, and therefore escape the trappings of what it was born from (Y2K panic or 2012 panic), it becomes a dated time capsule.
It's sad that this game didn't rise to its potential.
But at least we got this video out of it!
Also, William, I appreciate you embracing the memes and the cheese, it put a big smile on my face!
I was introduced to White Wolf through Werewolf: the Apocalypse. Love the lore so much.
I'm sick so what better way to spend the morning binging on some video game reviews from a new channel to me & getting a serious hit of nostalgia dating back to me teens in the 90s when I started playing Vampire, Werewolf & WoD games for a decade! I came across the Mordheim review as I played the miniature game, but never the video game, & then after subscribing just wTched the Wraith video so basically doing this series in reverse. Was really excited for a Werewokf the Apocalypse game only to be dissapointed by the demo I plated for this & never played the full game as time was too precious with a large family & despite years later your reviews give me just enough of what I feel I missed. I think I will be getting the Wraith Afterlife as my wife will keep me rather entertained as I watch her play that if watching her play Resident Evil The Village was funny enough.
speaking of the werewolf VN, i actually think the vampire visual novels are all pretty good too. coteries and shadows are both pretty good, fairly short if i remember. the choice of games text RPGs are also good IF you like that sort of thing.
i really WANT bloodlines 2 to succeed but i just dont believe it will, it doesnt have any advertising power like cyberpunk did or the inherent popularity of dnd and Baldur's gate, and i imagine shadowrun returns had a lower budget then bloodlines 2 will so it being niche didnt harm it
I'm not buying that game unless I hear good things cause that new trailer looked so bad.
I believe the success of bloodlines 2 depends entirely on the quality. The game will get viral on youtube anyway since the original is the cult classic, and if it's good it'll be popularised by word of mouth like a wildfire.
I did notice the story was weak, but still I was hoping it had a sort of WoD shared universe from the Garou perspective, and of course it did NOT deliver. I mean like having at least a bossfight against a relatively weak Abomination like IDK a Nictuku Black Spiral Dancer. But regarding some lore I was missing: I didn't know Garou technically massacred non-wolf were animals.
How can Garou now pretend to be a force for Gaia's good after this? I mean, at which point does the entire premise become disfunctional? The guardians of nature who were at one point temporarily the killers of other guardians of nature? That kinda looks like irrepairable damage to me. It kinda feels like the writers wanted to be terribly epic but went overboard.
there was supplementals of the others which had some survivors especially in the East but Garou are always arrogant asses except the children of Gaia which is the pacifist hippy tribe which even accept in the sterile metis(double garou child born in war form) and most tribes especially get of fenris and red talons decided the other weres were too soft on humans. Another tribe was all Amazons even taking in metis and abused female Kin from other tribes
Yeah I've read about them.
@@rudolphantler6309 reason I brought up CoG is think their supplement had a good chunk of info on the War of Rage which is what made CoG pull away from the other tribes
Someoone probably has pointed this out already, but the humans hanging around the werewolves in the beginning could be kinfolk. Not all kinfolk have som form of magic, except being immune to the delirium, iirc.
I don’t know much about the World of Darkness games, all I wanted was a decent werewolf game. Sadly they can’t, or won’t get it right.
There's a better timeline out there where White Wolf teamed up with Troika in full to create a gaming franchise. Some alternate version of me is sitting at his desk, playing Troika's excellent bloodlines five, maybe even a New Vegas 3 if Bethesda didn't get their wicked way in the better world. I loath that lucky sumbitch, my envy is unspeakable.
shadowrun. . . . Shadowrun. . . . . Shadowrun!. . . . SHADOWRUN!!. . . SHA-DOW-RUN!!! SHA-DOW-RUN!!! SHA-DOW-RUN!!!!!!!!!!!
Blame MS for absolutely wasting that property. They could have capitalized on the multi-year hype leading up to CP2077's launch by doing their own competing Shadowrun game, but nope. They're just sitting on it.
