Conclusion of Variety

I had a great time playing in the Werewolf game at Gencon this year. One of the extra bonuses is that the new Werewolf game hasn’t been released yet. It won’t be out until Feb 05. As a result the demo gave me a chance to take a sneak peak at the game. Other gamers of course are as curious about the game as I am and the demo gave me a chance to share my knowledge on rpg forums. One of the things I did was post a summary of the actual demo which I’ve decided to also put here. So, for those of you who enjoy, werewolves, rpgs, or both enjoy. I ended playing Pedro in Part 1, and Alice in Part 2 and 3.

Part 1

The adventure is set in a high school in a poor part of LA. A young poor athletic hispanic student named Pedro (aka Tru) was caught with a gun in school that was brought to him by his hot girlfriend Becky. The adventure opens up with a parent teacher conference that included PCs: Pedro, Becky, Gilbert (Becky’s dad and a teacher) Ira (Vice Principal), and a Janitor Steve (their was a sixth character but I’m not sure who it was as we only had 5 players).

Parent teacher conference starts and after a while strange things start to happen such as flickering lights and the getting cold. Suddenly the time advances to 10 in the evening and children dressed as catholic school girls or Indian girls are seen walking around. When someone sees their face the notice their mouths are stitched shut by wire, staples, or other nastiness. The children walk around, put their finger to their mouths and say “sssshhhhhhh.” They would also reach out and touch you which would cause you to loose your voice or breath.

Other strange men dressed as old principals would appear and order you to sit down. If you tried to resist things like letter openers, syringes, scissors, bottles would be flung at you in a poltergeist like manner. The ghosts also seemed to dislike loud noises.

A little invesitgation would reveal that a number of suicides had occured at the school and the principals had covered them up.

Of course this entire time everyone is trying to escape (the school is empty with the exception of the ghosts and the PCs). The doors are chained locked with 18th century locks.

Steve the janitor at one point keeps hearing noise to the point it is driving him crazy. Plugging his ears is not working and upon seeing two hangers proceeds to put out his own ears.

The other characters are also getting beat up by the ghosts (falling on top of barred wire jacks, getting stuck by flying objects ex ex). They manage to retrieve the gun Becky brought to school that caused the entire mess. An attempt to retreive the janitors tools to open the locks reveals thousands of spiders which included one dauberman sized spider.

At this time, Steve the Janitor, starts changing and freaking out. He runs into the library were the PCs follow. The school starts to shift into a catholic missionary that has Indian slaves. The library morphs into a Catholic cathedral and the doors lock shut. Also in the library is Roberto, a pimply faced student that everyone ignored. He turns out to be a zombie of some sort. Roberto the Zombie, and Steve the Janitor (now Steve the Werewolf) proceed to fight. Steve tears the zombie a new asshole.

Steve then goes into a frenzy and attacks everyone else. He first goes after Pedro who makes a good run but Ira steps in the way and the Werewolf scatches her down. Pedro then jumps to save Ira and Steve bites his head off. Steve then rips into Ira.

During all this Gilbert is trying to open a library emergency door and succeeds. He escapes out the door with his dead daughter but the werewolf tracks them down in a matter of minutes and kill Gilbert. Steve runs off into the night.

Part 2

A new Werewolf Pack had been recently formed and taken territory in LA. The Pack consists of:

• Nadine – Bone Shadow. She was originally from the Ozarks and was a sort of medicine woman. In the 3rd adventure she was the alpha. There was no alpha in the second.
• Alice – Blood Talons. Athletic, attractive, Buffy like. She was extremely competitive.
• Soledad – Ghost Wolf. A female catholic nun who was torn between her faith and the reality of her werewolf nature. This was the reason she was tribeless.
• Mike – Iron Masters, Ragabash. Mike is a computer guy and kinda selfish.
• Randell – Ahroun (not sure of tribe). Don’t remember his description but he was played as bastard that got in everyone’s face and didn’t listen to reason or other tribemates.
• Eric – For the life of me I’m can’t remember the character’s real name, but he was a Hunters in Darkness. Very spiritualistic but also the youngest of the group in his late teens.

The scene starts with the new pack relaxing at their house. Alice is sleeping when she has a vision of ghost girls, spiders, a cathedral, and a new werewolf murdering people, and than eating a human bum.

During this she is thrashing in her sleep in garu form which alerts the rest of the pack. When Alice awakes she tells the pack about her dream and they jump to action to try and find this new werewolf who is causing havoc in their territory. Some quick research and questioning of Alice gives them a general idea as to where the new werewolf is.

