General WoD Discussion #2: Its time to Celebrate!

[The Glyphstone]

Predator's Taint, page 168:

Even if a vampire has met another Kindred
before, the initial “surge” of the Beast takes place every time
the two make contact, though it is far more manageable than the
initial contact of the unknown.

On the other hand, it does say the flare of Beasts only occurs if you're aware of the other person, and you get no special vampire detection abilities...so I think A was wrong here specifically, but would have been right if you hadn't been meditating.

[Lord_Gareth]

You're certainly allowed to disapprove, but I stand firm on changing the "must eat vampires" thing to simply requiring more vitae for two reasons.

First, IRL, it's much more efficient to eat herbivores than carnivores, because each link between you and the source of your energy had to expend a bit more of that energy in keeping itself alive. Since all vampires require blood from some source, it's obvious that the source of their animating energy isn't in them. It comes from living things, and any vampire drinking vampiric vitae is just drinking what his victim took from a mortal (or his victim's victim... somewhere down the line it came from a living source.

You could argue that the older vampires need their vitae to be concentrated in another vampire's system first, maybe reduce human vitae to the efficacy of animal vitae rather than make it totally ineffective, but that doesn't address my second reason for the change. Vampires are supposed to be unholy monsters. They're supposed to hurt innocents, or at least mortals who haven't been actively Damned by whatever force is in charge of their world. From my point of view, putting another step between them and the humans they victimize deemphasizes the fact that no matter how you try to pretty it up, a vampire is a moving, slightly decayed corpse that eats people. Eating other monsters is inconvenient due to the vinculum, but it could be morally justified, and nothing about a vampire's condition should be morally justified. Under these rules, a vampire could try to eat only bad people, but that's still more in keeping with the theme I'm going for than a monster that only eats other monsters.

You're missing a few things here.

First and foremost: the whole herbivore/carnivore thing is bringing science into something that operates under magical/narrative laws. The comparison is actively unhelpful at best and a Stephenie Meyer-class genre breach at worst.

Second: An elder vampire that needs to feed on his own kind is unlikely to just stalk and attack random vampires. The reason for this is simple: your average vampire is dangerous as all hell. And yet, they also need to ensure a steady supply of blood (oh, hey, incidentally - once a vampire becomes old enough to require vampire blood for sustenance, they're immune to any vinculums they don't already have. Check the core book) in order to fuel their powers and/or existence. How to do this? Well, the obvious answer is this - establish a herd.

But a herd of vampires is a very different beast from a herd of humans. A herd of humans is a group of unsuspecting mooks or blood dolls. A herd of vampires is an industry built on violence. Each of those vampires (and having more than one is ideal, of course, especially given the amount of vitae you may need to refresh each night) has their own feeding needs, which they inflict upon humans. But then they also need to feed you, which means attacking two or even three times the number of people each night in a spreading wave of callously planned malice. Even at blood potency 6 or 7 creating such a thing means deliberately planning (or at least accepting) a campaign of assault (possibly murderous assault) upon the unsuspecting innocent.

Does that sound like it's taking the edge off the moral consequences to you?

[Morty]

You're missing a few things here.

First and foremost: the whole herbivore/carnivore thing is bringing science into something that operates under magical/narrative laws. The comparison is actively unhelpful at best and a Stephenie Meyer-class genre breach at worst.

Second: An elder vampire that needs to feed on his own kind is unlikely to just stalk and attack random vampires. The reason for this is simple: your average vampire is dangerous as all hell. And yet, they also need to ensure a steady supply of blood (oh, hey, incidentally - once a vampire becomes old enough to require vampire blood for sustenance, they're immune to any vinculums they don't already have. Check the core book) in order to fuel their powers and/or existence. How to do this? Well, the obvious answer is this - establish a herd.

