Alex's Journal

So Todd died. Dexter left the city after the funeral. Mackenzie probably moved out east and got eaten by an oil Thing. Who knows what happened to Jude.

At least Stan died.

In commemoration... memes.

( Meme text! )

Well, I'm feeling depressed (again) and can't sleep (what else is new?), so I'm going to do an hour of 100 Themes.

( 009. Drive )

( 011. Memory )

( 012. Insanity )

( 021. Vacation )

( 026. Tears )

( 027. Foreign )

( 093. Give Up )

17/100, 1879 words

Things I Have Learned From Werewolf

1. Never underestimate the sheer striking power you have if you're willing to lose it all.

(Mackenzie is a Strength 1, Brawl 1 human. She used to have just Strength 1. When she is in her most powerful war form, that goes up to Strength 4, Brawl 1, with an extra die for claws/bite. In her usual combat form, it's only Strength 3. This is usually against opponents with at LEAST Defense 3 (2 natural, 1 armor - war form). This means that going all-out (since I usually blow through my Willpower like it's candy and don't have any), I have a pool of 2-5 (up to 8 with WP) to hit, injure, or otherwise maim the bastards ...I have gotten more exceptional successes with Mackenzie in combat than Az ever did, despite the fact that Az was stronger (at least in human form, and just as strong if she blood buffed), used similar tactics, and had better Willpower.

And sometimes that was against the guys with 4+ Defense.

Yes, the dice realize that Mackenzie is really that punk. Don't mess with the small chick.)


2. Never underestimate the value of being a total sociopath in your desire to win.

(You know, one of the main tenets that separates the Forsaken from the Pure is that they're not willing to kill other werewolves easily. And one of those basic human tenets is that you don't kill teenagers, no matter how psychotic THEY are, even if you are one. On the other hand, when you really don't want to let the psychotic pack have its full numbers when they come to get revenge against you, sometimes deliberate slaughter of the wolf called "Warlord" is, you know, necessary.

Especially when his high-heeled bitch of a pack leader is taunting you and threatening your alpha. I mean, some things just won't slide.)

2a. There is nothing cooler than making a 40-foot jump down the building with her two packmates' unconscious (and then dead, upon falling) bodies, not hitting the ground particularly well, and STILL beating the tar out of her, despite being in a weaker form.

3. There is sweet sweet glory (or, I suppose, Honor) in dragging said pack leader, unconscious and bloody, back to your territory to gloat about your victory in the sight of the Lunim and becoming a Storm Lord for it.

(Much to the surprise of Wilma, and probably everyone else too.)

4. There's probably sweeter glory in not one but BOTH of your packmates howling so goddamn well that Red and Black Wolf themselves howl back (the totems of the Iron Masters and Hunters in Darkness, respectively).

(We're going to have to make good use of that +1 with allied spirits (especially since there are so few of them now).)

5. The funniest line ever spoken after game may be (re: Todd), "I need Weaponry to masturbate."

(Just thought you should know. Thanks, Simon.)


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Speaking of which:

Pat was visiting his cousins a while back, and they were telling him about their Werewolf game. They were describing sneaking into Pure territory and sneaking back out again without being caught (over the course of a night). ...this got them Renown 5.

The BEST of us, for sneaking into Pure territory, WINNING against a pack despite a ratio of 2:1 foes:friends, AND they had their totem there and we didn't, AND we broke into their house and stole all their money/land deeds for their clubs...

Well, Todd got Purity 3. I got Honor 1, and Jude got Cunning 2.

Slight differences in expectations, no?

(And Pat has put us next to a Wound, and there's an evil demigod in the middle of it, and there are no other Forsaken packs until you hit either Quebec (MAYBE) or New York, and the only FRIENDLY ones are in New York and fucking Labrador, and they can't exactly come help or THEIR territories will get overrun in their absence, and also we have a total fucking psychopath of a Bale Hound here too.

But no... Pat doesn't like just fucking us. I mean, even the vampires weren't this fucked.)

