Werewolf: the Essentials

I think Werewolf is an inherently queer medium

This is all a part of a larger long-term project.

I am trying to hold the World of Darkness to higher standards of inclusivity.

Book 1: Cliath

Meet The Gaians — a chosen people blessed by Gaia of whom among them there are heroes who are born, blessed with the power to Change. They have been charged with the duty of protecting her and her brood, and among them are fellowships from every culture. They are largely comprised of Kinfolk. Vanguards of the earth, they follow the Codes and Creeds of renown in chiminage to the spirits in exchange for favor, protection, and power to strengthen their Fellowships and they form one of several primary factions.

A small number of Gaia’s chosen have been gifted the ability to shapeshift through either bite or birth into animals; warriors joining the fight against the Wyrm. The Gaians have many secret names for these shapeshifters between their cultures, and they range across many animal species and tribes, but the most common among them in these times are Garou.

This sourcebook includes information on First Changes, Rites of Passage, how people become werewolves, and what they're fighting for. Book 1 is effectively a players guide, including enough comprehensive character creation rules for people to create rank 1 Garou.

The World of Darkness is implied to exist just beneath a facade that all others take for granted as simply being a world gone wrong. When the Change happens to a Garou, human or otherwise, the world they once knew ceases to be. The Apocalypse is said to be something happening to everything, everywhere, simultaneously, and on every level. This transcends the concept of everything succumbing to a singular event but many small ones.

In many ways, the Garou themselves are emblematic of this Apocalypse, with these former lives ending and sweeping the cub into something far bigger than themselves. A Call To Action is the theme of Book 1.

Book 1: Cliath goes into warborn, bitten, wolf-born, and human-born lives leading up to the change. It presents a curated depiction of the Garou from the perspective of those who would mentor them. There are not a lot of conflicts, profound lore, or politics so much as 'this is what we are, this is what we do.' Functionally, this can be considered a Players’ Guide, containing your attributes, abilities, advantages, and Merits and Flaws. Gifts and rites will be truncated to rank 1 for the most part. Guidelines for new STs will be found here, including enough powers and enemy stats to keep their troupe of players on their toes. This will also include things like chargen and descriptions of attributes, abilities, and advantages. This will also have many details on packs and the importance of one's packmates. And what better way to introduce new players than to have it happen in an all-new setting for storytellers to introduce their players to the game: the first three chapters of Dead Mountain!

Dead Mountain isn't going anywhere. In fact, it will be used as the foundation for this series. Already-finished parts of the Dead Mountain will be released over the next few months, and a delayed release of the full chronicle will come next spring. The scope of Werewolf: the Essentials will strongly diverge from past game traditions. In past core books and settings, there was an intent to showcase the world at large, written from the perspective of people who had never been to these places. In the end, many details were laughably wrong or mediocre representations that didn’t appeal to the groups they represented. We want the World of Darkness to be HUGE. So, we will be laser-focusing this project to represent the Garou from the Pacific Northwest as an example, with guidelines on how to make your own World of Darkness at your locale HUGE too!

CALLING ALL CHARACHS!

We cannot make this happen without your help.  We are putting out the call for folx from all parts of the queer, lesbian, trans, bisexual, gay, and asexual werewolf fandom looking to help make this the best possible release we can:

Artists

Horror writers

Editors

Consultants

Hype Wolves to help spread the word

Indie TTRPG creators

Kira Voskresenskaya

A priest decided that was an utterly anti humanitarian course of action (rightfully so) and so his solution.. was to destroy those rocks with a hammer.

Happy Writer's Wednesday!

When I was a kid, I wanted nothing more than to dress up as a werewolf. I wanted to either buy a full length costume or paste a bunch of fur to myself and strut my stuff while trick-or-treating. Werewolves were the coolest creatures to little Toni back in the day, so it would be a crime if I didn't make werewolves a prompt this month.

Per usual, this is just for fun and practice. If you want to share, great! If not, that's okay, too.

Two parents are sitting in bed having a hard discussion about their teenage child. How will they tell their child that they are a werewolf?

“You are so hairy! Haven’t you heard of a razor? Walkin’ around like a werewolf,” says your friend, who has no clue that you are actually a werewolf.

“Shapeshifting hurts.” “It hurts?! It shouldn’t, though. Maybe you need to get checked out.”

Write about a pack of werewolves that teams up with the enemy: the vampires.

You’re walking home from school and discover a furry friend has followed you home.

A patriarch recounts the werewolf origin story of the family to his grandchildren.

A stranger is bitten by a lone werewolf because they no longer want to be alone.

Write about a young werewolf who has a hard time accepting that they’re a werewolf.

While hunting, a werewolf meets a woman/man and falls in love.

The alpha of a pack is secretly in a relationship with a human … until they’re not.

Write about a werewolf who mistakenly ends up in a zoo.

Desperate and afraid, a scientist works hard to find a cure after being bitten by a werewolf.

oughj keenan why are you so angry for

im trying to think really hard about the lycan designs bruh i can never get it the way i invision it in my head

also im tryig to make like idk what theyre called like concept sheet maybe of the different forms of lycanthrope in unwound

Finally sketching up a garou NPC from my dark ages game, the wettest soggiest boy, fails pretty much every roll, nearly died to an inquisitor at least twice, too chill for his own good

Stag - pencil on paper by me :)

I wanted to do some Celtic style art again and some people on a Werewolf the Apocalypse server suggested I do an ornate version of a stag glyph from the game. I used a magnifying glass for most of the bottom third part, and it was VERY fun.

Unfortunately what I learned was that when you do extremely fine detail, you think you have gotten a lot done, but its still a very small amount of space you’ve covered.

Overall I’d say close to 8 hours has gone into this!

Particularly proud of the design of knotwork for the antlers which I made myself :)))