But a herd of vampires is a very different beast from a herd of humans. A herd of humans is a group of unsuspecting mooks or blood dolls. A herd of vampires is an industry built on violence. Each of those vampires (and having more than one is ideal, of course, especially given the amount of vitae you may need to refresh each night) has their own feeding needs, which they inflict upon humans. But then they also need to feed you, which means attacking two or even three times the number of people each night in a spreading wave of callously planned malice. Even at blood potency 6 or 7 creating such a thing means deliberately planning (or at least accepting) a campaign of assault (possibly murderous assault) upon the unsuspecting innocent.

Does that sound like it's taking the edge off the moral consequences to you?

I agree with what you said, more or less, but I don't think this is true. Last I checked, vampires whose blood is too powerful for them to feed on mortals are immune to becoming addicted to vampiric Vitae, but not Vinculum. Unless I've missed something.

[Lord_Gareth]

I agree with what you said, more or less, but I don't think this is true. Last I checked, vampires whose blood is too powerful for them to feed on mortals are immune to becoming addicted to vampiric Vitae, but not Vinculum. Unless I've missed something.

Oh hey, you appear to be correct (page 158 of the Red Book, "Elders, Addiction, and Diablerie"). Good thing I haven't had the chance to screw that one up in a game I'm running yet >.>

However, the presence of (likely mutual) Vinculums does not actually change the whole 'industry of violence' dynamic.

[Mono Vertigo]

Predator's Taint, page 168:


On the other hand, it does say the flare of Beasts only occurs if you're aware of the other person, and you get no special vampire detection abilities...so I think A was wrong here specifically, but would have been right if you hadn't been meditating.

Finally! A reference! And one I shouldn't have missed because it's within the first two hundreds pages!
Thanks a lot! Glad to see my error is not as jarring as I'd feared.

[CN the Logos]

Lord Gareth: Before I even get started, let me say that it's really, really unlikely we're going to convince each other of anything. If I liked Requiem exactly as written, I wouldn't be making changes to it. I only posted my changes to this thread so that people could catch anything I did that screwed up the mechanics too badly (I already know that I'll have to rework the Coils, so aside from that), or point out fluff consequences of my changes I wasn't thinking about (such as Glyphstone's noting that newbies starting out with a bloodline gets rid of the whole "learning to unlock your true vampiric potential" stage. I'll probably stick with what I've got for characters that were Embraced prior to a chronicle's start, but it's something to consider for a chronicle centered around a neonate). But we're not going to get anywhere arguing over taste.

That said, I feel compelled to explain my rationale behind certain decisions, so here I sit, writing this, knowing that I might as well be typing to a wall. It's probably some sort of really depressing metaphor for my life in general. Anyway:

You're missing a few things here.

First and foremost: the whole herbivore/carnivore thing is bringing science into something that operates under magical/narrative laws. The comparison is actively unhelpful at best and a Stephenie Meyer-class genre breach at worst.

That's subjective. Vampires are a metaphor for predation, disease, rape, and possibly serial murder, and I like them to fit with that theme. I also dislike arbitrary systems of magic.

Also, throwing the name "Stephanie Meyer" around like some sort of Your Vampires Suck trump card needs to stop. Not just from you, from everyone. Because the people I hear using it are generally defending Anne Rice style vamps that have about as much in common with vampire folklore (or even the Victorian horror fiction that codified the modern vampire) as Twilight's sparklepires. Not that there's anything redeeming about Meyer's writing, but you can't criticize her on fidelity to the original mythology when you're playing a game that involves vampires who get together in their vampire courts to discuss vampire politics. You've already left the genre, or at least the bits of it that interest me, long behind at that point.

Second: An elder vampire that needs to feed on his own kind is unlikely to just stalk and attack random vampires. The reason for this is simple: your average vampire is dangerous as all hell. And yet, they also need to ensure a steady supply of blood (oh, hey, incidentally - once a vampire becomes old enough to require vampire blood for sustenance, they're immune to any vinculums they don't already have. Check the core book) in order to fuel their powers and/or existence. How to do this? Well, the obvious answer is this - establish a herd.

