Werewolf: The Forsaken - Blank It

to defend the territory while they’re away or forge powerful
allegiances with neighboring packs to keep their own
territory safe while they’re traveling. For the time being,
though, the pack’s territory is the setting for your chronicle.
The richer and more detailed it is, the better your
game becomes. Getting that detail right starts at the very
beginning of the character-creation process and deeply
involves your players from the get-go.
RURAL OR URBAN
The decision to base your game in a rural or urban
area has a significant impact on the feel of the chronicle
and the nature of the antagonists you use. Again, one
of the main rules of Storytelling applies here: Find out
what your players want. Do they thrill to the idea of being
urban wolves, prowling through the darkened streets of
the city, possibly trading occasional favors or blows with
the local vampires and hunting the city’s cold, inhuman
spirit denizens? Or does the classic werewolf trope of
the deep, dark woods, isolated houses and communities
that look askance at strangers resonate more with them?
Atmosphere is key — what most effectively speaks to their
concept of modern werewolves and savage fury?
You have the option to change this setting later on
by having the werewolves driven from their territory
and forced to find a new base, for example, but that’s a
poor second to getting the territory right at the start of
the chronicle.
It’s possible, even likely, that a mix of opinions will
arise within the group over the sort of environment the
players want for the chronicle. In that case, work with that
and use a suburban area, or an area that borders on a small
town. Doing so opens up possibilities of intra-pack conflict
later on, as the characters argue over whether to gain territory
in the town or the surrounding countryside.
GET TING DOWN TO DETAIL
Actually detailing the setting of your game might
seem like an intimidating prospect. After all, this is going
to be the core of your story over the course of the chronicle,
and getting it wrong now could have serious implications
down the line. That would be the case, apart from a
little secret that’s easy to forget: You don’t have to do all
the work. The territory you’re describing belongs to the
characters, and a good way of stimulating that feeling of
ownership is to allow the players some input into the way
you create the landscape. Ideally, this input should come
during character creation.
The way the pack came together has some bearing
on the way the characters relate to their landscape. If the
older werewolves who found and trained them moved
them to another part of the world entirely, the characters
might have very little idea of their environment and territory,
so the initial sessions can be spent in exploration. If
the new pack’s likely territory is one with which some or
all of them are familiar, however, you should involve the
Territory
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