[OSSR]Exalted: the Lunars

[Voss]

Underworld was such a ripoff of World of Darkness that it is fucking hilarious.

I guess there's a bunch of werewolves running around in the Anita Blake series, but that degenerates into 50 Shades of Supernatural pretty quickly.

I thought it was a WoD product. I'm... guessing that's wrong..

No, Underworld was that wacky (and bad) movie series from a while back. Werewolves vs. Vampires and 'embraced' werewolves, which was a thing WW did early on as a crossover, so there was a lawsuit and a shit-fit. Personally, the latter seemed somewhat deserved since the tone and terminology (Abomination, specifically) was pretty spot-on.

[Username17]

Anyone know of any good werewolf source material? I'll even accept a furry webcomic, as long as the plot is good.

I mean, you got good vampire and Frankenstein's monster and mummy and such source material out the ass. But werewolf material? The pinnacle of the medium seems to be Underworld and Golden Sun, which is just fucking sad.

Well, you have some nice atmospheric horror movies like Ginger Snaps and The Howling. Werewolves rarely get to hulk out and be the hero protagonist, which is fine for when you're doing a piece about loss of control and guilt, but not so great when you're doing ensemble serial storytelling. For that, you want something that is actually built for protagonist werewolves like the surprisingly good Teen Wolf TV show on MTV.

White Wolf did sue Underworld, but they also lost. Underworld does refer to a Vampire/Werewolf cross as an "Abomination," but for fuck's sake Byzantium refers to the girl who was made into a Vampire without consent of the elders an "Abomination." That's just the actual word for something which is created which should not have been, which obviously includes any Vampire created outside the rules of whatever Vampire organization you have. The Werewolves in Underworld were nothing at all like the Werewolves in White Wolf, and they were in all ways better for it. The real problem with the Underworld series is that only half of the movies are any good. All the time jump movies are hot garbage.

-Username17

[Fuchs]

In a whole lot of "modern urban fantasy" series the werewolf's "role" is to to provide an alternative love option for the girlfriend of the vampire - or a three-way option. How lycanthropy works in any series usually depends on what best fits the central love triangle.

[FatR]

The whole "But Lunars, are, like, bad people!" complaint is retarded, and ruins the whole review due to how unbelievably annoying it is in its repetition. I wonder what reaction besides "so what?" it is supposed to provoke? For the record, the significant majority of people I know or knew, personally or through PBEM games, who were seriously into roleplaying, had, at some point, played: (1)Sabbat vampires or some other literally baby-eating WoD faction; (2)Chaosites, Dark Eldar or some other literally baby-eating WH faction; (3)Biggest assholes you can find among nominal protagonists from the same verses. And probably more than once. Before even counting career criminals in Shadowrun, who were explicitly intending to walk their way to the top by piling up a mountain of corpses and DnD adventurers played similarly.

This only dilutes the real complaint: the Lunars book takes some quite bad people, and then tries to treat them as straight-up heroes, whose claim on being right in their convictions is supported by out-of-character text. Whis is hardly even mentioned untill the post-review discussion.

Well, that, and these people are bad in a rather boring, uncreative way, considering their powers. All of their evil, and every vice of their society, can be easily found in, say, a game setting based on Icelandic sagas, reduced in sheer scale but not in nature (well, except bestiality, for those who consider that a significant point). Ancient and corrupt magical demigods in what was supposed to be an over-the-top game should have long surpassed such petty levels evils. I'd expect their weapons against the civilization they hate be something akin to what we can see in the War Against Chtorr books, a whole alien ecosystem spilling from the world's edges to devour and assimilate, with once-humans reduced to just one of symbionts within it. Instead Lunars in the setting have Zulu, except with animal heads and less tactics, and they don't fucking matter and don't create interesting challenges for anyone, because this is fucking Exalted, so basically everything Lunars did in 1500 years is meaningless.

