Shaking up my stream of VtM posts with a WtA post
My first game of Werewolf was a really eye opening experience for me roleplay-wise. I've always tended to play very bitter, rageful characters in TTRPGs who've been wronged in the past and lash out over it. My favorite Clan is Brujah, fyi. But in the past, I've caused a lot of friction at tables by having my characters act out or do irrational things as a result of their rage. Legitimately been kicked out of groups before for having characters lash out against authority in ways that make sense.
So Werewolf was a very freeing experience for me. The Rage is the point. You're allowed, and expected, to be angry at the world and to lash out at it. It's the central catharsis of the game, and if you point yourself in the right direction you can even be rewarded in that rage.
My favorite Tribe is the Get of Fenris, which often gets boiled down in the community by people who don't get them as just "the really strong angry ones" or "the N*zi ones." Which pisses me off. I mean, I'm pissed at White Wolf for writing about the small contingent of the Get who sided with facists, but also upset at the community that despite all the rich lore about the Get, they get boiled down to just "the racist wolves."
A little bit about my spiritual background: raised Christian, drifted away from the church and into pagan practices as a teenager and young adult, became a Christian again for a couple years because I never really got over the fear of hell trauma from childhood, before breaking away again and fully embracing my pagan spirituality. I'm specifically a heathen Pagan, which means I worship the Norse gods. And this practice, involves a lot of Rage.
I Rage that I only get to know my gods through the snippets that have floated down through Christian authors. I Rage that I can't learn Seidr or how to read the runes the way my spiritual forebears would. I Rage that so much of that spiritual culture was obliterated by Christianity. I Rage that greedy, bigoted men a thousand years before I was born took away the stories and practices of my gods. And I Rage especially that the most heinous ideology in human history had a brief effort to "revive" that spiritual heritage, and that some of the worst hate groups in the modern day appropriate the imagery of my faith and gods to serve their own agendas.
More than that though, I seriously Rage at the fact that the authors of Werewolf 5th edition turned the entire Get of Fenris into unplayable antagonists and wrote them all off as N*zi wolves.
I need you to understand that the division between Folkish (this means Racist) and Inclusive Heathens is one of the most sensitive subjects within Heathen communities, as is the appropriation of our symbols by hate groups. I had a really meaningful experience playing my first WtA game where I played a young Heathen woman who underwent her first Change, and finally had a direction to point her Rage in. Destroying the Banes that dwelt in the Umbral reflections of churches, courthouses, and prisons, fighting against those that had appropriated her faith's imagery, and got some tremendous spiritual connection from being able to talk to the Patron of her own people, the Great Fenris wolf who understood her Rage and taught her how to become strong through it.
I don't say I hate W5 easily. I don't like V5, but I can still engage with V5 content and the community around it, because most of the things I don't like about V5, V5 fans also don't like about V5. But W5 is hard, especially people who assert what happened to the Get was a good change in some way. Werewolf the Apocalypse 5th edition took something extremely sensitive to my faith and culture, and just said "Nah anyone who associates with this is a racist N*zi.) And that fucking sucks.
Anyways, fuck W5, all my homies hate W5
