That's me! 🌖💙

I think a big step / consideration is: What is the game you're joining, and how might the character relate to that? The sort of meta-social aspects beyond the character sheet.

Like with many games across many systems, sometimes a ST / GM has a particular story or tone in mind that they'll set up ahead of time, and sometimes it's more like something that gets built up depending on what the players bring in.

If it's more the first type, where there's already an established plot or [thing] the ST is trying to present, you're likely to find a lot of good places to plant character seeds that are directly relevant to what will be going on, as opposed to bringing in an idea that you thought of completely outside of the context of the game. Your involvement is likely to be a lot deeper to start, and making a character that has inherent ties to THAT world (not just the world in general, but specifically the world as-told and through the lens of that game) is almost always far more rewarding.

If it's more of the second type, where the ST is just gonna jam with whatever they're brought and the character creation process is fairly individual, then considering what you want to accomplish with the character (narratively, mechanically) even if it's just a general gist will help inform you which of the Big Three aspects of the character (Breed, Auspice, Tribe) to hone in on to empower you to explore that concept.

In either case, working together with other players to figure out if there are any pre-existing bonds and connections is an important part of the game that doesn't necessarily take place entirely on the character sheet. I think it's important and enriching for any game, but for Werewolf ESPECIALLY because of the complexities of their social, cultural, and political lives. So this is also a good point at which you and the rest of the troupe can determine if it's important to everyone or not how much 'overlap' there might be between what the characters will be capable of.

Personally, I think there can be a lot of fun to be had with doubling and tripling up on things, but sometimes people want to be responsible for [x] thing, and it be their thing that they're bringing to the group and the part where they can shine. So touching base about what sort of "sub-concepts" within an Auspice or Tribe people are looking to express can be helpful and enlightening, and help everyone create a troupe that has good communication and intentions out of character, between players, even if the in character relationships have friction.

For example, maybe if there are two people who both really want to play the Galliard, they can figure out different aspects of the Auspice to exemplify so they both have room to breathe in their concepts, and feel like they compliment each other rather than crowd each other. Or, if they want that in character conflict and to see who is the 'better Galliard', it's something that is above board and discussed as a mutual interest, a collaborative process rather than it feeling like they're passive aggressively disrespecting each other as players.

Get excited about other people's characters, too! They're going to matter to your character, whether or not they get along, and Werewolf is also a game about relationships and reciprocity. Find where they click, where they start with each other, where they might become rivals, where they might become family. These connections tend to make all of the characters involved more nuanced and interesting, because now it's not solely something that comes from within just you. It's something that has involvement from your little community, and that's how people are; none of us are untouched or uninfluenced by those around us. 💙

Hi, thanks for the question! 

I can already feel myself wanting to Galliard-ramble, so I'm not gonna bury the lede:

The Glyphery project was "born" around Spring 2014 back on a .webs site.

Okay question answered now it's rambling time!

I've been messing around with glyphs for way longer than the Glyphery project itself, but I don't know that I could give an exact date for that.  It definitely ramped up when I was active in LARPs around 2008-2010 and onward, though.

I wanted to do two primary things with Glyphery:

• Make a space to showcase people's fan-made glyphs together.  There are and have long been some really neat and creative designs out there, but they've been always tucked away in one article of a Chronicle wiki, a random forum post, peppered throughout a blog or image album, or in some rare and wondrous cases, galleries like Glyphmaker's old site (which I hope will be reborn some day) with their personal creations.  I really craved seeing as many of them all in one place, to touchstone these characters and stories where able, and help show how big and creative this pretty niche part of this specific game community is, and hopefully inspire people to get more involved with it themselves.

(and)

• Have as much reference material in just one place to try to make it the most complete compilation possible.  I was very inconvenienced while trying to teach "glyph classes" without having a comprehensive, centralized resource for it, so I had to do something about it for my own sanity and Weaverish need to gather and sort things.  I kept this part of it private and just for my own use for a while (it didn't get published on Glyphery until I migrated off Webs in, I think, 2019? and I included it in the rebuild) but it ended up being a big drive because I realized how many official glyphs were out there and hadn't made it onto other compilations, weren't on the White Wolf wiki, etc.
  
  

My updates have been really slow, and I could have been done by now (there are still some more obscure or embedded official glyphs that haven't made it up there yet that are in my queue, and are part of one of the remaining big updates I mentioned before) but maybe I've just subconsciously stretching it out to savor it before I reach the end. 

Anyway, I hope it's been a helpful resource and maybe inspires you to do some glyph work of your own!

I voted a byproduct of the medium, BUT!

Theoretically you're still getting information out of the weathering of the medium in which the glyphs are made, so while the shapes themselves aren't adding "words" to the glyph, they're adding other sensory impressions. 

As non-Garou players who can't just touch a glyph and pick up all the extra sensory and spiritual information like our character are capable of, we, alas, must rely more on the visual cues.  The intensity, force, speed with which they were carved, if used with intention, can give clues about the "tone" or other modifiers.

A glyph that is made messily, with fast-deep-angry marks will convey a different vibe than the same glyph carved carefully, mindfully.  IMO that difference can end changing the entire message:  [Danger] carved with all the time in the world feels very different than [Danger] carved fast, either through fear or rage.  That could indicate different urgency and potency about the danger without having to add additional marks.

So the clips and notches aren't glyphs or inherently a part of them - but they can, potentially, still add to what's being communicated anyway, and I think it's worth considering as an artistic tool when doing glyph art!