electricpaladin (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
electricpaladin) wrote2008-08-28 07:26 pm
electricpaladin) wrote2008-08-28 07:26 pm
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Fucking temping. I cannot wait until I’m not doing this anymore.
I’m not going to unload the entire story on you all (not that I’m not tempted to), but let’s just say that getting the wrong address, forgetting my cell phone at home (today of all days), and having a rep who refuses to acknowledge the possibility that she screwed up is a lousy combination.
Argh.
Anyway, I’m going to seek some catharsis by making a character. Today is Werewolf: the Forsaken. Werewolf is good for catharsis.
The Game: Werewolf: the Forsaken
Publisher: White Wolf
Familiarity: Medium. I’ve read the corebook and many of the supplements cover to cover, run a game, and played in a (frankly lackluster) one-shot at GenCon.
So, what is Werewolf: the Forsaken?
Simply put, it’s a game about savagery and spirituality. You play a werewolf, a half-spirit, half-flesh member of an ancestral subculture hiding within modern human society. Your mandate is to police the border between the spirit world and the human world, trying to keep humans from abusing spirits and spirits from abusing humans. Your enemies include powerful spirits with an interest in abusing the human world, humans with an interest in abusing the spirit world, your own kin – werewolves called the Pure who have abandoned their role as spirit cops in favor of trying to remake the world as a primordial paradise – and all sorts of other weirdness.
I think Forsaken compares favorably to Apocalypse. Don’t get me wrong, Apocalypse was a great game, but Forsaken is darker, grittier, and more complex in all the right ways.
Step One: Character Concept
I want my character to have something to do with my suckdiferous day. So, I think my character worked a lame corporate job – like the temping I do, but regular. He had graduated business school with high hopes of making lots of money and improving the world with philanthropy and good business practices. He doesn’t know if he pissed off the wrong person, failed to make the right connections, or was just plain old unlucky, but right out of business school he found himself hopelessly sidelined into completely meaningless jobs.
With nothing better to do, he threw himself into material acquisition. Sure, he wasn’t paid too well, but what else was he going to do with himself? His life consisted of going to work all day to bring home a crappy paycheck; he may as well spend it! His little apartment was pretty slick: great DVD player, flatscreen tv, playstation, DDR pad.
Then the weird stuff started happening. He started dreaming of terrible things, and then they actually happened! He saw weird things out of the corners of his eyes, unnatural shapes and impossible creatures, but they were gone when he turned his head. He started feeling more than he ever had before, incredible passionate mood swings that felt great but almost cost him his job.
Finally, on the night of the gibbous moon, everything went crazy. He lost himself to visions of the world ending in fire and madness. He woke up half naked in the middle of the park, covered in someone else’s blood.
Oh, and his name: Raphael Chambers.
He’s an average-looking guy: dirty blond hair, blue eyes, average, indifferently handsome features. He still looks like he should be wearing business casual and working in an office… but instead, these days, he’s usually in a mud-streaked t-shirt and torn jeans, grinning like a mad jackal – pleased and hungry.
Step Two: Select Attributes
Mental is definitely Primary. After all, he went to school for this! That means five points: Intelligence 3, Wits 2, Resolve 3.
Social should be Secondary: Presence 2, Manipulation 2, Composure 3. He’s learned from long meetings that keeping your cool is a good way to unnerve the competition. Also, from holding his tongue when dealing with moronic superiors.
Physical is Tertiary, and average across the board. He doesn’t work out much, and doesn’t have to.
Step Three: Select Skills
Again, I think Mental Skills are Primary for Rafe. At least, they were until I tried to spend them. Instead, Mental will be Secondary: Academics 2, Computer 2, Investigation 1, and Politics 2. A good selection of skills useful in the modern business environment.
Social is, as I mentioned, Primary: Empathy 2, Expression 1, Persuasion 2, Socialize 2, Streetwise 2, and Subterfuge 2. Likewise, a useful corporate skillset.
Physical Tertiary: Athletics 1, Brawl 1, and Drive 2. Raphael plays Frisbee on the weekends (and DDR!) and he knows how to drive in a city.
Step Four: Select Skill Specialties
Looking over my description above and using the “Three Things Method,” Raphael is… fond of DDR, a former corporate man, and a basically good person who wanted to save the world. I’ll translate that into Athletics (Dance) (because “DDR” would be stupid), Empathy (Confidante), and Politics (Business).
Step Five: Add Werewolf Template
I love this part.
First of all, Auspice. If you were paying attention, you saw that Rafe finally lost it on the night of the gibbous moon, and had visions while he ran mad through the park eating people. His Auspice is, therefore, Cahalaith, the passionate prophets of the Uratha.