So apparently there's now a 100 THEMES challenge, as well. Well, I said to myself, I always did want to do fanart for the werewolves but figured no, no, that would take too much away from the vampires...

So, here we go. 100 Themes in 10,000 Words (or so), on the topic of ze Werewolves!

( 001. Introduction )

( 016. Questioning )

( 017. Blood )

Werewolf #1 ended with a lot of crazy spirit shit happening to us in Mulholland. Which I have, in fact, skipped entirely over, because I don't feel like detailing it all.

Todd killed his father during his First Change, which was instigated by his father's revenge for the Bat Tactic. (The revenge: slamming a bag of pennies into his son's crotch while asleep, hard enough to roll it over into lethal damage.)

Jude, who woke up one night with a knife in his hand in his parents' bedroom, finally admitted that he'd been having insane dreams about killing his father. They checked him in to the local psych ward, where he was put on muscle relaxants. Apparently muscle relaxants also dope you the shit up, because he didn't initially remember his Change - just waking up in a completely trashed psych ward room.

Dexter had been seeing a crazy old man around the school late at night. One night, he decides to follow him. When the man got where he was going, space seemed to shift - and the old man was joined by a younger man... who introduced himself as Stan Durnham, and another werewolf. After the 'space shift', Dexter was ordered to go home. En route, he was attacked by a wolf. After the hospital, he encountered the wolf again, this time in his backyard. He decides to follow it into the forest where it attacks him again. He lost it and tore the forest a new asshole (read: clearing). (Thank you Jason!)

Mackenzie had the calmest of the changes: while wandering around in suburban Mulholland, she slowly began to change and shift. She explored the area, basking in the coolness of her new self, and then returned home, clothes in tatters.

Fast forward to the first day of school...

(to be continued)

I'm feeling kind of down about school right now, so here is more about last night's Werewolf game.

( Cuts are for those that don't care! )

Okay, I have to cut it there. There's more, but I'll post it later.

But I figured if I posted it, I could bring the stupidity to the masses!

FeralBastet doesn't like what's been done in Werewolf: the Forsaken.

Highlights:

FeralBastet bitches a lot. Crowned_Sun and wyrm try and talk to him about this; he's having none of it. Finally, in exasperation, Crowned_Sun decides that the reason FB doesn't like the new game is because it doesn't have werecats. FB wonders where and why he invented this explanation...

Crowned_Sun:
I think it because there has to be SOME kind of explanation for "Werewolves suck! If you take Mr. Atlas, give him body armor, a wepaon of some kind, and willpower 10...he'll kill that Werewolves ass! So werewolf isn't horror!" and that's the only reason I can think of.

Someone points out that FB is totally disregarding, you know, Gifts/Totems/Fetishes.

FeralBastet:
Yeah I disregarded gifts. When I want to do things like the gifts allow I'll just wait for mage to come out. If thats not messed up itself.

...

I imitate Jon Stewart... now. "BUH???!"

Crowned_Sun is actually quite brilliant in this imitation of FB:
"If you're not taking on rambo, you're not horror!"

FB keeps complaining.

And that, friends, was where I started bashing my head against my desk.

HOWEVER.

It gets better.

Specifically, that thread up there "degenerates into a flamewar", so FB STARTS A NEW ONE!!!

Are Uratha horrific? Part deux.

Here, FB takes a slightly different tack, at first:
Lets say someone who wasnt a werewolf. Lets say off the top of my head Jay Leno (for lack of a better person off the top of my head) Possessed the strength, regeneration, and gifts of a Werewolf. But he didn't possess shapeshifting(he could gain the strength of these forms but not put on the show of actually transforming), or Lunacy.

TwiceDead rejoinders with this, which is hilarious and true:
Does evil Jay Leno have a feral mien? Is evil Jay Leno prepared to kill me because I read the big black book of spirits? Will big bad Jay Leno keep coming after me no matter what? Can he throw fire at me, call down ligftning? Transform into my best buddy? Run at terrifying speeds? Track me anywhere? Snarl at me and cow me in a moment? Can he bind me so i cannoit run with but a few words? Does evil Jay Leno realise he must fight for his life everyday and thus spend a lot of time training for battle and working out whilst I sit in starbucks sipping my latte and reading Empire magazine?

