RoleCraft this week will again take a look at the worgen in the light of roleplaying, sort of a follow up to the Roleplaying for Worgen article from a couple weeks ago.

Worgen RP, in some ways, is related to druid RP, in respects that both are shape-shifters. The one unique difference that sets them apart is the knowledge that druids know they have the ability to shape-shift, while I believe it will be absolutely possible to roleplay a worgen who has no idea that they can, too.

Let’s look at it from the view of there being three parts to roleplaying a worgen: their human form, the moment of transformation, and their beast form.

Human Form
As I see it, the option has been left up to the individual worgen player concerning which form to accept as their ‘true’ form. Since lore and canon have it written that worgen both come from an alternate dimension (with no mention of them being shape-shifters), and from humans being infected with some form of curse which turns them into worgen, both forms can be deemed as a true form.

However, if you choose to flow with the worgen intro cinematic, worgen players will start as humans in Gilneas City, in the midst of a civil war. Note that you start as human, not worgen in human form. Sometime during the initial quest line, the characters will become worgen. So, by this reasoning, human form for worgen characters is their true form.

Now, the question arises, do you know you are worgen, or do you believe you are still only human?

The first few levels will take you through becoming a worgen, but who’s to say that time is nothing more than a dream to your character? The worgen cinematic intro references the worgen as ‘rumor’, and as ‘feral, nightmare creatures’, and never by the name worgen. Those facts indicate that worgen are not a public entity, but something only truthfully known to those who know they are worgen.

So, in human form, your RP options are you know you are worgen, or you do not know. Either way you choose, the door is wide open for a huge variety of roleplaying possibilities.

Transformation
As far as I have found through other sources, changing into beast form comes by choice, via the Darkflight racial ability, or automatically, as when entering combat. While it lasts only a short few seconds, the transformation is an important part of your character, and should not be looked over when it comes to roleplaying.

For example, set up some choice macros and emotes to go along with the transformation:
“Please don’t make me angry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.”
/badfeeling
/doom
/growl
/pounce
/roar
/warn

Beast Form
Once in beast form, what state of mind do you see your character in after the transformation? Do they still retain their human mental abilities and knowledge? Does your character fully transform into the beast, mind, body, heart, and soul? Or, is your character caught in a struggle somewhere between those two options?

Movie and television history is full of werewolves going through just these sorts of dilemmas, and make for prime source material for ideas on how to convey your character’s own inner and outer turmoil for roleplaying purposes.

These are just a very few of the worgen RP ideas I have. I’m still excitingly investigating them in preparation for Cataclysm, and may not have a solid worgen personality in mind until then. Keep the worgen RP discussion going at RoleCraft on Twitter (@RoleCraft), or at the official RoleCraft Facebook group. Until next Monday, role on!