As a Cahalaith, Raphael gets a free specialty in Crafts, Expression, or Persuasion to reflect the things he’s expected to know to fulfill his role in Uratha society. I’ll give Rafe an Expression Specialty in Poetry. He didn’t know it before his Change, but he has a real talent for extemporaneous verse. Now that his passions burn a little hotter than they did before, he can’t help but discover it.
Next, Rafe ends up in a Tribe. The tribes are the splat your character gets a say in, the one you can choose to abandon or join. Rafe ended up joining the Hunters in Darkness, the greenest of the tribes, whose spirit Ban is “let no sacred place in your territory be violated.” How did Rafe end up with these guys? His apocalyptic visions during his Change made him realize that the human world is doomed to be crushed beneath the wheel of history, just like everything else. Everything he worked for, everything he wanted to do with his life, all of it was ultimately meaningless, as meaningless as the dumb job he got stuck with. But defending sacred things? To be connecting to the world by serving it in such a spiritual way… that was still compelling.
Next I get Renown, the spiritual kudos Rafe has earned from his deeds as a werewolf. Being a Hunter in Darkness and a Cahalaith gets me one point of Purity and one point of Glory. The last point I’ll put into Cunning.
Next, Gifts. Magic powers. I get one gift from the lists associated with my Auspice, one from the lists associated with my Tribe, and one from anywhere I choose. I can also turn in one Gift for a point of the Rituals trait and a free level one ritual of my choice. For my Auspice Gift, I’ll take Pack Awareness, which lets me know what the members of my pack are up to. Lame, in context of a character creation exercise, sure, but it feels like the right thing to do. For my tribe gift, I’m going to go with Call Fire. In the book, it’s Call Water, but it also says that each gift in that list could exist for every element, and I want to give Rafe the opportunity to give in to his angry anarchist side. He can’t throw fireballs at people (yet) but he can create fire between his hands, and use it to light things on fire.
For my third Gift, I’m going to take a level one Rite instead. In keeping with his Tribe’s purpose, I’ll take Banish Human, which lets Raphael banish a wayward human away from the Shadow (the spirit world) and back to the physical world where he or she belongs.
Step Six: Select Merits
First of all, if Raphael is going to end up his pack’s ritualist (which fits his spiritual approach to werewolfhood), he should learn some of the basic “werewolf life” rites. So, I’ll spend two Merit points to pick up Rite of Dedication and Rite of the Spirit Brand. The first is useful because it lets clothing and gear change with a werewolf and accompany him into the Shadow, and the second because it’s the only way to gain Renown. Now, rather than having to owe favors to more established packs, his pack can get lesser packs to owe favors to them!
I think Raphael has maintained some Contacts and Allies in the business world. They don’t know what to make of him these days, but they will still help him out from time to time. For now, Raphael also has a dot of Resources. Since he’s quit his meaningless job, though it remains to be seen how long he’ll keep it.
Wow… more points to spend than I know what to do with. That’s a rarity in the World of Darkness. I’ll toss my last two points into Totem.
Step Seven: Finishing Touches
I really wanted to get a Lodge for Raphael… unfortunately, I just couldn’t figure out a way to cut the Renown requirements. Ah, well. I guess I’ll have to earn the Lodge of Ruin in play. Anybody want to run Werewolf?
Rafe’s Harmony is 6. He lost a point for his accidental human eating during his Change. With those five points, I’ll buy a dot of Survival and improve my Contacts to include the homeless.
Raphael’s virtue probably wasn’t this before his Change shook everything up, but now it’s Faith: Faith in his visions, Faith in his purpose, Faith in the gospel of living every moment. His Vice is Lust. Raphael sometimes mistakes plain old lust for the spontaneity and energy he pursues.
Step Eight: Spark of Life
Who is Raphael Chambers?
He’s a guy who’s throwing his old life out because it sucked. He was stuck in a bureaucratic nightmare of a meaningless job, working because it had become a habit. He’d given up on his ambitions a long time ago… but now he has new ambitions. Now he can make a difference. Best of all, now he’s going to live his life for the moment, because his life is all he gets.
I’d love to play this guy in a game about balancing the Wolf and the Man, because Rafe has decided that the Man was lame. He’d serve as a great counterpoint to a character with a good reason to hang on to his human life, because Raphael has thrown his away, and he’s doing fine.
Or is he? Of course, I haven’t written much about Raphael’s life before the Change, and that was on purpose. I’d love for an ST to surprise me, either in play or during a conversation before the game starts. Did Rafe have a girlfriend who might come looking for him? A family who might get concerned? Friends from the office who might even go so far as to have him hospitalized (sudden personality shifts can be a sign of everything from a psychosis to a brain tumor)? There's no way Rafe is as free of his old life as he thinks he is.
EDIT: I'm a goon. I forgot Health and Willpower. Since my scanner is a bitch and a half (it refuses to scan to my computer, so I have to scan into Abby's, then put them on photobucket with Abby's, then go back to my computer to post the entry) I'm going to leave it as it is. Health is 7 (and 9, and 11, and 10) and Willpower is 6.
