Research

[T-Bone]

Hello All,

I have been kicking around an idea for werewolf concept for a while now and it just sounds like a rehash of other peoples stories and settings.  Alot of that is due to reading lots of novels and RPGs like Werewolf the Apocalypse. 
So I thought it might be good to get back to the roots of the legends rather than looking at someone elses interpratation of the subject.
This is proving to be a bit more difficult than I had expected and I was hoping that some of you guys might have some suggestions.

Thanks in advance!

[Enjorous]

Well, I'm no expert on the werewolf, but I know that one of the places that the legends started was in Western Europe, specifically France. But you can find shape shifting stories in almost every culture. I'd suggest looking into mythology texts at a local bookstore and see what you turn up.

I know it's not terribly much but I hope it helps a little.

[Nickeris86]

yeah most every culture has a form of were-critter of some form, most of them are the tradinal blood thirsty monster that eats babies and rapes virgen girls, then eats them. there are some however that are actually wise nature spirets or guardians. you can always make your own mythose for your werewolves and not worry if it sounds simaler to anyone elses cause its going to happen no matter what. it all dependes on what you want the focuse of the story to be.

as far as research goes, there are a couple of books you can find at boarders or amazon.com that have a lot of lore in them, plus websites, unfortunately most of it is pop culture crap but its still useful for ideas. most of what your going to find is going to be European werewolf's.

[logarithm.and.blues]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beast_of_G%C3%A9vaudan 18th century French werewolf legend. Probably what Enjorous was talking about.

[Enjorous]

Well the Beast of Gevaudan is one of the later werewolf legends out of France. They date back into the middle ages and earlier iirc.

[Nickeris86]

there's a documentary on one of the underworld dvd's that i am sure you could find online. it has some pretty interesting history on the vampire and werewolf legends, it also delves into the popular culture werewolf and vampires. it wasn't bad.

[Quantus]

http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Vampires-Werewolves-Other-Monsters/dp/0816046859

I got ahold of this a while back, so far has been very informative.

[svb1972]

There are 3 distinct Werewolf 'genres'
European Loup-Garou style
North American "Shifter"
Asian Oni

The first thing to do, would be to decide which of those you want to follow, and then start doing research on those.

[T-Bone]

Thanks for all the great leads everyone!

One of the books I found that was a bit disturbing but infomative was The Book of Werewolves by S.Baring-Gould. 

I guess tonight I will be getting the encyclopia and more online research. 

[Rachel Taylor]

Bob Curran, an Irish scholar, has written a couple good books. One features undead of all types: vampires, werewolves, zombies, etc. His most recent one, I believe, is werewolves and nothing but werewolves.