Werewolf the Apocalypse; Session 1
May. 27th, 2013 08:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brushwolfGoing a little backwards in time, this is a one-shot I ran two weeks ago to introduce a new player (Andy) to tabletop RPGs. Frankly I'd rather do 4e D&D as an introduction to gaming since it's easy to generate scenarios and it's just complex enough to hand players the idea that it can get pretty arcane, and in fact Andy had listened to some podcasts about 4e games, but all the players were stoked about the W20 Kickstarter.
My goal in running a one-shot as campaign introduction was to give the new player both conflict and resolution in the same session, and introduce all the big things the players could potentially do in a game (social interactions, social interactions that played off them being Garou, magic and the spirit world, and combat).
Since most tabletop games tend to wind up with characters referred to by role, by player name, or by both ("Jon's druid") I'll actually stick with that convention. Hence the player character pack are;
The players figured that it was a lot more worthwhile for them to take a pack totem during character creation than to try saving up XP, which was another savvy decision which I'd never have thought of myself. They chose Boar, which turns out being a really user-friendly choice for new characters - he grants his followers two extra dots in Brawl, which they can circulate among the group, great for scout, shaman or social characters who might not be able to get an okay Brawl score during character generation. If the game continues, I may run a "flashback episode" about how they gained that totem.
The characters were called to the Seattle caern by the sept's chatelain, Inja Enkulu - Enkulu runs a lot of day to day operations because as a metis and a Silent Strider, he has no rooted political stake and if things really go south it's politically distanced from the Silver Fang king. (My back story is that Seattle's leaders - Silent Strider, Silver Fang, Bone Gnawer and Uktena - were a pack in the 1980s who rose to prominence fighting the Wyrm activity associated with the Mount St. Helens eruption.)
Since they're essentially wolves, Garou should theoretically back off if someone rolls over and shows their belly, and in fact it's part of their Litany (basic code of behavior). In this case someone hadn't - a ragabash was trying to goad a despondent galliard packmate to further action, there was a warning growl, the ragabash rolled over and submitted - and his friend literally gutted him. Unfortunately for Inja Enkulu and Seattle's werewolves in general, the ragabash was Wendigo and the galliard was Fianna, and the Wendigo (with their Red Talon allies) had literally shut off access to the Cascades to all European-descendent Garou until there was a resolution of some sort. The player character pack were perfect investigators since they were another mixed Amerindian/European pack, but none of them were from the involved tribes.
The PCs tracked down Watches-Raven, the ragabash, who was still recovering - werewolves can and do kill each other, but it's possible to bring characters back from the edge of death using Mother's Touch, a healing magic available to starting characters which makes D&D's Cure Serious Wounds look underpowered. Getting information from the remaining Fianna - the theurge who healed him - was a little more touchy, since it required going into the Fianna pack's home territory, The King's March pub in Renton, and talking to him among his kinfolk.
From those characters the PCs pieced together; a pack of four Garou, mostly Fianna with the one Wendigo ragabash, had been investigating Wyrm activity linked to the old Nike Missile sites around Puget Sound. Three of them (ahroun, galliard, ragabash) would clear out those sites with some success while the theurge hung back as a medic and to guard the home base. On the most recent expedition to the Redmond missile site, a giant Wyrm creature took out the ahroun and badly wounded the galliard. Watches-Raven was trying to encourage his friend, Cam O'Sullivan (UiSullibhne) to keep going by pointing out what the deceased ahroun (named Caibre) would have wanted. Cam very obviously frenzied, left Watches-Raven for dead, and took off... well, nobody seemed to know where even if it seemed likely that an epic-minded bard haunted with grief and guilt would try to take himself out doing something heroic as follow-up to his pack's actions.
The player characters could take a pretty reasonable guess where, though. The NPC pack had been slowly working their way towards what they were pretty sure were the two most Wyrm-tainted sites, in Poulsbo and Cougar Mountain/Issaquah respectively. With Cougar Mountain firmly in Wendigo territory, that left the Poulsbo site - which while active had twice the normal missile compliment, the buildings had been sold to the King County School District, and the launch site proper was under an equestrian center. By the way, that's a description of the real world site - but I decided in the WoD the equestrian center had closed down thanks to the recession in 2000.
Our heroes made their way to Poulsbo, where they found their way blocked by horse fomori - scaled, four-clawed beasts with elongate muzzles. After defeating the fomori, they were able to find what were probably Cam's tracks, which led to the middle of an abandoned corral and promptly disappeared, right above what were obviously, obviously long-buried silos. There was only one place the Fianna might've gone, and that was into the spirit world, so the characters braced themselves - and plunged in.