I feel better.
I’m not going to unload the entire story on you all (not that I’m not tempted to), but let’s just say that getting the wrong address, forgetting my cell phone at home (today of all days), and having a rep who refuses to acknowledge the possibility that she screwed up is a lousy combination.
Argh.
Anyway, I’m going to seek some catharsis by making a character. Today is Werewolf: the Forsaken. Werewolf is good for catharsis.
The Game: Werewolf: the Forsaken
Publisher: White Wolf
Familiarity: Medium. I’ve read the corebook and many of the supplements cover to cover, run a game, and played in a (frankly lackluster) one-shot at GenCon.
So, what is Werewolf: the Forsaken?
Simply put, it’s a game about savagery and spirituality. You play a werewolf, a half-spirit, half-flesh member of an ancestral subculture hiding within modern human society. Your mandate is to police the border between the spirit world and the human world, trying to keep humans from abusing spirits and spirits from abusing humans. Your enemies include powerful spirits with an interest in abusing the human world, humans with an interest in abusing the spirit world, your own kin – werewolves called the Pure who have abandoned their role as spirit cops in favor of trying to remake the world as a primordial paradise – and all sorts of other weirdness.
I think Forsaken compares favorably to Apocalypse. Don’t get me wrong, Apocalypse was a great game, but Forsaken is darker, grittier, and more complex in all the right ways.
Step One: Character Concept
I want my character to have something to do with my suckdiferous day. So, I think my character worked a lame corporate job – like the temping I do, but regular. He had graduated business school with high hopes of making lots of money and improving the world with philanthropy and good business practices. He doesn’t know if he pissed off the wrong person, failed to make the right connections, or was just plain old unlucky, but right out of business school he found himself hopelessly sidelined into completely meaningless jobs.
With nothing better to do, he threw himself into material acquisition. Sure, he wasn’t paid too well, but what else was he going to do with himself? His life consisted of going to work all day to bring home a crappy paycheck; he may as well spend it! His little apartment was pretty slick: great DVD player, flatscreen tv, playstation, DDR pad.
Then the weird stuff started happening. He started dreaming of terrible things, and then they actually happened! He saw weird things out of the corners of his eyes, unnatural shapes and impossible creatures, but they were gone when he turned his head. He started feeling more than he ever had before, incredible passionate mood swings that felt great but almost cost him his job.
Finally, on the night of the gibbous moon, everything went crazy. He lost himself to visions of the world ending in fire and madness. He woke up half naked in the middle of the park, covered in someone else’s blood.
Oh, and his name: Raphael Chambers.
He’s an average-looking guy: dirty blond hair, blue eyes, average, indifferently handsome features. He still looks like he should be wearing business casual and working in an office… but instead, these days, he’s usually in a mud-streaked t-shirt and torn jeans, grinning like a mad jackal – pleased and hungry.
Step Two: Select Attributes
Mental is definitely Primary. After all, he went to school for this! That means five points: Intelligence 3, Wits 2, Resolve 3.
Social should be Secondary: Presence 2, Manipulation 2, Composure 3. He’s learned from long meetings that keeping your cool is a good way to unnerve the competition. Also, from holding his tongue when dealing with moronic superiors.
Physical is Tertiary, and average across the board. He doesn’t work out much, and doesn’t have to.
Step Three: Select Skills
Again, I think Mental Skills are Primary for Rafe. At least, they were until I tried to spend them. Instead, Mental will be Secondary: Academics 2, Computer 2, Investigation 1, and Politics 2. A good selection of skills useful in the modern business environment.
Social is, as I mentioned, Primary: Empathy 2, Expression 1, Persuasion 2, Socialize 2, Streetwise 2, and Subterfuge 2. Likewise, a useful corporate skillset.
Physical Tertiary: Athletics 1, Brawl 1, and Drive 2. Raphael plays Frisbee on the weekends (and DDR!) and he knows how to drive in a city.
Step Four: Select Skill Specialties
Looking over my description above and using the “Three Things Method,” Raphael is… fond of DDR, a former corporate man, and a basically good person who wanted to save the world. I’ll translate that into Athletics (Dance) (because “DDR” would be stupid), Empathy (Confidante), and Politics (Business).
Step Five: Add Werewolf Template
I love this part.
First of all, Auspice. If you were paying attention, you saw that Rafe finally lost it on the night of the gibbous moon, and had visions while he ran mad through the park eating people. His Auspice is, therefore, Cahalaith, the passionate prophets of the Uratha.
As a Cahalaith, Raphael gets a free specialty in Crafts, Expression, or Persuasion to reflect the things he’s expected to know to fulfill his role in Uratha society. I’ll give Rafe an Expression Specialty in Poetry. He didn’t know it before his Change, but he has a real talent for extemporaneous verse. Now that his passions burn a little hotter than they did before, he can’t help but discover it.
