#WoD5

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

W5: Oral histories are bad

For an edition focusing on being more aware of different cultures, W5 sure does spend a lot of time hating on oral histories; NOTE: LONG post and critical of W5, don't read if you like it.

"A history of the Garou is both impossible and reductive. The stories of the past that werewolves tell are oral histories, part legend and part reality, revised, reinterpreted, and redone, according to the needs of the generation doing the telling. They contain multiple narratives that are all considered to be true. The finer details, locations, and players in these grand dramas may shift with the times, and with the storytellers spinning the tale for those listening to them. " - W5 core, p.22 "The Garou Nation, as it was known, existed for a brief period of relative success, but even there, its actual duration is unknown and varies by who’s reciting the history. Was it decades? Centuries? Millennia? Because the historical events involved in it date to various times across myriad locations, to say with any certainty is impossible, and even spirits speak of it in terms unsuited to the physical world. " -W5 core, p.37 "Much of the Garou’s history is oral, more within the realm of legend and even self-mythology than a true history. Given the animistic perspective of Garou, when one says, “the mighty Silver Fang rode upon Falcon’s back,” that might literally mean a werewolf rode an enormous falcon in a legendary time, or it may mean that a falcon-spirit carried the werewolf, or even that Falcon himself transported the werewolf through the Umbra.

So it goes with the Litany, a code of Garou custom that’s equally as impressionistic and open to interpretation as the animistic lens through which werewolves see the world." -W5 core,p.46 "The Litany is an imperfect set of rules by which to wage a guerilla war of resistance during an ongoing Apocalypse. Those rules mean different things at different times to different werewolves, and the oral tradition of the Garou is rife with the Litany being used to justify self-dealing or even atrocity. " -W5 core, p.47 "Above and beyond the tribes and the septs, there used to be something called the Garou Nation. It was understood that all Garou were united in their war against the forces of the Wyrm.

Some dispute whether this was ever really true. Were the Garou of old really united in a global nation in the mythical prehistory of Garou legend at a time when humans had barely managed to get from one continent to another" -Shattered Nation, p.37

"The Garou are creatures of the present, their traditions built on oral storytelling. This means that factual accuracy is often not considered particularly important as long as the broad outlines fit what the crowd at the moot wants to hear. The stories of Garou from the '80s and '90s are already ancient history, having happened before most Garou today were even born.

Garou legends are notoriously difficult to date accurately. When was the War of Rage or the Impergium? In the Middle Ages? In the Stone Age? Who knows, and the spirits are no help either. Their sense of time is so different that it’s impossible to translate into human reckoning."

-Shattered Nation, p.40

I apologize for the paste spam, but I wanted to show you that this is not a one-time thing. This is constant. This is not that the books are saying that the garou specifically are bad at keeping histories straight, it is saying that with oral storytelling, it is impossible to tell when things happened. Which doesn't pass the smell test even if we focus solely on Europe. People have, for generations, kept information up through oral histories. Minor things might change, but the core details are there.

Think about it, how many of your family histories are written down? Most likely they are told orally a put into memory. And the time these events happened is usually a big part of it. Those of you with immigrant backgrounds will know why your family left, what kind of journey it was and when they arrived. It gets even less acceptable once we get to Indigenous people. Australian Blaks are very strict about accuracy and so there is no drift in stories over the centuries. Most Native American nations told their histories orally, maybe using metaphor but still recalling exact details over the centuries. W5 says that garou don't know when the Garou Nation existed. Given the former silver fang king is alive, it is clear it was within living memory. Yet the book still paints the garou as ignorant of their own history, the origins of their laws and so on. What is worse, is that this is often contrasted with written history being accurate. Essentially implying that the correct history is only found in books. A VERY Western European take if I ever heard one. Let's remember that, according to W5, any tribe can be found anywhere. So those garou found in mostly oral cultures just failed to record their own history? Writing like this, in a work with heavy animistic inspirations from Native American cultures and other animistic cultures, is insulting because it suggests only the western method is accurate.

[songoftrillium]

Please share for sample size

[gnost-stories]

I'm gonna start unapologetically dropping my positive World of Darkness 5th Edition takes if y'all aren't careful.

[gorbalsvampire]

More questions! Would you consider having cross splat play for a group with v5, ww5, and h5? Have the mechanics been simplified/streamlined enough for that to be possible without being a huge headache?