How is a herd of vampires even going to become a thing? This isn't Masquerade, where vampires of BP 6 or higher (Generation 7 or lower, I know) have access to super-awesome secret elder only powers that the new kids can't compete with. That new kid could have as many dots in Dominate, Auspex, etc... as the elder trying to eat him. I mean, it's possible to get together a flock of wolves, sure, but it's not exactly a stable situation. That's the actual, metagame reason for the feeding on vampires thing; the elders need to sleep to keep them from railroading the new kids. Which sort of happens anyway with the large number of older (but not elder!) vampires that have pretentious Latin titles, but meh.

In my case, I like having a few crazy elder vampires around, but I don't want them to be all over the place, taking control of vampire society, so I wanted something that would hopefully result in a middle ground between Masquerade's "elders everywhere, in charge of everything!"and Requiem's "almost no vampire makes it longer than a century!" That's not the only reason for the change, of course, which leads me to...

But a herd of vampires is a very different beast from a herd of humans. A herd of humans is a group of unsuspecting mooks or blood dolls. A herd of vampires is an industry built on violence. Each of those vampires (and having more than one is ideal, of course, especially given the amount of vitae you may need to refresh each night) has their own feeding needs, which they inflict upon humans. But then they also need to feed you, which means attacking two or even three times the number of people each night in a spreading wave of callously planned malice. Even at blood potency 6 or 7 creating such a thing means deliberately planning (or at least accepting) a campaign of assault (possibly murderous assault) upon the unsuspecting innocent.

Does that sound like it's taking the edge off the moral consequences to you?

Do I look like the sort of person who answers sarcasm-laden rhetorical questions?

Regardless of the total amount of vitae taken, it's putting another degree of separation between the elder and his ultimate victim, and allows the vampire (and his player, if he's a PC) to put the ultimate mortal victims out of sight and out of mind. Making the elder having to directly harm his mortals makes the harm he does an immediate thing. Something he can't avoid thinking about, because he's doing it personally.

And believe it or not, I did consider that elder vampires should have a harder time maintaining their unlives, and that they should do more harm to the world around them. That's why I've written a BP 10 elder as needing eight times the amount of vitae that a BP 1 neonate does. He's still causing a lot of suffering. At sustenance-level feeding he's actually causing more harm than an elder under the default rules; a vampire only needs two vitae to heal the point of lethal damage that an elder who's drinking just enough to keep animate does to him, for a total of three lethal damage to (a) mortal(s) per night, versus eight damage per night under my changes. I just want the suffering inflicted to be up close and personal. Of course, as the elder needs more vampire blood to replace extra vitae spent healing and using powers, the default rules start pulling ahead in "total lethal damage done to mortals," but if your Methuselahs are active to the point where they regularly burn that much vitae on Discipline use and fighting things that seriously threaten them, you might actually be playing Masquerade.

[TheCountAlucard]

Not that you don't know it, since you've been making WoD related posts on this board for longer than I've been playing the game, but it bears emphasis: NWoD mortals are really fragile.

Fragile, they may be; I just find it odd that they can survive several minutes after being completely exsanguinated, and can even be saved from death at that point.

Also, throwing the name "Stephanie Meyer" around like some sort of Your Vampires Suck trump card needs to stop. Not just from you, from everyone. Because the people I hear using it are generally defending Anne Rice style vamps that have about as much in common with vampire folklore (or even the Victorian horror fiction that codified the modern vampire) as Twilight's sparklepires. Not that there's anything redeeming about Meyer's writing, but you can't criticize her on fidelity to the original mythology when you're playing a game that involves vampires who get together in their vampire courts to discuss vampire politics.

That's not why her vamps suck, though - it's that she keeps trying to say, "Oh, but it's not magic - look at all this science, which, by the way, I didn't actually research before writing this stuff."

