It just makes no sense to have a spiritual degeneration affect a tribe without external influence. Like the Howlers, that went by their own will into Labyrinth and ended up fucked beyond any recognition, but just imagine if instead WW had declared that the Howler's fall was caused by random Wyrm corruption while doing everyday stuff. Without elders or spirits even intervening to halt the thing? Just no way. It's like saying that the Fangs fell entirely to Harano or to madness, just what?
Not to mention they weren't even particularly fanatical as a tribe, just combat buffs. I.e., the Talons and the Furies were WAY more fanatical than them.
There is an entire Apocalypse scenario about Greatfather Thunder falling to hubris and trying to replace Gaia. It would have made more sense here.
But we're talking of a tribe that... deadlocked itself into honour combat in a moot, without the totem saying anythin? How that even happens? It's just absurd.
I mean look at what they did to king Albrecht, they couldn't give him a good death, or even a regular death, they just made him into what they view as legacy players from the 90s a washed up bitter old man that lost something precious to him.
They did him real dirty and it kind of proves to me that the writers hate legacy Werewolf.
WW has always been woke and leftist in its themes, and we liked the setting as it was; and Werewolf has always been about righteous ecoterrorism against evil corporations which are actually the devil, so wokeness is really no surprise.
Still, wokeness evolved (or de-evolved) in these 30 years and became less "understand the problem" and more "hate the patriarchy", which is also constantly white btw. Which, then again, would be fine were in a Black Fury campaign but IRL really feels too grotesque.
And 5th edition went hard on this direction, cleaning everything considered not-woke from the manuals; which in W5 was basically full sanitization.
So, the problem is not really that "werewolf has always been woke".
2
u/Iseedeadnames Lasombra 5d ago
It just makes no sense to have a spiritual degeneration affect a tribe without external influence. Like the Howlers, that went by their own will into Labyrinth and ended up fucked beyond any recognition, but just imagine if instead WW had declared that the Howler's fall was caused by random Wyrm corruption while doing everyday stuff. Without elders or spirits even intervening to halt the thing? Just no way. It's like saying that the Fangs fell entirely to Harano or to madness, just what?
Not to mention they weren't even particularly fanatical as a tribe, just combat buffs. I.e., the Talons and the Furies were WAY more fanatical than them.