Also, unrelated: I think in today's ttrpg terms WoD5 wants to be a "fiction first" type of game. It definitely has introduced some features that add support in that way, such as the relationship maps, considering Coterie type, and the touchstones. But I think some of its mechanics still cleave to that "simulationist" mindset of the 90s and aughts, and get in the way of what the narrative does well 😅

This is a bit meandering, but I hope you gain something from it anyway.

So for my money, the big issues with cross splat play are thematic. Vampire and Werewolf are asking different questions of their players, and pursuing different kinds of horror. For all that they're nominally set in the same world, they don't fit right when they're shoved in next to each other. It's like how comics crossovers reduce the cosmic splendour of interplanar warfare between godlike entities and the workaday world of a nerdy student/photographer to a sort of spectacular slurry when they're put together - it can be fun, but it feels like less than the sum of its parts because none of them are getting to do what they were designed for.

Hunter is the exception. I think Hunter can dovetail with another splat reasonably well, because the Hunters are real people in over their heads and confronting a supernatural horror; a premise that can adapt to whatever kind of horror the other splat is presenting. Hunter also has tidier mechanics, which brings me to the "why I, specifically, wouldn't include Werewolf in a crossover" part.

When I've checked out Apocalypse in the past, I've found it aggressively America-centric (why do werewolves in the Celtic nations or the Balkans use terms from the First Nations?), not quite selling the "melting pot" pack (maybe this is me, but I feel like a werewolf pack should all be from the same tribe and differentiated by something else, like auspice), and worst of all - dull. Between Tribes and Gifts and Auspices and Spirits and five different statblocks it's managed to make pretending you're a werewolf fussy and pedantic.

I like trad games. I came up with Call of Cthulhu and WFRP. Pass me the percentile dice, we're going in! But the strength of V5, specifically, is that it's modular. From "only players roll" to "only simple conflicts" to "right, look in the back of the book for a combat move", V5 scales to an extent where it can be mechanically present, imposing the bare minimum of Hunger and Predator Type, in even a fairly lightweight chronicle - or it can go full tradgame, if you want it to!

The trouble with the wider WOD, in my opinion, has been the development outwards from Vampire. Most of the splats have started with Vampire's mechanics (an equivalent to blood points, humanity, disciplines, clans and so on) and adapted them and developed on top of them, which means they end up overburdened because they weren't working out from a neutral core. (CofD sidestepped this by starting with the human-focused core game and building very similar sets of numbers into the different splats, one direction at a time.) Combine that with the ever more convoluted world-building of the One World of Darkness conceit - you and I know that no amount of "the Lupines from Vampire aren't the Garou from Werewolf" holds up to the way the Revised books were written - and by the time you get to Wraith, both the system and the setting are overdeveloped and creaking at the seams.

I bring up Wraith because I really, really want Wr5 (technically it'd be the fourth edition, but whatever). I want a Storytelling Game of Psychological and Survival Horror, something that interrogates why the dead haunt the living and poses that as its central question. You can keep your Kingdoms and your Legions, but they're the threats that drive the playable ghosts into the periphery - they've made unacceptable compromises to survive deeper into the Shadowlands, closer to Oblivion. The Guilds offer another way - true death staved off by staying close to the truly alive. Maybe that's been the premise of Wraith all along, but I got the impression the game as published was more interested in building Stygia as a dark fantasy adventure than in ghost stories.

You're not wrong though: the WOD games have always existed in the space between blow-by-blow gun-catalogue tradgame and experimental, experiential storygame. When they're good, they turn that space into a sliding scale. When they're bad... well, when they're bad they're the detailed rules for kung fu in Requiem. The whole thing runs better when you're fiction first, but retain just enough risk/resource management that the mechanics get to intrude and remind you that you're not playing heroes. You are the monster. The more action you take, the more those trackers move. The Hunger is rising. When will you Rage?

[dragon-noises]

i noticed your tags on that post abt working class vampires vs. bougie werewolves and on god i'm about to become an unskippable wod cutscene; what you'd be describing is the average brujah, nosferatu, or (if you want to dip into the weird lore) healer salubri, versus certain glass walker camps. it wouldn't work in wod5 though because fucking nothing works in wod5 (and believe me our troupe has tried, it was absolutely miserable)

I only play Vampire sometimes so I'm not brushed up on all the lore and dynamics but my husband runs vampire and werewolf games and I planned on showing him this stuff later for him to chew on!

