Repost of my Feral playbook with added sections based on the prerelease of the book. If I had the spare change I’d see if I could find an artist to do a Masks-style rendition of my character Random as a stand in. Probably between her human seeming and true appearance.
Thank you Magpie Games for making this game.
Moment of Truth:
For the moment, the urges of your instinct and the complexities of civilization are overlapping. All parts of your psyche are working in a smooth, graceful cooperation allowing you to show the best of both the wild and the city. There is no hesitation there is no doubt. You know what needs to be done and you do it. And now comes the challenge of figuring out when your actions today aren’t acceptable…
Team Moves:
When you share a triumphant celebration with someone let your emotions out in a primal way. If they roll with it mark potential. If they react poorly, ask them to choose between Danger and Freak, move that label up 1 and shift either Superior or Mundane down 1.
When you share a vulnerability or weakness with someone behave in a submissive manner. If they treat you like an equal mark potential. If they treat you as a subordinate clear a condition. Either way add 1 to the team pool.
Potential:
Advancement:
Take another move from your playbook.
Take another move from your playbook
Take a move from another playbook.
Someone permanently loses influence over you. Add +1 to a label.
Rearrange your labels as you choose. Add +1 to a Label.
Unlock your moment of truth.
Change two of your problems fitting in OR remove one.
Unlock your moment of truth after unlocking it the first time.
Change to another playbook.
Take an adult move.
Take an adult move.
Lock a label and add +1 to a Label of your choice.
Retire from the life or become a paragon of the city.
The Feral
This isn’t the world you grew up in. You have been raised and shaped by struggle. Emotions have been repressed by wild, mechanical instinct. Suspicion and caution are your most common feelings.
Now you are in and among other people and a new environment. You don’t want to fail these people, but they confuse you so much.
Hero Name:
Real Name (if necessary):
Look:
Ambiguous, Man, Woman, Transgressing
Asian or South Asian, Black, Hispanic/Latino, Indigenous, Middle Eastern, White, Indistinct
Simple clothing, military clothing, furs, torn clothing, improvised clothing
Malnourished Body, Inhuman Body, Primitive Body, Disturbing Body, Scarred Body, Healthy Body
Abilities: You are a predator, pure and simple. Choose two of the following descriptors to describe the manner that your nature expresses itself.
Primal Ambush Adaptive Trap-Making Eldritch
Relentless Stalking Quick Powerful Skillful
Environment: Choose one of the following to describe your upbringing or what made you go feral.
O Child Soldier O Supernatural Incident O Lost in the Wild
O Unethical Experimentation O The Cracks of the City O Amnesia
O Trapped in a Coma/Dream O Future Apocalypse O Mental Trauma
Labels:
Freak -2 -1 0 +1 +2 +3
Danger -2 -1 0 +1 +2 +3
Savior -2 -1 0 +1 +2 +3
Superior -2 -1 0 +1 +2 +3
Mundane -2 -1 0 +1 +2 +3
Backstory:
How were you removed from society to begin with?
How long were you removed society?
What brought you back to society?
Why do you stay in society now?
Why do you care about the team?
When our team first came together…
…it took a little bit before you acted in sync. What did it take for you cooperate smoothly like a pack?
Relationships
You think __________________ is either in danger or is a danger and you haven’t figured out which.
____________________ often corrects you on how you should behave around people.
Influence
Choose your demeanor: innocent or cautious.
If you are innocent, you are outgoing and people take your strangeness as naïveté. Give influence to two team members.
If you are cautious, you are stand-offish and people take your strangeness for coldness or aggression. Give influence to nobody.
Fitting In
Choose three ways that you especially have difficulty fitting in with normal, civilized people.
O Language Issues O Emotional Mismatch O Paranoia O Animalistic
O Tech Confusion O Blind to Social Cues O Overprotective O No Culture
If a non-combat situation occurs that involves one of your difficulties, roll +Danger.
On a 10+ choose 1:
You make a huge scene and embarrass or frighten several people or one important person. Give them Influence.
You want to leave the situation entirely. Either leave the scene or shut down all your social responses.
Two options from the 7-9 list.
On a 7-9 choose 1:
You attract ridicule or hatred from someone. Give them Influence.
You are put off balance by the situation. Mark a Condition.
You offend someone you thought understood you. Lose Influence over them.
On a miss, you are able to figure out the basics of how to act and nothing extraordinary happens. Mark Potential as normal and say how you’re able to work out the problem so that most people don’t notice it.
Choose three moves:
Clever Girl: Your instincts serve you well as long as the matter concerns survival or battle. In those cases you can Assess the Situation by rolling +Danger instead of +Superior.