[CN the Logos]

Fragile, they may be; I just find it odd that they can survive several minutes after being completely exsanguinated, and can even be saved from death at that point.

If it bothers you, think of it as them having a bit more blood, but they can't provide the vampire with any more of the delicious life energy that she craves, and they've lost enough blood so that they'll be dead soon regardless.

That said, humans have survived some crazy ****, the brain can go without oxygen for four minutes before incurring permanent damage, and NWoD isn't much of a simulationist system anyway. Call it an approximation of reality and shrug at the potential weirdness, I suppose?

That's not why her vamps suck, though - it's that she keeps trying to say, "Oh, but it's not magic - look at all this science, which, by the way, I didn't actually research before writing this stuff."

Oh no, fidelity to the source material is a secondary concern for me. What's important is that whatever rules for the monster you use, they should make sense and facilitate the story being told. I just mean that saying that her material is a breach of genre is sort of meaningless. Portraying vampires as sentient is, to some extent, a genre-breach.

From the little bit of her work I've looked through, the problem is that her writing is bad. Far be it from me to tell anyone that they're wrong to enjoy what they enjoy; if you want your vampires to activate their dread powers by singing showtunes (while dancing, where appropriate), that's cool. I'm going to roll my eyes a bit, but there's no disputing matters of taste. But bad writing is bad writing.

[The Glyphstone]

Fragile, they may be; I just find it odd that they can survive several minutes after being completely exsanguinated, and can even be saved from death at that point.

The human body is surprisingly resilient:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinical_death

You can survive with no blood flow for 3-4 minutes, sometimes up to 10 minutes, before suffering brain damage at body temperature. Your other organs can survive up to 30 minutes with no blood flow; severed limbs can be reattached after 6 hours and still function.

[closetgeek44]

Obviously saw Dark Knight and Bane may be one of my favorite villains atm. Was trying to think of how to create a Bane type character to use in a WoD game setting. Maybe he's not a mortal? Maybe a different splat? Maybe he's an immortal? A veteran Rahu? A seasoned Gangrel? etc...

If he is a mortal, what would his attributes, merits, skills, etc...be?

I'm looking for any kind of input.

[erikun]

The tricky part is that a lot of Bane's character is about his backstory, methods, and motivations, not his "powers". Overall, he is just a very tough person with a lot of strength and pain relief, and some rough greco-roman wrestling training (from what I could tell).

His backstory seems similar to a Geist, or someone who has died and came back to live out life again. While I'm not as familiar with it, he also seems similar to a Promethean, at least for his body.

If I was more familiar with the systems (sadly, I am not) I would just make him a mortal with a few appropriate gifts and training in a few fighting styles. To use Vampire's disciplines, I'd give him Vigor, Resilience, and a few ranks in Dominate... for spoiler reasons below.

Spoiler

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A big part of Bane's character in the movie was his ability to speak at the people in Gotham and get them to either revolt or stay indoors. Bane's takeover of Gotham wasn't so much with strength of arms but with manipulating and convincing everyone to do what he wanted them to do.

Edit, and more spoilery bits below.

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Talia as a Vampire might actually work out really well for your purposes. She could easily possess Dominate and Majesty, using them to hold together the League of Shadows. Bane would be a ghoul, with the "Bane Juice" (not in the movie, but from the comic) being Talia's blood and granting him his discipline powers. Yes, it doesn't work out perfectly as Talia frequently wanders around in daylight, but could make an interesting idea if you want a Talia-ish and Bane-ish character for a game, rather than trying to reconstruct the existing characters.

[closetgeek44]

The tricky part is that a lot of Bane's character is about his backstory, methods, and motivations, not his "powers". Overall, he is just a very tough person with a lot of strength and pain relief, and some rough greco-roman wrestling training (from what I could tell).

