Werewolf

Visit the Werewolf Plot page to catch up on recent events.

There are a handful of House Rules  in play. Experienced players will recognize these, but they're gathered here for newer players, or anyone seeking clarification that they won't find in the source material.

New! A one-time award of 5 extra XP for adding a character bio on the Character page. Fair warning, though: anything posted on that page is considered IN CHARACTER knowledge, and fair to use during play, unless clearly marked otherwise.

They had lots of words to describe you, and none of them were "normal." Try as you might, you never could quite fit in. It seemed your soul hailed back to a simpler, more barbaric time. Your instincts were wilder, stronger than those around you; a modern-day Mowgli at heart trapped in the midst of the twenty-first century. But you were only human, and this was your life, so you made the best of it - sometimes so well that you forgot how different you were.

Then your world began to fray around the edges. Life began to toy with you, reality seemed thin, and  things  began to appear at the edge of your vision. You questioned your sanity. You lost sleep. On the edge of madness, you stared up at the moon and this time, She stared back !

Your body became as malleable as clay under Her light, as She remade you: wolf and man and monstrous shapes between that have no name. Your throat swelled with the sound of your soul, too wild to ever again be tamed by the trappings of man. You lost yourself in sensation, and found yourself in fur and blood and fang. You understood nothing. You understood everything. When you came to, you could feel the wolf still inside, where, perhaps, it had lain sleeping all along. It sleeps no longer.

You are the werewolf, and this is your hunt.

In Werewolf: the Forsaken, you play a shapeshifter said to inherit powers from your spirit-world ancestors, Father Wolf and Mother Luna - and, more immediately, through one of your biological parents. Your nature is twofold: flesh and spirit-stuff. This dual nature allows you to learn the Gifts of spirits and the Rituals to bind them, as well as to travel to the spiritual reflection of reality. You have taken on your ancestral duty to safeguard the relationship between worlds. For assuming this burden, you have earned the enmity of the spirits and become Uratha, the Forsaken.

Werewolf is a "Valley of Shadows" game - like Changeling: the Lost and Geist: the Sin-Eaters, it is set in present-day State College in the World of Darkness. This is the world and town you know, albeit one darker and more superstitious, with supernatural beings hidden in the shadows. Character concepts can incorporate any human elements appropriate to the area: there are a large number of positions associated with the university, for example, but not so many gangbangers.

Although you grew up thinking yourself human, your First Change shattered that illusion sometime between puberty and your 60th year. The phase under which you first transformed has a major impact on your character. You can learn more about the different Auspices  here. You may transform at will during any phase of the moon, but choosing your shape wisely is a major part of being an effective werewolf character. You can find information on Shapeshifting  here.

All Uratha share certain goals, but there are many approaches to those goals. Additionally, fully integrated members of werewolf society bind themselves to a totem, one of Father Wolf's Firstborn children, who levies an additional task upon His or Her followers. Each Tribe  thus upholds a different tenet of Father Wolf's original duties.

If you want to discuss a new character, or have a question or downtime activities for the Storyteller, you can reach Shay at RaptorSLH@yahoo.com, or through the Facebook group. New characters start with 35 XP. Players can earn additional XP at any time, up to 35 bonus XP over the life of their character, by providing a detailed backstory. If you have an unusual concept, or want to tweak a new character to better fit how she evolved during play,don't be afraid to drop me a line!