Tag: werewolf

This week’s roleplaying session was cancelled, I’m sorry to say – one player not being able to make it I can roll with, but when we’re down to half strength I have to admit that the stars are just not right. At least prepping Werewolf got me going on some alterations I’ve been meaning to make for a while now.

For one thing, I’ve scrapped the Bonds system, which is meant to help the players start out with some pre-defined relationships to each other. Sounds good in theory, but in practice all the players I’ve ever subjected it to have hated it. As a result, I’ve been drifting away from it in my later ports. It’s only in the Werewolf port because it was my first and I was still cribbing a lot of stuff from Dungeon World and Apocalypse World.

Still, I really do want some kind of mechanic that encourages players to act out the meeting-between-cultures aspect of the game. I feel like a major part of any World of Darkness game is people with very different viewpoints coming together and realising that they all have something to offer, and that’s really cool. And it feels especially vital to Werewolf, where the backstory has a ton of disasters and tragedies caused by one faction deciding that it was just plain right about everything.

So here’s my new attempt: whenever a player in some way pays tribute to their Tribe’s distinctive nature (whether by words or deeds), and the other players are down with it, that player holds Respect. Respect can be spent to give bonuses to other players’ actions. Essentially, proudly representing your heritage and being open to learning from each other allows you to function better as a team.

I’m not sure if it needs some more support. What I mean with “pay tribute to their Tribe’s nature,” I mean things like being a scheming bastard for a Shadow Lord or a street-smart survivor for a Bone Gnawer – acting out the archetype, basically. I guess that might be pretty easy for a long-time World of Darkness freak like me but a bit harder for someone I’m trying to introduce to the setting? Dunno. I’ve made the mistake of over-explaining things before, though, so I’ll leave it like this for now.