Debating Systems For Dramatic Werecreatures Game...

[BlackTiger]

I'm a long time Werewolf Apocalypse/Forsaken player, but also a fan of urban fantasy, and specifically non-supernatural-romance werewolf novels as a genre. I play tons of other crap too. JAne Lindskold's Firekeeper novels do the pack dynamics well even if it's fantasy and mostly humans, and Carrie Vaughn's kitty series is a major influence on my thoughts here.

I've been wanting to run a story/social conflict driven game about a pack of modern shapechangers, and I've been trying to decide what the best system to develop this idea in would be.

D20 based games offer system simplicity, but have a hard time with challenge ratings working well for a party of shapeshifters, and fail amazingly at handling lots of social scenarios.

I like NWOD, and Forsaken is a favorite, but Changing Breeds seems to be a good go-to place for this kind of campaign. Even then, the World of Darkness does personal horror very well, but I'm not sure if it has the chops to handle some of the freeform, intra-pack trouble I wanna see.

Fate, specifically the Dresden Files RPG, seems to make a lot of sense here - Especially since a werewolf pack like The Alpha's from the Dresden files is a prime example of what I'm after. Very story oriented and freeform, but isn't built quite so much for personal horror, and would require some work to disentangle from some of the Dresden world givens.

Thoughts, or requests for more detail to help me pin down a good approach?

 

[Pain Noodle]

I see no reason why WoD couldn't handle this. As for the DFRPG, you'd just be changing allowances of abilities and, possibly, the descriptive flavor of what their were-forms look like. As in Crinos form from WoD or just Dire critters of their chosen species. Personally, I prefer the Crinos idea rather than just a very large wolf.

 

[BlackTiger]

Sensible points. It's easy to build a shifter with Changing Breeds / War Against the Pure that only has human/hybrid/animal forms, Without the WOD intermediates.

One other reason I like Fate more is that I can be much more specific in compels to help create more character-driven drama. Not that I doubt it would happen otherwise, but it boils down to a ton of humanity-stat rolls and having to hint very heavily on the virtue/vice side of things.

 

[Pain Noodle]

I would have to agree. The Aspects side of character creation for DFRPG is just ... freakin' fantastic. That alone would probably swing my vote for Fate.

 

[BlackTiger]

Some of the interesting fate variations - Like, Campaign-wide aspects - Really appeal top me in designing that kind of game as well.

When I run a big D&D game, I want to use Pre-gens because I can give the player characters enough background that they have big concepts to lock into in the game. With Fate/DFRPG I feel a lot more comfortable just letting players do what they want, because when I throw out the big campaign hooks they all are working to try and find a reason to grab onto it.