WerewolfXwolf

[Tom Mazanec]

If a werewolf in wolf form mates with a she-wolf, will they produce a litter?

[Varyon]

Depends on the setting. I seem to recall the Werewolf books from New World of Darkness referencing this, with werewolves sometimes mating with humans and sometimes with wolves, with basically the same result either way (it's explicitly noted that mating with another werewolf is a really, really bad idea). In some settings, werewolves aren't humans with a curse (or gift) that turns them into a wolf (and/or an in-between form), but rather wolves with an ability to turn into humans.

[JulianLW]

Yes. .

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Tom Mazanec

If a werewolf in wolf form mates with a she-wolf, will they produce a litter?

Depends how lycanthropy works in the setting; you can come up with plausible arguments for both yes and no, and it's not something GURPS would assign a point value to.

[The Colonel]

The effects if the werewolf is ... well, the correct old English would be a wyfwolf ... may be interesting.
Is the morphology of the offspring determined by the mother's form at conception? Is she locked in shape for the duration of the pregnancy (the results otherwise could be horrific)? If, as a lot of lore suggests, hereditary werewolves start to shapeshift at puberty, being born in wolf form would mean about a year later, a bunch of young equivalent humans with no idea of how to human ... not so much raised by wolves as raised AS wolves...

[tshiggins]

Wendy and Richard Pini got a lot of mileage out of a similar idea, but they used shapeshifting elves.

In Werewolf: The Apocalypse, the only way for the werewolves to remain viable was to mix it up every generation.
If one generation had one parent as a werewolf and the other as a human, then to have healthy children they had to mate with wolves.
Their offspring would then (ideally) have children with a human.

Rinse and repeat.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by The Colonel

The effects if the werewolf is ... well, the correct old English would be a wyfwolf ... may be interesting.
Is the morphology of the offspring determined by the mother's form at conception? Is she locked in shape for the duration of the pregnancy (the results otherwise could be horrific)? If, as a lot of lore suggests, hereditary werewolves start to shapeshift at puberty, being born in wolf form would mean about a year later, a bunch of young equivalent humans with no idea of how to human ... not so much raised by wolves as raised AS wolves...

Honestly, if I were to design a setting where werewolves/wyfwolves can mate with both wolves and humans, I'd create a new wolf species (or several closely-related ones) that has sapient-level intelligence (avoiding bestiality concerns - said species would pass the Harkness Test) and has a time of gestation and maturation probably somewhere between humans and normal wolves, but leaning more toward the wolf side. Werewolf offspring would in turn have a maturation time that was the average of the wolf species and humans - so those raised as wolves grow slower than their peers, while those that are raised as humans grow faster than their peers. It may be appropriate in such settings to have the only wolves that exist be of this type (although in such settings there may be no subsapient animals).

On the question of wyfwolf mothers, I see around four options. Arguably the simplest options are either the have pregnancy "lock" her into her current form, or have it be that shifting causes her to abort and reabsorb the fetus (as wolves will do in cases of excessive stress, from my understanding). Possibly both - she can shift during the earlier stages of pregnancy, reabsorbing the fetus if she does, but once the fetus has matured sufficiently, she loses the ability to shift until after she gives birth. Another option is to say the developing baby actually shifts with her - puberty is when they gain the ability to shift at will, but their bodies are actually capable of it from the moment of conception (and there may be methods to cause a prepubescent werewolf to shift if needed). Finally, it could be that the baby stays the same form (matching that of the father) without issue when the mother shifts, which could result in a wyfwolf in wolf form giving birth to a human baby, or one in human form giving birth to a wolf cub. Come to think of it, in cases where there's a "hybrid" form, maybe that's the starting form for the child (although that does make "Surprise! You're a werewolf!" plots largely not an option).

There's also the consideration of litter sizes - humans typically have single children, while wolves typically have a litter. I'd be inclined to go in-between again - so twins and triplets are typically the case for werewolves - but you could also (particularly if doing the "matches the form of the non-werewolf partner" option) have it depend on the form the werewolf was in at the time of conception.

[Anthony]

It tends to come down to whether a werewolf changes shape or replaces its body. In the former case, regardless of form it's some sort of thing that morphs into different forms, and it probably either can't breed with either human or wolf, or can only breed with one of them (whichever type it originally was). In the latter case, the werewolf has two bodies (one human, one wolf), and each one would be expected to function like a creature of that type.

[Gold & Appel Inc]

Originally Posted by tshiggins

In Werewolf: The Apocalypse, the only way for the werewolves to remain viable was to mix it up every generation.
If one generation had one parent as a werewolf and the other as a human, then to have healthy children they had to mate with wolves.
Their offspring would then (ideally) have children with a human.

Rinse and repeat.

Not so, TH. There are entire tribes that don't mix it up in W:tA. The Glass Walkers hardly ever mate with wolves, and the Red Talons detest those who mate with humans. Were + Were = Sterile Mule, though. But The Black Spiral Dancers revel in that style anyway. But they're kind of supposed to be a bad example.

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by Gold & Appel Inc

Not so, TH. There are entire tribes that don't mix it up in W:tA. The Glass Walkers hardly ever mate with wolves, and the Red Talons detest those who mate with humans. Were + Were = Sterile Mule, though. But The Black Spiral Dancers revel in that style anyway. But they're kind of supposed to be a bad example.

I recalled part of that.
But, as I understand it, the dilution of blood in the Glasswalkers had started to limit their abilities substantially and introduce some other problems.

I don't recall the Red Talons, though -- it's been a really long time since I read the source material.