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Werewolf stands as one of White Wolf's more successful games,
and it did a lot to set the spiritual tone of the World of Darkness
- much more so than Vampire, whose focus was much more insular,
and focused on vampiric society. Werewolf actually went ahead and looked at the World of Darkness - what
was making it such a lousy place to live in. The Garou - werewolves
- are supernatural defenders of the Earth, fighting against the
corruption of the Wyrm and the sterile order of the Weaver. However,
the Garou have been making mistakes for the last few millenia,
and now, as the Apocalypse approaches, the Garou's numbers are
low and they're fighting a losing battle. The only hope is that
the Tribes of the Garou can mend the ties that they've broken
and unite against the Wyrm. Otherwise, the Apocalypse will destroy
the Garou, and most of the earth along with them.
Werewolf is also one of those games that made me initially grit
my teeth and shake my head, alternately. While it is an interesting
game, it suffers from a number of problems, some of which will
hopefully be fixed in the Revised edition of the game coming out
soon. Besides suffering from the perception of being an all-combat
game, rabid stereotyping, and a somewhat crippling sense of hopelessness,
Werewolf also springs from the early Nineties, when tree-hugging
hippie crap ruled the field. At points, Werewolf gave me the impression
that it was the insufferable Captain Planet in role-playing form.
It isn't, to be sure, but the game can lapse into straw-man villains
and self-importance.
In any case: Going by the main book, the PCs are Garou, from the
Thirteen Tribes, who have existed since prehistoric times. Their
society is stratified into different levels of ranking and birth.
The phase of the moon under which you're born actually determines
what role you'll take, whether it's a judge, or a bard, or a warrior.
And your point of origin - human, wolf, or the product of a Garou/Garou
mating - also determines what you're like. And then therre's your
tribe, which encompasses a rough stereotype to play to, or against.
So, once you've finished, you'll have something like the below.
Play with the drop lists below; generate your own Garou. You'll
pardon the unsubtle use of HTML, I hope.
You could be a: |
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Is this a good thing? It can be. It provides an immediate hook
for those who aren't familiar with role-playing; if you want a
character who likes telling stories, then you can have a Galliard,
and if you want to boot in some head, you can play an Ahroun.
If you're looking for a more subtle role-playing experience, then
take a Ragabash, or a Theurge, or a Philodox - trickster, shaman
and judge, respectively. While the Ahroun - warriors - tend to
shade towards the combat game, the other Auspices can be played
as more than just the stereotypical grab-something-and-kill-it
school of role-playing.
But it also takes away from possibilities, too. If you're an Ahroun,
you're expected to fight; if you're a Philodox, you're supposed
to be a judge. There's a fair amount of possibility within the
different Auspices, but if you have a character concept that doesn't
fit, you'll either have to ignore the Auspice system or figure
out how to shoehorn what you do into a particular mold. One of
the themes mentioned in the original Werewolf Player's Guide is
that Garou culture is repressive - that's one of the challenges
of being a Garou, to balance out the demands of being a shapeshifter
with being a normal human, or a normal wolf. It's a role-playing
challenge, but it's not necessarily one that I'm overwhelmingly
fond of.
There's also the addition of breed forms - what you were before
you Changed for the first time. Humans and wolves have it relatively
easy, although wolf characters can't take certain skills. The
ones who really have it bad are the Metis, who are the product
of a forbidden Garou/Garou coupling; every Metis character has
a deformity of some kind, marking them in Garou society and turning
them into quasi-outcasts within their own society. On the other
hand, they're able to detect the Wyrm, and they're naturally in
the Garou war form. They're a nice addition to the game.
The game starts sliding into being almost silly when you hit the
Thirteen Tribes, though; it's here where the bulk of the stereotypes
live. The Bone Gnawers are street bums, the Shadow Lords are mustache-twirling
villains, the Get of Fenris are Schwarzenegger-esque German/Norse
butt-kickers, the Fianna are hard-drinking, jolly Irish stereotypes
- there's even the word "laddie" in their tribal quote. Some might
like that; me, I thought that it was about a step away from just
having the Fianna tribe eternally trying to get their Lucky Charms
away from the Wyrm.
