Wandering Star

"Anyway, they're pushing for the railway to be rebuilt from Los Cruces out to the launch site."
"What'll that mean for us?"
"Dunno - if it happens, probably more mechanicals around the place. More tourists maybe. "
"More? The chile festival was bad enough - "
"Um, Jen .."
"What's up, Kirk?"
"It wants something weird again. "
"Great. What this time?"
"A rock from the space museum"
"... we got plenty of rocks out here, it can have one of them."
"I told it that, and it got real shrill like"
"What the hell does a coyote spirit want with a rock?"

Five neophyte werewolves skulk over the dusty hills at the edge of the Rio Grande valley in New Mexico, dodging trouble with the humans in nearby Hatch, trying to placate spirits both hostile and just plain mean, and at the mercy of the random whims of their totem spirit, Coyote-that-Bleeds.

A 5 player single session Werewolf:the Forsaken scenario

This game will run with a cut-down version of the background, suitable for people that haven't played Werewolf:the Forsaken before. It will also include some use of dice - those that dislike dice as a randomiser should take note.

Adult Content:M
Characterisation:2
Genre Knowledge:1 (helpful, but eh)
Rules Knowledge:1 (helpful, but eh)
Seriousness:2-3 (its a horror game)

Being a werewolf and the spirit world, as the characters are aware of it.

dramatis personae

Anette Ferrer
A tempestuous 22 year old woman, Anette is a muay thai practioner of Spanish descent. Anette is extremely intense - from her serious expression to her dark eyes as she she stares people down, she has at best a tense and angry demeanour, and many people find her threatening. She has a limited amount of patience, and can sometimes be too impetuous. Only about 5' 2'' and with a boyish figure, she dresses in baggy pants and singlet tops by preference.
Douglas Callahan
Doug's everyone's friend. He's big, boisterous and friendly - if you turn up to the burger bar, then he'll likely buy you a drink... or start a fight, but just in the name of fun. Doug is clean-shaven, and jeans, singlet, shirt and his hat are the usual attire. Doug owns a property out of town where he trains his dogs.
Jen Wheeler
Geneveive, or Jen, is about 5'10'' and fairly fit. She has dusty blond hair, a smattering of freckles and intensely blue eyes. Although not pretty per se, something about her look attracts people and they find it easy to confide in her - and she finds a lot of satisfaction in trying to help people with their problems.
Kirk Brewster
Kirk is a gangly teenager, light brown skin and about 6'2'', but still growing into his height. He keeps his hair short, but he's trying to grow a moustache. He's lacking some socialisation, and that can lead to being awkward in person, but he writes well. He doesn't have much in the way of clothing, some tshirts and jeans. He has a good touch with animals and animal spirits.
Tahoma
Tahoma is of amerind descent, and tall and clear eyed. He laughs easily but generally doesn't speak unless he has much to say. Boots, jeans and a shirt means he mostly blends into the crowd in Hatch. He works as a mechanic, and has a knack with mechanical spirits. He is hard to rattle.
Coyote-that-Bleeds
Their spirit totem, an ancient spirit who lends its strength to the five werewolves in return for favours and offerings.
Coyote-that-Bleeds is a slightly larger than normal coyote. Where it touches the ground, the spirit bleeds. Blood pools around its feet if it holds still, but it disappates, leaving no mark. It refuses to discuss why this happens.

I ran this at Conquest 2007, and had a good, if slightly frazzled, time of it.

I ran 11 sessions and Alicia kindly ran one for me, so about 60 people played through over the weekend. There was a fair bit of variation in how people approached the problems in the game, so I got to watch them interact with various scenes in different ways - violence, negotiation, sneaking, etc. When things happened got shuffled around a fair bit, and what they thought was happening was often quite different.

Unfortunately, I once again ended up with 1.5 sessions worth of material being burbled into the game, and only 1 session to run it in, so too many people got the accelerated version and no time to really play through, or the quick version which left them not enough time to think it through. I seem to have this 'talent' - mostly through worrying people won't have enough to do, and forgetting congamers propensity for waffling about and taking their time, splitting up and looking at everything and so on.

So while people had fun, it wasn't quite the game I wanted to run, which was a bit disappointing. I blame being out of practice - I've really only run one con game since 2000, and it was two sessions. If it was run without a time limit, I think it'd work as is, but if I was going to run it at a con again, I'd make it two sessions and expand some of the things a little.

On the plus side, I think it gave some folks a glance into how Werewolf:the Forsaken (even tho the situation that the characters are in is atypical), and hopefully they might be enthused to run it. Its a hard game to run at cons - the background knowledge required is immense because there's so much going on in their world. It would have been nice if Milsims had brought some W:tF books along to sell :(

Anyway, for folks that might be interested, here's the scenario as it stands - if I have time and interest I might tweak it up and fix the things that are a bit wonky (some glitches on character sheets, some details on how things are laid out), but right now I don't really want to look at it for the moment. It doesn't include the photos and maps, because some of that was copyright, and while I don't mind using them myself at the con, I'm not too keen to republish them.