Author: Hmmm?
Category:
Company/Publisher: White Wolf
Line: Storyteller
Capsule Review by Charlie Merchant on 02/10/00.
Genre tags: none

You have the ability to turn into a nine foot tall killing machine. Your Mother's death fills you with a fury that the codified, cerebral language of the humans could never describe. The world ends in ten minutes and you're outnumbered a thousand to one. Go!

In Werewolf, you play a creature that has both strong ideals and the anger to pursue these ideals. Your character, however, is in serious danger because the very anger that gives him strength can also be his undoing.

You are tied to the Earth and she is dying. Slowly, painfully, a little more every day. You were a human mask at times, but within you is a hungering, slavering beast that you can not always contain. You walk amongst the humans and the animals, mourning their spiral into corruption and decay. You seek to protect them, but you are apart from them and they will always smell the difference on you. Even if you were raised by humans, you are outside their society and they will never be comfortable with you.

You face a monster so ineffable and horrible that even to speak its name is to risk inviting it into your soul. Your kind is rapidly becoming extinct, with the passage of every generation there are less and less warriors that can fight for the Mother. To make matters worse, your brothers and sisters no longer stand together in harmony against the Defiler, they are divided now and they fight amongst themselves with increasing viciousness.

There is no time left. The world might end tomorrow.

The world's destruction is felt in your soul. Every tree that is chopped down screams briefly within you before dying. Every blade of grass that is trampled upon inflicts you with psychic agony before passing. You see your Mother being raped and butchered everywhere you turn. The concrete streets that weigh heavily on Her back mock you as you trod upon them. The massive sky-lines that the hairless apes purposelessly erect slowly crush Her fragile spine. Images of the planet's destruction are broadcast endlessly across the screens of the 'televisions' that the homids have built, so common are the sights and sounds of the world's destruction now that the humans barely register it.

The human race is apathetic and unaware. They fear your primitive nature, your intensity and they deride your naive quest to 'set things right.' Only a child or an insane freak would believe, in this world, that the natural balance can be restored.

But even as society crushs you under its boot, even as you are trampled beneath the implacable passage of 'progress', your single saving grace, your life-giving rage, only grows stronger.

And it is through your rage that you survive. You feed off your rage, it gives you warmth in the cold, sterile world of technology and 'science'. It gives you the strength to rip down the doors that are slammed in your face, it gives you the resolve to survive the injuries that your enemies inflict upon you. Even when you are shot to pieces, bleeding from gaping wounds, lying in a tangled pile of your own viscera, it is your rage that gets you back on your feet, it is your fury that makes you turn back toward your enemies and howl your defiance even as they unleash another attack on your aching, bleeding form.

As for your enemies? Known collectively as the Wyrm, they are the epitomy of corruption and defilement. They take many different forms, but in the end they are all the same. They seek to destroy the planet and they pursue this ambition with the same intensity that you seek to defend it. Because humankind is prone to taking easy routes to power and because the Wyrm offers such power, the Defiler has far more servants amongst the mortals than your kind can ever hope to. The Defiler has essentially won, the humans have created an arsenal of bombs that could destroy the world several times over. There are hardly any forrests left, the wolves are all but extinct and no one can be made to care.

This game doesn't have a lot of hope. This game has all sorts of hope. It's really how you look at it. On one hand, you can see it as a parable for the noble savage, the person who realizes that society is inevitably going to destroy itself if it doesn't begin to undo some of the damage that it has done to the planet. On the other hand you can see it as a testament to the danger of harnessing ancient instincts in a modern world and the necessity of controlling our primitive passions now that they are anachronistic.

Werewolves are not 'good', even the best amongst them would casually gut a human being if they felt it served their purposes. Most of them have a code of honor, but this code is constantly undermined by their degeneration into frenzies of butchery and catharsis. They are just as likely to rip out the throat of a child as they are to save it, especially if they've let their anger build up to a fever pitch. They are at turns unreasoning and rational, rigid and flexible, ferocious and cowardly. They humans with the souls of animals or animals trapped in human form.

The mechanics of the game are very simple. As with most Storyteller games, the stats and systems are there to facilitate the story, not to strait-jacket it. They can be discarded at the game master's whim or altered according to circumstance.

Rage, Gnosis and Willpower are the three stats that define the character's passion, spirit and will. Rage is a measure of how angry the character is and it can be used to heal incredible amounts of damage, move at inhuman speeds and shape-shift. Gnosis is the character's connection to the spirit world of Gaia. Willpower is, as always in the WoD series, a measure of the character's resolve. There are five basic forms the werewolves can assume: Homid - the human form; Glabro - neanderthal form (somewhat stronger and tougher); Crinos - the war form, epitomy of a killing machine, so frightening that 'normal' humans run away screaming and gibbering at the sight of it; Hispo - the 'big' wolf form; Lupus - the wolf form.

It sounds complex at first, but once you get to understand the mechanics of shape-shifting, rage expenditure and stepping sideways (i.e. entering the spirit world), you find that it's all very basic and consistent. The mechanics are designed to facilitate the fast-paced, visceral nature of the game and they excellently convey both the raw power that the werewolves possess and their anguish over their inability to affect change.

Ultimately, the game works on many different levels. It's a bummer that a lot of players tweak characters that are Uber Killing Machines With Large Cocks, but this happens with every game system. Fortunately, there is enough substance to the game to attract slightly more witted players and the immediacy and urgency of the issues and conflicts that the game deals with can lead to some profound, thought-provoking sessions. There's something for everyone in this game, for every type of gamer. The combat-twink can build an Ahroun Get of Fenris with huge claws and bulging muscles, the artistic sort can go for a Galliard, the rules-lawyer can make a Philodox (just kidding!), the spiritual hippie-chick can play a Theurge Child of Gaia and that hyperactive teenager that hangs around the fringes of your gaming group in hopes of getting laid can play an annoying Ragabash Bonegnawer with a life expectancy of ten minutes.

Check it out, kids. It's fun stuff.

Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 4 (Meaty)

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