Werewolf: The Forsaken

It was quite recently it struck me that what gives me the biggest kicks in roleplaying is socializing, especially meeting new people - in character. It's really hard to explain why it's like that; but one explanation I have thought off is that

• it is exciting, maybe the most exciting thing in life, to meet new people,
  

• but I'm so damn tired of introducing my own self to people and I'm just so damn tired of my own self that I really don't want to talk about it.

It's really (at least in Sweden) seen as quite polite, when you meet a new real person, that you present yourself as the physical person the state accept you as (yes, I define myself through the state). And you always have to the same things about the pathetic life you are living.

But of course, there's more to it than that. Talking to a person while - in the shared imaginative space - having a complete different history than your real is simply amazing. It enables so many questions and feelings that you normally can't reach.

I remember being S'Rin Foug, (Fading Suns) a quite good body guard, mediocre person and outright bad opera writer, who only wants to be A terrific writer of operas, a nice and warm person and actually not at all a body guard. I remember being him on a geo stationary station talking to nobles and tecnicians and finally meeting the greatest opera star in known part of the galaxy. I remember being Hedlund in Aurora Borealis, a quite ordinary worker in the '30s, suddenly sitting together with all this important people planning a trip to the South pole. And they were actually listening to me! I explained to these engineers and all kinds of big people what my dogs needed and what they could do and they planned accordingly. Truly amazing for Hedlund.

Yesterday we played Werewolf: The Forsaken, the first installation of the online demo game. It was a really nice session. The thing for me was the meeting with the other players. Everyone made good interpretations of their characters and I'm a quite a bit curious still about everyone of them. That's a very good sign. My character Mike Berringen is closer to me than my characters have been in quite a while (I have played a lot of rapists lateley, I'm really tired of that. It's a heavy burden to carry, even when he just shares mind with you for a short while.) and that was a really nice experience. He cares much for his political views, left wing they might be, but it's the same kind of conviction.

One small detail is hard to understand, though, but that's an American thing. It says in his background that he earlier used to carry a gun for self protection. I guess this is a normal way of thinking in US, but for me more than absurd that a normal computer nerd (blogging is his main business) would get gun. US must be the only rich country where this is considered a reasonable way of thinking.

One detail made a lasting impression on several of us players. The huge bed made for a werewolf pack and the specially constructed bathroom with room for a lot of simultaneous guests. Our characters (and we) were quite surprised at this. But they soon found it very normal. After all; this is a pack of wolves. The pack instincts colliding with the modern world is an important concept in W:tF. This is beautiful.