Places

Pack status differs from Rank or Sept Standing. Unlike the various forms of personal status respected by the Garou nation, pack status is fluid, more like a kind of social currency than a hierarchy. Packs spend their status in a variety of ways to make their lives more comfortable or open up new opportunities for glory and advancement. Pack status functions as a Pooled Background (see W20 p. 140 for details).

Pack status is not formal. When the sept is pleased with a pack, everyone is happy to do them favors and lend them resources. As members of the pack justifies its withdrawal from the sept’s stores by basking in their own glory, they eventually wear out their welcome and have to perform more great deeds in order to regain the social currency that they have spent.

Pack status is used in the same way as the Resources background. The chart below details how packs can spend their status to acquire various benefits.

If a pack performs some extraordinary service for the sept, the Storyteller might decide that it’s appropriate to reward the pack with a dot or two of extra status that last until the

pack uses it, or until the end of the story. As a general rule, any heroic deed that’s worth Renown could be worth half its highest Renown reward (round down) as dots of temporary pack status. Packs do not gain additional pack status for taking on sept duties, even though they can gain Renown for taking on sept duties. If a pack has taken on sept duties, that should be reflected with the Sept Status Background, since it is less a one-time boost and more a reliable source of goodwill.

••

••

••

•••

•••

•••

•••

•••

•••

••••

••••

••••

••• to •••••

•••••

•••••

It’s important to remember that many of these “rewards” are still available to packs that don’t have the Pack Status to pay for them, especially if the pack needs them to perform a duty for the sept. Only the most poorly run or dysfunctional sept would ask a pack to dig a ditch and then fail to lend them a shovel! The difference is in how hard it is for the pack to get its hands on sept resources. When a pack purchases a reward with pack status, the items, training, or favors are given freely by a sept that already views itself as in the pack’s debt. When a pack has to beg and borrow resources, they often find themselves having to perform favors for more influential Garou, or even kinfolk.

Secondly, the Garou have more respect for packs who contribute to the sept without drawing on its resources. Nearly anyone can defend a sept with the community’s most powerful fetish; only a real hero can do so on his own, with the treasures that already belong to him. Anything that a pack acquires with Pack Status counts as something that belongs to the pack. In other words, if a pack achieves something by begging the shaman to lend them her powerful spirit guide for an Umbral journey, it counts for less than it would if they had done without any help, or if they had acquired the spirit guide by reminding the shaman of what she and the sept already owed them.

Most importantly, while any sept will loan its packs resources when they are on sept business, getting ahold of sept resources for personal matters is something else entirely. Anyone can borrow a van to bury some freshly killed Pentex executives — only a respected member of the community can borrow it to move house. Most Garou don’t view using sept resources to pursue individual agendas as inappropriate or corrupt thanks to their “survival of the fittest” culture — to a point — but they are also clear that this is a “withdrawal” from an individual’s social account with the sept, and needs to be paid for, before or after.