The Inside Scoop on Gaming

Werewolf: the Wild West was one of White Wolf's offerings in the "main game, different era" genre, which includes Vampire: the Dark Ages, Mage: Sorcerer's Crusade and Wraith: the Great War. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately -- I'm not a huge fan of Werewolf: the Apocalypse)), it got canned due to horrendously poor sales. Only a pittance of supplements were produced in its relatively short lifetime as a cohesive game line. In its wake, White Wolf published earlier this year Tales from the Trails: Mexico, calling it "the 19th-Century Mexico sourcebook for the World of Darkness." This, gentle readers, must be what happens when the axing of a game conflicts with contractural agreements. Get on your white-guilt armor, and read on.

If you ask me, they should have simply named it Mexico: Que Horrible!, and been done with it.

The book is divided into six sections, along the typical White Wolf lines:

an opening piece of short fiction (the best part of the book),
a "chapter" made up of two pages of general scene-setting,
a crash-course in the history of Mexico, narrated by a Nuwisha,
a brief discussion of the general geography and topology of Mexico, sprinkled with meta-story about what vampires and Garou are doing there,
a much lengthier description of "the people of Mexico," which is another mish-mash of supernatural information,
and a closing section on various NPCs currently active in Mexico during 1898, the book's setting.

The fact is, this book is pretty awful.

The opening story is an interesting look at a town apparently made up entirely of Garou and their Kinfolk. The Garou are all noble-spirited warrior-beasts ready and willing to turn into nine-foot meat-grinders for Gaia. A predictably innocent boy runs into a tavern and alerts the multitude of Garou there that "Ticks," or vampires, are on their way into town. The Garou head outside, and then proceed to get the ground swept with their furry hides. The story closes with a pack of Sabbat vampires rubbing their hands together and cackling over a bunch of dead werewolves. Yawn.

Unfortunately, this is one of the best sections of the book. The villainy of the Sabbat is well-presented, and the closing dialogue flows very nicely, actually. What's unfortunate about this? Even mired in its two-dimensional, cartoonish portrayal of werewolves and vampires, it's better than much of the rest of the book.

The second section is a quick heads-up on what the setting in Mexico is like: war and the threat of war doesn't just loom large between the Mexicans and the Americans, it's all around. Vampires vs. Garou, Western Garou vs. Native American Garou, Garou vs. Bete, Bete vs. one another, and so on. Everyone hates everyone, basically, although it also states that most Shifters live in peace with one another, and recognize one another's "role in the cosmos." Huh? Isn't that a bit of a contradiction? Well, yes. So is much of the book.

The third section is where the book both gets its most interesting and does the most dragging of its feet. The Nuwisha in question, an apparently Caucasian Nuwisha with a thick spaghetti-western cowboy accent, named Laughing Many-Skins (huh?), tells us how humans used to be sparse, and everyone lived in peace, and the Wyrm wasn't really paying attention to Mexico. Over the course of the next twenty pages or so (be sure to drink a cup of coffee before diving into this one), we're told, alternately, that the noble, native humans forgot who their Earth-Mother was, so the changing breeds (mostly Bete, with very few Garou) got together and "corrected the situation" (translation: killed lots of people), taking out leaders here, undoing the "dark desires" of the Mayan people there, etc. Then, a noble, native race arises, called the Aztecs. But then they turned out to need a spanking, too, so the Shifters got together and did the will of most holy Gaia, meaning they launched into another slaughter-fest. Yay. But, eventually, as always happens, some jerk Europeans showed up, including European Garou who brought with them the Wyrm, and before long those horrible people who had to be culled regularly were the noble, native people who were being horribly and undeservedly deprived of political freedom. Now, yes, there have been examples in history of particularly extreme activists and, perhaps, visionaries, who chose death over economic and political oppression. But, really, the fact is that I simply could not swallow the sheer hypocrisy of switching back and forth every other page from "humans were lovely people who loved Gaia" to "humans had to die because Gaia said so" to "humans were lovely people being oppressed by those horrible people who came with the European Garou." What sort of bi-polar disorder afflicts Gaia, anyway? If this is how Gaia presented things to her children, wouldn't someone eventually suggest she take the proverbial chill pill? Maybe the Changing Breeds should have left the peyote alone. Or may the author should have, instead. Or maybe by "Shifting Breeds," White Wolf actually means their political leanings. Ah, that must be it.