They found themselves in what turned out over time to be the digestive track of some immense, immense Wyrm beast. In the "mouth" they nearly snuck past astral scavengers feeding off the remains of a recently-killed Bane larva, with a Fang dagger stuck in its body - a little like an insectoid take on a basilisk. Failed Stealth rolls meant they had to fight off the scavengers as well. Crypto's occult knowledge was able to help the PCs piece together that Cam had probably gotten infested by the Rage-increasing Bane when wounded, and because Fang daggers are Garou weapons literally made from a chunk of dead Bane - nobody picked up on that slight Wyrm radiation until it was too late.
The PCs successfully navigated a "gizzard" of desperately sharp teeth on every available surface, swung over a place where the tissues of the huge beast had decayed and dropped down into nothing, and finally made it to a "stomach" area where deep digestive pits contained sludgy, sluggish acidic creatures. That's where they found themselves fighting a pair of Scrags - isopod/crustacean warrior spirits, somewhat toned down in this case but still potent, able to attack with either scythelike arms or claw with smaller manipulatory arms, with disturbingly human looking teeth and olive-black plating vaguely patterned like USAF uniforms. The Scrags attempted to push the characters into the deep digestive pits, and very nearly succeeded. As part of the desperate fight, Kes successfully bolstered her packmates with her Call of the Wyld gift, a powerfully inspirational howl... which was answered.
As the players finished up the battle, a huge and heavily wounded red-furred Garou raced in to join them. Andy's ancestry and role as philodox was impressive enough to convince Cam that he could return to face Garou justice without it being automatically fatal; the revelation that Watches-Raven was still alive convinced Cam that returning would be more productive than staying in the belly of some Wyrm beast to go down in glorious battle. Taking trophies (both from the dead Rage larva in the mouth, to prove Cam's innocence, and bits of dead Scrag to show off to the Get of Fenris), the PCs returned to the material world and to Seattle.
My goal in running a one-shot as campaign introduction was to give the new player both conflict and resolution in the same session, and introduce all the big things the players could potentially do in a game (social interactions, social interactions that played off them being Garou, magic and the spirit world, and combat).
Since most tabletop games tend to wind up with characters referred to by role, by player name, or by both ("Jon's druid") I'll actually stick with that convention. Hence the player character pack are;
- Crypto; Uktena theurge, the team's brainpower/mage. A grad student in Native American studies, the character's been rediscovering his mostly buried First Nations roots. Crypto took the Curiosity flaw - the character's almost pathologically compelled to investigate things - and his family, who are mostly white or Coast Salish, handed down a powerful fetish which is an obviously very old Aleut visor.
- Kes; Child of Gaia metis galliard. Supernatural warder turned rave kid, so the pack's social animal. Although werewolves are creatures of muscle with access to ancient ancestral weapons and magics, invariably someone decides to bring firearms, and that's Kes this time 'round.
- Prancival; Get of Fenris ahroun. The muscle of the group, currently living in a loft above his day job at a boxing studio, his Wyrd is to bear the powerful rune-hammer Hagalaz. So far in the game he's either had poor luck using it or has relied on the pretty potent Brawl skills, so I'm thinking of developing the plot point that his Wyrd is to carry the hammer - not necessarily as any sane Get would think, to use it in battle. There's a little more, very WoD backstory to the character.
- Andy; Silver Fang philodox. Andy's new to tabletop gaming, and his character brings further investigation and social skills to the pack. I don't know what I thought he'd choose, but philodox turns out to give okay access to Rage (the "activate superpower" stat), and suggests a range of skills, without locking the character down to any one thing. So in retrospect it's a much smarter choice than I'd make in that place.
The players figured that it was a lot more worthwhile for them to take a pack totem during character creation than to try saving up XP, which was another savvy decision which I'd never have thought of myself. They chose Boar, which turns out being a really user-friendly choice for new characters - he grants his followers two extra dots in Brawl, which they can circulate among the group, great for scout, shaman or social characters who might not be able to get an okay Brawl score during character generation. If the game continues, I may run a "flashback episode" about how they gained that totem.
The characters were called to the Seattle caern by the sept's chatelain, Inja Enkulu - Enkulu runs a lot of day to day operations because as a metis and a Silent Strider, he has no rooted political stake and if things really go south it's politically distanced from the Silver Fang king. (My back story is that Seattle's leaders - Silent Strider, Silver Fang, Bone Gnawer and Uktena - were a pack in the 1980s who rose to prominence fighting the Wyrm activity associated with the Mount St. Helens eruption.)