Next, Rafe ends up in a Tribe. The tribes are the splat your character gets a say in, the one you can choose to abandon or join. Rafe ended up joining the Hunters in Darkness, the greenest of the tribes, whose spirit Ban is “let no sacred place in your territory be violated.” How did Rafe end up with these guys? His apocalyptic visions during his Change made him realize that the human world is doomed to be crushed beneath the wheel of history, just like everything else. Everything he worked for, everything he wanted to do with his life, all of it was ultimately meaningless, as meaningless as the dumb job he got stuck with. But defending sacred things? To be connecting to the world by serving it in such a spiritual way… that was still compelling.
Next I get Renown, the spiritual kudos Rafe has earned from his deeds as a werewolf. Being a Hunter in Darkness and a Cahalaith gets me one point of Purity and one point of Glory. The last point I’ll put into Cunning.
Next, Gifts. Magic powers. I get one gift from the lists associated with my Auspice, one from the lists associated with my Tribe, and one from anywhere I choose. I can also turn in one Gift for a point of the Rituals trait and a free level one ritual of my choice. For my Auspice Gift, I’ll take Pack Awareness, which lets me know what the members of my pack are up to. Lame, in context of a character creation exercise, sure, but it feels like the right thing to do. For my tribe gift, I’m going to go with Call Fire. In the book, it’s Call Water, but it also says that each gift in that list could exist for every element, and I want to give Rafe the opportunity to give in to his angry anarchist side. He can’t throw fireballs at people (yet) but he can create fire between his hands, and use it to light things on fire.
For my third Gift, I’m going to take a level one Rite instead. In keeping with his Tribe’s purpose, I’ll take Banish Human, which lets Raphael banish a wayward human away from the Shadow (the spirit world) and back to the physical world where he or she belongs.
Step Six: Select Merits
First of all, if Raphael is going to end up his pack’s ritualist (which fits his spiritual approach to werewolfhood), he should learn some of the basic “werewolf life” rites. So, I’ll spend two Merit points to pick up Rite of Dedication and Rite of the Spirit Brand. The first is useful because it lets clothing and gear change with a werewolf and accompany him into the Shadow, and the second because it’s the only way to gain Renown. Now, rather than having to owe favors to more established packs, his pack can get lesser packs to owe favors to them!
I think Raphael has maintained some Contacts and Allies in the business world. They don’t know what to make of him these days, but they will still help him out from time to time. For now, Raphael also has a dot of Resources. Since he’s quit his meaningless job, though it remains to be seen how long he’ll keep it.
Wow… more points to spend than I know what to do with. That’s a rarity in the World of Darkness. I’ll toss my last two points into Totem.
Step Seven: Finishing Touches
I really wanted to get a Lodge for Raphael… unfortunately, I just couldn’t figure out a way to cut the Renown requirements. Ah, well. I guess I’ll have to earn the Lodge of Ruin in play. Anybody want to run Werewolf?
Rafe’s Harmony is 6. He lost a point for his accidental human eating during his Change. With those five points, I’ll buy a dot of Survival and improve my Contacts to include the homeless.
Raphael’s virtue probably wasn’t this before his Change shook everything up, but now it’s Faith: Faith in his visions, Faith in his purpose, Faith in the gospel of living every moment. His Vice is Lust. Raphael sometimes mistakes plain old lust for the spontaneity and energy he pursues.
Step Eight: Spark of Life
Who is Raphael Chambers?
He’s a guy who’s throwing his old life out because it sucked. He was stuck in a bureaucratic nightmare of a meaningless job, working because it had become a habit. He’d given up on his ambitions a long time ago… but now he has new ambitions. Now he can make a difference. Best of all, now he’s going to live his life for the moment, because his life is all he gets.
I’d love to play this guy in a game about balancing the Wolf and the Man, because Rafe has decided that the Man was lame. He’d serve as a great counterpoint to a character with a good reason to hang on to his human life, because Raphael has thrown his away, and he’s doing fine.
Or is he? Of course, I haven’t written much about Raphael’s life before the Change, and that was on purpose. I’d love for an ST to surprise me, either in play or during a conversation before the game starts. Did Rafe have a girlfriend who might come looking for him? A family who might get concerned? Friends from the office who might even go so far as to have him hospitalized (sudden personality shifts can be a sign of everything from a psychosis to a brain tumor)? There's no way Rafe is as free of his old life as he thinks he is.
EDIT: I'm a goon. I forgot Health and Willpower. Since my scanner is a bitch and a half (it refuses to scan to my computer, so I have to scan into Abby's, then put them on photobucket with Abby's, then go back to my computer to post the entry) I'm going to leave it as it is. Health is 7 (and 9, and 11, and 10) and Willpower is 6.
I feel better.