Still redlining. Much of the week got eaten by Apocalypse work, but things keep going. Pack creation won 39–19! Let’s see what the future holds
Pack creation happens after character creation. It’s not mandatory, but it’s something that I’m very happy with, and that I really think people will get a kick out of.
Characters first create their werewolves. This is, after all, Werewolf. But that’s just the start. Once each player’s done, everyone takes a turn introducing themselves to the others in character, getting a feel for the character’s voice. Once that’s done, it’s time to connect the werewolves.
Each player says what her character thinks of one of her packmates. If I’m playing Julia, an Iron Master Irraka, I might make a connection with Caleb, the Storm Lord Rahu.
Caleb’ always going on about how we need to be better, like he’s the team coach and
we’re never going to win a game how we’re playing. It pisses Julia off, because
she’s doing her best already, damnit.
Caleb’s player gets to come back and embellish the connection, so you end up with how both characters feel about one another:
Caleb’s focused on getting Julia to improve because he trusts her more than the rest
of the pack. He likes and respects her, and wants to nurture her talent – but after
boot camp he thinks being a drill sergeant is the best way to do that.
Every player gets to start a relationship. The group may want to take notes, or use mind-mapping software like Scapple or MindMeister, to record these relationships. They help the pack feel like they’ve had a life before play starts; everyone knows one another. Some of the relationships can be antagonistic, but the majority should be positive.
After that, move on to supporting Wolf-Blooded. These aren’t created the same as a Wolf-Blooded character using the full tells as detailed previously. Supporting Wolf-Blooded use a simplified set of traits. Each player makes one, and establishes their connections to one of the Uratha, just as happened between the werewolf packmates.
Next, supporting human characters. They don’t really know that they’re in a pack per se, but do have a role to play as friends, family, coworkers, and other people that fall under the pack’s penumbra. These characters have really simple traits, and everyone creates between one and three of them. They don’t have a full tie to the pack like the Wolf-Blooded do, but each has a defined role.
Finally, the pack’s totem. It’s got a more in-depth creation process, including a name and a set of traits. It hunts with the pack in the Shadow, and provides benefits for both supporting characters and for Uratha on the Siskur-Dah.
This system is optional – if you want to play through the story of a group of werewolves who come together, hunt a totem, carve out territory and find their own packmates, that’s absolutely something that the book supports. But rather than forcing the start of a story to focus on an “origin story”, we’re giving a system to start with an established pack with a place in the world.
We’re also providing an in-character method of pack creation. This method starts with players having a concept for their character, and moving through The Funeral – a framing story that helps them define both character and pack during play, using set events and leading questions to bring out aspects of the character. The Funeral requires a bit more willingness from players to let the play happen as it does, but the results are well worth it.
We may provide other framing scenarios than The Funeral, either later in the line or on the blog. I’m still going call all of them “The Funeral”, as an overarching term for the whole process. You can’t stop me. It’s a nelogism now.
The supporting Wolf-Blooded and human characters also provide an option for troupe play, as seen in games like Ars Magica. Nobody really “owns” the supporting characters, but if one or more of the werewolves are out of the scene, their players can pick up on any packmates who could help out. It helps get the flavour of a pack in play.
Unfortunately, we don’t have the room to cover spirits and wolves as packmates outside of a sidebar in the Idigam Chronicle itself; we’re focusing on humans and Wolf-Blooded as the most likely to be protagonists or supporting characters. If possible, we’re going to get into more detail in future releases – and possibly on the blog after the book’s released.
While not a normal pack recruitment line, Curiosity’s Play With Us showcases the kind of temptation that can bring someone into a pack, and that then convinces them not to leave. Also, it’s a fantastic song that more people should know. Finally, would you like Rites or Prey?
Interesting. I thought there’d be a little more mechanical oomph behind it, but I can see where the story-framing and plot-hooks this creates will be useful.
Since the Wolf Must Hunt, let’s have Prey next.
I’m gonna shoot for rites. I’m specifically curious about bale hounds and the rite of sin eating?(sp) from soulless wolf. With the harmony system as is it no longer appears like they’ll need such a pinnacle of their “tribe.”