Gag me. That's all I can really say.

Perhaps the most useful section is the fourth, which deals with the geography of Mexico. It identifies major regions of the country, and a sampling of typical or important settlements. Unfortunately, you can't do an entire city a whole lot of justice in two or three paragraphs. This is really the problem with the entire book: you can't cram the entirety of a country as rich in history, tradition, internal conflict and external conflict as Mexico into one supplement. You certainly can't do it in 95 pages. However, as I said, this section is useful. It does, at least, give you a surface scan of various sizes of settlements, and various mortal activities in them, as well as just a hint of the supernatural interests and/or influences in them.

Next comes "The People of Mexico," perhaps the single greatest misnomer of anything I've ever read. It's not about people. It's about supernaturals. Have they forgotten the millions and millions of people populating Mexico at the time? No, they haven't, as there are discussions here and there about the cultural conflict between Spaniards and Mexicans, along with political strife and the briefest possible smidgen of religious disparities -- another tremendously disappointing ommission, as the religious conflicts alone could make an entire sourcebook. Instead, we get a confusing and conflicting jumble of information about supernaturals roaming Mexico, laying claim to some chunks of it and defending other annexations against other supernaturals.

Now, I will be the first to say that there are bits of this which are interesting -- even interesting enough to serve as fodder for further story development, which is one of the nice things about White Wolf's best supplements: you can get ideas and run with them, rather than having a complete meta-plot shoved down your throat. Unfortunately, too much of the presentation of this is...bad. I've struggled with how to describe the problems I have with this section, so bear with me.

A typical example is this, regarding Garou tribes' attitudes towards one another: "The Silver Fangs have discovered Mexico as well, and they have a very simple philosophy that has begun to grow stronger in their hearts and minds: the failure of the Shadow Lords to drive the Sabbat from the land are evidence that the Shadow Lords are not strong enough to rule in Mexico." Okay. So some Silver Fangs see the appearance and settlement of vampires in Mexico as a failure on the part of the Shadow Lords who would wish to "rule," as much as any tribe ever truly rules another.

The problem is that the phrasing re-shapes the information being presented. Saying "the Silver Fangs" makes it feel like all Silver Fangs in Mexico have adopted this one philosophy. Is every Silver Fang thinking this? Do the Sabbat move like one entity? Do Shadow Lords act with a hive mind? The same problem plagues the presentation of everyone else in the World of Darkness. The Camarilla is described as functioning with one will. Each tribe is described as acting, reacting or philosophizing as a single entity. Maybe I'm being too picky, but roleplaying games are about individuals, not mass trends. Mass trends can be a part of the background (the Camarilla is at war with the Sabbat, the War of Rage was between the Garou and, well, everyone else, etc.), but they don't make for good stories themselves. Maybe there are even elders of various tribes who set "official policies" in various areas. But does everyone follow that hook, line and sinker? Does no one have free will? Does no one have opinions of their own? My Uktena player-character surely isn't going to take everything he's told and just assume it's true, assume it's inevitably going to bear out as Gaia's will, and follow it to the letter. Otherwise, what's the difference between my Uktena and everyone else's Uktena characters? What makes us individuals? The color of clothes we wear? Images of "the Mokole," as though they function with zero individuality despite their reputation as irrascible, incorrible, loner Bete, moving as one to cut off vampiric infiltration of Mexico, strike me as oversimplistic, cartoony, two-dimensional tripe that fails to live up to the complexity and depth which the world of Werewolf demands for a mature, balanced presentation.