[Username17]

Both Ancient History and myself have repeatedly allowed that there is in fact room in the world for darkfics and even rapefics. The thing that pushes Exalted: the Lunars over the line of acceptability is not that the Lunars are slave holding cannibal rapists, but that the book tries and fails to portray this as being OK.

Stories about rape are, at least potentially, fine. They can be cathartic or even titillating. But rape apologia is not OK. And Exalted: the Lunars very clearly crosses that line. And it's not OK.

But beyond being simply morally reprehensible to make a book this tone deaf to the moral implications of hideous war crimes, the book simply fails to make the main characters appealing. Darth Vader blows up an entire planet full of innocent people and is objectively a terrible person. But he is awesome. People root for him, because he is bad in a cool way. The Lunars aren't. They are bad people, and we're asked to sympathize with them for no reason. It doesn't work.

• "I think you should sympathize with this guy who spends his time kidnapping people so he can have them be raped by dickwolves and eventually eaten."
  "No. Also: ew."

Overtly asking for people to sympathize with an objectively awful character is awful. It's a bad tactic to get people to sympathize with your character, and by making it explicit that you're special pleading, you're explicitly writing apologia for horrible crimes.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

Well, one of the many of the coolest things about Dracula-derived vampires is their society. Even in the lamest of movies, when you more than a handful of vampires together movies take glee in showing you how they live between sprees of ultraviolence. Interview with a Vampire, Blade, Underworld, etc.. is all the more awesome for having shown them. Hell, the only remotely engaging part of Twilight is learning about the (insane and underbaked, but still) feuding vampire clans.

I don't think that many people have come up with a good werewolf society. Either you have White Wolf stupidity or you have a lame ripoff of the vampire one; which never works because vampires are almost a sweet as ninjas and it's really obvious.

If I was going to write a werewolf society, I'd be sorely tempted to just make them an exception to the masquerade. That is, muggles know about them and all but because they're superstrong and prone to flipping out they're treated with prejudice and suspicion and forced to live in the bad parts of town and the like. So basically like the mutants in X-Men but with a touch less persecution and more punk aesthetic. The underclass metaphor to the vampires' aristocracy metaphor.

Of course, if you do it like that then you can't have a masquerade -- which does violence to other monster groups if you have them in the setting. Hmmm.

[Username17]

Actually the Teen Wolf / The Howling deal where there are "packs" that have regional territories and are led by "Alphas" who call the shots in their territory until someone bloodily overthrows them seems to work fine. You have pack conflicts, you have the protagonists' pack getting temporarily taken over by someone who is evil or insane, you have stupid dominance hierarchies that people can rail against, and you have a whole "strength in numbers" tirade to justify putting up with all the stupid traditionalist bullshit.

Really, I'm not sure what else you'd want. You could have a global werewolf conspiracy where the different packs had tribal elders they nominally had to respect, but that seems wholly optional.

-Username17

[Ancient History]

I like the old folklore bit where when a werewolf dies, they become a vampire. It's a pity people don't use it more, because it makes an interesting dynamic.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Really, I'm not sure what else you'd want.

Well, I'd like for a way so you can scale up the breadth and importance of werewolf society in such a way so that you can smoothly scale up an adventure to 'abandoned soldiers discover werewolf clans in the swamp' to 'werewolves are in charge of a worldwide conspiracy' in such a way that the underlying themes and coolness of werewolves intersect with their importance to the plot.

I mean, it doesn't kill the archetype to have werewolves be stuck stuck at 'small beer' in the monster hierarchy -- Hannibal Lector and Freddy Kreuger don't become less scary just because they're only able to terrorize a small group of people. Moreover, they don't become scarier when/if they become President or Pope. If Hannibal Lector becomes President, how much does his body count really rise above him just being a politically powerless dude. Which is part of the problem with werewolves. If the President is a secret vampire or secret alien that's problem in a way that the President being a secret werewolf is not.

