Rage against the dying of the light!

These are the last days. Gaia is dying. The Apocalypse is here.

Will you fall defending her or die a cowards death? Will your pack live in legend as the ones who saved the world, or those who betrayed it?

Is today a good day to die?

Take control of a pack of Garou, savage werewolves, as they battle the forces of the Wyrm in defense of Mother Earth, Gaia.

Sun and Rain

September 16th, 2007 by Lord Kuato

Remaking Rage 9: Sun and Rain

Welcome to Rainmakers! Less of a preview than a postview, I want to show you around the backwaters of the second set in Ahadi. If you hadn’t seen it yet, Rainmakers can be found here.

The Block

Before I explain the Rainmakers concept, I need to explain the Ahadi. While Rage, and indeed Werewolf, focussed largely on the Garou there existed on the outside many different changing breeds (most of whom also served Gaia). A long time ago, in prehistory, the Garou declared war on all other changing breeds – killing many of them - and for some reason they did not particularly appreciate this. Ever since the changing breeds have been a bit .. unfriendly .. towards the Garou, and indeed to each other.

In more recent times there has been some move towards peace and reconciliation. In the Amazon, the Bastet and Mokolé came to a precarious understanding with the Garou there (including Golgol Fangs-First). Then in Africa, as the Ajaba (werehyenas) were being decimated by the Simba (werelion) pride led by Black-Tooth (not to be confused with Black Claw), one of them made a stand. Her story is detailed in the Players Guide to the Changing Breeds (a rare and thus expensive book printed shortly before Apocalypse), but in brief she made an alliance with North African Silent Striders, Mokolé and other Bastet. They defeated Black-Tooth, and with some heavy diplomacy the “Ahadi” survived beyond the fall of his pack.

This African block revolves around the Ahadi but also drifts off into other aspects of North Africa (including, of course, the Wyrm’s agents there).

War Council

War Council set was, for the development team and playtesters, a warm-up. We had compiled a 400+ card database to begin and were introducing lots of new factions. While I had not started work on Revised at that point, there were still plenty of rules and design questions thrown up by some of the proposed cards and factions, as well as questions thrown up by the increasing number of online players. We wanted a set that did not throw up too many awkward questions and which would not be too hard on the playtesters.

From a thematic point of view it introduced many of the elements of Africa and some of the peripheral players. Cooperation and Talebearer’s Quest link to the Ahadi; Spring of Visions and Scale of Ma’at give some of the Egyptian feel; while the Firearm theme (that extends into Rainmakers due to art issues) is sadly all too relevant to too many parts of Africa. The set also strengthened both Glass Walkers and Board Meetings which provided a strong link to the rest of the world. Finally we introduced many cards that foreshadow things to come – Cooking for instance. For those without access to Rage Across Egypt, I will fill you in a lot, lot later in the block.

Rainmakers

What would a Remaking Rage article be without links? When we started Ahadi I knew nothing about the Ajaba apart from the small write-up in the 2nd edition Players Guide so the name of this set came from Fenris, which she explains here. You can also find more about the Ajaba at this fan site, although it is not necessarily what is in the printed books.

As Rage designers and developers, Rainmakers was very clearly the place for Ajaba, Mokolé and the odd Pentex Executive (for balance). We also included all those cards that we had wanted in War Council but had been left out due to space and art constraints. This was Chiaka, Pistol Whip and Full Auto while the two Board Meetings, Industrial Espionage and Opposing Goals, were also delayed to give us time to balance them.

This decided the overall look of the set, but the actual themes are more subtle. Designing new factions is both easy and difficult. It is easy because there is often a lot of source material to draw from. It is hard because you want to make each faction have its own flavour and range of abilities. As such, the factions are shaped as much by what was left out as what was put in.

The Mokolé lost three cards that boosted their Rage as well as several defensive cards. While in practice we lost these through happenstance rather than design, I am happy they were left out. The Mokolé – both werelizards and weredragons – have a strange dichotomy: they are both one of the most reclusive changing breeds and yet also have the largest Crinos forms of any of them (look at the Crinos form of Sand’s-Last-King!). The Mokolé also lost a lot of Totems, although in fairness they were not very exciting. Finally they lost a theme I hoped I could give them, that of Rites. Why? We couldn’t think of many. We stretched ourselves to 4 and two were playtested sufficiently. I hope that this is an area that we can return to, but in the meantime enjoy the fruit of the Rite drive: Burn the Library. It is a new idea for Rage and we would like to see how it goes.

