Chebucto Regional Softball Club

If you try to make a system that generalizes to any context, it will never be deep enough to truly embrace any context.

That's the hollowing out. They gutted things and didn't put anything in the hole, like a bad taxidermist. 

It was a disappointment to me in a number of ways as well. Regarding the removal of the old stuff, I can sort of get it, but they screwed it up. No more metis as, effectively, a slur? Makes sense. Seriously offensive to those people. No more intra-werewolf racism? No historical bad blood? I get that it's offensive to some people, but that's the point of not only werewolf, but the entire World of Darkness. It's a **WORLD** of **DARKNESS**. A (fleshed out system of lore) of (the things that make you uncomfortable or scared). Despite DnD dorks trying to make it superheroes with fangs, Vampire is a personal horror game in which you make reasonable decisions that slowly turn you into a monster. Werewolf was about confronting the grim truth that often the 'heroes' battling against 'evil' are often just as fucked up as the ones they are fighting against. Changeling is a game about PTSD. Wraith is a game about the death beyond death, being forgotten. The whole set is about stepping into the shoes of those we call 'monsters' and seeing things from their perspective. Some people call things edgy but this is, by and large, just a way to dismiss things that make them uncomfortable. It provides an ironic distance that lets them feel superior when someone asks them philosophical questions. So, when they stripped all that out in an effort to appease the idiots who can't bear the existence of fictional hypocrisy as a teaching metaphor, they strip out the Darkness from their World of Darkness. And then, even more foolishly, by **not replacing them with something else**, they end up with no World to their World of Darkness. It's just an of. Who wants to play some 'of' guys? Anyone? Without the lore, then to be good, it has to have good mechanisms at least, but they used the same formula as with Vampire, which somehow made it past playtesting, though I will never guess how. The flaws, merits, and backgrounds stuff was absurd, and to keep it from clashing with Vampire, they didn't fix it for WW. The XP system also clashes with itself, never committing to an idea fully. The rage/critical dice system is cool, though just a touch complex for something like WW, where feels like it should be dumber but punchier. I could see trading some punchy speed for depth, or vice versa, but WW kind of fails at both. Now, I will say, the thematic warform change was great. I love the interplay that exists in the space of 'I have power, but I have to be afraid to use it because I can't fully control it.' It recreates some of that tension that the lore scrapping removed. The darkness is no longer in the culture of the werewolves, it's in you. That's excellent fodder for stories. And the Harano/Hauglosk system is also great. Faced with the end of the world, do you fall to despair, unable to fight a battle you know you can't truly win, or do you let the war consume you, letting you and everything you hold dear be destroyed, as long as the enemy dies first. This is also excellent fodder for stories. Thank you for coming to my TED talk. I'll be signing copies of my books in the lobby for the next hour.

Now you're thinking like a dragon.

Gee, it's almost like dragons are powerful, intelligent beings who are not to be trifled with and not just something to throw in front of a party because it's in the name.

They shoot you with their bow.

DnD Barbarian: "B...A...T... Oh no, it's bait for a trap!" WoD player: "No, you dolt. It's clearly meant to be a more complex anagram indicating the identity of the coconspirator. Cunning... peasant..." Call of Cthulhu player: *insensate screaming* "It is the name of the unspeakable! Burn them! Destroy the tablets! Bury the entrance so that none find this place again in our lifetimes!" DnD Wizard: "Fireball. Final answer." *rolls*