Werewolf 2022

[Youngblood]

Hello night howlers,

I went through and processed all the untended XPRs. I can't express how sorry I am that I didn't get this addressed when the ST first disappeared. The question now is what you would like to do with the venue. There appears to be only three active players of the seven wolves that existed at that time. If the player has not been active in several months I marked their characters as retired so they could pick up play again if they wanted.

Yumyumcrow Xadun Mark

There was talk of alternating running threads but that seems to have been short lived. I haven't had and don't currently have the bandwidth to learn and run this venue in the interim. Without players willing to lead/run threads or plots I think it might be best to let the venue go on coast so you can continue to interact with others in shards as wanted. I'm open to other ideas if you have any.

[Xadun]

I think the first time I thought of that was shortly before I had to take time away for work and it never got back on track. I'm not is a space to take this up either, but that works for me. When there's more interest, we could look at doing a little more.

[Matt]

Youngblood I know I offered to re-boot Hunter / Mortal. However, if you needed me to I could take a look at running Werewolf instead. Full disclosure: I know a bit of Werewolf having played it in the past but I am majorly out of practice with it so I would be re-learning parts. However, I would be happy to do it. Feel free to drop me a message on discord if you want to discuss.

I am certainly willing to take a look and have a chat with you about Ideas and what I would want to do.

Honestly, it is up to you.

[Yumyumcrow]

I'm in no space to run anything at the moment.

Thanks for the offer though

[Youngblood]

I'm taking Matt up on his offer and letting him run Werewolf. Thank you for volunteering for the dip and I look forward to seeing what stories you tell!

[Matt]

Thanks Youngblood, and hello to everyone else.

I have played wolf more times than I can count (However, it has been a while so I will be refreshing my memory real quickly but I am sure it will all just click into place again.. a bit like riding a bike. Only this bike has teeth, fur and can kill you in less than 3 seconds).

I have a few plans for Wolf and I expect within the next week or two I will have a fully formed plan. Part of this is I want your ideas, I want to know what you want from the Venue.

• All current characters will be retired - I know this is not a popular choice and I apologise for this in advance. However, I have made the difficult decision and its an action which will make it easier for me to hit the ground and get up to full speed quickly. However, as you are all Loyal Wolves I will be doing something for you for new characters and you will get some extra XP at creation.
• I will write a Glimpse to explain what has been happening in the city and to set the scene for the current state of the city. (I will also give you the opportunity for you to be involved in this glimpse and write your own characters out... do they go down in the glory of Battle? Do they survive and leave? the option is there for you)
• I will create a map of the territories for Sacramento.
• Wolf is geared towards pack play and this is something I want to encourage. I will have 1 NPC pack that has a small bit of territory which will be a sort of neutral ground. This enables social scenes later on for wolf, any meetings etc. It also means that new players can meet packs and can join and any lone wolves can be partnered up so they can participate in plots.

Those are just brief details of my thoughts. I wanted to know what you all think, and what it is you want from the venue. This is your space to talk and I will listen. Your thoughts and Ideas will help me come up with the final plan.

[Xadun]

It's really exciting that you are taking up the ST role for the venue!

I do have a few questions, both connected to this and to the PM you sent:

• Are you going to look at taking some of the history built up as a basis, or looking to sort of gloss over that as happenings from the last 6+ months and start anew?
• Werewolf was always to most casual of venues, which was reflected by the smaller playerbase. I'd be curious as to what sort of plot ideas you'd want to run with to begin.
• Emily was my first character here, I am disappointed that you want to effectively soft reset the venue. I understand your reasoning, but are you completely set on retiring all the old characters? Honestly I'm not sure how much I would want to start a fully new character when an older one is easier to pick back up. Speaking just for me, I'd be much keener to bring Emily back than start over (not just because I don't have any budding wolf ideas on the back burner). There have been plots fizzle out and ST's have to hang up their hats mid-plot in other venues before, and you just have to kinda gloss over it and move on with characters that continue in those venues. I'm also not saying I wouldn't play if that was the final decision - I love Werewolf and wouldn't be that precious over what is basically sentimentality - but as my first EOD character Emily was kinda my doorway into playing here and I wasn't ready to see her go in basically an epilogue montage.

Just my thoughts, happy to discuss more. Am super happy someone has decided to pick up the mantle

[Matt]

I am really excited to take Werewolf forward and I totally understand your concerns. The plan is not yet set in stone because I value what the three of you and any potential new players say. I want to assure you that I want to give 100% to the venue and I have had to think hard about that and what works best not just for me but for the three of you. With my idea, it puts the onus on Me as the Storyteller. If we keep current characters it puts the Onus on the three of you and also raised a few ugly what if questions in the process. (I would be asking where the post is that details the pack totem, the post where you met your totem spirit and other posts you have interacted with it so I can get a vague idea of its characterisation, what happens if one of you drops out and your pack ceases to exist etc)

If the previous ST had stepped down yesterday I could ask them questions, I could pick up where they left off. Due to the amount of time it makes it a bit difficult and puts too much onus on you as players to dig out information that I may need and am unable to find. What if we don't find that information?