People have been able to do monster scaling for vampires, mad scientists, Frankenstein monsters, aliens, and demons and demon worshipers. Hell, Final Fantasy X managed to do it with ghosts. I'm just wondering if there's a way to do it with werewolves.

[Username17]

Well, you have those pack traditions, right? And presumably, you have some elders somewhere who keep those traditions. And those elders have however much power you say they have. When they show up because they hear that someone has broken the law of the pack, they could show up with however many hitters you felt like having them show up with.

Those elders can belong to a pack themselves, whose alpha could in turn be a member of a bigger pack. Once you bring in lycanthropic power pyramids, you can introduce as many layers of secret mastery as you want, either all at once or piece by piece.

Werewolf packs are basically a cell structure. And like a cell structure, there could totally just be a revolutionary committee that is secretly running this shit. Or not. Or there could have been one at one point, and now the rest of the system just lumbers along as if the central committee was still a thing because independent cells just fucking do that sometimes.

-Username17

[Maxus]

It's also a question of what an old werewolf -does-.

Just how far up does the knob go and in what areas?

[erik]

A werewolf pack structure is helpful.

And on an individual level you can also have advancement.

Dresden Files has Werewolf tiers, to crib from that
1. Berserkers
2. Shape change via pelts a bit clumsy with animal form
3. Natural shape changer with flawless animal form
4. Deadly monster that is all but immune to magic and weapons

No reason that cannot be expanded either.

[Ancient History]

Most of the problem with werewolves is giving them a purpose beyond "be a werewolf." Vampires fall back on the need to feed and being dead making it hard to interact with living society, but werewolves don't have quite the same thing - movies usually make them generic murderer/cannibals when they care to address it at all.

[codeGlaze]

Underworld was such a ripoff of World of Darkness that it is fucking hilarious.

I guess there's a bunch of werewolves running around in the Anita Blake series, but that degenerates into 50 Shades of Supernatural pretty quickly.

I thought it was a WoD product. I'm... guessing that's wrong..

No, Underworld was that wacky (and bad) movie series from a while back. Werewolves vs. Vampires and 'embraced' werewolves, which was a thing WW did early on as a crossover, so there was a lawsuit and a shit-fit. Personally, the latter seemed somewhat deserved since the tone and terminology (Abomination, specifically) was pretty spot-on.

Yea, I worded that poorly. I had thought the movie series was a direct adaptation or officially sanctioned product in cooperation with White Wolf. Or at least something along those lines.

I had the impression that it was directly tied to Vampire and Werewolf somehow... maybe as a spin off.

[Ancient History]

Hah. No. In fact, White Wolf sued them hard. I think they ended up settling, but it was still funny.

[angelfromanotherpin]

I think the lawsuit was specifically because White Wolf had previously released a tie-in novel which was a werewolf/vampire Romeo/Juliet thing that earlier versions of the Underworld script were suspiciously similar to.

[Grek]

What I'm getting here is that werewolves in a game about werewolf society should have the the following traits:

• A werewolf strain starts when a human performs a magic ritual while coated in human blood and wearing a wolf pelt to become a loup-garou. Loup-garou transform at will.
• Loup-garou bites spread lycanthropy, a disease which causes involuntary werewolf transformations in sufferers from each moonrise to the next sunrise.
• Loup-garou refers only to voluntary werewolves. Lycantrope refers only to infected werewolves. Werewolf can be used to refer to either.
• A werewolf in human form is infectious, unusually hairy and has a deadly allergy to silver, garlic and wolfsbane. They otherwise appear as normal.
• A werewolf's animal form is a hulking 300kg creature with giant teeth and knife-like claws. It is only vaguely canine and can walk on two legs or four.
• Transformations can cause the werewolf to enter a rage and act like a monster. Different werewolves have different supersitions about what makes rages more likely.
• While in a rage, the monster will preferentially target people significant to the werewolf. It is equally likely to attack enemies as it is to attack loved ones.
• If a werewolf is killed, it becomes an undead creature. Loup-garou become revenants, which are constantly in a rage state, while lycantrope become vampires, who are not.
• Both revenants and vampires are inanimate corpses from sunrise to sunset. They weaken and begin to decay if they do not consume fresh human blood each night.
• Undead are infectious as well: Revenants create revenants while vampires create new vampires. Revenants need only a bite; vampires must drain the victim dry.
• All supernatural creatures exposed to direct moonlight gain: Super speed, super strength and regeneration along with the ability to paralyze humans via eye contact.
• In order, the relative strength of these powers per creature is: Loup-garou, Lycantrope, Vampire, Revenant. These powers also wane and wax with the moon's phases.