Hunter’s Solace: You have access to a place where you can go and be yourself. It might be a patch of wild nearby, a training facility, pocket dimension or anything else. Choose two positive aspects and one negative aspect.
Positive Aspects: Secure, easy access, calming beauty, vent for frustrations, respectful residents, useful resources.
Negative Aspects: Dangerous secrets, difficult to access, difficult to leave, lose track of time, no security, feeds your feral side
Primal Empathy: You have an instinct for when someone in your circle is feeling out of sorts. If you have time to show them your concern in your own weird way, you can roll +Freak instead of +Mundane when you comfort or support them. If you do so, you also open yourself up to being ridiculed or judged for your unusual mannerisms.
Watcher: Experience has taught you how to go unnoticed. As long as you have not already established yourself to be elsewhere, you can spend 1 Team in order to declare you have been shadowing a teammate if they get in any danger and need help. They gain Influence over you due to revealing you were following them. If any secret of theirs was revealed earlier in the scene, you gain Influence over them as well.
Herding Tactics: When you successfully engage a threat, you can choose to add 1 to the Team as an option.
For the Pack: When you enter battle or danger, you can also take a condition to prevent the removal of 1 Team as if you were the team leader. If you are already the leader you can choose to take a -1 ongoing instead of a condition to prevent the loss of 1 Team.
Playing the Feral
Lost, abandoned and distant. The Feral has been disconnected from society all their life. They mostly grew up on their own with nobody to teach them anything about the way people interact. They could have been broken entirely, but somehow they’ve managed to keep a core of empathy and a faint desire for social interaction. The story of a feral is the story of someone who wants contact but is fearful of it at the same time because they feel it can be taken away. Once they extend their loyalties they are almost unswervingly devoted but always fearful of being abandoned.
In someways the Feral overlaps with the Bull and the Transformed since sometimes a Feral might come from a similar story of deliberate change. However, the focus of the Feral is on that sense and fear of abandonment. Even if they have had connection with animals, the Feral still has an intense desire to be with other people and an equally heavy fear that those people will either leave them or be taken from them. The Transformed and Feral might both have experienced a physical change, but the Transformed was changed but didn’t spend the long period of separation from society that the Feral has. The Bull and the Feral might have experienced a similar deliberate experimentation but the Feral was discarded somewhere after and the Bull continued receiving attention.
The Feral has lived all their lives in a situation where the ground might literally fall out from under them and their instincts are primed over and above their emotions. Their Fitting In extra shows the battlefield they have between the still beating desire to be among people and the instincts that a harsh life has taught them. Confusion and frustration mark their interactions with other people constantly. In this manner they have some overlap with the Outsider, but unlike the Outsider, they don’t have a place to go back to where people will accept them.
The Feral’s Moment of Truth is about reaching a point where everything makes sense. Where that sense of confusion is gone and a sense of purpose and belonging replaces it. It presents something for the Feral to try to branch off from and grow more comfortable at being around people. If the Feral ever ends up changing playbooks then they’ve escaped their fears of abandonment and moved on toward other issues.
Notes on Moves and Extras
Primal Empathy and Watcher highlight the both the Feral’s predatory strangeness and their surviving desire to be connected to other people. In one case they are aware of the distress of those around them but the manner in which they express it shows as being a bit odd while on the other hand they appear when needed mostly because they were essentially stalking their friend. In this manner, For the Pack also highlights the extent that the Feral will go to help their chosen pack as even when their instincts are telling them to flee, resulting in a Condition, they will stay firm and show their solidarity.
Clever Girl and Herding Tactics highlight the caution of a true predator. Initially a Feral will likely hang back and try to analyze the situation only moving when someone they care about is in imminent danger or if they’ve identified an advantage. They are used to analyzing combat and crisis situations even if more subtle situations elude them. Likewise, a Feral that has literally been raised by wolves or some other sort of hunting animal will be used to acting in a hit and run manner designed to improve the chances of the pack while minimizing the risk to any one individual.
Hunter’s Solace represents the existence of a place that the Feral can escape to for a short time when the confusion of dealing with people becomes too much. When they were on their own, they would have established a safe spot or lair of as well and the Solace is not much different. It might be a hidden chamber in the sewers with cache of weapons or an extradimensional realm, but regardless it can act as a place of calm and recovery for them or a place of shelter for them and their friends. Unfortunately, it will generally have its own downsides and dangers which the Feral themselves rarely thinks about.
Inspirations
River Tam – Firefly/Serenity
Sousuke Sagara – Full Metal Panic!
Mowgli – The Jungle Book
Atalanta – Greek Myth
San – Princess Mononoke
Jessica Drew (original origin) – Spider-Woman (Marvel)
