u/PencilBoy99

The default assumption of the game is that the players get together because they're involved in some event, and then they stick together and endanger their lives investigating things for random contacts. This is very much in the war hammer fantasy tpg tradition of characters being people that endanger their lives doing random things. Do you think there's any way I could switch this to patron based play? That is let the players come up with a patreon, like they can in imperium maledictum, such as the town's merchant guild or something, and have that patron provide direction as to why they're involving themselves In these random dangerous events. For whatever reason that just feels a lot more comfortable to me. And each week, having some random contact, ask them to do a thing. The patron based thing also makes it seem more like a part time job.

I read through the drama section again of the storyteller's guide and a couple of things stand out.

It really, really seems just like the 2d20 momentum mechanic. Even today, a decade or more after that, mechanic came out, gm's are still posting questions about what they can and can't do with and without threat.

You could house rule in any way you want, but rules is written. It looks like to make anything interesting happen in a scene. You have to have a pile of drama. If the players want to do something impossible, they can go ahead and do it as long as they've made sure they've starved you of drama. If the gm thinks it would be interesting or appropriate or useful, or make sense for x to happen in a scene, if you don't have drama, it's not going to happen.

I can't for the life of me figure out why people that use mechanics like this are so terrified of gm's making decisions. What is it they think game masters are doing with their agency? What horrors will occur if a gm is able to make us scene more difficult or interesting without begging for metacurrency.

The mechanic is also odd because it's a weird loop. Players want to succeed, so they generate the metacurrency, the poor g m has to spend the metacurrency to do their job, this makes it harder, so the players have to spend meter cards either overcome the more difficult situations. I want to just play it normally. What problem is it that we're trying to solve? If I have a pile of drama obligated to essentially murder the players?

The mechanic of people always finding core clues in gumshoe was designed to solve a problem. You might not agree that it's a problem or even a good mechanic for solving that problem, but it was created to solve a problem. What problem is this solving that makes it worth it to make my life as a gm harder? I'm already doing the least fun job at the table. The players, ninety nine percent of the time are using their agency to advance their characters agendas. The gm doesn't have an agenda other than making an awesome session for them.

I'm not going to play test this because i've already played a bunch of this mechanic and I'm not a fan.

I can't just ignore this mechanic because then there's no break on players gaining drama.

Evolved? 2e?

It seems like the majority of comments on this thread indicate that canonically the Garou would like to cull most humans rather than just have a nicer environment.

https://www.reddit.com/r/WorldOfDarkness/comments/1v80910/comment/p0asq0n/?context=1&screen_view_count=3&ext-referrer=DIRECT

It seems like the smartest thing to do would be to engineer as many epidemics as possible. Use all of your werewolf powers to capture as many scientists as you can and force them to make deadly diseases. At first, the spirit world would be messed up because of all the suffering.But then there'd be no people so everything would be great based on this world view.

Even vampires don't want to destroy most of humanity.

Can you play or run the game if you don't want to explore doing this? Otherwise, I'll have to run forsaken, and the chronicles of darkness system makes me want to stab myself in my eye.

The coming destruction campaign and probably any werewolf or vampire campaign is going to have scenes where there are large number of npcs arguing (moots, elysium). How do I present?What the npcs are doing re saying without making it a weird theater thing where I am talking to myself

TLDR: managing level of effort/creativity for spirit court

I'm getting ready to run the *Coming Destruction* and read through the supplements including *Moonlit Path*. The spirit world presented there seems incredibly complex (all the types of spirits, how they relate). The amount of effort required to constantly build huge numbers of NPC spirts in every location along with the spirit court they're embedded seems massively complicated. Each spirit may have weird goals, needs, etc.

I like to run games set in mostly the real world (World of Darkness, Chronicles, Cthulhu, etc.) because it's very easy to come up with NPC's (just random real world people). However, I can't rely on any of that for the Spirit side of the equation. I can't just use any of the "coffee shop barista" people I've met in real life for an NPC - I need to build out the whole spirit thing.

Lots of people play werewolf so I think I'm not understanding how this works.

TLDR: managing level of effort/creativity for spirit court

I'm getting ready to run the *Coming Destruction* and read through the supplements including *Moonlit Path*. The spirit world presented there seems incredibly complex (all the types of spirits, how they relate). The amount of effort required to constantly build huge numbers of NPC spirts in every location along with the spirit court they're embedded seems massively complicated. Each spirit may have weird goals, needs, etc.

I like to run games set in mostly the real world (World of Darkness, Chronicles, Cthulhu, etc.) because it's very easy to come up with NPC's (just random real world people). However, I can't rely on any of that for the Spirit side of the equation. I can't just use any of the "coffee shop barista" people I've met in real life for an NPC - I need to build out the whole spirit thing.

Lots of people play werewolf so I think I'm not understanding how this works.

Has anyone checked this out? It seemed neat

Does the system work if I don't have planned structured story arcs?

Lots of the books and premade chronicles have stats or mentioned normal human antagonists, like guards or police. If even 1 garou shifts to big monster firm, all these antagonists will suffer from delirium forgetting the encounter and flee. How are they any sort of obstacle?