[cruddyart]

In case you haven't been told, the hunters bad vampires good mentality? Yeah it comes from the official WoD5 books. The Second Inquisition book might as well start with "big bad hunters are hunting poor widdle vampires!"

Oh great fun. Tbh in my opinion I feel like the opinion might have always existed in a very limited capacity but with the newest edition they're rly cultivating this sort of thought process.

It's ridiculous in my opinion and the 5th edition is rly horrid with black and white morality.

[antipathiczora]

you know what? no, actually, i will touch W5 for a minute

what an absolutely limp-dicked evisceration of a game with otherwise really rich and prominent lore.

first of all, it is absolutely okay for a game to not be for everyone. werewolf, at its core, is messy, and not in a bad way. it’s visceral, it’s gritty. the tribes are all problematic in their own ways, and the toxic attitudes that have been seeped into garou society and their treatment of their disabled and different is part of the core of the game. it goes into sexuality and reproductive drama in a way i have never seen another game do. if i’m honest, most other games are scared to go to these places, because there are people on twitter and even on this blue hellsite that will lose their minds and start screaming if you even so much as allude to those topics. the game isn’t for these people. and that’s absolutely okay. not everything has to be for everyone, and i’m kind of tired of seeing things try to be for everyone. some gatekeeping is fine, not to exclude people who aren’t ‘the in-group’ (on the contrary, i love getting people into the world of darkness games), but because some people genuinely can’t handle stuff like this and will not treat it with the tact it deserves. and that goes for WoD5, in general, because V5 also stripped down its core conflicts to push any and all strife out of the group considered t be ‘the good guys’.

second of all, the idea that Gaia is dead and that the garou are all deluded absolutely crushes the spark of hope that the game has always held as one of the pillars that it’s built on. to me and many others, werewolf has always been about hope in the face of hopelessness, and keeping that grit and determination in the hopes that you can make a difference and effect change. and, hell, even the idea that if you’re determined enough, you can change things. to hear that the new writers have taken that central pillar and just made a mockery of it by destroying the very thing that the player characters were made to fight is, to me, abjectly terrible. the tone of hopelessness and grimness that pervades vampire doesn’t belong in werewolf, and i will hold to that until the day i die. there should be things to fight for, reasons to keep going. the garou are not the kindred.

there’s a lot more i could say, but these are most relevant to what i’m feeling, i guess. shit sucks.

[coloursfalllikesnow]

Watched both episodes of the Renegade Games live play of Hunter 5 and it looks interesting so far but it's ALSO had almost no mechanics involved so I'm not really sure what to feel. like. Most of it has been generic WoD5 mechanics, which are fine and not the problem with V5 or what I've heard about W5 (😬), it's the stuff that's been done to the lore.

And admittedly, Hunter was kind of woefully incomplete and parts didnt age well, but the core of the game is super interesting and mostly needs polishing! I'm especially worried that so far at least it seems like the Hunters are no longer supernatural, which drove a really great conflict in the original game; are you really still human, or something else now?

And with as little as we've seen, I don't really have much to go on, admittedly. The preview looked very interesting and the writing's tone was excellent but I just hope it hasn't been changed TOO much like the other two.

also idk if it was deliberate in-verse, a typo, or WoD5 changing stuff for no reason like usual, but the ST spelled it 'Wurm" and not "Wyrm" which is Strange

[solimedsd]

@crossfit_portu ACTCH WOD5. ¬ Ha vuelto a pasar... Como todos los meses, me he enfrentado al wod que nos traen los amigos de @amateurcrosstrainingchallenge y he vuelto a salir derrotado, pero no hay que rendirse. Un wod exigente, que si el peso hubiera ido acorde a mis capacidades hubiera tenido un buen resultado. Pero todo se ha torcido en el momento de hacer las 50reps de press de banca con 50kg. Tras hacer las 25 primeras reps los brazos me han abandonado y me he quedado solo en el box y he vuelto a la realidad jajajajajaja. En las fotos mi cara de sufrimiento es real. Finalmente y como cabía esperar no he acabado el wod pero lo he dado todo que es lo importante. Ahora toca recibir con los brazos abiertos al wod6. Vamos!!! 💪🏼🔥 Rebajita - 15% @solimedsd código PORTU × × #Crossfit #instafit #picoftheday #actch #actchwod5 - #solimedsd https://www.instagram.com/p/B9H2JGvIuBj/?igshid=klwn40m5gm5p

