The Butcher
Legendary Pubber
- Joined
- Apr 29, 2017
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Werewolf: the Forsaken is amazing, and I say that as someone who's derived hours of enjoyment from Werewolf: the Apocalypse.
But god damn it feels so much harder to piece a camp... uh, chronicle together.
I mean, W:tA's tribes and their main antagonists (the Wyrm) were very colorful and very easy to slot anywhere. You stat a few key NPC werewolves, the local forces of the Wyrm, and when you need spirits you can pretty much make them up as you go along. The Umbra and its non-Wyrm-aligned denizens are... just kind of there, I guess, for PCs to call upon more or less as action demands.
W:tF (heh), on the other hand, hinges almost entirely on what happens in the Shadow and how it affects the physical world (and vice versa). The GM (Storyteller? Chronicler? Wolfmaster? I keep forgetting the "right" terms), needs a more detailed Shadow landscape and a working spirit hierarchy, which I find sort of confusing (though WoD: Book of Spirits was a really cool bestiary). Once you've established those you can stat up a few Ridden to act as opponents later on. The Hosts and the Pure I find straightforward enough to whip up and insert (ironically I find the Pure tribes more evocative than their Forsaken counterparts).
But what really bugs me is the need to have just about every local Forsaken pack detailed — or at very least the ones whose territories touch your packs' — because your fellow Forsaken are every bit an antagonist as all these others. The PCs will have to watch their backs as neighboring packs might make a move on their territory even as they're busy fighting the common enemies of the Tribes of the Moon.
I don't see a similar need for detail with either version of Vampire or Mage or Changeling. I always got away with statting up just a few key players within the sandbox.
But then that's probably the big draw of the game for me, isn't it? Just how much more complicated a werewolf's life gets in Forsaken. Sure, Apocalypse had its share of backstabbing and spirit shenanigans, but Forsaken's all about these things. A sandbox with a ton of moving parts, not all of which work as intuitively as your average D&D map hex or dungeon room.
If anyone has experience running this game, I'm all ears.
But god damn it feels so much harder to piece a camp... uh, chronicle together.
I mean, W:tA's tribes and their main antagonists (the Wyrm) were very colorful and very easy to slot anywhere. You stat a few key NPC werewolves, the local forces of the Wyrm, and when you need spirits you can pretty much make them up as you go along. The Umbra and its non-Wyrm-aligned denizens are... just kind of there, I guess, for PCs to call upon more or less as action demands.
W:tF (heh), on the other hand, hinges almost entirely on what happens in the Shadow and how it affects the physical world (and vice versa). The GM (Storyteller? Chronicler? Wolfmaster? I keep forgetting the "right" terms), needs a more detailed Shadow landscape and a working spirit hierarchy, which I find sort of confusing (though WoD: Book of Spirits was a really cool bestiary). Once you've established those you can stat up a few Ridden to act as opponents later on. The Hosts and the Pure I find straightforward enough to whip up and insert (ironically I find the Pure tribes more evocative than their Forsaken counterparts).
But what really bugs me is the need to have just about every local Forsaken pack detailed — or at very least the ones whose territories touch your packs' — because your fellow Forsaken are every bit an antagonist as all these others. The PCs will have to watch their backs as neighboring packs might make a move on their territory even as they're busy fighting the common enemies of the Tribes of the Moon.
I don't see a similar need for detail with either version of Vampire or Mage or Changeling. I always got away with statting up just a few key players within the sandbox.
But then that's probably the big draw of the game for me, isn't it? Just how much more complicated a werewolf's life gets in Forsaken. Sure, Apocalypse had its share of backstabbing and spirit shenanigans, but Forsaken's all about these things. A sandbox with a ton of moving parts, not all of which work as intuitively as your average D&D map hex or dungeon room.
If anyone has experience running this game, I'm all ears.
