The Red Mist Descends

Open Development, Werewolf: The Forsaken

I was off visiting family over the last few days, so this is a late column. Since each one involves a vote, I don’t want to give people less than four full days to register their opinion. As a result, I’m pushing next week’s back to Sunday to give people time; after that, we’re back to Fridays. Thanks also to @PrimeWolfie for hounding me when I’m late or I’m sure I’d have missed a couple by now. 😉

Last week was Idigam or Kuruth. 33/40 split, with Kuruth coming out on top.

Before we get to that, I’d like to highlight some of the changes we’ve made based on feedback from the previous post

Hishu not has no penalties to tracking by scent (this is already present in the other forms in addition to their Perception bumps).

Tilts are going to be in the book (I was misremembering an earlier disucssion we had).

As a result, Urhan don’t penalise Defense. Instead, they can inflict an appropriate Tilt (e.g. Arm Wrack, Leg Wrack, Knocked Down) on a damaging hit.

In any form, a werewolf’s bite (not claws) counts as a supernatural attack for e.g. hurting vampires. This last will be explained in full in the book.

Hybrid forms keep Defense against firearms, with a Merit to make it higher of Dex or Wits. My rationale here is that doing it the other way around makes packing a gun the easiest way to take out a werewolf. Defense is higher in GMC combat, so using the higher Attribute makes melee combat harder for people to use and makes fights between two well-matched opponents take a lot longer. Applying Defense to firearms instead makes a revolver as useful as a machete against a werewolf. This way, a silver weapon is always useful; I’d rather a silver blade (e.g. a letter opener) be as useful as a silver bullet.

That said, I’d appreciate people using both in their games and getting back to us in the comments of one of these devblogs. Please don’t use so-called “white room” fights, they’re only really useful for analysing white room fights. Use them in play, where fights happen in a given place for a given reason.

Anyway. Death Rage. It’s one of those parts of Forsaken that attempts to model the loss of control inherent to being a werewolf, but in play it doesn’t quite have that effect. Too often, “Bob falls to kuruth” means “Sit on Bob until he calms down”. Partly, this is because the combat system incentivises many-on-one fights, and partly it’s because Death Rage means Bob can’t effectively contribute to the game. The loss of control only affects one character, who either gets part of the scene dedicated to him or becomes an inconvenience.

Each character has triggers dependent on Harmony. Close to balance, she has specific things that set her off — e.g. seeing violence against children, smelling freshly-spilled blood. In the mid-points, she reaches Kuruth when she encounters something that she might not be able to avoid — e.g. seeing her Auspice moon in the sky, smelling raw meat. At the extremes, she’s affected by passive triggers — she doesn’t have to see or smell anything. The typical example is a character who falls to Kuruth when the full moon rises. Not when she sees the full moon, not when she steps into it’s light, but as soon as the moon rises she enters Kuruth. She’s so far out of balance that she can’t control her Rage.

So let’s look at what’s actually going on with Kuruth. How do we make it dangerous, while still reflecting the period when you’re trying to keep hold before losing it and flipping out? Well, look at that sentence. We’re modelling two things. Thus, we’ve split Kuruth into two stages: Wasu-Im, the Soft Rage, and Basu-Im, the Death Rage.

Wasu-Im forces a character into Dalu or Urshul (she can switch between them, but cannot take Hishu or Urhan). If she takes Gauru, she goes straight to Basu-Im. She must attack something each turn, but she can choose her target — friends, enemies, or inanimate objects. She can act normally with a Resolve + Composure roll, each success giving her one turn of normal action.

She’s got a time limit determined by Harmony — 3 seconds (one turn) at the extremes, 15 minutes at Harmony 5. At the end of her time, she can roll Resolve + Composure. If she succeeds, she gets another time interval. If she fails — or at the end of that second period in Wasu-Im — she enters Basu-Im.

Basu-Im is the Death Rage. She takes Gauru, without the normal limit on the time she can spend in the form. The duration of Basu-Im is dependent on Primal Urge, from 10 minutes to start with, up to 12 hours at Primal Urge 10. Any attempts to mentally influence her suffer a penalty equal to Primal Urge, and she has boosted resistance to such attempts — controlling a Raging Uratha is a fool’s errand. She has to attack the closest living creature each turn (human-sized or larger; you can’t get away with killing a rat), with no ability to distinguish between friend or foe.

Each time she kills, packmates who are close enough (within about ten yards) who can smell the kill fall straight into Basu-Im. They’re the only exception to the “must try to kill everyone” — a group of werewolves in Basu-Im will work together to kill everything around them. This is especially dangerous around human and Wolf-Blooded packmates.

Once the Basu-Im is over, she collapses into Hishu with no memory of what she has done. If she learns of her actions in Basu-Im she may suffer breaking points, especially if she killed friends, loved ones, or packmates.

Lots of people go straight to heavy metal for songs to rage to, but for Forsaken’s focus on the pack and the infectious nature of Kuruth, N.W.A.’s Straight Outta Compton is far more representative.

Next week — and it’s going to be on Sunday, remember — I’m going for another mechanical spoiler. I know some folks would like Renown, but David Hill’s written some great Werewolf Merits that would make sense to show off. Would you like to see Renown or Merits?