Pack Creation Guidelines

Before the group begins pack creation, each character should have at least one meaningful connection to another pack member already established. These are not invented during this session — they emerge from individual preludes and character backgrounds.

Connections answer the question: why does this person belong to this specific pack, with these specific people? "We're both werewolves in Anchorage" is not a connection. "She was there the night I first Changed and talked me down before I killed someone" is a connection.

The pack chooses three Aspirations reflecting its collective goals. These should be personal to this pack, not generic werewolf duties.

What Makes a Good Aspiration?

"Protect the territory" is a given for every pack — it makes a poor Aspiration. Aim for goals that tell a story about who your pack is specifically.

• Personal to the pack, not generic werewolf duty
• Concrete enough that you'll know when it's achieved
• Grounded in the pack's history, losses, or relationships

Changing Aspirations

Aspirations usually change when fulfilled.

Bonuses to Territory or Pack-specific Merits are awarded to the pack when most members complete Aspirations.

Every pack has at least two Touchstones: one physical and one spiritual. These are places, objects, or relationships that ground the pack and keep it anchored to both worlds.

Physical Touchstones

Connect the pack to the material world and its mortal life. Examples:

• The bar or diner where the pack first came together
• A family home that has been in a packmate's bloodline for generations
• The garage or workshop where the pack plans its hunts

Spiritual Touchstones

Connect the pack to the Shadow and its purpose as Uratha. Examples:

• The locus where the pack first contacted its totem
• The site of a great victory or loss in the Shadow
• A sacred place where the Gauntlet runs thin

Additional Touchstones

Established packs may have more Touchstones — each reflects accomplishments and strength. Other packs may covet what you claim.

Every pack has problems. Complications are persistent sources of trouble that generate conditions when they create setbacks or drain the pack's resources.

Choose two or three Complications during pack creation. The best Complications are difficult to remove and create ongoing dramatic tension.

Examples of Complications

• A rival pack that covets your territory
• A spirit court that demands regular tribute
• A human gang or criminal organization operating in your hunting ground
• A packmate's mortal family that keeps stumbling into danger
• An old debt to a Bone Shadow elder that is being called in

How Complications Work

When a Complication creates a setback, distracts the pack, or drains its resources, the pack will gain a condition that when resolved will provide a bonus to their territories or pack merit. The ST will not impose more than one setback per Complication per session, but players can invoke Complications multiple times per session — no more than once per scene. Each successive invocation must escalate from the last.

Werewolf packs straddle the line between wolf instinct and human reason. The pack's Hunting Nature reflects which side currently dominates.

Hunting Nature only applies to packs that include at least one Uratha. Packs without werewolves — no matter how feral their Wolf-Blooded — do not have a Hunting Nature.

Determining Starting Nature

The ST rolls a number of dice equal to the combined Primal Urge ratings of every werewolf in the pack:

• Failure: The pack begins with no dominant nature (discuss with ST)
• Success: The players choose to begin with Human Nature or Wolf Nature
• Exceptional Success: The pack begins with Werewolf Nature

Shifting Nature

The pack receives 5 dots of Pack Merits — qualities that define the pack as a whole, separate from any individual character's personal Merits.

Adapting General Merits

General Merits from can be adapted for pack use with ST approval. When adapted, the Merit belongs to the pack, not any individual. Any time a character uses it, roll the merit's dot rating as a dice pool:

• Failure: Another packmate has recently used it — temporarily unavailable
• Dramatic Failure: Unavailable for the rest of the Story

The totem is the spiritual heart of the pack. It binds the members together, supports the hunt in the Shadow, and defines the pack's identity as much as any Uratha does. In return, the pack always has the Resonant Condition for their totem spirit.

Step 6a — Name and Concept

As a group, decide what the totem is. A fire spirit? A wind-spirit? A spirit of vengeance, protection, or cunning? The totem's name should be a short epithet reflecting its nature.

Step 6b — Aspiration and Ban

The totem has an Aspiration that becomes a fourth Aspiration for every pack member. Choose something that reflects both the totem's nature and the pack's collective goals.

The totem also has a Ban appropriate to its Rank — a restriction it logically cannot violate. A fire spirit cannot immerse itself in water; a spirit of loyalty cannot break a promise.

Pack members must uphold the totem's Ban. Disregarding it once inflicts the Ban Condition. Breaking it a second time costs the offender her Totem Merit dots.

Step 6c — Determine Totem Points

Add up the total Totem Merit dots from all pack members. This total determines everything about the totem. Supporting Wolf-Blooded may contribute only one dot each.

Step 6d — Determine Totem Advantage

The totem grants a benefit to every member of the pack — including those who don't hold the Totem Merit themselves. Use the table below to determine how many Experiences the pack has to spend on this advantage:

The pack spends these Experiences on an Attribute, Skill, Skill Specialty, or Merit. Every pack member gains it — including Wolf-Blooded and human members. This can take characters one dot above their normal maximum. Human packmates already at five dots in the chosen trait gain 8-again instead.