The pack heads out and tracks by scent where they found the alley that the bum was in. Carnage is everywhere with the remains of not just one bum but two or three. An old bag lady is found scarred out of her mind. Soledad and Nadine take her to the hospital and try to question her but she gives little more than “evil dog, evil dog monster.”

The cops show up but Alice is in a hurry and wants to find the new werewolf before he causes more damage. Mike decides to stay behind and detour the cops from the scene. Unfortunately, he fails and the cops enter the scene and proceed to start puking and freaking out. They do let Mike go after a bunch of questioning.

Eric, Alice and Randell are able to track the new werewolf to a secure train depot. It is heavily guarded. Alice speaks to one of the guards who only responds with asking her to leave. He has a genuine “inhuman” quality to him.

A quick howl brings the pack back together and they proceed to sneak into the depot. There are 4 guard shacks at each corner of the chain link fence perimeter. When one of the guards leaves Mike investigates the shack. All of a sudden a few small spiders stream down on single pieces of thread. When he looks up thousands of spiders come sliding down.

Mike jumps out and all the lights go out. Mike starts to attack the guards sure that they are inhuman and evil.

Everyone else has found the new werewolf who immediately attacks them. A huge fight between the guards, the new werewolf, and the pack breaks out. When Alice tries to grab the werewolf he leaps into the air taking both of them through the roof of a warehouse which also houses and giant spider web in which they are both stuck. Alice gives a howl of warning, help, and evil.

Half man half spider like creatures start to attack from inside the warehouse. Eric manages to light spider web. Mike and Nadine manage to finish off the guards while Soledad, Randell take out the spider men. Eric and Alice take down the werewolf.

When everything is calm the pack questions the new werewolf who is insane and deaf (blood dribbling out his ears). Little is gathered from him other than the evil is at the high school. They are able to knock him out and take him home.

Part 3

The pack returns home to lick their wounds and question Steve the werewolf. Nadine makes a solution that helps Soledad and Randell come out of their comas but they are still extremely weak and sick.

The pack tries to question Steve further by writing on a pad of paper and letting him respond. It is obvious that he is insane, possibly beyond all hope. Steve keeps frenzying causing damage to the house. An argument about what to do with Steve occurs and the pack starts to splinter.

The pack decides to get some rest. During this time Nadine and Randell sneak Steve out and kill him and then dispose of the body. The rest of the pack believe he has been put into a deep sleep so they can decide what to do with him later.

Everyone wakes up and Mike is able to find the High School by using the computer and looking at the locations where Steve went then finding a location that would have a track and field.

The pack heads to the High School. They bust open the locked doors and immediately encounter the ghosts. They start to investigate and discover the carnage left by the students and faculty from the first adventure.

At one point a ghost girl seems extremely human. Alice goes to help her and grabs her noticing that Nadine was in near-wolf form but Nadine has lost her voice. Randell comes running around and still assumes all the children are evil. He goes to goaru and rips the child from Alice’s arms killing the girl. Alice jumps to goaru and a fight breaks out between the two werewolves causing Randel to frenzy. The rest of the pack helps Alice until Randell is knocked out.

A lot of ghosts start to crowd in including new Monk spirits who have nasty jagged knives. Mike manages to connect his I-Pod to the speaker system and blasts “Schools out for Summer” throughout the school causing the ghosts to disappear.

They finally make their way to the library where they find the locus. It looks like a swirling dark whole. Alice touches it and is sent to the Shadowlands which is in the shape of the catholic missionary. The rest of the pack arrives and everyone notices a bunch of monks walking around along with the Indian slaves.

There is also a bell tower where the pack notices a strangely dressed priest. He seems to be the head spirit in charge. Soledad uses her gift “spirit name” and discovers his name is Whispers with Dead (actually, I forget his name but it was Whisper something other).

Nadine asks a monk if she can speak with Whispers with Dead and the monk says only if Mike cuts his tongue out. The pack has until the monk moves 5 prayer beads to decide (the GM actually had a beaded bracelet that and used that to count beads creating a very nice effect). Mike refuses to let anyone touch his tongue and Nadine offers hers instead. The monk says that will buy them 20 more beads. She does it anyway. Mike still refuses and sees Randell coming toward him. Eric tries to convince him to cut out his tongue for the pack. Mike runs and Alice starts fighting the monks.

Randell manages to catch Mike, open his mouth and bite his tongue out. Eric offers it to the monk. Erik has frenzied as the result of getting his tongue ripped and Nadine tries to bring him out. Alice, Soledad, Eric, and Randell go to speak with Whispers with the Dead at the top of the bell tower. They try and reason with him to leave the human world alone but all he says is “Leave here.” When they press that matter Whispers with Dead sticks a jagged knife right in Randell’s head killing him.