His backstory seems similar to a Geist, or someone who has died and came back to live out life again. While I'm not as familiar with it, he also seems similar to a Promethean, at least for his body.

If I was more familiar with the systems (sadly, I am not) I would just make him a mortal with a few appropriate gifts and training in a few fighting styles. To use Vampire's disciplines, I'd give him Vigor, Resilience, and a few ranks in Dominate... for spoiler reasons below.

Spoiler

Show

A big part of Bane's character in the movie was his ability to speak at the people in Gotham and get them to either revolt or stay indoors. Bane's takeover of Gotham wasn't so much with strength of arms but with manipulating and convincing everyone to do what he wanted them to do.

Edit, and more spoilery bits below.

Spoiler

Show

Talia as a Vampire might actually work out really well for your purposes. She could easily possess Dominate and Majesty, using them to hold together the League of Shadows. Bane would be a ghoul, with the "Bane Juice" (not in the movie, but from the comic) being Talia's blood and granting him his discipline powers. Yes, it doesn't work out perfectly as Talia frequently wanders around in daylight, but could make an interesting idea if you want a Talia-ish and Bane-ish character for a game, rather than trying to reconstruct the existing characters.

The point you make in your second spoiler seems fairly accurate as a relationship analogy.

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Bane does afterall act out of love and devotion to Talia pretty much from the get go, and while he acts as her enforcer he does seem to possess a formidable intellect and charisma of his own.

I think in each splat there is a Bane-ish template (why I mentioned Gangrel) but could easily be turned into a Nosferatu (hence the mask).

I'm not familiar with Geist so I'll take a look at it and see what it offers as well. A few of the immortal templates seemed like they could be used to create a Bane-type character as well due to many of them being very tough to kill.

[The Glyphstone]

Great Modthulhu: Spliced the Bane-build thread into the main WoD thread.

Burble.

[erikun]

I'm not familiar with Geist so I'll take a look at it and see what it offers as well. A few of the immortal templates seemed like they could be used to create a Bane-type character as well due to many of them being very tough to kill.

Geist, as I mentioned, is all about characters who have died and came back to life. That is the whole point - the characters get their powers from having been dead and resurrected. This parallels Bane and

Spoiler

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The Pit, which is basically a metaphorical death and resurrection. Getting out of the Pit is pretty much as close to having died and being reincarnated as you'd get to a non-magical setting.

Promethean was mentioned as well, as they are pieced-together creatures of unnatural toughness. Especially in Dark Knight Rises, Bane is very much a character that was taken apart and put back together in his new life; the parallel is what I first thought.


Note that both fit the theme of the Bane character, not necessarily the power set or capabilities. I mentioned Vampire because, beyond being most familiar with it, Vampires are well known for their ability to manipulate things. Bane (along with Joker) were primarily manipulators, so while a Bane-vampire or Joker-vampire may not make the most sense from a Vampire lore standpoint, the system does definitely grant them the most appropriate abilities.

(Resilience and Vigor, or Strength-boost and Soak-boost, are in most WoD systems that I know of. In that regard, it isn't difficult to build a strong toughman in almost any of them.)

[Yuki Akuma]

Objection!

Sin-Eaters get their powers from sharing their souls with horrible ghost-gods, not from having died and come back.

If anything, Prometheans are the ones whose powers come from being resurrected - although they're not the same person as the person who owned the corpse they were made from.

[comicshorse]

( Because I love Changeling)

Spoiler

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Bane is an Ogre ( with plenty of Contract of Stone) who was abducted by his Keeper and held in The Pit. There he remained until Talia ( Fairest) arrived and the two forged a friendship with Bane protecting her.
Eventually Talia escaped Arcadia and found friends and a adoptive father in a group of Bridge Burners. She lead them deep into Arcadia and in a daring raid they freed Bane and fled.
Now she and Bane are working on their greatest plan. Gotham is home to many Trods and if the world is to be saved from the true Fae they must be destroyed no matter what the cost. It has taken many years of planning but now they have a weapon powerful enough to take out all of Gotham's Trod's at once.