Herein also lies my other major fault with the book: all Garou seem to know about vampires. All Kindred seem to know about werewolves. I'm sorry, but the idea that supernaturals "grow up" knowing about one another is ridiculous. Do vampiric sires turn to their Childer and say, "There are lupines in Mexico, who hate us, and are fierce warriors," and expect their childer won't, in the inevitable fit of youthful curiosity, flighty rebellion or even over-eagerness to please, go right out, find some werewolves, and get horribly killed? Does no Garou teenager, after being told that "Ticks" are running around, decide to see what one looks like and get eaten? If supernaturals "grew up" knowing about one another, they'd never grow up. If nothing else, in a world like the World of Darkness, with terrible things around every corner, there are secrets so terrible and frightening and simply dangerous that you don't tell your offspring about them at all, much less hand them every piece of information possibly knowable.

The absolute worst section of the book is, undoubtedly, "The Bad and the Ugly," the section which covers everyone who isn't "of Gaia," meaning vampires, Black Spiral Dancers, and ghosts. Thanks. Thanks, White Wolf, for marketing this as a "World of Darkness" supplement, making me think there might actually be information useful to, say, a vampire game which includes a flashback to Mexico at the turn of the century, or is even set in Mexico City as it falls to the clutches of the Sabbat, and then handling all non-Changing Breed races as the undeniable enemy. Whatever. The final insult, however, to anyone who might not be running a Werewolf: the Wild West chronicle, and might be interested in Mexico as a setting, and might pick this up because the cover claims it's a sourcebook for the WoD in general, not just lupines, is the page-after-page presentation of the NPCs, who are all described in terms of Werewolf statistics. Come on, guys, if it's a WoD sourcebook, give examples of stats in their "native" game terms. While you're at it, make the characters believable. I was appalled to read about a member of the Sabbat, who is a sixth generation Samedi, ridiculously low-generation and a member of an incredibly rare bloodline, and see that he has a Gnosis rating, and his powers are described in terms of Rage and Gifts.

Yes, if you're a Werewolf storyteller, this is an incredibly useful feature, because reading stats like "Thanatosis 5" would be meaningless. But guess what? Garou Gifts are just as useless to me, if I'm running a Vampire game.

Why am I so incredibly harsh regarding this? I am a Vampire storyteller. I've played in Shifting Breeds games -- heck, one of my favorite PCs was my Bastet big-cat handler -- but that wasn't what I had in mind when I picked up this book. I was excited because I thought, Oh, good! A Mexico sourcebook that includes more than Garou!. Wrong.

Another reason I'm reacting so harshly is this book's complete failure to pick up on the incredibly rich tradition of mysticism and mythology native to what we call Mexico. Did you know that Mayan religion included a defined date for the end of the world? The Mayan calendar has a last day: December 21, 2012. Their belief was that on the Winter Solstice of the year we would number 2012, CE, the tools we have made (technology) would rise up against us and take the universe's revenge for the mistreatment we've done to the world around us. It's the Apocalypse just sitting there, waiting to be extolled, in a real-life native mythos. But, this book just ignores it. It ignores a lot of exploration of cultural differences and political tragedies and economic oppression and the general human condition which could be used to paint the picture Mexico deserves: the epic tale of a country full of a million unique landscapes and a hundred competing factions, a nation that's scorched by the sun by day, and wrapped in the cold light of stars by night, a country of big skies and vast prairies and deserts, unbelievable mountains and hidden valleys, a nation that deserves a story as epic and beautiful, tragic and victorious as itself.

And this book, quite simply, doesn't deliver.

I think it's safest for everyone if I don't even begin to talk about the art. I've seen enough busty vampires in my day. I don't need more.

Don't buy this unless you're running one of the very few Werewolf: the Wild West games out there. It's not a World of Darkness supplement. It's the white-guilt supplement written by a bunch of gringos that fails utterly in its mission, from where I stand.

