New Werewolf: The Apocalypse Coming This Summer

Announced back in 2019 for a 2021 release, Werewolf: the Apocalypse's 5th edition is finally here--at least, it will be this summer. Coming from Rengegae Game Studios (who also make Kids on Bikes, and a number of Hasbro licensed RPGs) it's the first core book for the horror game in over a decade, and uses the latest version of the Storyteller game system. You'll choose a heritage from one of 11 werewolf tribes and fight to save a dying world.

Werewolf 5th Edition is a 300+ page hardcover book. You can pre-order it now for $55, for a release on August 31st (though if you are going to Gen Con in Indianapolis this year you can pick up your copy earlier).

 

[kunadam]

Werewolf is about horror stories for adults. It parallels their (our) life. You play a superhuman who could take on anything 1:1 but the larger world conspires against them. They fight a loosing war, even if they win all their battles. So while one can play Werewolf as a straight territory defense style, combat oriented game, it misses the point (imho).

 

[Voadam]

WtA is fascinating to me. Even in the 1990s, it was hyper-sincere, in sometimes awkward-to-me ways. But the environmental themes certainly haven't gotten any less relevant and having an antagonist group that was all about racial purity and railing against dilution of the blood was definitely ahead of its time (edit: that might be the nWoD Werewolf, actually).

The Pure are a New World of Darkness Werewolf the Forsaken thing. They even had a whole book for running a campaign about fighting against the extremist racial purity antagonists.

The "lol, the Irish are all drunks" clan probably needs to be changed, though, as does having a breed based around birth defects.

Not sure what changing the name Fiana to Hart Warden does here. My guess is it would be a deeper change perhaps tying them more to fey/the Wyld type of stuff instead of just celtic bloodlines for this reimagining.

Dropping the three breeds was a NWoD thing as well I believe.

Kind of weird to have a bunch of WoD Apocalypse editions in continuity, two editions of NWOD Forsaken with different lore and cosmology, and now a rebooted reimagined Apocalypse 5e that is not in continuitity with the other apocalypse stuff but uses a bunch of the lore but changes some big things including using some hybrid Forsaken concepts.

 

[Fenris-77]

The Stargazers and Get of Fenris are out.

That would have been a crap family reunion anyway.

 

[aramis erak]

Lol. Same. Never played a single game.

I got most of the original oWoD cores (VtM, WWtA, CtD, MtA, VtDA, and the Ghosts one)... only run VtM and VtDA... my players just couldn't get into them at the time (about half,), or got into them with other GMs willing to accede to that subset who wanted power-fantasy. At least the fiction was amusing.

 

[aramis erak]

Not sure what changing the name Fiana to Hart Warden does here. My guess is it would be a deeper change perhaps tying them more to fey/the Wyld type of stuff instead of just celtic bloodlines for this reimagining.

I suspect it has a lot more to do with the appropriation of ethnic identity names for a less than positive association.
Ethnic labels have been an issue for the franchise in the past...

edit to add: The Fianna are, in Irish mythology, the kin and associates of Finn Mac Cumhail, and their purported descendents.

 

[MGibster]

Bit I did not know the term "hart" meant "deer". Interesting. Unsure. Oh well.

I first learned it from Angel (the Buffy spinoff) with their Wolfram & Hart - or Wolf, Ram, and Hart law- law offices.

 

[ProfessorDetective]

I first learned it from Angel (the Buffy spinoff) with their Wolfram & Hart - or Wolf, Ram, and Hart law- law offices.

Frick, it's a pun?! Nearly thirty years missing that one!

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Kind of weird to have a bunch of WoD Apocalypse editions in continuity, two editions of NWOD Forsaken with different lore and cosmology, and now a rebooted reimagined Apocalypse 5e that is not in continuitity with the other apocalypse stuff but uses a bunch of the lore but changes some big things including using some hybrid Forsaken concepts.

Yeah, it's getting to the point where the Terminator franchise is looking over at the WoDs and saying "whoa, that feels pretty complicated."

 

[Fenris-77]

Yeah, it's getting to the point where the Terminator franchise is looking over at the WoDs and saying "whoa, that feels pretty complicated."

Give it another edition or two and WoD will be in Games Workshop territory.