That scares me.

FB comes back, slightly later, when someone points out that even the GEEKIEST GEEK TO EVER GEEK A WEREWOLF can take out Average Joe with a knife:
Sure if you put a geekwolf up against an average person the geekwolf will still win. But take geekwolf and put him up against some hard nosed ubercommando and we have problems again.

Ethan Skemp, thank God, is sane:
The mere premise of a geekwolf against a hard-nosed ubercommando certainly does have problems. Consider this as a movie pitch. What movie studio would take this seriously?

I'm really not sure why you felt the need to create two threads on this. You're already convinced that the numbers printed on the page for form stats do not terrify you, for the most part based on situations where it is conceivable that a weak werewolf can be beaten by a very strong human. Nobody's going to convince you otherwise, and the form statistics aren't going to change — we find them very suitable for where werewolves are supposed to be, and you're not going to change them in your own game.

Why is this worth a second thread?

Someone points out that the Geek isn't worried about Commando; he's worried about ripping his family (or the girl he has a crush on) to shreds.

FeralBastet returns this volley:
(other person) These are not inept humans, they are normal humans. Commando is abnormal.

Well regardless my only alternative left as to not make the werewolves lose credibility is to use only "normal" humans in my game. Which means that even the law enforcement on the streets will be the equivalent of Police Chief Wiggum.

...WHAT?!?!?!

Kordeth calls him on bullshit:
Where are you getting this ridiculously binary idea that everybody on earth is either a James Bond death-ninja commando or a drooling incompetent incapable of wiping his own ass? There is such a thing as a middle ground, y'know.

FeralBastet finally comes to a conclusion on page 5:
As much as WW thought it necessary to downgrade the Uratha, I will go one better and downgrade the entire human race. Almost every human I will use in a Werewolf game will have no more than one dot in any given stat or ability. And the most skilled people such as veteran cops may have 2 in some areas but no more.

TwiceDead:
So instead of accepting that Uratha are genuinely scary... you've decided to Nerf humanity?

OK... odd solution to a no-existant problem. But if it makes you happy :)

A few people go on trying to convince him he's an idiot; he brushes them off with "I have a non-houseruling solution now!"

FB:
I can make humans weaker and it technically isnt house ruling. But if I add to the werewolf stats than it is house ruling.

And house ruling goes angainst my no house rules rule.

Crowned_Sun is hilarious with this (sort of) parting shot:
Ah! That's okay then.

I claim victory!

I told you, in the LAST thread, that you were overstating your humans.

You apparently had a delayed reaction, but eventually agreed with me in the end. Albiet you took it a bit further than I did.

So, yay! Go me! I win!

*does the victory dance*

EDIT: He goes away for a while... AND THEN COMES BACK!!! (End page 6, p. 7)

Oh man. I missed so much in leaving this thread early.

darkfall14 also has a great sum-up:

Feralbastet invites some friends over for a werewolf game:
*session begins*

Fb: remember guys, this game's gonna be pretty horrific, just letting you guys be ready for it

players: ok cool

Fb: your pack runs through the forest, on patrol

random player: can i summon a rainfall??

Fb: NO!!! this is horror!! not furries with superpowers!!!!

random player: um..ok

Fb: suddenly, you encounter a team of green barets, supported by 5 kung-fu experts!! what do you do??

players: our geekwolves attack!!!

fb: they fall to your claws!!! none survive!!! you don't even take any damage!!!

players: really??

fb: can't you feel the horror??? are you terrified yet

players: umm....

fb: YOU PLAYERS HAVE NO IDEA WHAT HORROR IS!! GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!!!!

*session ends*


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And that, friends, is the story of Why Forums Are Bad For My Health, or Why Wyrm, Crowned_Sun, ESkemp and Kordeth Are My Heroes, or Why Idiots Should Not Be Allowed Online.