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Game blather; Children of Gaia werewolves
May. 29th, 2013 09:38 amThinking about Werewolf the Apocalypse. I'd always sorta thought the Children of Gaia were lame - a little like the Stargazers, an attempt to graft pure white-hat good guys onto a mostly grayscaled world. (WtA already had the Shadow Lords and Red Talons as The Official Bad Guys). I think part of why I didn't like them was that the CoGs were presented as Victorianly intellectually superior homids rather than a group which included peace-loving lupus.
Lately I've started to like them more.
My current perspective on GMing is that you want to let players have whatever concept they want, within the limit of balance to the rest of the group, and I can see players wanting to play a paladinic good guy. Having the CoGs around is the Werewolf equivalent of having a good-aligned solar deity or established knightly order in your fantasy setting.
From a story perspective, I like the idea that the Children of Gaia are about how awesome the world is. It makes sense to me that Garou could easily lose perspective, and get completely lost in their roles as warriors of Gaia, doomed to fight a losing war, unlikely to personally survive it, haunted by tragedy (Get of Fenris, Fianna, Bone Gnawers, Red Talons, Black Furies)... or alternatively very much defined by the ancestry handed to them by generations of hunted, persecuted, unwanted ancestors (Uktena, Wendigo, Silent Striders - it's not an accident that I relate to them).
The Stargazers can get lost in their personal quests for enlightenment or their egos about how awesomely detached they are. The Glass Walkers seem to be there as a player character tool for people who want to do the World of Darkness motorcycle-and-katana combo, have some sort of explanation for an urban werewolf not inspired by The Wolfen, or play Shadowrun. As such I like having that option around, though I usually sort of detest the GW as basically tech-wanky gentrified Bay Area werewolves; Gaia cries out in pain and even our pups know that this is the Age of Apocalypse, but that's cool 'cause the latest iPhone came out. That leaves the CoGs as the actual here and now good guys, the people who are into the idea that the world is full of good stuff worth fighting for. The equivalent of how getting to see Lothlorien or the Shire gives you an idea of why Middle-Earth is awesome and you don't want it overrun by Mordor.
How's that for dumb roleplaying game thoughts?
Dumber roleplaying game thought; RIFTS general technique of taking an interesting setting or mythos (ancient Egypt, Russia, wild west) and mixing it with aliens/mutants/robots/mecha/dinosaurs/juicers/technocratic human supremacists creates an exuberant and strangely compelling setting, and also a tangled rules nightmare with constant power creep. Could you modify 4e Shadowrun - which is already about Man meets Magic and Machine - to stamp a more unified rules set on the whole mess?
Lately I've started to like them more.
My current perspective on GMing is that you want to let players have whatever concept they want, within the limit of balance to the rest of the group, and I can see players wanting to play a paladinic good guy. Having the CoGs around is the Werewolf equivalent of having a good-aligned solar deity or established knightly order in your fantasy setting.
From a story perspective, I like the idea that the Children of Gaia are about how awesome the world is. It makes sense to me that Garou could easily lose perspective, and get completely lost in their roles as warriors of Gaia, doomed to fight a losing war, unlikely to personally survive it, haunted by tragedy (Get of Fenris, Fianna, Bone Gnawers, Red Talons, Black Furies)... or alternatively very much defined by the ancestry handed to them by generations of hunted, persecuted, unwanted ancestors (Uktena, Wendigo, Silent Striders - it's not an accident that I relate to them).
The Stargazers can get lost in their personal quests for enlightenment or their egos about how awesomely detached they are. The Glass Walkers seem to be there as a player character tool for people who want to do the World of Darkness motorcycle-and-katana combo, have some sort of explanation for an urban werewolf not inspired by The Wolfen, or play Shadowrun. As such I like having that option around, though I usually sort of detest the GW as basically tech-wanky gentrified Bay Area werewolves; Gaia cries out in pain and even our pups know that this is the Age of Apocalypse, but that's cool 'cause the latest iPhone came out. That leaves the CoGs as the actual here and now good guys, the people who are into the idea that the world is full of good stuff worth fighting for. The equivalent of how getting to see Lothlorien or the Shire gives you an idea of why Middle-Earth is awesome and you don't want it overrun by Mordor.
How's that for dumb roleplaying game thoughts?
Dumber roleplaying game thought; RIFTS general technique of taking an interesting setting or mythos (ancient Egypt, Russia, wild west) and mixing it with aliens/mutants/robots/mecha/dinosaurs/juicers/technocratic human supremacists creates an exuberant and strangely compelling setting, and also a tangled rules nightmare with constant power creep. Could you modify 4e Shadowrun - which is already about Man meets Magic and Machine - to stamp a more unified rules set on the whole mess?
