I posted a couple days ago about thinking about reskinning BitD to run Werewolf: The Forsaken 2E. Enough people +1 or commented that I figured it was worth posting more notes.
Soon I need to write up all my notes in a more organized manner, plus I need to make character playbooks and pack playbooks, but in the meantime here is a very rough overview of what I’m thinking. I’m very open to any feedback, negative or positive. Also, the below uses a lot of terms from WtF without explaining them — I’m basically assuming you’re familiar with both BitD and WtF.
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The playbooks are by the characters role in the pack, rather than tribe or auspice or any of the basic WtF splats. Instead each playbook has a choice of two auspices, which grants a move (similar to races in Dungeon World). Then you can pick any tribe with any playbook Below is a very preliminary list of five playbooks.
* Killer (rahu:warrior or irraka:assassin)
* Stalker (irraka:shadow or ithauer:spirit-hunter)
* Howler (cahalith:war-howler or rahu:champion)
* Face (elodoth:mediator or cahalith:charismatic)
* Spirit-talker (ithauer:witch or elodoth:emissary)
The action and effect lists will be tweaked, but will work the same way.
Backgrounds become place and role in the human world and work the same way. So occupation, social status, etc.
Tribes determine allies and may impact gear. They don’t have a lot of direct mechanical impact and are mostly about tying your character to the larger werewolf society.
Gifts are bought at the tree level. There are no individual gifts. So you might have Shadow, Nature, and New Moon, for example. They do a couple things:
Narratively, you can describe little color effects for free. You can also spend Stress to do supernatural effects (like intimidating all the lights to burn out). It’s similar to the Rituals special ability, I suppose.
You get a Gift from your auspice, one from your Tribe, and one or more from a list on your playbook. Gift lists are more tied to playbook than to auspice or tribe.
Rites are basically just an action and then made up free-form in play.
For shape-shifting, all the forms except hishu grant +1D to some actions (like a Background) but also count as a condition for some actions and have narrative limitations. The wolf forms (gauru and the two wolf forms) have weapons that count as fine gear. Gauru also have armor. I have no ideas on handling death rage yet.
Regeneration is simple. Spending Stress to avoid physical harm can be described as luck, skill, or burning power to heal quickly. Also, physical harm heals one segment after each scene and heals completely between hunts. Unless it’s aggravated, in which case it recovers like every other type of condition.
The Pack sheet includes the totem, other pack mates, the territory, pack status, and relations with other packs, spirits, and other supernaturals. “Coin” is renamed, but basically covers essence and other spendable resources.
What else? The game basically runs exactly like BitD. The pack does hunts. There are leaders and followers and they switch as usual. Heat is trouble with spirits, other packs, humans, etc. I’m thinking of somehow working the Hunter Aspects into the group hunt moves. Maybe it will be mechanical, or maybe it’s just narrative (whoever is currently leading, their Aspect is in effect).
I’m basically scrapping Harmony as a separate concept, but I picture Vices playing a similar thematic role in some ways.
There will be minor reskinning of gang tiers to be more about territory than status, but it’s basically the same. Also, other “gangs” aren’t just other werewolves. Spirits, hosts, and even other types of supernatural beings are all rivals and allies. Improving your territory is going to require allies and make enemies within and near your territory.
Obviously that’s not everything, but it’s my high-level thinking at the moment.
So… thoughts? Criticisms? Suggestions?
Obviously, I’m emphasizing the parts of WtF that I like most and/or that I think for BitD best and I’m cutting or changing other things. It’s very likely that in at least some areas, my priorities and preferences will differ from yours. That’s fine.
Narayan Bajpe
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Hi John, I’ve been thinking of doing something very similar to you. I’ve gone with Auspice = Playbook as I think the Auspices are broad enough to cover different “types” of characters.
For Backgrounds, I am thinking of having something like Professions from Hunter: the Vigil, which is basically what a werewolf does to blend into human society and earn cash.