Since they're essentially wolves, Garou should theoretically back off if someone rolls over and shows their belly, and in fact it's part of their Litany (basic code of behavior). In this case someone hadn't - a ragabash was trying to goad a despondent galliard packmate to further action, there was a warning growl, the ragabash rolled over and submitted - and his friend literally gutted him. Unfortunately for Inja Enkulu and Seattle's werewolves in general, the ragabash was Wendigo and the galliard was Fianna, and the Wendigo (with their Red Talon allies) had literally shut off access to the Cascades to all European-descendent Garou until there was a resolution of some sort. The player character pack were perfect investigators since they were another mixed Amerindian/European pack, but none of them were from the involved tribes.
The PCs tracked down Watches-Raven, the ragabash, who was still recovering - werewolves can and do kill each other, but it's possible to bring characters back from the edge of death using Mother's Touch, a healing magic available to starting characters which makes D&D's Cure Serious Wounds look underpowered. Getting information from the remaining Fianna - the theurge who healed him - was a little more touchy, since it required going into the Fianna pack's home territory, The King's March pub in Renton, and talking to him among his kinfolk.
From those characters the PCs pieced together; a pack of four Garou, mostly Fianna with the one Wendigo ragabash, had been investigating Wyrm activity linked to the old Nike Missile sites around Puget Sound. Three of them (ahroun, galliard, ragabash) would clear out those sites with some success while the theurge hung back as a medic and to guard the home base. On the most recent expedition to the Redmond missile site, a giant Wyrm creature took out the ahroun and badly wounded the galliard. Watches-Raven was trying to encourage his friend, Cam O'Sullivan (UiSullibhne) to keep going by pointing out what the deceased ahroun (named Caibre) would have wanted. Cam very obviously frenzied, left Watches-Raven for dead, and took off... well, nobody seemed to know where even if it seemed likely that an epic-minded bard haunted with grief and guilt would try to take himself out doing something heroic as follow-up to his pack's actions.
The player characters could take a pretty reasonable guess where, though. The NPC pack had been slowly working their way towards what they were pretty sure were the two most Wyrm-tainted sites, in Poulsbo and Cougar Mountain/Issaquah respectively. With Cougar Mountain firmly in Wendigo territory, that left the Poulsbo site - which while active had twice the normal missile compliment, the buildings had been sold to the King County School District, and the launch site proper was under an equestrian center. By the way, that's a description of the real world site - but I decided in the WoD the equestrian center had closed down thanks to the recession in 2000.
Our heroes made their way to Poulsbo, where they found their way blocked by horse fomori - scaled, four-clawed beasts with elongate muzzles. After defeating the fomori, they were able to find what were probably Cam's tracks, which led to the middle of an abandoned corral and promptly disappeared, right above what were obviously, obviously long-buried silos. There was only one place the Fianna might've gone, and that was into the spirit world, so the characters braced themselves - and plunged in.
They found themselves in what turned out over time to be the digestive track of some immense, immense Wyrm beast. In the "mouth" they nearly snuck past astral scavengers feeding off the remains of a recently-killed Bane larva, with a Fang dagger stuck in its body - a little like an insectoid take on a basilisk. Failed Stealth rolls meant they had to fight off the scavengers as well. Crypto's occult knowledge was able to help the PCs piece together that Cam had probably gotten infested by the Rage-increasing Bane when wounded, and because Fang daggers are Garou weapons literally made from a chunk of dead Bane - nobody picked up on that slight Wyrm radiation until it was too late.
The PCs successfully navigated a "gizzard" of desperately sharp teeth on every available surface, swung over a place where the tissues of the huge beast had decayed and dropped down into nothing, and finally made it to a "stomach" area where deep digestive pits contained sludgy, sluggish acidic creatures. That's where they found themselves fighting a pair of Scrags - isopod/crustacean warrior spirits, somewhat toned down in this case but still potent, able to attack with either scythelike arms or claw with smaller manipulatory arms, with disturbingly human looking teeth and olive-black plating vaguely patterned like USAF uniforms. The Scrags attempted to push the characters into the deep digestive pits, and very nearly succeeded. As part of the desperate fight, Kes successfully bolstered her packmates with her Call of the Wyld gift, a powerfully inspirational howl... which was answered.
As the players finished up the battle, a huge and heavily wounded red-furred Garou raced in to join them. Andy's ancestry and role as philodox was impressive enough to convince Cam that he could return to face Garou justice without it being automatically fatal; the revelation that Watches-Raven was still alive convinced Cam that returning would be more productive than staying in the belly of some Wyrm beast to go down in glorious battle. Taking trophies (both from the dead Rage larva in the mouth, to prove Cam's innocence, and bits of dead Scrag to show off to the Get of Fenris), the PCs returned to the material world and to Seattle.