Shadowrun Pub
General => Role Playing Games => Topic started by: kv on February 28, 2006, 09:40:41 AM
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Hey all.
I've been invited by some friends to take part in a Werewolf campaign (I think it's a white wolf game, but I don't know for sure), and I was wondering if anyone else had played it, or heard things about it, or had any tips/warnings for me.
I know that freaky people play Vampire: The Masquerade (no offense intended, ROOT), but I can't really say that I've had any bad experiences with people who play Werewolf.
Can anyone enlighten me? Is there something I should do to prepare for it?
-kv
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I've played it. they use D10's like shadowrun uses D6
it's actually not a bad system. it's got well thought-out bloodlines with various skills (much like a class / race)
takes place in the same 'world' as the vampires, so if you are a warewolf, be prepared to fight vampires, and vica-versa.
-RuskiFace the Pirate
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Yeah, they were telling me about successes (apparently anything over 6 is considered a success, and a botch (1) takes away a success) I should probably read up on the rules beforehand, but I don't have any books. Methinks I should use my day off (first one in a long time without a headache) to read some rulebooks.
-kv
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Nah. just sit there and let someone else make up a guy for you.
just give them a generic history... like they were a vampire hunter, because his brother or sister or something was bitten, and then he got 'recruited' by the warewolves to help, even though he was human, and once, after a fight he was wounded mortally, and the only way to save his life was to turn him into a warewolf.
and let one of them make a guy for you from that.
-RuskiFace the Pirate
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I've tooled around with that system before, and yes it is white wolf. Not bad.
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I actually like making characters, though... it helps me get to know the system. The only reason I don't know more about 4th Edition yet is because I haven't made a character.
-kv
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I think it comes down to the group you play with.
-RuskiFace the Pirate
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Uh, one side bit. In White Wolf you can't be 'turned' into a werewolf. It's more a case of genetics and potential, kind of like the Awakened in Shadowrun. Werewolves can come from either human or wolf, but werewolves are forbidden to mate with each other, as the offspring will be born with deformities. Humans and wolves who have werewolf ancestry but don't change are called Kin and they are the prefered mates for Werewolves as their children are more likely to become Werewolves, themselves. (Although any Kin can have offspring who change, even if the other parent has no relation to the werewolves.)
Some of the Tribes are set up along racial lines, i.e. Get of Fenris are mostly Scandinavian/Germanic or the Celtic/Gaelic Fianna, while others are a little more encompassing. Glass Walkers tend to be the most comfortable with human Technology and Bone Gnawers tend to come from the dregs of society
I've only played it a couple times, but I've liked it when I have.
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hmmm... all I remembered was the genetics bit, with the diffrent lines... perhaps he was a late blooming kin?
that could be an interestnig storyline.
glasswalker is the geek of em huh? I say stick to what you know.
-Ruski
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*shrugs* There's room for variation, but depending on who your parents are, which Tribe you belong to, and which Auspice you have, you get access to different gifts.
I've only played Werewolf: The Apocalypse, not Werewolf: The Forsaken, so I don't know what kind of differences exist between the two versions.
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Is there any difference between the two versions? I don't know which version it is that they invited me to play... but I wasn't aware that it would make a big difference.
My idea for a character was a huge samoan guy- the 400 lb. weightlifters you see doing security work, who happens to also be a werewolf. I'm thinking mainly hand-to-hand combat, and a huge ability to soak damage. (Basically a troll of a werewolf)
-kv
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warewolves have that whole regeneration thing going for them.
you could do H2H combat, or you could go in as the 'tank' with a bunch of dammage resistance and regeneration abilities.
i think you'll have to take one or the other though.
-RuskiFace the Pirate
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I've had WtA chronicles running for years, so I suppose I can claim to know the system reasonably well? Haven't looked at the newest incarnation though.
AJ's summary seems to be all in order, though one thing is worth noting:
If your group actually uses the rules as written, don't worry about being able to be a combat monster. I have a 90 lbs wimpy, who when he changes into Crinos shape (the middle 'Werewulf' shape, between human and wolf, but furthes from either) can still rip the governator a new one in under 0.5 secs flat. Werewolves are very powerful in combat, especially close combat.
The system is a lot like SR, or actually like what SR4 sounds like it's becomming. You roll a pile of d10s, against a fixed TN, and count successes, you should know how to do that I'm pretty sure.
There are differnaces, ofcourse, but don't worry too much.
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I have a buncha D-10's I bought for the cool fanged skull on the bag that came with them if you wanna borrow them kid.
-RuskiFace the Pirate
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That would be handy. We're not playing until the third saturday of the week, but I would like to borrow them.
-kv
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I've played a mortal in a World of Darkness game. WoD is the setting for the universe, and all White Wolf games exist in that world (and all the mechanics for the different games are pretty much the same).
