Gifts, Rites, etc.

As a reminder, one of the biggest differences between Vampire and Werewolf is that all things supernatural require a teacher in Werewolf, even if it is in-tribe, -auspice, or -breed for you.

Rites must be taught by a kinfolk, garou, or spirit. For the first two, you must note in reports or when buying them at session who is teaching you. If it's a PC, they must confirm, if it's an NPC, the ST who ran that must confirm. In the case of spirits, you must specify what spirit taught you, the chiminage you offered, and what ST ran the scene.

For gifts, you can only learn them from spirits or garou. Keep in mind Kinfolk have special restrictions on the gifts they can buy which is specified in their Creation Rules. For spirits, the process of learning gifts is the same as it is for rites. As stated in LotW,r even the most advanced and complex of gifts take a few days at most to learn as the spirit imparts the knowledge directly to your heart and spirit so you know EXACTLY how the gift works. In the case of garou, it takes at least a month to teach a gift, often longer. It's an arduous, difficult, often painful process that also isn't guaranteed to work. On top of that, if the spirits ever find out you violated the Spirit Pact and taught a gift to another garou, you both should expect heavy renown loss, and often Punishment Rites are involved.

All that said, because of the nature of the spirits, there are very few things you CANNOT buy or learn from the Spirits. The backgrounds Ancestors and Mentor can easily be bought up with Spirits (excluding certain tribal restrictions, some of which are actually flexible, not hard rules). Wish you knew more about your past, and you didn't ignore your ancestors or have a bunch of vampires and mages curse your tribe? Talk to a spirit to connect you with your ancestors!

Are you a Galliard lacking in good stories? Know there's some deep, lost piece of knowledge you really, really want? Have you tried bargaining with the spirits? There are many things lost and hidden in the umbra just waiting for an aisling to retrieve them.

TL;DR
Buying a gift? If you didn't learn it from a spirit or another garou, you can't buy it.
Buying a rite? If you didn't learn it from a spirit, a kinfolk, or another garou, you can't buy it.

Bump.

From some activity I've seen in the last two months, this could use a re-read for everyone.

Okay. Given current events, I have to ask:

Do we really want a game where every single gift requires roleplaying out the negotiation and chiminage?

I ask because I honestly wonder if it won't cause more problems than it solves. There's limited time at session, and most of that is generally spent dealing with various crises. Yes, there might be time to squeeze in chiminage for one pack member's gift...but what if three or four are learning gifts?

And, yes, there's always the board--but not everyone posts on the boards, for whatever reason. I can understand wanting to encourage them to do so, but I'm not sure this is the way to go about it.

Yes, every gift needs a teacher...but up until now, that's generally been hand-waved for in-tribe or in-auspice Basic gifts. It hasn't been hand-waved because those gifts don't require a teacher, but because the teachers are generally sympathetic and likely to teach the gift with a token chiminage.

The hand-waving was, to the best of my knowledge, not arbitrary; it was done for good and proper reasons--namely, the logistical issues I mentioned above. I guess I'm just curious as to why the apparent shift.

My personal feelings are that for expediency that the player and his theurge should come up with a chimenage, and submit the chimenage done with the request for the gift.

These are token chimenages, and the player is free to come up with something interesting that shows they understand the spirit.

It keeps the feel of chimenage, but doesn't take up any more game time than necessary.

MarkWalker wrote:My personal feelings are that for expediency that the player and his theurge should come up with a chimenage, and submit the chimenage done with the request for the gift.

These are token chimenages, and the player is free to come up with something interesting that shows they understand the spirit.

It keeps the feel of chimenage, but doesn't take up any more game time than necessary.

This is what I've been expecting. For basic gifts, and I've had multiple players do exactly this without issue. ("Hey, I want this gift. -theurge- and I are going to summon -spirit- who I think can teach it and I'm doing this for chiminage." "Sounds good, do you want to run a scene for that?" Most have said yes, because it's Role Play.) While this is enough for Basic gifts, it may not be for Intermediates (ST discretion), and Advanced will require a full scene.

Spirits get greedy if you let them choose. So long as the Chiminage you offer them is satisfactory and they don't hate you for whatever reason (another reason all Spirit things should be done with one ST), they're cool with it.

If you want to run logistics and other OOC concerns with gifts by Brian or Bucky, as they are our HSTs, that's fine, but when you go to buy a gift, please see me on actually learning it first. Once I've signed off on the Spirit side, you're free to buy the gift.

I fully support Matt in this. Its an important part of the genre. If you're having problems, feel free to escalate to me and Buck.

I have had STs handwaive gifts that were put on my sheet even on the printed one and now I am being told I can't use them. Yhe other two were written on my sheet by STs. If I had known I needed to do these things I could of had my Theurge handle it at session. In fact i was ready to deal with at session till a STs basically handwaived them.The one chimage I got was an impossible task for a basic gift.

Write up the three chimenages, the one, the impossible one, will likely count as a success if you can talk to Unicorn. It was more about the attempt than success.

If you have the three proposed chimenages written up, I'll talk to ed and make sure he's okay with us just running the summonings if he's not going to be available on the boards. He wants to be, but between work, and life, and tech issues with posting, he hasn't been able to.

I have no idea what the STs will accept. It was only not done at session because I was told basic gifts were handwaived. The fact the they let me buy Spirit of the Fray and it was on my sheet surly confuses things.

Hoffman (Walker) is stating our position quite clearly.

I still don't know what kind of chimage each spirit would want.

Walker would suggest:

Spirit of the Fray, taught by a cat spirit, you will leave cat food around for strays for a week.

Calm, You will give up the wolf for a day to consider the true price of your rage and the value in occasionally leaving it behind.

Grandmothers touch: Speak to unicorn, chances are, no further chimenage is required, you worked your butt off on the other chimenage, and it was just short of impossible.