Alice bites the super monk who is whipping the floor with the werewolves. Soledad notices he is standing under the bell and jumps up ringing it which seems to cause him harm. After the super monk knocks out alice he starts to rip up on the other two. Eric jumps up and destroys the beam that the bell is on causing it to plummet down taking Whispers with Dead with it.

The End…

For more on Werewolf The Forsaken visit White Wolf

I headed up to Anaheim last weekend for tons of gaming and geekdom and I wasn’t let down. Jonathan and I hopped into a car Friday morning and took a quick drive up to the convention center. We arrived around 9:30am. I’m slightly panicked as my first game, Werewolf: The Forsaken, is at 10am. I rush, get my passes and head off to the game.

I’m not dissappointed as I meet the GM, Dave, who is crazy, bald and thinks he is funny. The game runs for four hours and is loads of fun as we watch our human characters get brutalized and killed by a player who turns into a werewolf. The Werewolf game is tournament style and I advance to round 2 which is 2 hours later. After the game I meet up with Glen and Andy who are playing Adventure! right next to me. We got something to eat real quick but they had to head back to their game.

I called up Jonathan and I met up with him, Chris (aka soop) and his girlfriend Destiny. We walked around for a bit killing two hours until I had to go and play round two of Werewolf. In round two we get play Werewolves who track down the insane Werewolf who killed our previous characters. Tons of fun but I hadn’t eaten and started to get dizzy. Got to howl… loudly! Advanced to round 3.

After the game I called Jonathan again and he was hanging in the Hilton with Destiny, Chris and two other guys. When I got to the room they were drinking a beer and playing Munchkin. Looked like they had been playing for about half an hour but I jumped in anyway, had a beer and won the game!!!

After that we checked into our hotel. Chris and Destiny stayed with us because they were originally staying with Warmachine Nachos who were stinky and wierd. Next day we got some breakfast at Cocos and headed back to the convention center. I didn’t have anything scheduled until 1pm so I got a good chance to walk around and buy stuff. Stuff list:

World of Darkness: Antagonists
Werewolf the Forsaken: Dice (free from tournament)
Werewolf the Forsaken: T-shirt (free from tournament)
A-state: Mires End
Orbital RPG
Emperor and the Assassin DVD

Also got to talk to developers and play a demo of Wars, Deciphers new game based off their old Star Wars CCG. Game sucked! After that Jonathan and I headed to True Dungeon! Not much had changed about TD this year except they added a Paladin Class, souped up the effects, reduced the amount of time per room and dumbed down the puzzles. Well, it sounds like a lot but it was more or less the same. Unfortunatly, Jonathan died in room 4 with our Cleric. It was a stupid way to die (fell off a bridge) as the rest of the dungeon was incredibly easy except for 1 puzzle (compared to the 3 puzzles last year). I actually made it all the way through which was kind of cool. Only made it to room 6 or 8 last year.

After that I had a quick beer and then round 3 of the Werewolf game. Got to play the same characters from round two and finish up the game. Round 3 went an hour over. Got out of the convention center around 9pm, got something to eat and then headed home.

Here are some pictures of freaks in costume that I took.

My parents came down for Thanksgiving. Luckily I got all my apartment crap out of the way and just before they arrived my roommate and I took my old roommate’s bed and put it in the alley. We had a lot of fun and included: drive up to Mt. Soledad, drive to La Jolla, Thanksgiving at The Dell (famous hotel on Coronado), tour of boat museum, Hornblower bay tour, fun in Gaslamp, tour of Midway Aircraft Carrier, plus shopping and lots of good food.

Parents got to meet Stephanie which went well. I also got to go an have a few beers with my brother which was fun.

In other wierdness I had the worst headache I’ve had in about 5-6 years Sunday night. It started when I went and saw a movie called “Sideways” about two guys who go on a week vacation of wine tasting and golf before one of them gets married. However, the groom decides he wants to get laid before he ties the knot and hooks up with two women. One was named Stephanie and the other was named Maya. I think the irony was so overwhelming it gave me a migraine.

I’ve also subscribed to Netflix which I love. The selection is awsome and has a ton of the things I’ve been wanting to watch they aren’t available at video stores (Buffy!!!!)

It has been two weeks since Eric disappeared and I’m doing just fine. So far there has been no word as to what happened to him. I’ve managed to contact both sides of his family. For the past two weeks I’ve been cleaning out his stuff, throwing a lot of it away, keeping some of it and packing the rest to give to Eric’s dad when he came by last Saturday.

