Hey, so to trade for some new stuff I made two new playbook supplements for the Driver and the Solace. There’s a third coming for the Gunlugger but it’s not ready yet.
The Survivor is for a Driver that has decided to lay down some roots. The quote for it is: In the end, you either have to hit the breaks or hit the wall. That expresses the concept pretty well. It has moves that allow you to do some car stuff without being in a car, and other moves where you pick bits of the fiction and get cool perks when you demonstrate your commitment to them. I made this one for Ben Wray.
The Howl of the Storm begins When you tell the Solace that you’re one of the Maelstrom’s wolves or it later turns out that you are one… and has a bunch of fun moves for what that means. However, all of the wolf moves can be transformed if the Solace spends advances to give wolf PCs certain corresponding Solace moves. I made this one for Nathan Orlando Wilson.
You can either trade with those folks for them or you can trade with me. This is what I want in return:
I’m running a AW game tonight where the apocalypse is werewolves. Amusingly enough, we decided on this theme before I ever saw the Solace playbook. The idea is that canine influenza (H3N8, a real thing) mutates into something that humans can get, making them hairy and crazy. The saliva of the victims carries a much more potent form of the virus, of course, so getting bitten is a bad thing. The PCs are the survivors, holed up somewhere after civilization totally collapses.
Post below some cool ideas about a world overrun by werewolves to help me out in brainstorming for the game. Then, probably sometime tomorrow, I’ll send everyone links to both playbook supplements.
Thanks in advance!
Survivor quarantines. All the holds have them. You want in, in you go. Into the ancient shipping containers. That’s right, for a whole month. There are even those outside who capitalize on this, selling you a month’s worth of food so you can survive in there. The bastards, making money off of people’s desperation.
Holy cats does territoriality become a serious thing! Constant posturing, like a biker gang on steroids. Don’t cross another pack’s territory without a tense and complex social ritual first.
Family groups are powerful.
Dayfolk and Nightfolk, two different types of werefolk. Think “Ladyhawk”, but all different animals, or different strains of the virus.
1. The werewolf infection has stages. When you first get it, it’s dormant. At the start of every session, roll + cool. On a hit, you’re not a were for now. On a 10+, choose one. On a 7-9, choose two.
* you develop an obvious physical canine trait
* you black out and do god knows what
2. There is a monastery out there that can supposedly “cure” it. If the PCs seek it out, it’s really a group of eastern religion-ish cultist who think they can control the rage through calming techniques. It seems to be working and I’m sure that front is going to go great.
3. The maelstrom is an ever growing “pack-mind”.
4. Tag, +regenerate. When you damage a werewolf, if you don’t kill them in one move, they regenerate almost instantly.
A were pack bonds through the Maelstrom, as if they were one being. But a Brainer would never take advantage of that, because that would be crazy. And how would you touch a whole pack with a violation glove, anyway? Hmmm.
You know they feed them, don’t you? They always have, that’s why Coldhold so affluent. They won’t let them into the hold but they they dump meat from their monstrous freezers all around the walls. Keeps ’em full, makes them territorial. Then, when the full moon comes and all the wolves turn into men for a day or two, they send their carts full of crops and goods out to the other holds. They have to rush to get clear before all the naked folk wandering the fields outside turn back into wolves again. You’ll never take the hold, I tell you, unless you can kill them all during the full moon.
Three facts, only one character knows each:
The virus does loopy things with perception causing the victims to see the non-infected as horrible monsters and themselves as normal (claws seem to be guns, teeth are guns). You know this to be fact.
Massive amounts of meat can stop the onset of the virus, but it has to be human. You were once a werewolf. You remember vividly consuming someone’s loved one. That person calls you friend.
You recognize one of the werewolves to be a family member or loved one. They will not attack you and seem to remember you as well. You can hear its thoughts.
That’s right, I said time vault. The whole hold is one big time vault. The door is one giant metal disc, slowly turning with the lunar cycle. There’s a hole punched in the disc and it only aligns with the hole in the interior disc once a month. The only time you can get in or out is during the full moon. That’s why they’ve lasted so long. On the full moon, they sit inside with their guns and their fire and they kill anything that doesn’t ask politely before coming in.
There’s a Maestro’D with a were-baiting pit, and her boys just caught your brother.
The folks at the Cage think they worked out how to tame a were and make it do useful work. They say you have to train them up from just after they turn for the first time. They say that weres will pull loads and patrol with the best if you work at it long enough.
They say a lot of things. Me, I don’t go to the Cage any more.
Somebody tell me what happened down at the silver mine.
Also, what do the survivors eat? Herding sheep is suicide, yeah? Do fences keep them out of the fields?
Where do the werewolfs come from? Nazi experiments? Mutation? Mystic curse?
Are there Hoarders collecting all kinds of wolves?
Can you link your mind to a werewolf like a Dresden Files Hexenwulf or Lycanthrope does?
Also cool idea, Faceless with Werewolf Mask
In the snowy landscape, people wear heavy wool clothing to stay warm and blend into the snow. They’d joke about how much they look like sheep but it just isn’t funny.
What if a Werewolf found some old WhiteWolf Werewolf the Apocalypse Stuff and now thinks they are Gais chosen warriors against the apocalypse created by the wyrm?
What if normal people find it and think the werewolfs are the good guys? (what if they are?)
Wait, you’re telling me that all the people in this world were wolves? Like, they literally were wolves. So we were uplifted. That’d explain why there are so many half-ways and in-betweens. In their haste to update the genepool, they just left all these intermediates. Thanks, now we have to deal with them. I wonder when the creators will return.
The silver mine is where we learned that the weres think wearing a human skin will change them back.
What do people eat? Wolf meat. Duh.
It’s abundant, nearly never ending supply. They’re just tough dogs, guys. Stick em in a cage, get four guys — called Sheepdogs — with shotguns and on the count of three, 1 2 3, bang, Doggie Treats for everyone.
Cook it up for a long, good time. Dehydrate it — jerkify it. No water, it makes people nervous about the disease. But you cook it up good? Get it off a wolf, and not a PERSON? You’re in the clear.
Very dangerous prey.
It’s the apocalypse, children. You don’t have the right to get squeamish.
The infected almost always die unless in the care of a were, but if they’re in the care of a were, they almost never reject the virus and stay human. So what are you going to do with your ma? The sweats have started…
I don’t have a whole lot to contribute but, have you heard about SEA WOLVES? Apparently there’s a rare subspecies of wolf here in British Columbia that lives on the coast and spends up to 75% of their time in the water. They’re kind of weird.
http://pacificwild.org/site/our-work/resources/learning-resources-the-sea-wolves.html
Most holds are vegan. Keeping animals draws wolves and keeping the diet helps prove everyone is not a wolf–even in human form they crave meat. There are plenty of secret places to eat eat, but they are crawling with wolves and more dangerous sorts.
The infected are vegans. The entire danger was fabricated. The truth lies in the silver mines.
There is something wrong with the weres up by the old silver mine. I mean, did you see the scrawny one with two heads? And what about that one with six legs that looks bigger than a bear?
Just sent out links to the playbook supplements. Enjoy! And let me know what you think. If I missed you, let me know that too! Feel free to share them however you like.
If you become a were, pass your playbook to the left. That player plays you as a wolf.
When you’re playing another player’s character as a wolf, whenever you embody the rage and kill an innocent, mark xp for your character.