I like the idea that each Tribe has a certain type of prey from the 2nd edition of WtF, so I’m thinking the main mechanical difference is that you get 1D for the traditional prey of your Tribe, and with Ghost Wolves, you determined what your “prey” is and get 1D for it, effectively making it “wild”.
I like your take on Gifts. I was struggling with the concept of using all the Gifts in the books – there’s far too many to fit on a playbook! Same with Rituals.
Your take on shapeshifting was pretty much what I was thinking, too.
I also thought along the same lines as you with the Pack sheet and “gangs”. BITD is pretty much the perfect choice to model that.
Anyway, here’s what I’ve got so far:
Actions
Actions are grouped into five Renown categories: Purity (actions involving a physical presence), Glory (actions that are social and creative), Honour (actions involving investigation and acquisition), Wisdom (actions about knowledge and reason) and Cunning (actions that are deceptive and sneaky).
Purity Actions:
* Dominate: someone with Rage; intimidate or threaten, execute an action with one of the pack’s units
* Destroy: with savage force; brawl and wrestle; fight in a group skirmish
* Pursue: quarry unseen and overcome physical obstacles; general athletic ability; control and operate vehicles; ride animals
* Survive: harsh environments; forage and find shelter; understand and train animals; track prey; shapeshift under pressure
Glory Actions:
* Craft: to create, modify or repair objects, devices and machines
* Express: written and spoken forms of communication; journalism, acting, music and dance; write codes and secret messages; forge documents
* Socialise: with your allies and contacts to discover information or gain access to people or places; acquire new connections
* Persuade: with charm, manipulation, or bravado; seduce and lure; make a convincing case
Honour Actions:
* Empathise: to read someone’ s feelings and motivations through observation or discussion; discern moods or identify deceptive behaviour
* Investigate: what’s really going on; put the pieces together; draw conclusions; focus and judge; anticipate and foresee.
* Maneuver: through political structures and bureaucracy; identify authority; cut red tape; ruin political reputations
* Procure: the temporary use of an asset by mustering finances; bribe or coerce with money; trace supply routes for goods and services
Wisdom Actions:
*Attune: yourself to the supernatural; understand the Shadow, spirits, legends, lore, rituals, other supernatural factions, and other occult practices
* Innovate: with science to assess variables and formulate solutions; come up with new uses of werewolf abilities
* Treat: wounds and provide long-term care; remove a lasting effect penalty for one sequence of action.
* Research: with sources of information (computers, books, academic knowledge); translate languages; decipher cryptography
Cunning Actions
* Deceive: with falsehoods, disguise, or bluff; detect lies; evade questions and scrutiny; conceal your true intentions.
* Feint: an opponent with subtle action; misdirection, distraction; sleight of hand, pickpocketing; blending in to in a crowd; remaining inconspicuous; circumvent security systems.
* Stalk: a target to discover where it is, where it’s going, where it’s been and who’s connected with it.
* Slay: prey with precision violence; execute a killing and leave little evidence; engage in skillful combat.
Effects
* Strength: How hard do you fit? How strong is your hold? How scary is your display of violence? How badly do you wreck it?
* Dexterity: How quickly or smoothly do you do it? How stylish or impressive is it? How hard is it to detect?
* Manipulation: How thorough is your manipulation? How far do you get with this ploy? How well do you allay their suspicions?
* Intelligence: How much do you find out? How detailed or broad is the information? How accurately can you predict with this knowledge?
* Speed: How much ground do you cover? How good is the position you take?
* Willpower: How well do you resist it? How brave are you? How much inner strength can you muster?
Urges
Instead of Vices, werewolves have Urges that they pursue during downtime to reduce Rage
* Affluence
* Affiliation
* Carnality
* Destruction
* Dominance
* Fame
* Mystery
Rage
Instead of Stress, werewolves take Rage.
Taking Physical Effects
Because of their supernatural regeneration, when werewolves take physical effects, usually wounds, they don’t get a progress clock. Instead, any physical effect is automatically healed during downtime. Non-physical effects (e.g. mental and social effects) get a progress clock as normal. Werewolves can choose to take Rage instead of the effect.