Weird, I like it. Definitely the kind of thing to flesh out a pack without bogging it down in extra character sheets (hope the simplified rules work out, I always liked the entries from the blue book with write ups and three dicepools or so).
I’m really glad to hear about the spirits-as-packmates, even if they don’t get a showcase in the book.
I’m a huge fan of spirits and the spiritual aspect of the game, so I’m voting for rites.
Wow! That was not what I expected, but I’m loving it! Especially using the non-werewolf NPCs for troupe play, that could prove very useful.
Prey next, please. Really interested in seeing what ya’ll are doing for the stuff we’re supposed to hunt.
Pretty much how I figured it would go, and I’m cool with that
Prey!
I greatly prefer playing out pack creation in character, but this is a really interesting system for starting with an established pack. I like it, it seems vaguely similar to how my group has started working through character creation recently.
My vote is for Rites. I love Werewolf magic, their gifts and rituals. You guys have done such an amazing job improving gifts, I wanna see what the rites are like now.
I have absolutely no interest in Werewolves, but I may have to buy the Idigam Chronicle just to see the Pack creation rules. Getting the characters together is the most difficult part of an RPG and I’ll take anything that makes it easier. This is especially true for nWoD. I’m still trying to figure out how you could bring a ring of Demons together.
Please tell the people upstairs that I would absolutely love to see something like this for all White Wolf games.
Riiiites… Riiiitesssss
Also, this was a great post! I like to do it like this.
Will the humans be defined by stuff like having a few skills, and a dicepool, or will they be like the humans one encounters when rolling an Exceptional on a hunting roll in Vampire?
Oh, and before I forget. Rites.
Prey…?
Prey.
Rites.
(This was good, though I would have liked a little bit of mechanics info.)
Rites.
I like that something I already do is now going to be included in the core rule book. I had recently suggested to someone letting their players make a werewolf and wolf blooded character so their players could have someone to play when the werewolf character wasn’t part of the ongoing scene, and so the players could get a behind the scenes look at the support work the wolf blooded do for their Uratha friends and relatives. It’s worked for me before and I’m glad to see something similar laid out in the chronicle book.
Gotta vote for Rites this time around
Rites!!!
As much as I was excited about having Wolf-Bloods and humans in a pack, I don’t like how it is handled here. It makes the pack feel less like a close knit group and much more like the merit contacts added into the pack, like an organization or a cult. If the humans don’t know anything about the werewolves and the totem, what separates them from normal retainers or other NPCs the werewolves have, aside from the totem bonuses? It also makes the werewolves in the group more the actual pack, with the rest just allies at best.
Prey, is what I’m voting.
So, a page right out of FATE. This is so much like Character, Group, and City creation from that system that it almost hurts. More and more it is resembling the FATE Core system. Makes me kind of a sad panda. 🙁
Rites, Please.
Eh, not really. This is a slightly more codified version of how my groups have tended to handle character creation for years and years. There’s nothing Fate specific about it at all. You’ll note the call back to Ars Magica.
Nothing presented here isn’t an old idea. Not that there’s a problem with that, this is a really good way to handle group creation and deal with split group situations, and many games have used or suggested similar things for a long time because of it.
True, it isn’t unique or original. That would be too much to hope for, I’m afraid. No disrespect intended. It is just that original things are so few and far between these days. 🙂
Cool! It reminds me of Imbing the Ladder in B&S. I hope every new chronicle book gets a group building exercise like this!
Rites all the way!
Rites dude.
Calling that Prey’s gonna be disappointing. I wanna see more crunch.
To clarify: Disappointing as something to see in the spoilers. I wanna see less fluff and more mechanics. The fluff we can easily adapt for our games. The actual mechanics? not nearly as easily.
Rites!
Prey please.
This is excellent stuff for tabletop gaming and creating troupe games. I like the format of making connections to the other members.
Vote: Rites.
Intriguing little synopsis. I like it!
Prey, next, please.
Close call, but Rites.
Rites for me. Thank you Stew!!!
Prey
pretty
please!