Style: 3 (Average)
Substance: 2 (Sparse)

Tales from the Trails: Mexico
Author: James A. Moore Category: game Company/Publisher: White Wolf Games Studio Line: Werewolf: the Wild West Cost: $14.95 Page count: 95 ISBN: 1-56504-345-6 SKU: WW3705 Playtest Review by Michael Williams on 09/06/99. Genre tags: Historical Horror Conspiracy Old_West Vampire Gothic	Werewolf: the Wild West was one of White Wolf's offerings in the "main game, different era" genre, which includes Vampire: the Dark Ages, Mage: Sorcerer's Crusade and Wraith: the Great War. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately -- I'm not a huge fan of Werewolf: the Apocalypse)), it got canned due to horrendously poor sales. Only a pittance of supplements were produced in its relatively short lifetime as a cohesive game line. In its wake, White Wolf published earlier this year Tales from the Trails: Mexico, calling it "the 19th-Century Mexico sourcebook for the World of Darkness." This, gentle readers, must be what happens when the axing of a game conflicts with contractural agreements. Get on your white-guilt armor, and read on. If you ask me, they should have simply named it Mexico: Que Horrible!, and been done with it. The book is divided into six sections, along the typical White Wolf lines: an opening piece of short fiction (the best part of the book), a "chapter" made up of two pages of general scene-setting, a crash-course in the history of Mexico, narrated by a Nuwisha, a brief discussion of the general geography and topology of Mexico, sprinkled with meta-story about what vampires and Garou are doing there, a much lengthier description of "the people of Mexico," which is another mish-mash of supernatural information, and a closing section on various NPCs currently active in Mexico during 1898, the book's setting. The fact is, this book is pretty awful. The opening story is an interesting look at a town apparently made up entirely of Garou and their Kinfolk. The Garou are all noble-spirited warrior-beasts ready and willing to turn into nine-foot meat-grinders for Gaia. A predictably innocent boy runs into a tavern and alerts the multitude of Garou there that "Ticks," or vampires, are on their way into town. The Garou head outside, and then proceed to get the ground swept with their furry hides. The story closes with a pack of Sabbat vampires rubbing their hands together and cackling over a bunch of dead werewolves. Yawn. Unfortunately, this is one of the best sections of the book. The villainy of the Sabbat is well-presented, and the closing dialogue flows very nicely, actually. What's unfortunate about this? Even mired in its two-dimensional, cartoonish portrayal of werewolves and vampires, it's better than much of the rest of the book. The second section is a quick heads-up on what the setting in Mexico is like: war and the threat of war doesn't just loom large between the Mexicans and the Americans, it's all around. Vampires vs. Garou, Western Garou vs. Native American Garou, Garou vs. Bete, Bete vs. one another, and so on. Everyone hates everyone, basically, although it also states that most Shifters live in peace with one another, and recognize one another's "role in the cosmos." Huh? Isn't that a bit of a contradiction? Well, yes. So is much of the book. The third section is where the book both gets its most interesting and does the most dragging of its feet. The Nuwisha in question, an apparently Caucasian Nuwisha with a thick spaghetti-western cowboy accent, named Laughing Many-Skins (huh?), tells us how humans used to be sparse, and everyone lived in peace, and the Wyrm wasn't really paying attention to Mexico. Over the course of the next twenty pages or so (be sure to drink a cup of coffee before diving into this one), we're told, alternately, that the noble, native humans forgot who their Earth-Mother was, so the changing breeds (mostly Bete, with very few Garou) got together and "corrected the situation" (translation: killed lots of people), taking out leaders here, undoing the "dark desires" of the Mayan people there, etc. Then, a noble, native race arises, called the Aztecs. But then they turned out to need a spanking, too, so the Shifters got together and did the will of most holy Gaia, meaning they launched into another slaughter-fest. Yay. But, eventually, as always happens, some jerk Europeans showed up, including European Garou who brought with them the Wyrm, and before long those horrible people who had to be culled regularly were the noble, native people who were being horribly and undeservedly deprived of political freedom. Now, yes, there have been examples in history of particularly extreme activists and, perhaps, visionaries, who chose death over economic and political oppression. But, really, the fact is that I simply could