So it has been a minute, maybe a couple since I last wrote a blog post. Lots of life stuff like a new job and lack of motivation to write a blog post that almost no one will read. But I have also been busy with rpg stuff, mostly being the lead writer for a 3rd party Werewolf the Apocalypse sourcebook that should be coming out later this year.
So for those who don’t know, what is Werewolf the Apocalypse? It, along with Vampire the Masquerade and Mage the Ascension, is a core product line in the classic world of darkness. At this point it has five editions, though the last one is divisive and is basically a different setting than earlier editions. Like many others, I continue to use the 4th edition. It uses a dice pool system, that unlike some others (looking at you Fantasy Flight games) isn’t crazy complicated with multiple different dice types. I find it hard to place on the class vs classless scale; it doesn't have traditional classes, but your key choices at character creation will matter. Those key choices are what kind of werecreature you want to play, are they from human or animal stock, since one of the cool things about Werewolf is your character can be a wolf, rather than a human werewolf, and for most werecreatures your auspice or moon association. Auspice is probably the closest thing the game has to classes since for werewolves your five options are basically: Rogue, Mage, Diplomat, Bard, Warrior; but your tribe and breed matter a lot as well. Each of these options determine what gifts, basically various supernatural abilities you have, that your character can learn. Learning gifts from other tribes, breeds and auspices is both expensive and rare in setting.
Specifically, I have been doing a bunch with some third party stuff called the Savage Age, which takes Werewolf the Apocalypse and moves it into pre-history. This is not a one or two book project, they have been making stuff for it since 2019 and at this point have something like 15 published books with several more on the way. So far it has mostly been books detailing the different were-creatures of that era, and how to game in it, along with a few pre-made scenarios and a short story collection I still need to get. They haven't been afraid to add entirely new stuff to the setting that fits the time period. I got most of their stuff in the middle of last year and devoured it, even building a whole document on what a whole region would look like, but more on Rage across Anatolia in a dedicated blog about it.
As I went through everything it felt like something was missing; the Grondr, were-boars/hogs/peccaries, had entries in several books and are a big part of the era but it felt like a piece was missing, like all their stuff was skin deep and lacked detail. For example, the Grondr have four regional tribes, but in total they had like one page of information combined. By this point I had already joined the discord server that the developer ran, so I messaged him to ask if there was a plan to do more with them. It turned out there wasn't, so I asked if I could put together an outline of what I thought a Grondr focused book would look like. Next thing I knew I was working on their book. Now if I am being honest, a Grondr focused book is not what I figured I would do first, even for a Savage Age book. I probably would have picked something were-bear or were-big cat, because lions, tigers and bears are cool. But that wasn’t the chance in front of me.
This Grondr book is not small, the text alone is nearly 60 pages and with art and proper layout that will easily go past 80 pages. It is the largest writing project I have completed by around double the previous longest. It has both a lot of background/lore material and a significant amount of new mechanical details which I think really improve the ability to run campaigns centred around them. The tribes have been much more heavily detailed so they each feel like their own entity, not just a couple tropes thrown together. I also made sure that things like a timeline and ways that can be corrupted are included in the book; it needs to be useful not just when someone wants to run a wereboar campaign. That I think is an important feature of most rpg books, they need to be useful in most campaigns in some way.
Now I am waiting to hear back on the second draft of that project and have already been recruited to another. And I have some ideas for other projects in the modern era. Now I just need to be able to focus on only a couple of projects at once. Any independent projects are probably months away at the earliest from seeing the light of day, as i will need to figure out art, layout and editing with a current budget of $0, and at probably 2 of out 3 of those things i can’t do myself since editing your own writing is never a great idea, and i can’t draw. But I currently have no idea how many copies of something i would sell, and i certainly don’t want to lose money on a project that should make me money. At the same, I don't want to not pay an artist for producing original art. I would probably also have to go through the process of legally creating a company, which probably isn't free.
That all being said, hopefully I will have motivation to actually write more blog posts now. Planning on the next one being on fantasy maps.
Do you have experience with Werewolf the Apocalypse? If so, what do you think of it?
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