I’m actually surprisingly pleased that Pack Creation is going to be rules lite. Not sure what I was expecting but not having a huge pile of extra rules makes it feel more organic and natural.
I’m going to have to vote for Rites myself.
P.S. The note about lack of space for Spirit and Wolves in the pack sounds like a prompt for a second book to me, or at least a few pages released as a PDF being posted to the forums or here on the blog. If said book/PDF happens I’d be really pleased if there was a tiny sidebar mentioning other supernaturals in the pack. (No mechanics though just statements about what some Supernaturals can do to help the pack or what could possibly drive Werewolves to include Parasites like the Vampires or the strange Mediums of Sin-Eaters in a pack.)
Prey!
I’m voting for prey.
Prey.
Hard choice. Let’s go with Prey.
We’ve gotten Gifts, we may as well look at Rites.
Rites
I greatly enjoy group creation elements of games so this is perfect for me and my group.
I vote for Prey.
…Wolves? As…part of the pack? OMGYES
I’ll vote for prey
I really like what you’ve done with pack creation!
I’m excited to see The Funeral and all that it has to offer character creation for my WOD games.
I want more of a sense of the role that werewolves play in the world…
Prey!
Rites!
Rites!
I flipped a coin, it came out Rites.
So Rites.
im going for rites
Hmm, I like them both, but I guess I vote for rites
This was a very nice way of setting things up and starting the game faster with the pack.
Player and ST is involved with the entire process.
This is one of the things I like in the GMC updates.
Players and storyteller work together to form the world around the characters. This is very useful in a group of old veterans, players and ST alike.
It gives everyone some time to actually put some of their interest into each of the non player characters. Excellent.
It also creates players ownership over certain npc in the game. This might let players control these npc’s at certain times in a story.
This is exactly what I was hoping would be teased here. Thanks!
As for next: this is a hard one but vote:
Prey
Good shit. I’m excited! I was NOT looking forward to reading about packs; though it’d be boring. But you proved me wrong!
My vote is Rites!!
Good shit. I’m excited! I was NOT looking forward to reading about packs; though it’d be boring. But you proved me wrong!
My vote is Rites!! Ithaeur all the way, baby!
Sorry for my terrible double post. >.< Stupid internet.
I am interested in how this will play out, but I am even more excited to hear about Wolves and Spirits as pack members.
To help get a greater sense over how things have changed, I’ll go with prey.
Another vote for Rites
Good stuff. I’ll choose Rites.
Rites
This is awesome stuff! Everything on here is pretty much what I needed for my eventual WW game! The only exception is The Funeral. If you want suggestions on another The Funeral, How about an origin story where the core Uratha are kind of dumped together by other surrounding packs that just can’t fit another new Uratha so they teach them Mother Luna’s Laws and, through an agreement with eachother, dump together in the wilderness or outside another city with the expectation that they’ll create their own pack and carve out their own territory and find their own spirit.
That’s how I had planned to frame the first story for my eventual Chronicle but if there were already a Funeral scenario that needed little tweaking that would be awesome!
Anyway, ramble aside, I vote on Rites!
So I love new Pack creation rules, definitely I will steal them for making cults in Mage games. 🙂 Also, I’m very interested in Wolves as Pack members – maybe there is posibility for Lupus-like characters in Forsaken that were wolves before First Change?
And as I’m focusing now run chronicle on Bale Hounds, I’m really interested how Rites and Harmony will work. 😉
First off, Rites, I like Rites, and I want to know what the ‘no-longer Harmony’ dice pool is.
Pack creation should be fun, the set up has potential, and I’m thinking on possible variants already, which is usually a good sign.
Rites.
Rites.
I would have liked some mechanics as well, but I like the thematics at play as well. I’ve always posited the pack is one parts cult (the spirit part) and one parts street gang or at least a policeman’s lodge. However I am disappointed at the choice of mood music for this post, couldn’t we have had The Boys are Back in Town by Thin Lizzy? Really?
Rites
Rites please.
Rites.
Rites please 🙂
ArsMargica? Interesting!
and Prey!Prey!Prey!
Definitely Prey.
Good Stuff!!!
Letäs go with Prey!
Prey.
Prey.