It really breaks my heart.
I love the WoD setting it is so well suited to adapting into video games. My dream would be a trilogy of RPGs 1 of Vampire, werewolf, & mage telling of the coming of the apocalypse & the ending of the original cannon.
But much to my dissmay the mediocre but fun Hunter the Reckoning coop hack n slashers are the best games that actually launched in a non broken state. I love Bloodlines but they're is a very obvious reason the game didn't get a positive reputation until after modders made it playable.
Wow, this is an amazing video; a piece of well-made media that covers gaming history, video game development, and even important social questions. Seriously, bravo.
Hey William! Loved the video and i even learned new things about the WoD. But Ludmilla would be kinfolk likely, and they are immune to delirium even without powers. Is it possible the human activists are also kinfolk?
Still it is quite odd she'd take such an active role, given how the Garou greatly prize their Kinfolk. If Kin has to take up arms it is seen as a failure on the garou.
Kin do take the role of infiltrators and informants though especially the city tribe though yes the other tribes do look down on them since they are more dog than wolf
Werewolf Kinfolk are unaffected by the Delirium's memory loss. Also the other Shifters weren't meant to be Gaia's warriors, they had other jobs taking care of Gaia. Also, the Werewolves are separated into Tribes not Packs, not Clans, Tribes.
I love seeing non-D&D content on your channel, keep it up!
The Garou... The living avatars of willful, self-destructive stupidity.
A nitpick - Ludmila and other humans part of the tribes aren't actually humans - they're kinfolk, those homid and lupus who have garou lineage without being garou themselves. Kinfolk are immune to delirium, since they're far closer to garou themselves, and they even feel something like an affinity for garou instead.
Effectively, the garou breeding is very oddly structured. A garou breeding with a human or wolf produces kinfolk humans and wolves. The existing kinfolk of a tribe are ancient bloodlines that have disperced throught history and the garou usually watch and protect closely, since they're vital to their continued existence.
Then, if a garou breeds with a kinfolk - the result is 9 times out of 10 a regular kinfolk yet again, and the other 1 will be a garou that will undergo their first change as they grow up.
Kinfolk "bloodlines" can eventually peter out and diminish, if they spend too many generations without fresh garou blood in them, I'm not sure if it's slower or negated if it's kept between kinfolk, but there is a VERY VERY small, I think 1 in 1000 or so chance that a union between two kinfolk can produce a garou. (which, if it's kinfolk that aren't actively watched by a tribe or aware of it can likely be pretty awkward).
Now, as for garou on garou action, it's one hell of a pandora's box. Effectively, if two garou breed, the product is always a Metis (and the first time I heard it mentioned, not knowing how it's written, I heard "menace" and still think that would be such a fitting in-universe slang far better than "mule".)
Metis are treated like mistakes, for the most part. For a multitude of reasons, chief of which being that a metis is ALWAYS born with one of dozens of variable "deformities". It could be a physical one, like lameness, missing limbs, hooved feet, horns or antlers, albinism, blindness, deafness, etc. or even a "spiritual" deformity, like the absolutely epic one where mirrors and reflective surfaces ALWAYS reflect the metis' crinos form, which can, I believe, cause delirium if witnessed.
Why the Crinos form? Well, because as you should know a garou born of a homid or lupus kinfolk will be born in that respective form, and live in it until their first change (making lupusborn garou very bad at human things, like technology or society, since it's MUCH harder for a wolf mind to suddenly grasp humanity than for a human mind to understand being a wolf). But a Metis is born in the Crinos form, which means they spend thir childhood practically always angy and dangerous. So much so, a metis birth even usually isn't very peaceful, and at worst can literally be the Metis BURSTING claws and fangs straight out of the mother, killing her in the process.
