Werewolf The Apocalypse: Rage Across a Dying World

Creating your character

This game is near and dear to me, and I am well aware of the issues that have plagued it over the years, which is why I hold some lines in character creation. Session Zero is mandatory. Non-negotiable. Werewolf is a game of identity, community, and catastrophic violence in service of something sacred. Building your character before we establish what this table is and what it holds is not something I am willing to do. Safety tools are standard here, and every voice in the circle matters; Session Zero is where we set them, together, before a single die is rolled. Newcomers and veterans are equally welcome. If you have never rolled a d10 in anger, I will teach you at the table. If you have been playing since the '90s, you will find a Storyteller who speaks your language. We open on your First Change in Northern California, or recently after it, so most concepts will begin as fresh Garou finding their sept. Your personal pitch may change this, but you will begin no higher than Rank 1 (Cliath), or as a Cub. The Garou Tribes: this is their story first. Easy fit for a Northern California sept, no heavy justification needed: Black Furies, Bone Gnawers, Children of Gaia, Glass Walkers, Silent Striders, and Stargazers, whose long road east makes them a natural fit for where this chronicle is ultimately headed. Case by case with a conversation: Fianna, Silver Fangs, Shadow Lords, Red Talons, and the rest of the Garou Nation. A compelling reason to have your feet this far west is really all I am asking. Hakken (the Shadow Lord subset) fit with the right concept. Get of Fenris require an exceptional backstory and an honest conversation, and I will be straight with you about why: this table is anti-fascist and LGBTQ+ friendly, and this tribe sometimes attracts the wrong sort of player for it. Bring a concept that honors the tribe's fury without the baggage and you are welcome. Pure Ones, the Wendigo and Uktena, require a backstory that passes full scrutiny and a player prepared for an honest Session Zero about what it means to carry that material responsibly. The Changing Breeds are a harder sell, but the door is not closed. This is a Garou game at its heart, so the Fera take a conversation and a concept that earns its place at this table. Nuwisha and Kitsune seat most easily, as coyote runs all through this country and the fox's road runs east toward where we are going. Every other Changing Breed, and the Eastern Hengeyokai alongside them (Tengu, Zhong Lung, Same-Bito, Nagah, Rokea, Ananasi, and their kin), is on the table with permission and built to W20 Changing Breeds and Hengeyokai specification. Bring your Breed, Auspice, or Tribe; your character's First Change and the human life it tore them out of; and your answer to the question every Werewolf character has to answer eventually: what are you willing to destroy to protect what matters?

Preparing for the session

You do not need to own or have read the W20 corebook, or anything else. After our 1:1 conversation I will send a campaign primer built for this table: the world, the system basics, and what you need to start playing, without drowning you in it. What I do want you to grok before we start is what makes Werewolf itself: Rage, Gnosis, and Willpower. Rage is the fire that makes you dangerous. It is also the thing that makes you dangerous to the people you love. Gnosis is your connection to the spirit world and the wisdom that comes with it. Willpower is the grip you keep on yourself when both of those pull in opposite directions. Managing that tension is the game. Veteran of the World of Darkness? Some of this will not work the way you expect. This is a Garou chronicle that begins in the redwoods and travels east, and when it reaches the Beast Courts the Eastern shapeshifters do not map onto the Garou Nation you know: different courts, different cosmology, different rules. The Thai spiritual elements are mechanics, not flavor: the phi, the spirit houses, the sanctity of a Wat, offerings at the base of old trees. Bring what you know. You will still find new things.

What Yuthika 'Fey' brings to the table

I am a credited developer on this game line. My name is in the book 'Changing Ways' (the Book of Auspices for W20). I did not just read this cosmology, I helped write part of it. When I tell you how an Auspice feels from the inside, or why a rite works the way it does, that is not fan interpretation. It is the perspective of someone who built sanctioned material for the line you are about to play. I bring voice acting to every NPC. I am a professional voice actress with anime and video game credits, and every sept elder, every spirit that speaks from the Umbra, every Kinfolk, every mortal caught in the war has a distinct voice and cadence you will recognize from session to session. I am also a teaching GM with thirty-four years behind the screen. I started at age twelve in Asia and have never stopped, I hold a PhD in Psychology, and I work professionally as an educator. That background is how I pace a moot, how I hold a table's tension across a long campaign arc, and how I run a safety framework for a game this dark. Werewolf uses the Storyteller System: d10 dice pools, Attribute plus Ability counted against a difficulty. If you have never rolled a die in anger, I will teach you at the table. Curiosity is the only prerequisite. I bring a practical effects background to Garou horror. I spent years as a costume designer and VFX artist on NBC's Grimm, and I taught foam latex and silicone prosthetic work, and stage makeup blending, on the convention circuit. When I describe a Crinos towering nine feet in full frenzy, a fomor twisted inside-out by the Wyrm, or a Black Spiral Dancer's corrupted glyphs, those descriptions come from someone who has built the real version with her own hands. The game runs on full Foundry VTT production. All you need is a Foundry and a Discord account; I pay for all hosting and supply every book, sheet, and reference you will need. Custom maps from the redwood high country to the streets of Krung Thep, in-world handouts, period-appropriate visual assets, and a soundscape that moves between old-growth silence, ambient city noise, and whatever the scene calls for; every sept, every Caern, and every battleground has its own prepared environment. And the setting is home, both ends of it. I lived in Arcata for five years, deep in the redwood country where this chronicle opens; the fog, the sword ferns, the clear-cuts scarring the ridgelines, the particular hush under thousand-year-old trees are not researched, they are where I lived. When the chronicle travels east, the far end is home too. I live in Thailand, I speak Thai, my partner is Thai and my family is in provinces across the country, and when your pack crosses into the Beast Courts' territory and the Umbra shifts with the ground beneath it, the phi tending their intersections, the Naga holding their rivers, and the spirit houses on every corner come from my own faith as a Shinto-Buddhist, not borrowed atmosphere.