[CN the Logos]

So, curiosity (and the possibility of crossover in a game I'm running) compels me to ask:what's the deal with NWoD werewolves? Maybe it becomes totally obvious on a thorough readthrough of their rules (I've got the book, but have only had time to look it over so far), but I've heard them compared unfavorably to hunters. So before I bother coming up with details for the werewolf-centric subplot I've been wanting to run for awhile, could someone tell me why they're apparently stuck at the bottom of NWoD's tier list, and what if anything can be done about that?

[Selrahc]

but I've heard them compared unfavorably to hunters.

If so, you've heard wrongly.

Werewolves have some weaknesses that make them certainly amongst the weaker supers. But they do have a lot of positives.

Weaknesses-
Gauru form is very fleeting. For most non-combat focussed wolves, it will only last 3 turns.
Silver weakness is something that basically any non-werewolf foe can quite easily exploit, and negates some of their biggest strenths
Shapeshifting relies on luck and takes, or becomes a big essence sink.
In order to learn higher level powers, werewolves need to pay a premium by first increasing renown. Massive XP sink and less choice. Comes with a roleplay restriction(you want Honour renown? You have to act exceptionally honourably.)
The totem mechanics as written, are kind of ludicrous. I think if WW was doing werewolf now, they would probably have created something similar to pledgecrafting.
In general, the Gifts and Rituals that werewolves have access to are on the lower end of the power curve of supernatural abilities. Not useless, but generally rather specific in function.
Social penalties and Rage checks mean it is very hard to function in mortal society for any werewolf not particularly socially adroit.

Positives-
Alternate forms provide even the weakest werewolf with basic combat competence akin to a fairly combat focussed mortal.
Lunacy means that mortal antagonists basically can't confront werewolves.
Harmony is easily one of the more flexible and forgiving of the Morality meters.
Regeneration against everything but silver(and other agg. damage) is quick and handy, with easy in combat healing.
Access to the spirit world gives a whole other angle for attack against all spirit blind foes. It also gives a source of allies and information that outclasses anything in the mortal world.
Werewolves operate as a society a lot more readily than most supernaturals, and will attempt to compensate for others weaknesses. Dedicated pack fighting is something werewolves actively learn.
Once the Renown requirement is done, Werewolves have free access to gift lists and can cherry pick gifts at any level without having to learn prerequisites.


I'd happily put Werewolves on a level with Vampires and Prometheans, and the only reason I'd put Changelings above them would be pledge crafting.

[Sydonai]

Alternate forms provide even the weakest werewolf with basic combat competence akin to a fairly combat focussed mortal.
Lunacy means that mortal antagonists basically can't confront werewolves.
Harmony is easily one of the more flexible and forgiving of the Morality meters.
Regeneration against everything but silver(and other agg. damage) is quick and handy, with easy in combat healing.
Access to the spirit world gives a whole other angle for attack against all spirit blind foes. It also gives a source of allies and information that outclasses anything in the mortal world.
Werewolves operate as a society a lot more readily than most supernaturals, and will attempt to compensate for others weaknesses. Dedicated pack fighting is something werewolves actively learn.
Once the Renown requirement is done, Werewolves have free access to gift lists and can cherry pick gifts at any level without having to learn prerequisites.

1.Alternate forms might be useless depending on the ST's interpretation of Harmony.
2.Lunacy can be ignored by spending willpower, and it doesn't outway the cons of Death-Rage.
3.How much of a problem Harmony is heavily depends on the ST's interpretation. Shapshifting can be seen as "revealing the existance of werewolves". Using any bite attack can be seen as "cunsuming the flesh of werewolves/humans/wolves". Something as small as smacking an irritating packmate in the head can be seen as "betraying the pack".
4.There are at least three methods to harm werewolves that exploit their regeneration, one is a crippling fighting style that anyone can learn.
5.Spirits all hate werewolves, except for Lunes that love you and drive you crazy by accident.
6.Werewolves operate in a society based on having a pissing-contest at the slightest hint of an argument and give the win to the physically strongest four times out of five.
7.Gifts are useless if you don't have enough xp for them or you can't use them due to role-play restrictions.