Metis are also stigmatized largely due to being infertile. They're seen as wasteful because, well, the garou really need more garou for the war against the Wyrm. Some tribes treat them better than others - there's I think two that are even known for taking in the abandoned metis of other tribes, which is a large reason for their large ranks. So it's a very interesting juxtaposition of "metis are the most efficient way to make more garou and make them now, and (worst deformities aside) they're usually ideal warriors, being born "for it" native to the Crinos form.
Now, there's another very very special reason for the stigma around Metis, and why some tribes even go as far as to kill them, and their parents for the sin of creating them - the myth of the "Perfect Metis". It goes that, despite being infertile, one day two metis will mate and against all odds miraculously conceive a child - that will be a the Perfect Metis, one lacking any deformity or drawback. All myths say one thing - the coming of the Perfect Metis is a sign of the Apocalypse. It WILL happen when the Apocalypse comes, but that doesn't stop some garou from hoping it can be prevented by not allowing Metis to be born in the first place. Otherwise, the myths are vague. Will the Perfect Metis be a savour to the garou, a legendary figure that will unite them and turn the time in the fight against the Wyrm, or will it instead join the Wyrm and be the final nail in Gaia's coffin? Very tabletop RPG.
More likely, Glabro and Hispo were present in the blueprints of the early dev cycles and then they got work to ax the forms. Because those two forms being axed is one of the major changed that came to W5 after Hunter's Entertainment was fired.
I will give credit where credit is due, the game is correct on one part you got wrong. Those who are related to werewolves or other shifters are known as Kinfolk and are immune to Delirium. They also have a higher rate of making more confirmed werewolves so the shifters tend to stick with them.
Funny, this has me thinking about the MCU's "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier." Which, if you know the gossip, was similarly in the position of making some surprisingly controversial points on the topic of ... tourism ... and then (apparently) getting a major re-edit at the last minute to be less brave.
Ludmilla's Kinfolk. Any person with Garou Blood who isn't Garou is Kinfolk, which means they get to be immune to the Delirium. They are also prized among Garou because of that fact (and that they know about Garou culture and are aware of how bad things can turn out). So ...they did forget about the Delirium when a buncha rent-a-cops are fighting a 10 foot tall furry blender, but Ludmilla would be unaffected by the Delirium.
"(The Wyrm is) Planning to destroy all until nothing remains!"
A point a lot of people miss, is the Wyrm is actually trying to end the world so it will reboot back into a perfect and balanced creation. He's also almost certainly correct that is what would happen. It just sucks for those of us stuck on the current incarnation of Gaia.
The neverending avalanche of splatbooks that you pretty much *had* to have to play cost White Wolf a lot of fans.
Dude. Okay, we can talk a lot about the games and ttrpg quality, but this video is in a whole new level. Well done.
I agree, the WoD was way over-blamed for the sales issues. It was clearly more to do with the subject matter off the books selling poorly. Wizards of the early enlightenment and ghosts of World War I were not and have not been since a cultural touchstone deemed worthy of mass appeal by the public.
I don't think the metaplot was hostile to new players. Lots of fandoms have deep lore. As examples, Star Wars and Warhammer both have deep lore and neither of them had to destroy their worlds to get new fans. I believe the 20th Anniversary Edition was proof the fear-of-metaplot was complete unfounded. Yet, 5th edition WoD seems to be Metaplot adverse, despite this.
The metaplot was big. They sprinkled reference to it through the other books, so unless you had the right Werewolf or Mummy book in front of you a detail about what a character was doing could pass you by. All these events are giant conspiracies far above the head of average chump wizards and vampires just trying to deal with their own city. At least you could ignore it and just play the bits you liked, but to play through all the nonsense the Settites or weirdo mages were doing, you could be forced to get a random Mummy book.
I can't believe that the two modern Werewolf games are a Visual Novel and an Action game and the one that's great is the Visual Novel. Except, I guess I can, because White Wolf games were always treasures on the page.
RPG journalism. I love it. Crap we're getting old now. Old enough for this to be journalism now.