I also managed to contact Eric’s x-girlfriend who was probably the closest person to him for the past couple of years. She did not know anything either and I was the one to break the news to her. She managed to contact Eric’s best friend who also didn’t know anything. So, it remains a big mystery.

I have gotten a new roommate, Jorma who is cool. We seem to be getting along well. He moved in last weekend. And even though my life felt like it had been turned upside down briefly I managed to get through it with little to no problem. It came out just being a major annoyance especially in contrast to some of the things my friends have been going through.

Ok, I have a new cell phone. It is still the old number. If you don’t have it and you want it please email me.

So I seem to loose cellphones or they break I me I have added a cellphone status. If it is good than that means I have a cellphone. If it is bad that means I do not.

I guess some things just don’t work. Relationships are bound to fall apart, jobs not work out and things just get crazy. My life as been crazy for the last year and half but I imagine that is nothing compared to what my friend and roommate Eric has been through.

As of Monday, November 1st 2004 Eric has gone missing. I got home from working in Hillcrest around 8pm, sat down to eat and noticed that about a number of my DVD box sets were missing. It was shocking and I tried to figure out what happened to them. I hadn’t been robbed, as other stuff would be missing and stuff would be thrown everywhere. I realized he had taken them and probably pawned them off (something he had done with his own DVDs just weeks before).

At first I was terribly angry and knew I was going to have to get into it with him and that we couldn’t be roommates anymore. That thought quickly drifted as I realized he probably wasn’t going to return. I stayed up waiting and watching TV and became more panicked as time went along.

I finally decided to go to bed but realized I was too freaked to sleep. I called my friend Jonathan and stayed at his place for the evening. The next morning I drove back and nothing had changed.

At work I managed to get ahold of the landlord, Steve. Steve told me that Eric owed over $3000 in back rent: $600 for September, $1200 for October, and $1200 for November.

I moved in with Eric after splitting up with Maya. As it turned out his girlfriend, Claudine, was moving to New York City in August and he needed a roommate. I had been gaming with Eric for just under a year and I agreed to it. Some problems occured when we couldn’t get our apartment right away and I had to stay with Eric and Claudine in there one bedroom apartment for two weeks. During this time I just gave Eric money to cover some minor costs in his old apartment. This would continue into our new place.

Once we moved into our new place things seemed to get better but Claudine and Eric were fighting more until one night they blew up at each other. After that Claudine would housesit or try and find other places to stay until she moved.

Once she left Eric became depressed. I wasn’t too aware as I tried to give him his space and did my own thing as I had just gotten over Maya. Perhaps I should have been more aware but within a few weeks after Claudine left Eric was fired from his job after yelling at a customer.

I was concerned but not very. His birthday had just come up and I was certain he would get help and support from his family. I met his dad around that time and Eric was quick to bounce back as he knew everyone in PB, worked dozens of places and was able to get a job in two weeks after he lost his previous one.

This was not the case. A month and a half would pass before he got a new job. During this time he would sell a bunch of his stuff, continue to collect money from me until he started working again. What I didn’t realize was that he was keeping the money I gave him and not paying rent at all. He told me that he wasn’t paying his half but Steve was cool and would give him until December to pay the back rent.

For whatever reason he dug himself the hole that he could not dig his way out of and had me fooled the entire time. I wanted to trust him as I had trusted roommates in the past. As of now I have found a new roommate and currently taking the steps to reset my living situation. Steve is letting me start from $0 as Eric never gave him the lease I signed.

I still wonder what happened to Eric and hope that he didn’t do anything drastic and that he figures out what he needs to. I hold no grudge against him and only wished he was more honest with me and his family so that we could have helped him.

Every now and then I think about people from my past. Usually friends from college or high school. Apparently, other people do the same thing, but go even further back because I recently received an email from my best friend when I was in the second grade.

I was flattered that I was remembered after, what 20 years. My friend Nathan Fisher (now, Nate Fisher) must have been doing some soul searching and decided to contact me. I do remember him.

Funny thing is my last memory of him is not a pleasant one. I remember it was the summer before I went into middle school and was riding bikes with my (at the time) best friend, Adam. We were both nervous about going to the new school and I decided to visit my ole friend Nathan and see what he had to say. We walked up to his door, and rang the bell. Nathan answered the door, standing in his robe and looked like he just woke up. He looked at us as though we were selling something. We told him why we came and he just shook his head and told us he didn’t have time for us kids and that he needed to get some sleep. He then shut the door and we left. Adam and I were pissed and he couldn’t beleive that he was once a friend of mine.