[mromegafit]

CrossFit Semifinals starts for me tomorrow! Here is my schedule for anyone who wanted to come out to the gym to support. Thursday 3pm WOD2 then 6pm WOD1. Friday 3pm WOD4 then 7pm WOD3. Saturday 3pm WOD5&6. Thank you! 🇺🇸 #crossfitgames2022adaptive #omegastrong #latrobepa (at CrossFit Ageless) https://www.instagram.com/p/CeRX8ZMrT0o/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[clearparadiseenemy]

wod5

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

NOTE: When I'm speaking about 'the artist', I do not mean the guy who made the video. I would not post this, if the artist hadn't done this multiple times now. Regardless of my opinion on WoD5, having this artist work on pieces for products that are meant to be bought and blatantly trace and steal textures is a problem. Do not harass the artist, report him to Paradox, Renegade, White Wolf. Make it clear this is not okay. There are plenty of artists around who do not trace.

[lassser2000]

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A post shared by 🎖JT🎖 (@joamir_xfit)

Because a 2nd chance is always good. 1/3 Videos WOD5 @Thefittestexperience Qualifier . QUALIFIER FIVE  14 MINUTE AMRAP . 100 WALL BALLS 21 OVERHEAD SQUATS 21 BAR FACING BURPEES 15 HANG SQUAT SNATCH 15 BAR FACING BURPEES 9 SQUAT SNATCH 9 BAR FACING BURPEES . Men will use 20lb Wall Ball and 95# Barbell . . #CompTrainMasters @Gatorzeyewear @Crossfit @killcliff @thegranitegames #Crossfit #onamission #Gatorzlifestyle #Beards #Crossfitlove #Crossfitter #Life #lifting #BeStronger #fit #Master35-39 #Weightlifting #fitnessmotivation #fitlifestyle #Motivation #reebok #health #fitness #Gymnastics #CrossfitOTS3 #Masters #Athlete (at CrossFit OTS3)

[lasser2000]

Granite Games 2017 Team of 3 Masters 35+ Wod5 18 mins AMRAP Of.... Dubs, Thrusters, Pull ups..... C2B, Ring Muscle ups . . . . I'm humble just showing some action of the 1st and only the 1st round. It was awful as *&$?*%#, sorry but damn it, over 100° today here in #Texas . . . @thegranitegames @calintz79 @linnebur6 @thibbs81 . . . #onamission #Gatorzlifestyle #Beard #Crossfit #Crossfitlove #Crossfitter #Healthyfood #Healthyeating #Life #lifting #BeStronger #fit #Master35-39 #fitnessmotivation #fitlifestyle #fitnessaddicted #Motivation #reebok #health #fitness #assaultairbike #assaultbike #Gymnastics #gg17 #Granitegames2017 (at CrossFit OTS3)

[napocampojr]

This killer WOD5! #trainhard #traininsane #trainmean #fitabove40s #worksmartplayhardprepareharder #livetoughnrough #livesore #WOD #highintensityintervaltraining #spartanlifestyle #roadtospartanbeast #ultrarunnerby❤️ #roadtobdm1602018 #respectthedistance #fitby50 #beastmode #battleropes #hangclean #baglift #iloveburpees #fitnessballworkout (at Eastwood Richmonde Hotel)

[crossfitchalkbox]

Benchmark Box WOD 5 | How tough are you?

We have designed a number of Benchmark Box WOD’s (BB WOD) to test your level of fitness. These BB WOD’s will show up periodically in our programming. It is a perfect moment for you and your coaches to understand the progress you are making and adjust the cycles where needed to work on weaknesses.

A) Gymnastics Skill Practise:

EMOM12

1min 20seconds of practising Kipping Swing

2min max rep Strict Pull Ups

B) BENCHMARK BOX WOD5

What is it? This is our newest addition to our Benchmark Box WOD series. This test is a true test of work capacity and mental strength. Row 2k as hard as fast as you can. However every minute you need to do burpees. Starting at minute zero with one and adding 1 rep every minute to it. If you cannot complete the burpees within 1 minute and you still got to finish your rowing revert to 4 reps a minute until you have finished the 2k row....

Your score is:

Time to complete the 2k row and max reps in burpees you achieved before you had to revert to 4.