I'm impressed you even included the generational views during the 90s & eco activism.
i mistakenly got the graphic novel game instead of this one. i was baking after work and didnt notice till like an hour in, like wheres the thirdperson lol
I got interested in this game because I enjoyed Heart of the Forest a lot! Seeing what and how it happens in-game, I agree with many things you brought up - you also deserve extra points for including the soundtrack of Gilneas, nice touch, made me smile! ;)
I had hope they would redo tons of garou stuff in 5th edition cause oh boy.... the original line drips the bias of what they really wanted to write about. We got mages, who will get smacked by reality for doing magic and are also fragile humans. We got vampires who barely could do shit in earlier itterations, to the point where fucking dominate had a caviat that it will only work if command is not against someones nature... yeah, a fucking hypnoticmental command magic only works if the target wants it to work...
Then we got werewolves, borderline immune to half the damage in the game, healing mid combat passively, 5 different forms all for free, one of which is one of the most powerful forms in entire gameline, making it where even none combat werewolves are stronger than most of anything from other races. But wait, there is more! They also got their own language and are defacto saviors of the earth that also have a breeding fetish and got tons of wives mean for breeding. BUT WAIT! There is more! They are not only strongest gigachads who are drowning in pussy but they also have this entire artifact item system that allows them to wear armor and even wield weapons while in werewolf form. BUT WAAAAAIIIITTTTTT! THEEEEEREEEE IS MOOORREEE! They also can literally become invisible by going into umbra and communicate with spirits, as absurd as that a spirit of a fucking rock, and also they got a passive masquerade system built in where anyone who sees them forgets them.
LIke holy shit, why not just name the book, daddys favorite wolf protagonist who gets everything, the fuck everyone else, the 69th edition?
In the real world, the reason why we have so few tourists is that most people understand that there isn't much left that can be done without a massive restructuring to such a major degree where the loss of civilian life would be impossible to justify. And on top of it, none of it matters so long as three Asian countries produce more harmful emissions and sea pollutants than the rest of the world combined.
I think a lot of the environmental activism in the west is actually being funded by these asian countries. If the west was to reindustrialise and do it sensibly With a mind of Caring about the environment in which they live in. It is possible Then these asian countries would be out of business
Thanks for covering this ❤ its fun seeing you out of the pixel dungeons if only it was a better title
Y'know, this is the first dive into WtA that made me understand what is compelling about the gameline. No shade, I've read a lot, know a good chunk of Werewolf lore and all, but no compendium has led me to grasp why Werewolf has retained the loyal following it does like how your lore crash course has and WtA's flavor of grimdark-personal horror.
(Also as a CtD fan I'll take my lumps about it not being a *primary* gameline WW should have focused on, but oof, lol)
I walways felt CtD had the wrong idea about the mechanics - in all the other games, changelings were treated as this weird-ass boogeyman that it was best to leave the heck alone, but the actual changelings in their own game were super-frail and could fall over catatonic just from a regular neonate vampire saying "Hi." and their magic was overly complex and inefficient at anything not fae.
I think a far better approach (IMO, of course) would have had the Glamour thing being only the _human_ bits (like in Dark Ages: Fae where they had to use Glamour to look human, instead of being a blend of neither fae nor human enough like in CtD), and have Changelings be a bit more like glass cannons - still relatively frail but also immortal in a different way from the others (not the weird reincarnation thing that was highly inconsistently used) and with magics that would ROFLstomp anyone else - with obvious downsides and things that made doing so less than desirable (like, f'rex, doing a massive spell against a vampire or mage causing local Glamour to wither out, maybe even permanently if not careful). That would make the fear the other supernatural splats had about them make sense, while at the same time not make them too OP.
TL;DR I loved CtD but the mechanics made the game impossible to pair with the other WoD games (not even talking outright crossovers).
I apologize if this sounds nitpicky, but you used the term primevil to describe the wyrm after its imprisonment by the weaver and subsequent madness / corruption. The term primevil doesn't refer to evil, but to wildnerness, ancient and untouched by civilization or man, the natural world in its purest form. In some sense, the wyld would be far better described by primevil than the post-imprisonment wyrm. Anyway, great video, and I'll fuck off now.
