Beoric, with whom I have never shared discourse and don't know from Biblical Adam, made a comment I appreciated on one of Bryce Lynch's reviews:
There are 3 reasons to use a lycanthrope in a module:
(1) they are hidden, and the challenge is to figure out who is a lycanthrope;
(2) the risk of the curse of lycanthropy, which drives play if somebody might have been infected;
(3) you want a regenerating combat opponent and the party is too low level for trolls.
“Wererats in the sewers” defaults to (3), and is overdone and not that interesting to begin with. The curse has been sufficiently nerfed in 5e that it is really not much more than an inconvenience, so (2) is no longer a serious option.
That leaves (1) as the only remaining option that has any potential to be interesting at all. Which clearly should not take place in a sewer, since you need sufficient non-lycanthrope humanoids around for the lycanthropes to blend in. You could have an encounter with wererats in a sewer, disguised as public works workers or some such, but if *everyone* is a wererat in disguise then no wererats are really in disguise.
It will necessarily have a strong social element. The Thing is a better example of this than most werewolf fiction.
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