Homebrew rules

W20 uses a priority system during character creation where you rank Attributes and Abilities as primary, secondary, and tertiary, and that ranking locks the dots you can spend in each category. At this table, priorities are removed. You get the same total pools, but you decide where they go. Build template: 15 Attribute dots, distributed freely 27 Ability dots, distributed freely 21 Freebie points (6 above the standard 15) Flaws cap raised to 10 points (from the standard 7) The intent is creative range. Players who want to build balanced generalists, specialists who lean hard on one stat spread, or concept-driven Garou with heavy flaw baggage all have room to do it here. I have brought the Hengeyokai fully in line with W20. The original Beast Courts material predates this edition, so I have updated the Eastern breeds, their traits, and their mechanics and lore to sit cleanly alongside W20 Changing Breeds rather than forcing you to reconcile two editions at the table. You build an Eastern character the same way you build a Western one, against one consistent standard. Unless you want to be from Thailand. Because... I have also developed a full Thailand supplement for this chronicle, and it is not a reskin. Thailand is the only nation in Southeast Asia never colonized by a European power, and that unbroken history matters here: its spirits, its Courts, and its sacred landscape were never overwritten, never forced to bend around a colonizer's cosmology. So the Breeds you meet in Thailand are not the Beast Courts with Thai names painted on. Many of them are structurally different from anything in the sourcebooks, because a supernatural ecology that developed for centuries without interruption produces Fera that developed the same way. Most Werewolf material treats the East as a footnote to a Western spirit world. This chronicle treats Thailand as a place with its own intact history, its own rules, and its own answers, developed by someone who lives inside that history rather than researching it from outside. When your pack reaches Thailand, you will receive a player-facing primer written for this chronicle: the Breeds as they exist here, who walks this land, and what makes each of them different. It is yours to read, and it is the kind of material most tables never get to hand a player. W20's full line and its Changing Breeds and Hengeyokai material give you more than enough official content to build a Western or Eastern character. If your concept reaches Thailand, my own setting material takes over from there, built to W20 standard and consistent with everything you already know how to play. If a mechanic or option exists in official Werewolf material, we can almost certainly make it work in this chronicle.

How Yuthika 'Fey' creates a safe table

Your safety matters. Werewolf: The Apocalypse deals with Rage, with violence in service of something sacred, with the cost of being a predator who loves what they protect, with environmental destruction, and with the weight of a war that may already be lost. This chronicle leans into that last part. The Apocalypse is not a backdrop here; it is the pressure every character lives with every session. The setting itself will suggest, more than once, that Gaia cannot be saved. Fighting anyway, for something you may not be able to keep, is the emotional core of this game. That is a register some players want and some do not, and it is worth knowing which you are before we begin. I run the full modern Wyrm material: Book of the Wyrm, the Pentex Employee Indoctrination Handbook, and Freak Legion. That means fomori, corporate evil that reads a little too much like the real thing, and Black Spiral Dancers written the way the line intends them, which is to say genuinely disturbing. I do not pull those punches, and precisely because I do not, this warrants an honest conversation rather than a checkbox. Session Zero is where we talk about what that material actually involves and where your limits sit. Nothing about the Wyrm goes on the table that the table has not agreed to confront. The tribal material in this game carries real-world cultural weight. I handle it with the seriousness it requires. Session Zero is where we establish what this table holds and what it does not. Here is how we manage all of that. Lines and Veils before we begin. Hard limits respected without question or explanation required. Open Door Policy. Step away at any point. No judgement. Session Zero is mandatory. This is a game about identity, community, and catastrophic cost. We do not skip this conversation. Check-ins during play. Werewolf sessions can turn fast. I check in before we continue after intense scenes. Roses and Thorns at session close. A short debrief every session. Private follow-up after each session. A one-on-one check-in by message. The Apocalypse is real in this game. The table should never feel like one. When in doubt, say the word.