One Foot in Flesh and One in Spirit

Open Development, Werewolf: The Forsaken

Harmony won last week’s vote, 40 to 4. I will cover everything that comes up for a vote, these wee contests only affect the order of posts.

Harmony as a trait measures how well you balance the flesh and the spirit. The idea of balance, of needing to walk between two worlds while never being fully in one or the other, is key to Werewolf. That balance is what gives the Uratha a spark of control over the changing beast within. Being about balance and about change, Harmony as a trait ties the Forsaken to Mother Luna, goddess of cycles, change, and balance.

That perfect position of balance comes at Harmony 5. When your Harmony is higher, you’re closer to the flesh than the spirit. At Harmony 10, you can’t enter the Shadow and you need to burn Essence to shapeshift at all (except when you enter Kuruth). At Harmony 0, you’re trapped in the Shadow. You need to spend Essence and roll to not shapeshift when you face an emotional stimulus — and you’re laden with spirit bans over and above those from totem and lodge.

Balanced Harmony makes shapeshifting easier, making it a reflexive action or even removing the roll entirely. It also means that Kuruth triggers become more specific — you go from your auspice moon rising, to seeing your auspice moon, to seeing your own reflection in the light of your auspice moon. When you face Kuruth, you can hold it off for longer.

This way we can reflect the problems that werewolves face when they’re too human as well as when they’re too spirit. It’s a damn hard line to walk, though. Werewolves face two kinds of breaking point. Breaking points toward spirit reflect events that remind a werewolf of her inhumanity and supernatural nature. Breaking points toward flesh reflect things that remind the werewolf of the human life before her Change. Uratha who want to retain balance need to find ways to hit breaking points towards flesh, because they’ll hit a whole lot towards spirit just by being a werewolf. Having high Harmony makes it easier to fail breaking points towards flesh — the more human you act, the easier it is to be human. The same also applies for breaking points toward spirit. Once you overbalance, you need to work at finding that sweet spot right on the edge. As with Blood & Smoke some events are pretty much always breaking points for certain levels of Harmony, but players define other breaking points as appropriate for their characters.

Having Harmony work this way is a departure from how we’ve handled traits in most World of Darkness games. Harmony is not used as a dice pool, and it isn’t a resistance trait. It’s a measure of a werewolf’s balance and connection to Mother Luna. Freeing it to balance at 5, rather than higher always being better opens up a rich design space to reflect not just werewolves who are out of balance, but how they’re out of balance. It also gives us a lot of room for interesting breaking points.

Music for this week is the Manic Street Preachers’ Motorcycle Emptiness brings across the feeling of isolation and discontent that comes from being a werewolf and realising that people live hollow lives unaware of the animistic world around them. That’s easily a breaking point towards spirit for a high-Harmony werewolf.

And finally, this week’s vote: What do you want to hear about next week, Wolf Blooded or Tribe?