Silver
Silver is the exception. If a werewolf is injured with a silver weapon, they must take an effect with a progress clock – they cannot take Rage instead.
Rage and Death Rage
When you fill your last point of Rage, erase all Rage and make a Death Rage roll. The result determines what happens when you Death Rage and how much Discord you get.
Sins Against Harmony
When you commit a Sin against Harmony, make a resistance roll (usually Willpower). This determines how much Discord you get from committing the Sin.
Discord and Schism
Gain Discord when you commit Sins and/or enter Death Rage. When you fill your last point of Discord, you gain a Schism. If you fill your fifth Schism, you become a mindless beast and retire your character, unless and until your character is somehow redeemed.
Indeed! You have been furthering your idea. Very nice!
Narayan Bajpe, yeah this is will do so much more of what you’re after than your hack of AW/DW. I’d play this.
Thanks Oliver Granger ! Yeah BITD is a much better fit.
Narayan Bajpe, very nice! I like a lot off what you’ve done, especially Rage in place of Stress and your take on Harmony. I’m going to steal liberally from your ideas, if that’s alright. (I’ll give credit.)
Narayan, I have a question on silver: If you can’t spend Rage to avoid Silver, then it seems like you can’t even till an Effect to avoid it. Maybe I’m missing something, but if the GM says something like “the Hunter stands you with a silver knife,” then you have no choice but to take the full impact.
First, am I misunderstanding the rules?
If not, how about something like the Rage cost to avoid is higher and/or spending Rage lowers the number of segments to recover but never below two?
+ John Bogart Yeah, go for it, take as much as you like. I’m eager to see how it works.
As for silver, you can still roll to avoid the effect, in the usual way. You just don’t have the option of taking Rage to negate/reduce the effect. If that plays out with being too harsh/not fun then I’d be happy to make it cost additional Rage/limit on how much Rage you can spend, etc.
The thing is that I want to make bringing silver into a fight a big deal for werewolves. It’s the equivalent of someone bringing a lethal weapon into a scuffle, ie things just got deadly.
+ John Bogart Also, do you mind if I steal some of your ideas? Or maybe we could collaborate somehow? I don’t mind sharing any material I come up with but I’m hopeless with creating pretty character sheets.
Narayan Bajpe, of course! I’d be happy to collaborate. From your notes, we’re pretty much already on teh same page about most things.
I’m writing up a bunch of notes write now. It’s just in a word document so far, but I’ll put it up on Google Drive or DropBox or somewhere we can both access it.
Right now, I’m pretty much combining our ideas. The only things I’ve done specifically different than you is the way playbooks are setup and I am leaning towards the standard BitD Effects, instead of your list.
I’m… okay at character sheets. I don’t have any of the nicer software, so Itend to be using MS Word, which isn’t ideal. I’ll make up something usable, but it won’t be as nice as, say, the BitD sheets. When we get to that point, maybe we can find someone to help us out.
Sounds good, John.
I agree, the only thing different right now is the playbook focus and the Effects. To be honest, I just renamed the Quick start Effects to resemble terms used in the Storyteller system, but I’m not wedded to that. Happy to keep the BiTD ones.
Maybe once you get the document up on Drive/Drop Box, we could divvy up the remaining work on stuff we both want? For instance, more work needs to be done on Death Rage & the Discord/Schism/Sins mechanics.
Also, yes, agree that if we could get someone to help out with pretty playbook sheets that would be awesome
The more I think about it, the more I think auspice for playbooks is a better idea. WHile I’m still attached to my approach, I think that auspice is a better ft for people’s expectations coming from WtF. Plus, I can get the exact same archetypes from the auspice. Right now I have each asupice associated with exactly two playbooks. We can add moves to the auspice to allow the exact same differentiation (e.g. Irraka as scouts vs. assassins). I’m going to update that in my notes and then I’ll be ready to share my current draft either tonight or tomorrow.
I agree. I think the Auspices are broad enough so you can have the assassin Irraka or the social ninja Irraka in the same playbook.
All good, let me know when you update your notes.