I havn’t thought about that day in a long time. I do have some fond memories of Nathan (he may call himself Nate now, but to me he is Nathan, and apparenlty he remembers me as Christopher). Many action figure filled days, exchanging presents during Christmas, and Little League baseball which I was awful at.

So, even though it was strange to get a message from a friend that I knew when I was 7-9 it was still really neat. And chance to look back and think about a time long gone and see what happened to those people that I once played GI Joe with.

I thought I’d go ahead and wrap this up as the saga has finally finishes.

After awhile the guy calmed down and stopped trying to sue (probably found out he couldn’t) and decided to just send me the other guys package. Of course by this time I had already refunded him the money.

I managed to contact the other guy who I had refunded and told him what happened. He didn’t respond, for 4 or 5 days I waited for his message. Finally, it came and he said his package was destroyed!!!! I couldn’t beleive it, either the pissed off guy decided to take some revenge out, or the USPS can’t handle large boxes.

He said most of the books were good and he would give me $100 (of the $180 I had refunded him) and I quickly accepted. I took the $100 and sent it the original guy for part of his refund which was $280.

At the same time the insurance thing was going underway. It took almost two months but I did get a check from the USPS for $200. Very exciting, my first insurance payout. I immediatly pay the original guy his final $180 leaving me with $20 bucks.

Overall, I didn’t loose any money on the auctions, I broke even. However, I’m not sure if it was worth the mental anguish. I did however sell a series of RPG books on ebay before receiving the insurance check and they all went perfectly.

I went and saw The Capital Steps last weekend. The Capital Steps are a comedy group, similar to Saturday Night Live except all their humor is based on politics and it is a stage show. Apparently, they are on NPR a lot but have made guest appearances on a number of TV shows. I had never heard of them but was still excited.

I had high expectations and was slightly dissapointed. They were a lot more “pop culture” than I thought they were going to be. About 50% of the show was singing a dancing which I don’t have problem with, I enjoyed two musicals over the summer. However, all the songs were pop songs in which they changed the lyrics to make it political and funny. Hmmm… who else does this but Wierd Al. It was amusing for awhile but got old fast, a lot like Wierd Al that way.

The other 50% of the show were skits that were a lot funnier than the songs. This was classic “Saturday Night Live” style humor with actors posing as politicians. It even stretched to a skit about Martha Stewart in prison in which I didn’t understand how it was political, just newsy. They made fun of Bush, Kerry, Cheney, Edwards, Clinton (both Hilary and Bill), Anne Colter, and many others. I got at least 90% of the jokes which means I’m a lot more aware of what is going on in the world than I’d like to be.

So, overall I enjoyed the Capital Steps. My favorite skit was one of the actors talking about current events but would switch the first two letters of words. This was extremely high humor but was hilarious if you could keep up as at times he would speak very fast, and my cognative process had trouble keeping up at times. The other thing that surprised me was the audiences reaction. Every person I over heard thought the Capital Steps were the best thing in the world. I could only chalk it up to NPR elitism or these people just hadn’t seen anything funny in a long time because like I said, funny but on par with Wierd Al and SNL.

Best quote from the show “Vote for Bush or I’ll kill the baby!”

On to other things. Just became a little more aware of current affairs. They had Madeline Albright on the Daily Show last night and I thought cool, she was part of the Clinton adminitstration and did cool things. The talked about her dealing in N. Korea and I thought it was all interesting.

I also knew that N. Korea was a problem with weapon of mass destruction and was more of a threat than say… ohhh Iraq. Now, what I didn’t know was the details behind it and that Jimmy Carter, the Clinton Adminstration, specifically Albright had managed to prevent N. Korea from developing WMD and they were close to introducing N. Korea to the rest of the world.

Then Bush got elected, said fuck it, attacks Iraq, freaked out N. Korea and they now have nukes. Maybe I’m over exaggerated but I feel that Bush has put us in a more threatening position than what we were.

Ok, lost my phone again! Thanks to my man Lee for trying to keep me reconnected. I should have a new phone by Nov 7 in which my phone plan will let pick a new phone. They currently have a 2 for one deal so I might jump on that given my history with cell phones.

There is a slight chance I might still find it as the last time I used it was last Tuesday at 9pm in my apartment. I never left the apartment and realized it was missing right before I went to bed so it should still be there. If I find it I’ll leave a comment here.

So, if anyone needs to get ahold of me please email me and if you want you can request my home phone. I never answer it but you can leave a message and I should get it. You’ll be able to call again normally on Nov 7.