At the same time, some of the tribes have more potential. The
Uktena and the Wendigo are left over from the European colonization
of the Americas; one continues to tend the sleeping monsters of
the new continent, while the other tends to its wounds and tries
to drive out the European settlers. The Silent Striders, exiled
from their homeland, wander the earth and the Shadowlands, bringing
news of the Wyrm to different Garou caerns. The Stargazers are
mystics and martial artists, the philosophers of the Garou. The
Glass Walkers have adapted to the world of Man, as cyber-wolves,
street thugs, and even Mafia dons. (Yeah, it's stereotypical,
but there's more to the Glass Walkers than just the Mafia Don
/ cyberpunk stereotype.) The Silver Fangs, while nominally the
heroes and leaders of the Garou nation, have been interbreeding
for so long that the average Silver Fang has a mental instability
or two. The Red Talons, an all-wolf tribe, are slowly dying, and
advocate for a return to the Impergium - when the Garou culled
the ranks of humans in order to keep them under control. There
are interesting concepts to be found here, or stereotypes that
can be fleshed out into something more.
Besides the ability to regenerate astonishing amounts of damage
every turn, boost their physical attribtues by changing into a
Crinos war-form, act more than once in a turn with Rage, and inflict
aggravated damage with teeth and claws, the Garou also have assorted
mystic abilities that are given to them by assorted spirits. At
early levels, they aren't much; towards the higher levels, you're
doing stuff like causing localized earthquakes, creating a shadow
pack of other Garou, turning your fur into silver, and the like.
A lot of these powers seem explicitly comic-bookish, like a Black
Fury power that lets you shoot your claws, something like darts,
or a paralyzing stare, or the ability to turn invisible, or having
the trees in a local area come alive to fight on your side. Others
seem to draw their inspiration from mythic folklore, like being
able to run for three days straight, or summon a fire spirit for
a single task, or keep an eye on the Umbra - the spirit world
- at all times. In a sense, that's one of the major impressions
that I get from Werewolf - it can't decide whether it wants to be about comic book werewolves
fighting evil, or a primitive tribe of shapeshifters who are stranded
in a world that's passed them by.
There's also rituals for the Garou, and this is meant to convey
some of the atmosphere of Garou culture. I was going to complain
that the Rites are wasted space, but they really aren't - although
there 's one Rite of Punishment too many, there are a lot of good
rites here, and they suggest a lot about Garou culture that isn't
explicitly spelled out.
What is spelled out, in great detail, is the Umbra - the "spirit
world" that rests right next to our own. There's actually several
different layers to the whole thing, much like Planes in AD&D;
there's the Penumbra, which mirrors our own, as well as a dozen
or so different Umbral realms which have their own physical laws.
There's a lot of stuff that can be explored beyond the real world,
including visits to Pangaea - where dinosaurs still exist - and
the Scar, an industrial hell. Nothing is described in any tremendous
detail, but there's enough to give a GM enough of an idea to wing
it. The ranks of spirits, their kind and power, are described;
and, most importantly, it's here that the Triat is described for
the first. If you're wondering what the Wyrm is, here's the short
form: The Wyld spits stuff out at random, the Weaver shapes it
into something, and the Wyrm destroys anything that's outlived
its usefulness; but the Weaver became sentient, and then went
mad, and the Wyrm was caught and corrupted itself. Now, the Weaver
tries to industrialize the entire world while the Wyrm does what
it can to corrupt and destroy everything in its path. Therefore,
it's up to the Wyld, the Garou and their allies, to fight the
Wyrm to a standstill, and, someday, restore it to its proper place
of balance. (How the Weaver got out of control when 70% of the
Earth is covered with water, most cities are small, and where
every city worthy of the name has areas of forest isn't explained;
this was written back when concern for the environment trumped
common sense. And don't give me that "It's the World of Darkness"
schtick, either.)
There's also rules for spirits. I found these confusing, mostly
because Spirits seem to have one of the weirdest combat mechanics
in the World of Darkness. Besides having points for Rage, Willpower,
Gnosis and Power, they've got access to special Charms - abilities
which let them throw fire, or ice, or sense a forest, or possess
a being, or what have you. However, in order to use these powers,
they burn up a set amount of Power - one point of Power for two
dice worth of fire, or something along those lines. And damaging
them also reduces the amount of Power that they've got in reserve.
