Lores?

[Nile's Rage]

Alright, so it has just come up that certain words were being thrown out that should not be known by normal garou unless they have the lores appropriate for it. I know none of the books really have listed lore charts, so it makes it difficult. But not every garou has the knowledge of things like specific changing breeds, pentex or vampire clans. I found, online, a series of lore charts for just about everything, including tribes, triad, caerns, glyphs and other such things. We used these in my game. Here is the list of the basic and links to read them from my old forum if you would like to try this.

http://shadowsoftheabyss.freeforums.org/house-rules-f19.html

You can ignore the House Rules, Character Creation and Cybernetics, cause they were stuff specific to my game.

[Amanda]

Do you have specific examples? The only problem I've heard has been Pentex.

For clarification: Cliath Garou know the very basic basics. Pretend you had a three week crash course to learn all of America's culture, history, laws, societal rules, and everything there is here. That's about how much you know.

You don't know jack about vampires except they are called leeches, you should kill them, and they are evil.

You don't know jack about pentex, except that there is an evil corporation out there that controls other companies (IE, you wouldn't call the thing pentex.)

You know a little bit about changeling breeds, IE - they exist. You know there are some werecats, wererats, werebears, etc, but you don't know anything specific.

If you've asked elders, they would tell you what they know, none of these things are a secret, but they arn't general knowledge either.



The things every garou does know however, are as are follows:
1) The litany (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werewolf:_The_Apocalypse#Garou_Litany)

2) What happens if you lose all of either rage, willpower, or gnosis
--------------Rage: You loose the wolf (You can't shift to anything but your breed form)
--------------Willpower: You frenzy really easy (You attack friend or foe without restraint)
--------------Gnosis: You can't step sideways (Can't enter the umbra)

3) How their own gifts work (not necessarily how other garou's gifts work)

4) The Triat: There is a weaver (the one that puts stuff together) the wyld (the one that "is" the stuff that gets put together) and the wyrm (the one that breaks things down) The weaver didn't like the fact that the wyrm was destroying her shit, so she bound up the wyrm in her spidery web and cocooned him there till he went mad. Now the wyrm destroys everything it sees (not just breaks down old things that need to go away) and is the essence of corruption.

5) The two worlds of the Garou. There is a world of spirit and a physical world. Garou live in both. The spiritual world is called the umbra. There - things that are long lasting or well loved show up as a physical manifestation, most other things are either spirits or don't show up at all. The umbra generally reflects the real world, but doesn't have to. It is a strange place, shrouded in symbolism and spiritual essence.

[Linus Stamatis]

The problem I usually see with lores is that some players see it less as a "what I know" and more of a Shopping list of things to buy.

[Runs-on-Walls]

You see the only problem with lores is that it doesn't take in to account player backgrounds. It forces people to take abilities for things they already should know. I'm not going to make every player take Garou Lore of 2 just to know what the Apocalypse is, I mean really its the name of the game. The elder don't sit around and keep something like that a secret from everyone. That to be honest is just a silly notion. I think some lores are good. Spirit or Umbral lores for example. Things that are rather complicated to figure out. But the way most lores are set up if ever player should conceivably have one to two dots in every lore (depending on the lores), just from experiences alone.

And I've seen the same thing as Linus that it becomes just a lets start buying random things to know. Buying up Garou lore, not because their character would know it but just because it's there.

Do you have a specific example of what it is your talking about? I know I wasn't there for the first few hours of game but I didn't hear anyone throwing any blasphemous words around.

[Tells the Truth]

OOC Another problem is the rate at which information moves. To quote the Virtual Adepts, which of course we know nothing about, "Information wants to be free." This is most certainly the case in a highly social community like the Garou. One knows it, it gets shared, becomes public knowlege very very quickly. Now, there are some things that are VERY secret in the WoD, but there are also things that just get picked up. And they get picked up FAST. You try working in, for example, the largest Glass Walker Caern in New York without learning a BIT more about vampires than "they bad, smish them". After a few weeks there, you will know they are smart, that they have internal power structures and pecking order, that they tend to be EFFING wealthy, and like to puppet humans from behind the scenes. And that's just standing by the water cooler.

If lores are purchased, they have to be WORTH it. Nothing devalues a stat like having it not do anything, or become obsolete. Generally I find that [existance of major world influence/supernatural race] is fine to be general knowlege, dependant on backstory and personal choice, whereas [habits/weaknesses/strengths/location] of such races fits better within the lore. That way we aren't all required to pretend we lived in boxes back at our home Caerns, and only just learned that wind spirits can really get around, and can instead contribute our own local brand of "back home where *I* grew up..."


Still, if people are making informed decisions about something that is obviously an arcane secret, like listing off pentex subsidiaries or naming the urge wyrms, that needs to stop. We ARE all new furballs here, we are NOT well traveled heroes who have seen it all/done it all.

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