And as a werewolf, your society revolves around the following:

• Keeping up with whatever cultural taboos and practices your pack has determined make it less likely for a werewolf to go into a rage and go on killing sprees.
• Imprisoning "rogue" werewolves who are incapable of avoiding their rages, again to prevent dangerous killing sprees.
• Disposing of bodies whenever a werewolf has an accident and kills someone. Also, covering for them and keeping the police from getting involved.
• Putting down Revenants and guarding the tombs where their dismembered corpses are buried, as to prevent the revenants from coming back to life.
• Either putting down or providing blood for vampires depending on whether your pack things they're people or monsters.
• Desperately doing anything else in your power to keep the number of new lycanthropy, vampire and revenant infections down.
• Providing society and social interaction to a group of people who can't live with the normal population without potentially infecting others.

[Jefepato]

There was at least one Charm in this book -- Two-Target Method, I believe -- for which using it was objectively worse than not using it at all. At least, as long as you had 6+ dice for Dexterity+Archery, which you certainly will if you give enough of a fuck about shooting bows to take related Charms.

But that's really just the icing on the shit cake.

[malak]

What I'm getting here is that werewolves in a game about werewolf society should have the the following traits:

• A werewolf strain starts when a human performs a magic ritual while coated in human blood and wearing a wolf pelt to become a loup-garou. Loup-garou transform at will.
• Loup-garou bites spread lycanthropy, a disease which causes involuntary werewolf transformations in sufferers from each moonrise to the next sunrise.
• Loup-garou refers only to voluntary werewolves. Lycantrope refers only to infected werewolves. Werewolf can be used to refer to either.
• A werewolf in human form is infectious, unusually hairy and has a deadly allergy to silver, garlic and wolfsbane. They otherwise appear as normal.
• A werewolf's animal form is a hulking 300kg creature with giant teeth and knife-like claws. It is only vaguely canine and can walk on two legs or four.
• Transformations can cause the werewolf to enter a rage and act like a monster. Different werewolves have different supersitions about what makes rages more likely.
• While in a rage, the monster will preferentially target people significant to the werewolf. It is equally likely to attack enemies as it is to attack loved ones.
• If a werewolf is killed, it becomes an undead creature. Loup-garou become revenants, which are constantly in a rage state, while lycantrope become vampires, who are not.
• Both revenants and vampires are inanimate corpses from sunrise to sunset. They weaken and begin to decay if they do not consume fresh human blood each night.
• Undead are infectious as well: Revenants create revenants while vampires create new vampires. Revenants need only a bite; vampires must drain the victim dry.
• All supernatural creatures exposed to direct moonlight gain: Super speed, super strength and regeneration along with the ability to paralyze humans via eye contact.
• In order, the relative strength of these powers per creature is: Loup-garou, Lycantrope, Vampire, Revenant. These powers also wane and wax with the moon's phases.