Step 6e — Determine Totem Traits

The totem receives one Attribute dot per Totem Point, distributed among Power, Finesse, and Resistance. It must have at least one dot in each Attribute, and no Attribute may exceed half the total Totem Points.

These Attributes determine the totem's Rank using the standard spirit Rank chart. The totem starts with one dot of Influence per Rank.

Step 6f — Numina and Manifestations

Based on its Rank, the totem gains Numina (spiritual powers) and Manifestations (ways it can interact with the physical world). The All Numina and All Manifestations tabs on the Pack Sheet list every option with costs, prerequisites, and source references.

Totems can have Numina and Influence beyond their Rank limitations, up to the total number of dots the pack has invested in the Totem Merit.

At this point, the pack's character is defined by its goals and challenges, its territory, and the way its members approach the hunt. This step brings those details to life.

The group works together to describe how the choices made in the previous steps actually appear in play. This is not a mechanical step — it is a storytelling one.

Questions to Answer Together

• Why did these specific people form a pack, rather than any other combination?
• What is the pack's relationship to the First Moot and the new Anchorage Protectorate?
• What does the pack call itself? What do other Uratha call it?
• Does the territory have a name — in English, in the First Tongue, or both?
• How did the pack first contact its totem? What was asked of them?
• Which Complication is already actively causing problems at the start of play?

Pack Tactics are collaborative combat and social maneuvers that the pack develops together. They represent the muscle memory of hunting as a unit — the way packmates anticipate each other's movements, cover weaknesses, and press advantages.

Tactics are recorded on the Pack Tactics tab of your Pack Sheet. Three sample tactics (Animal Magnetism, All Alone, and Overkill) are provided on the Sample Tactics tab as a reference and starting point.

Tactic Ratings

Each tactic has a Rating (1–5) that represents how deeply ingrained it is. Higher-rated tactics are more reliable but take more investment to develop.

• Rating 1: Situational, newly developed, requires ideal conditions
• Rating 3: Practiced and reliable under most conditions
• Rating 5: Second nature — the pack executes it fluidly under fire

Developing New Tactics

New tactics can be developed during downtime between sessions or as a result of significant in-play moments. Work with your ST to establish what a new tactic requires and what its narrative logic is. The best tactics emerge from how the pack actually plays, not from optimization.

A pack's territory is as much a part of the pack as any member. It encompasses physical space — neighborhoods, wilderness, waterways, industrial zones — and the corresponding Shadow landscape. A healthy territory reflects a strong pack; a sick territory warns of trouble coming.

Territories are fluid. A strong pack naturally expands; a weakened pack contracts. Even a "small" werewolf territory covers several neighborhoods. The largest and strongest packs can cover a county or multiple townships.

Territory Features

• Loci — Points where the Gauntlet thins and Essence flows between worlds. The most valuable resource a pack can claim. Spirits flock to them, and controlling a locus gives the pack leverage in the Shadow.
• Safe Places — Locations secured against intrusion. Reflected by the Safe Place Merit.
• Resonance — The Shadow reflects the emotional reality of the physical world. A neighborhood plagued by violence breeds spirits of rage; a thriving community generates spirits of warmth.
• The Hunting Ground Rite — The pack can perform this rite to formally sanctify its territorial claim. Grants +2 to foot chases and tracking within the territory for all pack members for one season.

Tending Both Sides

The pack must tend both sides of the Gauntlet. Shaping the Shadow means managing the spirits that inhabit the territory — encouraging those that serve the territory's health, hunting those that threaten it, and maintaining the balance that keeps both worlds stable.

Alaskan totems tend to reflect the land's harsh beauty and extremes. When designing your totem, consider the world you are actually hunting in:

• Spirits of glacier and permafrost — ancient, slow, patient, and unyielding
• Aurora-spirits — luminous, unpredictable, and tied to cycles of light and darkness
• Spirits of isolation and endurance — shaped by the human experience of surviving winter
• Salmon-run spirits — cyclical abundance, sacrifice, and return
• Cold and darkness spirits — not necessarily hostile, but never entirely safe

Wolf-Blooded and human pack members are also worth considering carefully in the Alaskan context. They handle operations during the long summers when Uratha are spiritually strained, and maintain the pack's mortal cover in small communities where everyone knows everyone else's business.

If a pack disintegrates, the totem is left bound to something that no longer exists. Some totems return to their spirit communities, though they may no longer be welcome there. Some seek new packs, offering their services in exchange for protection.

Former pack members who held the Totem Merit lose those dots. The emotional and spiritual weight of a broken bond is real — it is not merely a bookkeeping adjustment. Address it in play.

"Your scars tell spirits what you've done. Your Renown tells them what you are."
— Common saying among the Forsaken