EDIT: Made it a little further into the video. It sounds like Ludmilla is kinfolk, blood relatives of the garou who are not subject to the delirium. Again, I will return to fucking off now.
I heard that as "prime evil" as opposed to "primeval"
@@FangsFirst That could have been what they said and I just heard primevil because I'd not heard the phrase prime evil before. Also, thanks for subtly correcting my spelling.
Paradox didn't publish Earthblood; Nacon did, and Cyanide developed it. Both of these studios are associated with Eurojank RPGs*, so the contention that Earthblood was meant to be that great chimera - an 'immersive sim' - but was cut down by interfering Paradox doesn't appear to be based on the available evidence.
*This isn't a complaint. I like Eurojank RPGs and so I also liked Earthblood.
I feel like a good example of an Immersive Sim that would really get that when should you get mad idea across is Dishonored. There was a lot of responsiveness in that game to what tactics you used.
I honestly think that the "metaplot was too complicated" excuse holds little to no real water. It honestly seemed far more of a constant excuse for the writers to try and not bother with getting into the setting themselves rather than an actual thought out opinion. As players and ST's, the metaplot really was far more of "Wow there's some really cool stuff and reasons behind a lot of what shapes this world. Guess we will figure it out as we go.". As people playing the game, this honestly made things incredibly fun, with some of us really getting into lore digging and theory crafting. But it was very obviously a bane to the writers, and honestly it generally always seemed like the writers kind of hated the fact they were all working on the same setting, and not just making their own takes on the main works. I'm not saying it wasn't convoluted or complex, it was, but more often then not even the writers in the same books would contradict (usually indirectly but sometimes just opposite info is given) things stated earlier. And it is almost never stated how so many things actually interact with each other to any real degree (Staring at the pages and pages of merits and flaws in all the lines that just refuse to have any guidance on how they should interact with many similar or contradictory things).
Honestly, playing the games, the metaplot never felt like a restricting factor, the thing that really seemed to restrict them was that for all that the world and stories were interesting and interconnected, the "game" aspects seemed to just get flung around everywhere, sometimes with awesome and interesting ideas but no real guidance on them after it's been spat on the pages. It made effectively a game run by it's lore, more so then anything about it's style of play, that just kind of happened to be built around a surprisingly versatile and pretty sturdy core system of d10's vs difficulty ratings and successes there of.
And then they decided to try and redo it, but this time let's remove the lore, but maybe improve the system? (No the system wasn't really improved, just somewhat cut down, and had a new coat of paint(Maybe kind of excluding CtL, that thing honestly did come across as something pretty new overall)) Well now they had the new world of darkness, which had a pretty great tone to it, and allowed more leeway for people to design their own games, but you lost anyone that was interested in getting deeper into the worlds, because there wasn't a "deeper" to go. This was great for some people, but the crossover wasn't what they'd hoped for. But then the 20th section came along and a surprisingly nice equilibrium was being fashioned over a number of years. with both nWod and oWod seeming to generally coexist pretty well, nWod giving people room to make really fun and interesting stories, with oWod/20th giving people a bit more of a grounded experience.
Then paradox bought it, and basically axed just about everything that was going on. Some people were hoping that having a large company getting it would mean way more development, faster. Most of us were confused that Paradox bought it. And once V5 playtesting started, it became obvious to most that they were going to basically try and mix nWod(now chronicled but I wasn't sure where to put that happening) and oWod, and trying to make it simpler to make into games at the same time. To me and many others, this stinks of the same thought process that lead to the 2000's mistakes , and the ttrpg of v5 seems to have gained most of the worst bits of both systems and few strengths. But it is definitely being advertised more, and the games, while wildly different in quality, are keeping it on peoples minds. I don't know maybe it'll still go somewhere? But what direction in gained in the 2010's seems to have entirely left it to me, and we are back to throwing things every which way , with the authors again seemingly at war with themselves on how things should go or work. I just don't see how it won't have the same results again.