not swallow the sheer hypocrisy of switching back and forth every other page from "humans were lovely people who loved Gaia" to "humans had to die because Gaia said so" to "humans were lovely people being oppressed by those horrible people who came with the European Garou." What sort of bi-polar disorder afflicts Gaia, anyway? If this is how Gaia presented things to her children, wouldn't someone eventually suggest she take the proverbial chill pill? Maybe the Changing Breeds should have left the peyote alone. Or may the author should have, instead. Or maybe by "Shifting Breeds," White Wolf actually means their political leanings. Ah, that must be it. Gag me. That's all I can really say. Perhaps the most useful section is the fourth, which deals with the geography of Mexico. It identifies major regions of the country, and a sampling of typical or important settlements. Unfortunately, you can't do an entire city a whole lot of justice in two or three paragraphs. This is really the problem with the entire book: you can't cram the entirety of a country as rich in history, tradition, internal conflict and external conflict as Mexico into one supplement. You certainly can't do it in 95 pages. However, as I said, this section is useful. It does, at least, give you a surface scan of various sizes of settlements, and various mortal activities in them, as well as just a hint of the supernatural interests and/or influences in them. Next comes "The People of Mexico," perhaps the single greatest misnomer of anything I've ever read. It's not about people. It's about supernaturals. Have they forgotten the millions and millions of people populating Mexico at the time? No, they haven't, as there are discussions here and there about the cultural conflict between Spaniards and Mexicans, along with political strife and the briefest possible smidgen of religious disparities -- another tremendously disappointing ommission, as the religious conflicts alone could make an entire sourcebook. Instead, we get a confusing and conflicting jumble of information about supernaturals roaming Mexico, laying claim to some chunks of it and defending other annexations against other supernaturals. Now, I will be the first to say that there are bits of this which are interesting -- even interesting enough to serve as fodder for further story development, which is one of the nice things about White Wolf's best supplements: you can get ideas and run with them, rather than having a complete meta-plot shoved down your throat. Unfortunately, too much of the presentation of this is...bad. I've struggled with how to describe the problems I have with this section, so bear with me. A typical example is this, regarding Garou tribes' attitudes towards one another: "The Silver Fangs have discovered Mexico as well, and they have a very simple philosophy that has begun to grow stronger in their hearts and minds: the failure of the Shadow Lords to drive the Sabbat from the land are evidence that the Shadow Lords are not strong enough to rule in Mexico." Okay. So some Silver Fangs see the appearance and settlement of vampires in Mexico as a failure on the part of the Shadow Lords who would wish to "rule," as much as any tribe ever truly rules another. The problem is that the phrasing re-shapes the information being presented. Saying "the Silver Fangs" makes it feel like all Silver Fangs in Mexico have adopted this one philosophy. Is every Silver Fang thinking this? Do the Sabbat move like one entity? Do Shadow Lords act with a hive mind? The same problem plagues the presentation of everyone else in the World of Darkness. The Camarilla is described as functioning with one will. Each tribe is described as acting, reacting or philosophizing as a single entity. Maybe I'm being too picky, but roleplaying games are about individuals, not mass trends. Mass trends can be a part of the background (the Camarilla is at war with the Sabbat, the War of Rage was between the Garou and, well, everyone else, etc.), but they don't make for good stories themselves. Maybe there are even elders of various tribes who set "official policies" in various areas. But does everyone follow that hook, line and sinker? Does no one have free will? Does no one have opinions of their own? My Uktena player-character surely isn't going to take everything he's told and just assume it's true, assume it's inevitably going to bear out as Gaia's will, and follow it to the letter. Otherwise, what's the difference between my Uktena and everyone else's Uktena characters? What makes us individuals? The color of clothes we wear? Images of "the Mokole," as though they function with zero individuality despite their reputation as irrascible, incorrible, loner Bete, moving as one to cut off vampiric infiltration of Mexico, strike