[ToySoldierCPlus]

1.Alternate forms might be useless depending on the ST's interpretation of Harmony.
2.Lunacy can be ignored by spending willpower, and it doesn't outway the cons of Death-Rage.
3.How much of a problem Harmony is heavily depends on the ST's interpretation. Shapshifting can be seen as "revealing the existance of werewolves". Using any bite attack can be seen as "cunsuming the flesh of werewolves/humans/wolves". Something as small as smacking an irritating packmate in the head can be seen as "betraying the pack".
4.There are at least three methods to harm werewolves that exploit their regeneration, one is a crippling fighting style that anyone can learn.
5.Spirits all hate werewolves, except for Lunes that love you and drive you crazy by accident.
6.Werewolves operate in a society based on having a pissing-contest at the slightest hint of an argument and give the win to the physically strongest four times out of five.
7.Gifts are useless if you don't have enough xp for them or you can't use them due to role-play restrictions.

1. Care to elaborate? Shapeshifting is good for Harmony; not shapeshifting for 3 days is even a Harmony violation at Harmony 8 and above.
2. Again, care to explain? At best, you have ST fiat, but if the ST is granting every NPC that fiat, he may as well just remove Lunacy from the game entirely, since it clearly isn't doing its intended job. Also, I don't know how he expects the werewolves to do theirs.
3. Only if your ST has it out for werewolves, in which case I have to wonder why he's running WtF in the first place. The core book even explains that, no, none of what you said is accurate. The Lunacy protects the Uratha from revealing themselves. Using bite attacks is not consuming the flesh of human or wolf, it's standard practice for wolves and werewolves in forms with bite attacks. You bite, tear, and spit, not bite, tear, and swallow. Besides, even if some blood or chunks of meat do make it down your gullet, you're not hunting for food, you're not gaining essence from it, you're not even actually eating anything. And smacking a packmate upside the head is not betraying the pack. Dominance battles are a regular thing for werewolves.
4. Silver stops the regeneration, there's Darius' unique fighting style, but it only functions for someone in Dalu form, what are the others?
5. Spirits do not all hate werewolves, unless, again, your ST is vindictively opposed to werewolves. Yes, lots of them dislike werewolves, but the Firstborn and Lunes like werewolves, and other spirits are mostly ambivalent. You have heard of totems, right? You know, the spirits that act as patrons for a werewolf pack, and provide them benefits? Or spirit allies? Not all spirits hate werewolves.
6. Yes and no. "The Low Honor the High; the High Respect the Low." If a werewolf disagrees with his/her alpha, they can say so. They have to be respectful, but so does the alpha or elder. If the younger wolf has a serious beef with the alpha or elder, they can challenge the alpha for dominance, but that may not be a good idea. The High got to where they are by being quick, cunning, and yes, strong. Not every sign of disagreement or argument has to devolve into a "pissing contest," and in fact usually won't.
7. Care to explain? If you don't have the XP to purchase Renown or Gifts, then obviously you can't use gifts you haven't bought. Once you've bought them either via XP or Renown, however, you can use them as much as you like, as long as you can pay the essence or willpower cost. What RP restrictions do you mean?

