#wtabohn

[bandyriddles]

I finally got to play the Werewolf: The Apocalypse - The Book of Hungry Names demo by Kyle Marquis and it’s great.

Marquis' Vampire: The Masquerade - Night Road is not only one of my favorite text games - it's one of my favorite games I've played in the last few years. The player character is a vampire courier in the American Southwest, and the vibes are Fallout: New Vegas meets Vampire: The Masquerade. Like D&D, World of Darkness is a system I'm more familiar with from video games than actual tabletop play, but Marquis really captures the tabletop experience through interesting combinations of character builds, stat checks, and branching narrative paths.

I was thrilled to learn he was working on a follow-up Werewolf: The Apocalypse game set in rural New England. I'm way more of a werewolf girlie than a vampire girlie (I nearly always play Gangrel when it's an option in VtM), and I was really interested in the character writing he would bring to a setting where pack dynamics are more important than being a lone predator.

It's fun. The Werewolf system, unlike VtM, is a much messier amalgamation of new age beliefs rather than traditional folklore and so it takes a little while to understand how things like moon auspice, pack, and spirit patrons interact in actual gameplay, but the game does provide very helpful in-game descriptions and glossaries. I went in completely blind, and ended up accidentally building a ragabash (new moon) werewolf with high dexterity, wits, and intelligence and pretty much zero strength, charisma, and endurance. 

While I initially thought that would make the game basically unplayable, I ended up with a fabulous upstate dirtbag who's great at sneaking, breaking and entering, stabbing, and analog library research. She almost never actually transforms into any wolf-forms, and in fact is so mild-mannered that she frequently loses the ability to transform at all because her rage stat is so low.

While you'd think being shitty at being a werewolf would be a problem in a werewolf game, she's actually been a stat-passing beast who can single-handedly take down powerful monsters because she is just that good at reading books and stabbing.

While the demo only lets you recruit three out of the four main pack companions, they all seem great so far. You've got Massachusetts' only black goth widower werewolf. You've got the wolf-born girl with communication issues who speaks partially via guitar riffs. You've got a crust punk camboy who shows up at one of your first encounters wearing a t-shirt, baseball hat, and booty shorts that all say "MASSHOLE". 

Marquis gets that urban fantasy needs both horror and humor, and I cannot wait for the full game to drop in late April.