And as a werewolf, your society revolves around the following:

• Keeping up with whatever cultural taboos and practices your pack has determined make it less likely for a werewolf to go into a rage and go on killing sprees.
• Imprisoning "rogue" werewolves who are incapable of avoiding their rages, again to prevent dangerous killing sprees.
• Disposing of bodies whenever a werewolf has an accident and kills someone. Also, covering for them and keeping the police from getting involved.
• Putting down Revenants and guarding the tombs where their dismembered corpses are buried, as to prevent the revenants from coming back to life.
• Either putting down or providing blood for vampires depending on whether your pack things they're people or monsters.
• Desperately doing anything else in your power to keep the number of new lycanthropy, vampire and revenant infections down.
• Providing society and social interaction to a group of people who can't live with the normal population without potentially infecting others.

WAT.

[Username17]

For Werewolves, the only truly non-negotiable thing is that they turn into 300 kilo war forms. This is the 21st century, people have guns, and hairy regular dudes or actual dogs just aren't a credible threat to some police. Also, they need to be vulnerable to silver. Optional things for werewolves to do include:

• Have lesser-than-warform enhanced human forms. Like, maybe they can become bigger or just sprout claws and fangs. Something that would give them a noticeable but not insurmountable physical edge.
• Turn into actual wolves. It's not threatening, but it could be used to tack and scout in the woods and shit.
• Have ancient spirit magic.
• Gain powers by eating the hearts of other werewolves.

-Username17

[Ancient History]

And, let us not forget, other kinds of were-animals. Because Cat People was creepy but people do kinda want to play Kzinti.

[Lago PARANOIA]

More optional things for werewolves to do, according to White Wolf:

• Mince and moan about the fall of their perfect society while doing nothing about it for 1000 years.
• Set up bestiality camps in order to churn out a race of brainwashed supermen with octagonal-shaped bodies that sucked the blood right out of you.
• Be so murderously xenophobic that even the Japanese Imperial Army would balk a little bit at how you treat people outside your 'nation'.
• Serve cooked human baby at parties made to highlight how much more honorable you are than soft humans.
• Force everyone, including the so-called celestial heroes, to knuckle under to a totalitarian society where the elders are worshiped as God-Kings. To maximize their freedom, you see.
• Shun any kind of non-oppressive labor so hardcore that you have starving children, slaves, and parasitical ennui.
• Marvel at how refusing to specialize in anything but murder makes you so much more honorable and free than anyone else.

[malak]

For Werewolves, the only truly non-negotiable thing is that they turn into 300 kilo war forms. This is the 21st century, people have guns, and hairy regular dudes or actual dogs just aren't a credible threat to some police.

Not so sure about that warform thing. A wolf with human intelligence, the ability to blend in and hide in the streets (it's just a dog) combined with disbelief that werewolves exist and animal protection activists (PETA)....think about unwarranted cruelty against animals and even extermination of dogs just because the police are too stupid to catch a serial killer?

On the other hand, 3 minutes after the first credible news clip of a werewolf warform hits the internet, the public will support police action.

[gamerGoyf]

Since this is still technically an Exalted thread I have a question.

From what I've heard about the setting it seems like the Sidreals should be considered the real heroes. If not for them the Solars would have wrecked everything and the only reason the Deathlords haven't personally kill everyone in creation is they're waiting for the boss Sidreal to die of old age. Is there something I'm missing?

[Whipstitch]

Honestly, it's not even like the core Apocalypse concept of being the last magical guardians of a dying planet is unworkable either--it's pretty much the cliche at the heart of a bajillion jrpgs, ffs. Rogue werewolves that abuse their powers, the undead and banes/toxic shaman that have been driven mad by environmental damage are all fine options as antagonists and there's nothing about them that indicates that the game must contain fucking dogs for great justice or having every tribe be jam packed full of unrepentant assholes.

Hell, even if you run lycanthropy as being largely hereditary magic you can still just handwave the declining population by saying that the balance has tipped too far in favor of Team Bad Guy. And if you're worried about things going too far into anti-science you could always have "the balance" be based more on things like proper control and maintenance of caerns/feng shui sites rather than insisting that everyone burn their pants.