I am not against current characters remaining, but it does come with that huge flag that it does put some responsibility on your shoulders. I am not against players having responsibility, actually I encourage it. But at this stage it opens up a whole host of what do I do if questions. It also means I move the timeframe I was hoping to get up and running from 1-3 weeks to... longer. There will be a lot of digging for information trying to put it all together etc and If that is the case then maybe January as a rough estimate (Taking into account we have the Christmas Period, New Year etc)

I hope that makes sense and to answer some of your questions.

The history of the city is the history of the city and I am not going to bulldoze that. The last post was 30th March, nothing has happened in the game since that time, that is almost 7 months. My idea was to write a sort of glimpse to give some insight into what happened in the city over that period to bring the city into current day Sacramento. I was also going to work with the three of you (Or however many of you still want to play) to fully form and figure that part out.

I get that Werewolf was always the most casual of venues. This is not my goal. Lets be frank... the Venue has died and without an ST it is never going to get new characters. I played Werewolf back in the day on this site and it was thriving and active, my love of Werewolf came from Nwod.org or as it was back then Twilight Valley (I was so happy when we had the name change). I want to see that again, I want to help your characters story get told, test them, work with them as they explore the world of savage horror around them. I want to see where your characters go, how they shape the world around them. Are they an antagonist or a protagonist or maybe a hero?

When it comes to plots I try to keep them to myself, I don't want to give any spoilers away. Yes, we will have some Plot Archs, these can be city wide or a plot arch for the pack. In the start-up I have given areas of the city a red, amber or green rating. Green is... relatively safe, Amber is be careful and Red is either danger or we have no idea what is going on there. Lets say you come in, the three of you start a new pack and take some territory. Your initial plots are going to be working on downgrading or upgrading your territory (depends how you look at it) from Red to amber and even green. In the other time period, other things have set up shop. The spirit world is a bit of a mess etc. You get the idea.

I get that Emily was your first character and I am sorry that you are disappointed. I would not pitch this to you if I though there was an easy way. I have a real fear that at this point I would be writing the final 2 seasons of Game of Thrones and not giving it my all or having to spend 2 hours finding posts to see what X place was like before to at least try to get it right or doing a retcon or glazing over stuff gives me anxiety that I would not do her Justice or have other IC implications that are through no fault of your own.

I get plots have fizzled out and ST's have had to hang up their hats mid plot. This is not my intention.

On the subject of sentimentality, I get it... and I never offer the chance for people to work with me to write them out and immortalise their characters into a venues history simply through creative writing. It is because I understand this, and I understand what I am asking from the three of you (potentially 2 as I don't think Mark has responded to this post at all as of yet) My hope is he gets the email saying he has a new PM and checks and makes a decision on if he wants to continue playing wolf. You do not have to write a glimpse, it was an offer you could take or leave. It is also why I was willing to give you bonus XP at creation (Again something I do not normally do. I like to be fair at character creation and everyone starts with the same XP). This situation can be classed as exceptional circumstances hence the offer.

In short, I want to do any characters and the Venue Justice without causing you the players a lot more work in the process and without too much of a delay. If it helps Xadun from what I have seen you write some beautiful characters and I am sure anything you came up with would be great.

Like I said, it is not yet set in stone. I wanted your opinions first. By all means that may be a "I don't agree / don't care" My hope is that by explaining where I am coming from and listening to where you are coming from we can come to a decision that benefits all.

[Xadun]

I think there's a bit of confusion here.

• In terms of how you restart the venue, I'm not hugely concerned if you want to use the past as a basis or not, I was just curious which way you were leaning.
• Similarly, I don't mean to suggest you might start as ST and then disappear - My point was meant to be that STs have had to leave/retire but characters and venues have managed to carry on or pick up when a new ST took over, even if that ST took a new direction or approach to the venue. The disappointment was solely around the idea of having to retire her when I would rather pick her up again - If I had a choice, I would rather have her continue, even if that meant putting onus on me as a player to support new members, even if that meant adapting to a timeskip to introduce the new aspects the venue you want to introduce.

I hope this clears up what I'm thinking. I am very glad you have offered to run the venue, and I'm very flattered about your thoughts on my characters. The tl:dr is just I want to carry on playing Emily if possible, and I'm willing to adapt to the changing setting if I can have that.

[Matt]

Yeah, it is never my intention to upset people. So at this point Emily is Confirmed, YC has confirmed they do not have time so are going to take the opportunity to write them out as it fits the character. I will start to put some things together and it should give you some things you could write a glimpse on (but that is not a requirement). Mark is unknown at this point so they can bring back their previous character or roll up a new one if they do decide they are coming back.

I am going to get to work this weekend doing some writing, putting up some information such as the recent history etc. I pretty much have a territory map done. It may give Emily some things to glimpse if you wanted but don't feel that its an obligation. My goal is to try to have everything done for this weekend so we can resume again next week but if I don't this may roll into the weekend after.

Also if anyone else is watching the post and is looking to join Wolf.... I am accepting character submissions so they are ready to go as soon as we resume which I hope will be next week or the week after.