So, in short, spirits can kick the hell out of themselves by using
Charms, as well as being hit by various enemies. I have absolutely
no idea how to run a combat between a Garou and a spirit, 'cause
the book doesn't explain how often a spirit will use its Charms
vs. its Rage, or simple materialization. If anything needs fixing
in the rules - or a convenient explanation somewhere else - this
is it.
Werewolf also introduced a rough form of experience system - as well as
gaining experience for playing, Garou PCs gain points in Honor,
Glory and Wisdom; once you top all three out, by performing various
actions. Whack a Black Spiral Dancer? Five Glory. Learn the Silver
Record completely? Seven Honor and eight Wisdom. Serve a sept
loyally for a year? Gain a few points in each of them. You can
also lose Renown just as quickly by screwing up, so there's consequences
for actions that don't aid the Garou Nation. It's an interesting
concept, and it fits in well with the game, but I'd rather stick
with White Wolf's system; it's nice to have a second system involved
for determining who did just what in terms of glory, but that
seems like the kind of thing that'd best be done with role-playing.
The system itself is pretty decent. Although it isn't always played
as such, combat is a big part of Werewolf; the system keeps up quite nicely.The basic system consists of
rolling a set number of ten-sided dice and looking for results
of seven or over. Every dice above that number counts as a success,
and the number of successes determines how successful you were.
The combat system is pretty nice too, although I've found that
it slows down to a crawl in an online game. I've also been told
that combats in Werewolf tend towards solid hits, with instant
death, or a glancing hit that's swiftly regenerated in no time
flat. I've had difficulty with spiritual combat, as mentioned
above, but the average gaming group probably won't have the same
kind of trouble.
The final chapter details antagonists, ranging from the relatively
harmless - vampires and the Inqusition - to the ubiquitous fomori,
humans who have been twisted into monstrous forms by Bane spirits.
There's also the Black Spiral Dancers, an entire tribe of werewolves
who have been warped by the Wyrm into hideous mockeries of the
Garou form. If that isn't enough, there's also a host of spirits
in the Umbra who need beatings, for one reason or another. Rounding
out the book is a sample caern in Central Park, which has its
own secrets to explore. It'll be a lot more helpful if you actually
live in New York, since some of the things here sound downright
fanciful - Belvedere Castle? I'm sure that it exists, but it doesn't
really have the same kind of local kick that it would to somebody
who actually has been to, or lives in, New York.
So, in the final anaylsis, what is Werewolf? It's two games. One of them is a comic-book style game about
fighting the evil minions of the Wyrm and saving the world; the
other is about a dying race, and its struggles to survive, and
a tribal culture that's slowly dying as the world leaves it behind.
You can do one or the other; the book is written for both. But
as it's written, it's confusing, unsure of what it really wants
to be, and that hurts it.
The art is pretty decent; some of it is utterly wretched (cough
cough cough SCAR cough cough), while the rest of it gets the job
done. There's a lot of finely shaded artwork by the inestimable
Ron Spenser, whose vision looks like it came from a richly gray
Hell, and a fight between two of the game's signature characters
running through the entire combat section, the characters splashed
across the entire page. It doesn't exactly catch the atmosphere
of Werewolf, but it does the trick.
Apropos to nothing, I'll give negative points for the conversion
rules for Renown from first to second edition Werewolf. The old version of Renown, in the first edition, had Glory scores
listed in thousands of points, or something along those lines;
you got 2,000 Glory and 5,000 Honor for an action, rather than
1 Glory and 2 Honor. However, the suggestion given in Werewolf 2nd ed is that you check the Renown charts in the first edition
of Werewolf and then figure out how close the old, 1st edition
amount gets you to a new rank of Glory. In other words, figure
out what 5,000 Glory in the old system equates to in the new system.
Which is easy.
IF YOU OWN WEREWOLF: 1st EDITION.
Otherwise, you'd be better off just translating the Renown in
the old supplements by checking the charts provided in Werewolf:
2nd Ed.
Anyways, would I recommend it? Yes, especially to beginning role-players;
it's got the stratification, easy motives, mechanized advancement
sytem and heavy combat that younger and/or beginning players like;
and, if there are older gamers in the group, they can take advantage
of the more subtle issues behind Werewolf. The books on the other Changing Breeds, ranging from weresnakes
to werespiders to wereravens, offer a lot more, and there's more
stuff coming out every day. Obviously, I'd wait until the Revised
edition is out, but if you can't wait, then I can recommend this
product.
-Darren MacLennan
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