I read what I think was the unpopular Brucado Mage 20 advice book which made it feel less threatening to run. I'm not sure weather to start with Revised or M20 for core mechanics and magic rules. I've never run or played.

I have a samsung tab s10 with the fancy keyboard thing that has a back part with a magentized cover.

What do you do with the keyboard when you are just using it as a tablet. The keyboard is the other half of the cover and is attached with magnet

TLDR: many of the significant normal things Werewolves can do seem like non-RPG interesting cakewalks

I'm reading through the W5 book in preparation for running a campaign. Many of the things it mentions as things Werewolves do are just regular terrorism and murder against corporations and people.

For example, if there's a Data Center being built in a town and it's bad for the environment, a werewolf pack could EASILY destroy it. It would take zero effort to get past human guards (regeneration, special abilities). Locked doors aren't going to stop you. Once inside even a normal human could do a massive amount of damage. Assuming there's even any opposition (delirum), no one is going to recognize you and a wolfman on camera isn't going to lead to your arrest.

This doesn't seem to be interesting to GM - there's really no tactical decisions, no risk.

So there must be something I'm missing here.

I am a pocketcasts plus subscriber. As of today when I try to listen on my laptop (web player, desktop app) and access my smart playlists they're greyed out and when I click on them it says "download android or IOS app">

I'm still (after decades) terrible at inventing my own content and I'm busy so I like to run pre-made campaigns.

75% of the campaigns have something that annoy me and I have trouble getting past them, usually in terms of why the party is doing the things.

Some recent examples, all of which have great core ideas/plots

• Deadlands Horror on Headstone Hill. Players are members of the "Twilight Legion", an unofficial organization of people who hunt the supernatural. The setting has two funded, professional, resourced organizations, the Agency and the Rangers, who handle this sort of thing. Why are the players who are just rando unlicensed people, handling this. There are people who are paid, trained, and have the authority to handle this kind of thing
• (new system) Winter King. Your players participate in the campaign because they receive a vision from Merlin. This seems flimsy. Why the players? This kind of "you're chosen" thing seems really common in campaigns.
• (WFRP 4e) The Enemy Within. Completely unclear why the players are doing any of this stuff, and pursuing this great conspiracy to protect the Empire.
• (Gumshoe) Pillars Built on Sand. The only thing that would get the players involved in all of the scenarios is if they're a group of guys that do random stuff for money, and randomly somehow they're hired at all of the key points. Also, they have to do super heroic stuff beyond what their paid for, even though they're guys that just do stuff for money. If you want to make a group that would actually try to handle the core issue of the plot (some supernatural bad stuff), it's hard to see how you'd rework the campaign so they'd interact w/ all the scenarios.
• A shadow of the demon lord campaign i just bought, where the players are kind of directed to go to places that happen to be part of the overall plot.

I don't have this issue with:

• Vampire the Masquerade, since its usually a sandbox and the players are just interacting with stuff or they're ordered to do stuff by their clan
• Werewolf the Apocalypse. It's explicitly your job to handle a segment of supernatural problems.
• Delta Green. Again, it's your job. The organization knows about stuff and can tell you to do stuff.
• One Ring. You have a company and you're agents of a patron. patron tells you what to do, and you like the patron. Patron knows stuff and can send you to it.

Given that campaigns whose setup annoys me are popular, that means that either

• players and GMs don't care about the weird setup;
• I'm deranged and this shouldn't annoy me (possibility). If so how do I stop being annoyed.
• GMs rework the campaign somehow;

How do you all think about it?

Without lots of people, there's a limit to how much humans can "damage" the environment.

Practically shouldn't Werewolves be focused on mass casualty events. For example, a covid like plague that wipes out 90% of the population would be good from Gaias perspective. Or something that causes a mass famine. That seems like Iike it's more productive than killing some weaver spirits at a local AI data center.

Gaia in lore doesn't privilege humanity. If there are less humans but more whales and bees that's fine.

Individual Werewolves might not like killing lots of people, but they're soldiers in an apocalyptic war. Soldiers don't usually like killing but they do it. They are built for killing

I'm misunderstanding the game im sure because what i said above doesn't seem to be what the core game activity is but im not sure why

Correction Impergium

My memories of the original 1e werewolf was that it was mostly about fighting pollution, but pollution was caused by an out of control wyrm.

Today, there's lots of solar and wind power, electric cars, etc. Even if the current administration isn't into the environment, many younger people are.

When you run games, do you just ignore that? Are there other ways the triat being out of balance can cause problems besides pollution?

OUTCOME what does a longer-term Werewolf campaign look like?

I understand how to run a Vampire campaign - it's easy to sandbox and come up with stuff for players to do (and they can come up with stuff to do)

• constant internal politics, squabbling over real resources (territory -> blood)
• weird stuff to deal with
• external threats from other sects
• player's own political goals

With Werewolf 5e, it's not clear to me how to setup a longer term sandbox campaign. After you clear out the N Pentex things (evil power plant, evil drug corporation) in your territory, it seems like your sort of done. There's politics, but not really anything like Vampire -there's no "resource" to compete over -you're essentially all on the same team.