Reinventing the Werewolf

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Not really the point. Yes you kill the werewolf if you can't neutralize it in a less extreme manner. But unless you insert some emotional drama into the choice, there's no horror. Just "sucks to be you" <chop>.

Yup.


I've got nothing against a straightforward, simple, hack and slash kind of adventure. That can be a blast.
But I certainly do like games in which the players develop emotional attachments to characters and sometimes face moral quandaries. It all contributes to good RP and fun stories!
This can be done with any system, IME. I've played and run Basic D&D games with all that good stuff.

Horror games in particular require some emotional investment in order to really work for me.



YMMV, but I agree with David and Brett on this one.

[The Colonel]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Not really the point. Yes you kill the werewolf if you can't neutralize it in a less extreme manner. But unless you insert some emotional drama into the choice, there's no horror. Just "sucks to be you" <chop>.

Also to the point, fear requires a sense of vulnerability - if your PCs are simply able to hunt it down and kill it, they are unlikely to be afraid.

Of course, one possible solution is to put the werewolf in the party...

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by The Colonel

Also to the point, fear requires a sense of vulnerability - if your PCs are simply able to hunt it down and kill it, they are unlikely to be afraid.

Of course, one possible solution is to put the werewolf in the party...

Or, since it's possible in many stories and legends to be a werewolf without knowing it, the GM could drop clues that one of the party might be the werewolf, or might not. With the right player, even a PC could be handled that way, with the player not knowing if s/he is or isn't. No all players would handle that well, but some would.

[Murrkon5]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Werewolf as psychic projection. The werewolf's soul takes on the shape of a wolf while she sleeps and can materialize and demateralize like a ghost...

This prompts me to dig out my copy of "Forbidden Planet" for a happy re-viewing. The "ID Monster" scared me plenty in my youth and has all the elements of horror. Prof. Morbius in the film had no idea he was creating this "astral projection" fiend. The revelation essentially snapped him.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Asta Kask

I'm going to be unoriginal and say that it is the melding of man and beast. In the case of the person who becomes a werewolf voluntarily, it is the fact that someone thinks so little of his humanity that he is willing to trade it for the rage of the beast. In the setting I'm writing for - 1920s horror - there were plenty of people who thought very little of humanity after the carnage of the first World War.

The origins of the werewolf myth may have been in ancient proto-indo-europeic initiation rites wherein the young men "lived as wolves" for a short time before they were welcomed among the adults. In the Germanic pantheon, the god hallowing the rites would have been Odin/Wotan/Wodanaz. So what if the young men really gained the power to change into wolves, and what if those rites were still available today? Who would volunteer to lose his humanity, if only for a period of time?

The rite would likely involve the skinning of a wolf, with the spear as an important ritual tool and possibly involving the sacrifice of an eye. Further inspiration for ritual tools and other ingredients can come from the Hermetic Astrology system detailed in Thaumatology.

Thoughts?

This kind of werewolf is at the center of a scenario I want to run, set amidst the Gottdammerung of Nazism in devastated Berlin at the end of WWII.

Heroic PCs from the MI5 Occult Bureau or the odds-and-ends desks of OSS or ONI would be dispatched into the last-ditch fighting between the Soviets and the remnants of the Reich in order to prevent Nazi occult secrets from falling into the hands of Stalin.

To gain access to secret bunkers under the Reichskanzlei, they have to fight through a gauntlet of elite SS guards, who were part of an Unternehmen Werwolf somewhat more literal than anyone suspected.

Complete with wolfskins, Woten-invocations and mystic spears, naturally. Bad anthropology and inaccurate history makes for awesome gaming.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Asta Kask

There's also a moral problem there. Suppose the character who became a werewolf is innocent - the victim of a curse. Is it really appropriate to whack him for being cursed?

As much as it is to whack an enemy soldier. Few of them enlisted under the slogan, "Become a minion of the Evil Emperor, burn the heroes village, lay waste to the innocent without cause, be slaughtered by ridiculously skillful heroes to enhance their glory when they rescue the princess."

[Anders]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

As much as it is to whack an enemy soldier. Few of them enlisted under the slogan, "Become a minion of the Evil Emperor, burn the heroes village, lay waste to the innocent without cause, be slaughtered by ridiculously skillful heroes to enhance their glory when they rescue the princess."

But if he's beaten unconscious, isn't he a POW (Prisoner of Werewolfiness)?

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Asta Kask

But if he's beaten unconscious, isn't he a POW (Prisoner of Werewolfiness)?

Why yes, and if you have some way to hold him(would the same bonds sufficient to hold captive an ordinary wolf be sufficient or do you need a silver cage?) you certainly want to do that until he wakes up.

[Anders]

Steel bars that are too difficult to bend* and a lock that's too difficult to pick.

*(or gates to heavy to lift)

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Asta Kask

Steel bars that are too difficult to bend* and a lock that's too difficult to pick.

*(or gates to heavy to lift)

Of course if you make a werewolf no stronger then a wolf you diminish the monstrousity a little.