I have to be insane; there's no other explanation for what I'm getting myself into. Forget kin stuff for a moment: I'm trying to run a campaign for a tabletop RPG of which I've only ever played ONE SESSION, and that was an alternate version. Even if you count other systems using the same basic rules, that totals to maybe 6 sessions. And this is a game full of detail and lore, so thick that the very first chapter doesn't even begin to discuss any mechanics. And the mechanics are split between two different books. I have to figure all of this out for my players, who are also inexperienced with this system.
But it gets worse, and this is where the kin stuff comes in. The system is called Werewolf: The Forsaken and it's part of the World of Darkness system. Another game that's part of the World of Darkness system? Changeling: The Lost, which some may recall as being the cause of my biggest experience of The Unstoppable Feeling (TUF) ever after I played it at GenCon last year. This year, I played it again, along with Werewolf for the first time. None of these started TUF, but they did give me a smaller version of it that I call "The Annoying Feeling" (TAF). As I discussed after Gencon this year, these games and their characters and worlds resonate with me, but this time it wasn't significant enough to start the full on TUF. But this Werewolf campaign hasn't even started yet, and it's already causing TAF just from me reading the book. I have a bad feeling that it could become TUF. Why? Well, let's discuss the differences between my session of Changeling last year, and my session of Changeling this year.
First, though, a brief explanation. Characters in Changeling were once humans, but later kidnapped by fey and enslaved in the spirit world, transformed into whatever the fey needed. Changelings are those who escaped from the fey, and gain a form somewhere between human and what they were transformed into. And it should be clear by now why that very concept resonates with me. In doing so, it creates one of the biggest ingredients in starting TUF: jealousy of fictional characters. I'm ashamed of it, but it's always been one of the key ingredients.
Now, on to the differences.
Both featured pre-generated characters, and in both games I played a character who was essentially part animal and part human. We're already entering dangerous territory, as those kinds of characters resonate with me for obvious reasons. In any case, that's where the similarities ended. The first difference is that my character last year was a goat-man, AKA a satyr, AKA one of the things I think I might be instead of a centaur. In this year's game, my character was a squirrel man, which isn't something I've even heard of before. But honestly, I don't think that's the real reason for the emotional difference. It comes down to story. Squirrel-man has no backstory to speak of; he was a murderer back when he was just a human, and that's about it. But the satyr had tons of backstory. The person running that session was an author, so it made sense. The character was a real, fleshed out person in his backstory. And his backstory took this mostly normal guy and had him physically become a satyr. And now you see why I had that aside in the previous paragraph. The character felt fleshed out enough to almost be real, and the stupid part of my mind had reason to be jealous of him. Sometimes I end up hating the characters I get jealous of, but not usually.
When talking about TUF, I talk about feeling trapped. Imagine that you've been trapped in a cage for your entire life, along with a whole bunch of other people. All you have ever wanted to do is get out, and see what life is really like. You imagine what kind of person you would be if you could just experience what's being kept from you. Now, say that one of the other people who was trapped there with you suddenly found a way to get out. Not only did he get out, he saw a world exactly like what you hoped to see, and he became the kind of person you wanted to be. If you're like me, you'd be insanely jealous of him. And in turn, you would be reminded of just how trapped you really are. The complacence you gathered over the years disappears, and all you can think about is how you can get out. And you know that actually getting out of the cage is impossible; what happened to the guy who escaped cannot ever happen to you. So you're stuck trying to get as close to the outside world as you can, in whatever way you can, knowing that it will never really be enough. Sometimes, after this happens, you begin to doubt that the outside world even exists. That's The Unstoppable Feeling in a nutshell. Usually I don't even think about getting out; I know that my goal is impossible. But when something brings it back to me, I become obsessed.
That hasn't happened yet, though.
So what does any of this have to do with Werewolf? Well, naively thinking I had the time and focus to read the entire book, I read through the entire first chapter which explains what werewolves are and where they come from in this setting. Until their first transformation, they live as normal humans. It's only after the first transformation that they truly are werewolves. But before the transformation, WoD werewolves are a lot like otherkin. They grow up always feeling like they don't quite belong, and that their form isn't quite right. They feel like there's something more that they should be doing. And most notably for me, they can sometimes feel the wolf's senses and its rage. Rage is something centaurs grapple with as well, though not quite in the same way. You can see the similarities, though. The big difference is that our first transformations will never come. We may know what we are, and we may know what it means, but we'll still always be humans. For these werewolves, the feelings pay off in a transformation and an introduction to a new world. And I'm about to engross myself in a very detailed and fleshed out story about these people who have the same troubles as me, but then reach my Impossible Goal (physical shifting). It's only caused TAF so far, but we haven't started yet. The story I'm telling is the kind of story that affects me most. As a GM, I value roleplaying and character background. The player characters, and many of the NPCs that I play, will be the kind of characters I get jealous of. In other words, I fear that TUF might make a comeback soon.
There's one other thing to this, and I think it should be noted. In my posts about Doubt, I explained that the main reason I began to doubt myself is that I very rarely, if ever, shift. I don't feel or experience the things that most kin do, which tie them back to what they really are. It may not be causing doubt anymore, but it's still an issue that I face. It's not for lack of trying, either. I've tried all different forms of meditation, self hypnosis, lucid dreaming, etc. etc. Ask Gryneos, he can vouch for that. I've been trying in some form or another at least since I joined Kinmunity. And do you know what's come out of it, besides doubt? A vague experience looking at a centaur that I saw in my head. That's about it. Let's go back to the cage metaphor for this. Imagine everyone else locked away with you gets "probation," a small amount of time that they can spend outside and unshackled, even though they are supervised. It's these experiences that allow them to really believe in what's out there. But not you; you don't get probation. You can imagine how much harder the urge to break out would be.
Well, this has been an interesting journey into my schedule and my psyche. If you'd like to discuss any of this, let me know on Kinmunity. If there's interest, I'll post all of this on the forum.