[The Glyphstone]

1.Alternate forms might be useless depending on the ST's interpretation of Harmony.
2.Lunacy can be ignored by spending willpower, and it doesn't outway the cons of Death-Rage.
3.How much of a problem Harmony is heavily depends on the ST's interpretation. Shapshifting can be seen as "revealing the existance of werewolves". Using any bite attack can be seen as "cunsuming the flesh of werewolves/humans/wolves". Something as small as smacking an irritating packmate in the head can be seen as "betraying the pack".
4.There are at least three methods to harm werewolves that exploit their regeneration, one is a crippling fighting style that anyone can learn.
5.Spirits all hate werewolves, except for Lunes that love you and drive you crazy by accident.
6.Werewolves operate in a society based on having a pissing-contest at the slightest hint of an argument and give the win to the physically strongest four times out of five.
7.Gifts are useless if you don't have enough xp for them or you can't use them due to role-play restrictions.

Whatever ST introduced you to W:tF did it horribly, horribly wrong.

[Selrahc]

What RP restrictions do you mean?

I think he is talking about Renown.
Renown doesn't really ever prevent you from using *gifts*. It just pushes your character towards certain ways of acting. This isn't really a specific criticism of the tangible "Select whatever gifts you want" benefit, so much as a reiteration that renown can be restrictive.

stuff

Uh. Sure. If your ST is out to stop you from playing the game, then I guess werewolves are quite hard to play.

[Sydonai]

Sorry, I'm in a really bad mood. My grandfather died about a month ago, my grandmother died less than a year before that, and I just got kicked out of a house my family lived in for seventy years.

(There is a gift that makes healing make wounds worse rather than better, I think this includes regeneration. Pretty sure its a Fire-Eyes fever/plague gift.)

[The Glyphstone]

Sorry, I'm in a really bad mood. My grandfather died about a month ago, my grandmother died less than a year before that, and I just got kicked out of a house my family lived in for seventy years.

(There is a gift that makes healing make wounds worse rather than better, I think this includes regeneration. Pretty sure its a Fire-Eyes fever/plague gift.)

That sucks...

As for the gift, remember that the Pure are a dangerous force in their own right, that sounds like it'd be a good anti-Pure Gift to have (or something the Pure would use against the People).

[ToySoldierCPlus]

Sorry, I'm in a really bad mood. My grandfather died about a month ago, my grandmother died less than a year before that, and I just got kicked out of a house my family lived in for seventy years.

(There is a gift that makes healing make wounds worse rather than better, I think this includes regeneration. Pretty sure its a Fire-Eyes fever/plague gift.)

My sympathies. I lost my little brother about a month and a half ago, so I sympathize.

As for the gift, remember that the Pure are a dangerous force in their own right, that sounds like it'd be a good anti-Pure Gift to have (or something the Pure would use against the People).

Mostly something the Pure use against the People. I'm trying to remember where it is... Wolfsbane, perhaps? I know I've read about it.

[The Glyphstone]

If it's a gift from a plague-spirit, you're probably right.

[ToySoldierCPlus]

Actually, I think it's a thing Rabid Wolf gave his tribe. Because that's a thing he would do.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

New Mummy blog on Cults, the equivalent of Lodges/Bloodlines.

Highlights: Mummies often have powerful mortal support systems. Being as they seem mostly to have been leaders of one sort or another before being mummified, this makes a lot of sense.
3 main types of cults: the occult cult (obviously), the conspiracy cult ("tell their followers they’re working for the CIA or the Bilderbergers"), and legitimate businesses ("it could be a profit-generating private equity firm, or an NGO, or a think tank, as far as the outsiders are concerned."), all of which basically give the mummy a different array of resources, retainers, allies, contacts, mooks, etc.

[Urpriest]

That's not why her vamps suck, though - it's that she keeps trying to say, "Oh, but it's not magic - look at all this science, which, by the way, I didn't actually research before writing this stuff."

...that's thoroughly true of Anne Rice as well, though. From Taltos onward, Anne Rice vampires were supposed to be biological.

[Yuki Akuma]

It's not as if WoD vampires are particularly close to any folklore, either - how many stories have you heard about vampires activating their special powers using the magical powers of blood? At best, vampires will heal by drinking blood, but often it's just food.