Werewolves fighting Vampires is pretty commonplace, and White Wolf has had these games for years, which is why White Wolf tried to throw a lawsuit at the people who made the Underworld movies. (Did you know White Wolf's first game was 'Street Fighter: The Storytelling Game'?)
It's tough trying to survive as a mortal in WoD, everything can kill you with a flick of their wrist. Werewolves are butch though, it usually takes an entire squad of vampires with a good trap to kill a werewolf.
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See... that's interesting stuff. So I'm going to be fighting a lot of vampires in this game?
What are other obstacles? Do real people play any sort of threat?
The thing with this group is, I've played a couple of 'charismatic intelligent manipulative puppetmaster' kind of characters, and now they assume that everyone that I'm creating is going to be a character along those lines. (I've only played like three characters with this group, two more than the other, and both of them were fairly intelligent and manipulative)
Are there 'good guys' and 'bad guys' in Werewolf games? Or is it more alignment-less, like Shadowrun?
-kv
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okey dokey. they are all yours.
-Ruski
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Kind of both. The Garou believe themselves to be the warriors of Gaia. They believe there are three parts, the Wyrm (Usually represented as a serpent or a dragon), the Weaver (a spider), and the Wyld. According to legend (And someone correct me if I'm remembering wrong), the three were once balance, the Wyld creating new resources, the Weaver giving it order, and the Wyrm breaking down things that were no longer needed. Eventually, the Weaver went insane and took the Wyrm with it.
Now, the Weaver tries to create the ultimate order, while the Wyrm corrupts anything it touches. The Garou generally see the Weaver as the lesser of two evils since it tends to ignore them if they leave it alone The Wyrm, however, actively seeks to destroy the Garou.
All the different groups in White Wolf (Werewolves, vampires, Hunters, etc), however, see themselves as the good guys. I.e. if you're playing a 'wolf, you'd see vampires as servants of the Wyrm, and Hunters will fight pretty much anything supernatural.
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Cool... so it's like a three-front holy war, or something like that?
Are werewolves allergic to silver bullets? How does that work? What else can be used against them?
-kv
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all the normal stuff you'd see in the movies.
-RuskiFace the Pirate
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but how does that work in-game?
Is it +1 power level, like SR? How does damage work?
-kv
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There's two types of damage: Normal and Aggrevated.
Werewolves can't regenerate aggrevated. It heals at the same rate a normal injury would a human.
Silver, magic, certain abilities all cause aggrevated. I think there's other things that cause aggrevated, but I can't remember what. 8)
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I believe the current edition supports 3 types of damage:
Bashing
Lethal
Aggrevated
Bashing is blunt trauma, getting hit with a fist or a 2x4. works a bit like SR stun damage, and werewolves regenerate it like blazes. Vampires take only half bashing damage (or they used to, anyway).
Lethal is what you get from swords and bullets. It can kill you, but if you're a werewolf, don't worry too much about it. You still regenerate it pretty quickly, atleast once you're out of combat.
Aggrevated is supernatural damage or 'special weaknesses'. This basically means silver, the teeth and claws of supernatural creatures (like, say, werewolves), some types of magic, stuff like that.
I'm not sure if you can soak it in this edition, and that stuff can and will kill you. Hwever, IIRC you can regenerate it, just very slowly (I seem to recall something about 1 health level per day of rest, but that may be an earlier edition).
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that's pretty fast still.
-RuskiFace the Pirate
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As compared to Shadowrun's healing times, yeah.
Is there anything else I should know about Werewolf? Any plot hooks or anything I should know so I can exploit it?
-kv
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*shrug* bloodlines are pretty much all-important in all of the white-wolf campaigns.
son of a famous bounty-hunter, dirrect linage of cain, son of a pack elder... thoes are all shortcuts to glory.
make up some BS backstory as to why you are the biggest and the best based on bloodline, and you'll have an easy-in to munchkin min-max your guy to death.
personally, I never enjoyed playing thoes PC's, but if you want to 'win'...
-RuskiFace the Pirate
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Never played too much of a role when we've played.
And I'd pour plothooks down your neck till your pants fell off, but I haven't read the newest version of the WoD, so I don't know how many of them still applies.
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Well, pour away, and if they don't apply, they don't apply. But it'll give me an idea of what to expect, and I can work my own way from there.
-kv
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First a short intro to werewolf cosmology:
(abridged, and I have no clue if they still use it at all.)
There is Gaia, She is the Mother of all, the Earth, the World. Her sister is Luna, the moon goddess.
But there is also the Triad.
The Wyld is chaos, but it is creative chaos. It is fertility and inspiration, evolution and all kinds of change.