me as oversimplistic, cartoony, two-dimensional tripe that fails to live up to the complexity and depth which the world of Werewolf demands for a mature, balanced presentation. Herein also lies my other major fault with the book: all Garou seem to know about vampires. All Kindred seem to know about werewolves. I'm sorry, but the idea that supernaturals "grow up" knowing about one another is ridiculous. Do vampiric sires turn to their Childer and say, "There are lupines in Mexico, who hate us, and are fierce warriors," and expect their childer won't, in the inevitable fit of youthful curiosity, flighty rebellion or even over-eagerness to please, go right out, find some werewolves, and get horribly killed? Does no Garou teenager, after being told that "Ticks" are running around, decide to see what one looks like and get eaten? If supernaturals "grew up" knowing about one another, they'd never grow up. If nothing else, in a world like the World of Darkness, with terrible things around every corner, there are secrets so terrible and frightening and simply dangerous that you don't tell your offspring about them at all, much less hand them every piece of information possibly knowable. The absolute worst section of the book is, undoubtedly, "The Bad and the Ugly," the section which covers everyone who isn't "of Gaia," meaning vampires, Black Spiral Dancers, and ghosts. Thanks. Thanks, White Wolf, for marketing this as a "World of Darkness" supplement, making me think there might actually be information useful to, say, a vampire game which includes a flashback to Mexico at the turn of the century, or is even set in Mexico City as it falls to the clutches of the Sabbat, and then handling all non-Changing Breed races as the undeniable enemy. Whatever. The final insult, however, to anyone who might not be running a Werewolf: the Wild West chronicle, and might be interested in Mexico as a setting, and might pick this up because the cover claims it's a sourcebook for the WoD in general, not just lupines, is the page-after-page presentation of the NPCs, who are all described in terms of Werewolf statistics. Come on, guys, if it's a WoD sourcebook, give examples of stats in their "native" game terms. While you're at it, make the characters believable. I was appalled to read about a member of the Sabbat, who is a sixth generation Samedi, ridiculously low-generation and a member of an incredibly rare bloodline, and see that he has a Gnosis rating, and his powers are described in terms of Rage and Gifts. Yes, if you're a Werewolf storyteller, this is an incredibly useful feature, because reading stats like "Thanatosis 5" would be meaningless. But guess what? Garou Gifts are just as useless to me, if I'm running a Vampire game. Why am I so incredibly harsh regarding this? I am a Vampire storyteller. I've played in Shifting Breeds games -- heck, one of my favorite PCs was my Bastet big-cat handler -- but that wasn't what I had in mind when I picked up this book. I was excited because I thought, Oh, good! A Mexico sourcebook that includes more than Garou!. Wrong. Another reason I'm reacting so harshly is this book's complete failure to pick up on the incredibly rich tradition of mysticism and mythology native to what we call Mexico. Did you know that Mayan religion included a defined date for the end of the world? The Mayan calendar has a last day: December 21, 2012. Their belief was that on the Winter Solstice of the year we would number 2012, CE, the tools we have made (technology) would rise up against us and take the universe's revenge for the mistreatment we've done to the world around us. It's the Apocalypse just sitting there, waiting to be extolled, in a real-life native mythos. But, this book just ignores it. It ignores a lot of exploration of cultural differences and political tragedies and economic oppression and the general human condition which could be used to paint the picture Mexico deserves: the epic tale of a country full of a million unique landscapes and a hundred competing factions, a nation that's scorched by the sun by day, and wrapped in the cold light of stars by night, a country of big skies and vast prairies and deserts, unbelievable mountains and hidden valleys, a nation that deserves a story as epic and beautiful, tragic and victorious as itself. And this book, quite simply, doesn't deliver. I think it's safest for everyone if I don't even begin to talk about the art. I've seen enough busty vampires in my day. I don't need more. Don't buy this unless you're running one of the very few Werewolf: the Wild West games out there. It's not a World of Darkness supplement. It's the white-guilt supplement written by a bunch of gringos that fails utterly in its mission, from where I stand. Style: 3 (Average) Substance: 2 (Sparse)