Aside from that, the Mokolé are left with a lot of new, quite powerful Characters and some powerful standalone effects to add to the ones they can already use (since Least Wanted they can recruit the Dreamspeaker Mage). It may have happened by serendipity, but the Mokolé are in a good place: they are suitably strong already, with good flavour and there is lots of scope to expand on them in the future.

The Ajaba on the other hand really only lost one thing: a combat ability called Iksakku. You will still see a reference to this in the rules but I don’t think that it will reappear in Ahadi. The trouble was that Iksakku was a big deal. There were 7 Combat Actions as well as a couple of Characters and a stick. It would have meant sacrificing space for the faction cards in an already tight set, as well simultaneously trying to test two new or heavily expanded factions. Unfortunately, getting rid of Iksakku also meant losing Kisasi, the Ajaba who initiated the Ahadi. I do see Iksakku returning though (and with it, Kisasi) because we had some good ideas for it (although there may not be room in the Ahadi block). By coincidence, it was mostly the female Ajaba who made it through playtesting and the Iksakku cull (I say coincidence; they were mostly designed and playtested by women!).

We are left with a small faction, but it is stronger than it looks. First of all, they will get cards in other sets as secondary (or tertiary) users. Secondly they have Auspices: technically they are not tied to moon phases, but their spiritual roles are so close to Auspice roles that they were entirely appropriate. Note that female Ajaba are either Ahroun or Ragabash, hence the number of Ragabash present. Thirdly, they do have a couple of nasty cards, as proved by Fenris: Ironjaw, Gnaw, Crushing Jaws and potentially Thirst for Vengeance. They are quite a fun faction, but “fun” doesn’t mean “friendly”.

The final faction in the set is not really a proper faction, more of a way to try and get closer to a full set of Executives. It is unfortunate for Wyrmaphiliacs out there that most of the new factions due to be introduced or expanded in Ahadi are Gaian factions. This makes Rainmakers one of the two sets with minimal Wyrm presence. Yet after the introduction of the first Unbound Character in War Council (along with reclassifying some Enemies and Allies as Unbound Monsters), we give you the second Rogue – Falling Sky. And this segues nicely into a couple of design stories.

—

“Falling-Sky” was the last item on the original file I had sent Fenris. I didn’t send that many Characters in and barely any of them got into the database (although I feel I am getting better at Characters). However, this one got through barely changed:

161. Character Falling-Sky – TB:SG[rev], p53 Rogue Stargazer Ahroun Metis Renown 6 – 6/2/6 Falling-Sky will attack anyone in his attempt to purge the Wyrm from Africa. He gains +2 Rage when fighting opponents with less Gnosis than him. Against the odds, I actually included a character from canon. His description cries out to be a rogue, and although he does not have Kailindo himself, would allow his Wyrm pack access to Tibetan Monastery and maybe Ethereal Wind. TB:SG actually gives wads of fun gifts but I am leaving them for perhaps a Hengeyokai set.

You can even see how far as I was thinking even back then, although I think that is the peril of too many ideas rather than true forward planning. The book gave no details to indicate his Renown or Auspice so I picked a hole I thought felt right. Fenris picked a better hole and we adjusted the stats. Sweet.

When Fenris showed me the artwork for Murgatroyd, she said she was really pleased it got such perfect art because she was my baby. While there are better cards I made, few approach the top down design that created Murgatroyd. I wanted a card that showed the ruthlessness of Pentex, specifically in the Congo which is in reality is also devastated by corporate and administrative greed. The first thing that came was the name, actually the family name of some really lovely family friends. It was the name that inspired me to push her in such a way that she became “my baby”. You really want to be scared of a lady called Murgatroyd.

There are many more design stories I could tell – this was in many ways a very exciting set. There is the tale of how we had our first Weapon Armor, why there isn’t a Realm in the set or why there is a bunny with pointy teeth in my Mokolé decks. But these stories will have to wait for another time because I am out of space.

~ Picks-at-Flies

While I hope the facts are correct, this article is inevitably written from my own perspective. I am sure you can cope.