The Wolf Must Hunt

Open Development, Werewolf: The Forsaken

Today’s the nine-year anniversary of Werewolf: The Forsaken. Nine years of trying to be a tenth of what Urfarah was. Nine years of hunting spirits, humans, and weirder things besides. Nine years of learning how to hunt — from games about werewolves, but also hunters and vampires and demons and everything else.

Time to take what we’ve got and pare it right down. Cut the meat. Clean the bone. Get our teeth into the spirit of the game. This book is the Idigam Chronicle and it has a single focus: making Werewolf the best game it can be.

We’re coming on the heels of Blood & Smoke: The Strix Chronicle for Vampire. It’s a big target, but I’m confident we can hit it. So far, the Idigam Chronicle is just called that. The title is less important for now than the thesis statement. People might have seen us talking about this elsewhere, but let me be quite clear: it applies to every single word in this book.

The Wolf Must Hunt.

Baked into the outline and the Idigam Bible, The Wolf Must Hunt is a four-word descriptor of what Werewolf is.

I’m in quite a lucky position here: I’m developing both the classic and new Werewolf games. I’ve got a really strong idea of what each game should be. I’ve also got a sense of who came before me: on both games, I’ve got to live up to Ethan Skemp’s absolutely stellar run as line developer. Forsaken adds Matt McFarland and Chuck Wendig to that list, while Apocalypse was the brainchild of Bill Bridges. Nae pressure.

I can spill lots of words about the difference between the games in theme and leitmotif and so much more, but frankly I’m not sure how illuminating that will be. I still don’t know if I captured it in the Idigam setting bible. So let’s boil it down to the simple truth: music.

Werewolf: The Apocalypse is Metallica’s Of Wolf and Man

Werewolf: The Forsaken is Florence and the Machine’s Howl

As with Blood & Smoke, the Idigam Chronicle will be developed in part here on the blog. I’m going to try to have something new every Friday to see what people think of the changes we’re implementing. This is different to how I’ve done open development for Apocalypse so hopefully I won’t fuck it up too badly.

One thing I will do: At the end of each entry, we’ll have a wee vote to see what shows up next week. So don’t just comment if you like (or dislike) a change, comment because you’re interested in what I might talk about next week.

Next Week: Harmony or Kuruth? The fate of the blog is in your hands.