The Weaver is statis, the lack of change, constancy, consistancy.
The Wyrm is destruction, entropy.
The Wyld spins things out of chaos without aim or thought. Some of these things, the Weaver weaves into 'existance', meaning that it will be more than a thought or an illusion. The Wyrm breaks down the things the Weaver has made, and turn them into fresh 'stuff' for the Wyld to shape.
Originally the Triad were simply Forces, without mind.
But somehow, the Weaver attained sentience, and decided to weave the Wyrm into it's nets, that the world could become constant, static, and pleasing to the Weaver.
Bound in the webs of the Weaver however, the Wyrm went mad, fragmented, and these fragments attained a twisted sort of sentience, as well as a desire to destroy all.
The Werewolves are the Warriors of Gaia, Her immune system if you like.
Their main enemies are the minions (knowing or unknowing) of the Wyrm, and any or all of it's aspects. The main 3 aspects are the Defiler Wyrm, which deals in the destruction of morality and decency. It feeds and grows stronger when men beat wives they've sworn to honour and protect, bribe eachother, or rape little children. The Beast of War is the most physical destroyer, it thrives and feeds on acts of violence and destruction, killings and mindless slaughter. Finally there is the Devourer Wyrm, which I suppose you'd sum up as Gluttony, gone horribly wrong. It is the aspect of the Wyrm which always hungers for more, and in the end drives all of the Wyrm's minions to take/use/spend much more than they need. Greed and Megalomania are characteristic trades of those who have come to close to the Devourer Wyrm.
Werewolves are (as a group) animistic, and have pretty good arguments, in that they can call up spirits of various kinds. But the Wyrm has spirit minions too, and they spread it's evil across the world as they can. These spirits, called Banes are perhaps the primary foes of the werewolves.
But often the banes cannot be gotten at, and because the werewolves are fighting a loosing battle, they are often forced into fighting "cleaning up" battles, where they simply oppose the deeds on men that are in league (knowing or not) with the Wyrm, such as huge corporations polluting the enviroment.
If you've been paying attention, you should by now be asking yourself "But what about the Weaver?" Well, the Weaver is (among other things) technologyand science (maybe not the most obvious, but it makes a twisted kind of sense, if you think about it long enough, have a athrocentric enough worldview, and really want it to), but most werewolves either consider it a minor nuisance, or at most the lesser of 2 evils, compared to the Wyrm. Perhaps they are right.
Oh, and mind you, by now you know more of the werewolf cosmology than many werewolves themselves.
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So did this game come off?
When we played I was an immortal (a la Highlander) who fell in with a small pack that was hunting the same guys I was. It was all very surreal, actually.
FYI:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_of_Darkness
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werewolf:_The_Apocalypse
etc.
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Hey, that's cool. I've wanted to play an Immortal character. I like writing First Deaths and it'd be interesting to role play through that.
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He was cool (yes I played a guy) His first death was during the Glendower Rebellion in Wales - died under English pikes - and still prefers speaking Welsh to English :)
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Well, considering most surviving Immortals are male (Probably due to cultural norms) it makes sense. Men were the warriors and hunters and more likely to be in situations resulting in the violent death required to trigger Immortality, plus women weren't supposed to fight and most females were probably easy prey for headhunters. (Naturally, there were exceptions, but probably not as many as some fanfic writers seem to think.)
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yhea like the celts
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Tonight I make a pitch for WoD or SR. Our weekly game has been taken over by the paper and dice people and the roleplayers are bored off their arses (including the GM) so its new game night!
A consort of one of da guyz has been coming for the last few months and between them they mathmatized everything - no story, no character development, you might as well be playing a video game for all the imagination being used.
Time for the revolution!
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That's awesome! I actually played Werewolf last night- it's Werewolf: The Apocalypse, which I had never played before, but it was actually pretty cool to have the background on the Weaver, the Wylde, and the Wyrm.
I think I came in right before the end of the world- there were two suns, one of which was blood red. And our totem sent us off to find the First Ronin, so we wandered off into the woods and tracked him down, and convinced him to lend a hand in the end times.
I don't know. It was fun, but I'm still not convinced. And now I need a matching set of d10s.
-kv
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Very cool.
I'm not sure if or what aspect of WoD we'll get into or for that matter what specific game but as long as the roleplayers rule, I'm happy. There's a reason the best role players stink at math :D
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Yeah, but I've always held that if you want to break the rules, you need to know what rules to break. ;D
-kv
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There's a reason the best role players stink at math :D
Statement: Disagreement.
Some of the very best are excellent at math, but get their 'math fix' by day, not by night.
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The exception that prove the rule :D
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Yeah, but I've always held that if you want to break the rules, you need to know what rules to break.
Actually I tend to agree with this.