Sorry for the random rant , and my take on how things generally went down with this IP, it just frustrates me, as this is my favorite TTRPG franchise, and I constantly see so much potential in it, but it rarely seems like anyone that had much official sway had much care for the IP. Excluding Onyx Path overall.
I would love to see a well-executed Werewolf and/or Mage game someday.
22:00 Kinfolk, ie humans who have familial blood ties to Garou, are immune to the delerium in the ttrpg, so dude's wife, as the sister of a other werewolf, being immune to the delerium is in canon.
Such quality videos . The bump is coming. I can feel it
22:05 Kinfolk are immune to the delerium. So, Ludmilla being immune to it is normal. You're right about the activists, though.
Ludmila is Kinfolk, meaning she shares enough Garou genetics to not be affected by delerium.
Did Prey do the "protagonist forced to kill a loved one" emotional climax better?
22:02 - So, Kinfolk like that tend to not be affected by the Delirium at all. It's not an oversight, in that case they are very strict with the lore. Similarly, the assumption is that the Activists are all Kin like that.
22:00 yoo, man, no, not "SOMETIMES"... People related to the garou who are not garou themselves (called "kin") are immune to the Delirium.
the reason that some humans like ludmila don't suffer from the delirium is because they are kinfolk and kinfolk are immune to it.
I by-and-large agree with you. I'd say its fine, if mildly enjoyable turn off your brain fun. The things that stood out most to me was the graphics and the story.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not some graphics snob, but..... wow did it look rough at almost all times. Whoever made Cahal and the various forms did a great job, but the rest was just bad enough to constantly drag me right out over and over. It's a 2021 game. Even if you couldn't pull off technical realism too well, having a stylistic choice and a more unique art direction could've smoothed over those rough edges.
The story was also just very one note. They were real ballsy to lean into "you're an eco-(tourist)" in the marketing and story, but they were too self-conscious about their own capability. Endron soldiers GUSH about how, when they attack the cairn, they would kill babies in the womb in front of the mother and father before killing the mother then the father. Going into lurid detail of how fun it is to spill oil everywhere because screw the planet, or delight in killing native or endangered species'. They were trying so hard to make every single Endron member fundamentally irredeemably evil. You could have something interesting like with some roped into working for Endron but getting cold feet when they learn the marketing was all false, or public opinion shifting between propaganda and your actions. It's also just following the singular plot-line of "woman in Cahals life is abducted, and he has to kill everyone including friends and family that get in his way to do so". Which is fine if you're going for just pure God of War brutal combat, to an extent, but is squandering the IP. There are interesting and fun quandaries and concepts that are brought up in the World of Darkness setting. If you wanted to just make a hack and slash with werewolves, you can do that separately from that setting.
That being said, and I will absolutely contradict myself here, I wish it was just a pulpy character action game with fun, juicy mechanics. Within a single mission I got frustrated with trying to carefully sneak and stealth everywhere, especially with broken AI that sometimes made a sneaky approach nearly impossible. I just started wolfing out immediately upon entering every single room so I could just toss things around and let loose. An immersive sim would be better than what we got, but thinking about a game like this constantly limiting my ability to go nuts and tear enemies apart and pushing me more towards stealth and the half measure forms feels more like clapping me in handcuffs from how I want to engage encounters. The game should have just picked a side between its stealth and action.
So as a long standing player of wod, and having met some of the peiple who worked for the company and taljing to people whove been at it for like 30 years. There was alot of infoghting amongst developers, some of the developers were VERY HOSTILE to any one who didnt agree with them and fans. The developer for Vampire thought all the other lines should be subservient to their game, and were deliberately making their rules to not work well with other settings so despite technically all using the same setting and rules set none of the different changers could realy mesh with eachother in any way, even going as far as mechanically not working together.