Trivia / Werewolf: The Apocalypse

• Executive Meddling: One of the controversies of Fifth Edition was how to handle the more problematic elements of the game's history regarding indigenous rights. J.F. Sambrano, one of the indigineous writers involved in writing it, got into a conflict with Karim Muammar, the World of Darkness brand editor, over how best to handle this. He describes his experiences here.
  • In his account, Sambrano also alleges the turn from the Get of Fenris to the Cult of Fenris was rooted in a desire by editorial to deal with the tribe's invokedUnfortunate Implications in an era of rising fascism by just leaning into them full force, complete with the original proposal being that they're taken over entirely from within by the neo-Nazi Swords of Heimdall, who were killed to the last in Revised Edition. The writers allegedly pushed back on the tribe becoming 100% Nazi, but they are still framed as a lesson in the dangers of extremism and talked about in terms of ecofascism.
• Science Marches On: Rage Across the Heavens deals with Garou astrology and assigns each of the 13 tribes and a patron spirit to the most significant planetary bodies in the Solar System. However, it relies on concepts that have been outdated for years. Namely, the Uktena's patron planet is Vulcan, a theoretical body on opposite end of Mercury's orbit, to explain how it revolves so fast, but it's been proven to not actually exist. The book also states the once-popular theory that the Asteroid Belt is the remnants of a destroyed planet, which we also know is not the case (Pluto gets a pass, since the Planetary Incarnae don't necessarily have to represent full-size planets). One could argue that the Garou zodiac system was set up centuries before modern astronomy, except you can actually visit Vulcan despite its nonexistence on the physical plane. This is less the purview of Werewolf, but reality levels get a mite thin once you get past Earth's atmosphere (and get really thin when you past the Asteroid Belt). There probably actually is a physical Vulcan somewhere in the World of Darkness' solar system, perfectly content to keep existing despite being disproven. Also, following the reclassification of Pluto as a dwarf planet, its planetary incarna Meros departs from the Solar System. In-universe, all this is entirely fitting, as The Technocracy (a group of mages rather than werewolves) more-or-less run the human world since the Renaissance. The Technocracy wants order and dislikes vampires, werewolves, other mages, and anything supernatural; and since mages run on Clap Your Hands If You Believe, they are entirely capable of wiping the planet Vulcan out of existence by convincing ordinary humans that it doesn't exist. The Technocracy Marches On.
• What Could Have Been: A 5th Edition of the game was announced to be in development in 2019 by Hunters Entertainment. It drew a lot of fan engagement through Discord, but little was revealed other than a trailer an an ever increasingly inclusive list of writers. A year later, this edition was cancelled when Paradox decided to consolidate core rule book production, without fanfare. Eventually a 5th edition would release in 2023, penned by Renegade Game Studios, but no one can tell how much it shares with Hunters' version.

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