Author: White wolfers
Category: game
Company/Publisher: White Wolf
Line: Werewolf Wild west
Cost: £30 from leisure games
Capsule Review by Stephen Joseph Ellis on 10/25/00.
Genre tags: Horror Old West Gothic

Overview of the Werewolf the Wild West product line

INTRODUCTION

Fortunately this overview will be somewhat shorter than my L5R work. Having recently bought Leisure Games' cheap Wuffle:Wild West (henceforward WWW) it consists of only 5 official products. Namely the titular rulebook, the GM's screen and Secrets book called 'Frontier Secrets', the 'Wild West Companion', 'Tales from the Trails: Mexico' and the Wraith crossover 'Ghost Towns'. A period poker deck was also produced but is eye candy instead of a true supplement. There also exists a Deadlands crossover trilogy of 'dime novels' written by PEG's Matt Forbeck called 'Under a Harrowed Moon'.

The WW books share similar brown-wood covers, are largely well produced (though a few typos and page XX's occur. After all it wouldn't be a Werewolf product if they didn't have p.XX's). By and large the writing is competent but not inspired.

SETTING

WWW is set in Americas old West between 1827 and 1890. Termed the Savage West, it nominally concerns itself with the struggle of the many tribes of werewolves (or Garou as WW likes to call them) with themselves, and the evil 'Storm eater' a mighty spirit who brings death and destruction to the earth. Despite this supernatural element (and unlike Deadlands) WW keep to real life history fairly accurately. Therefore we have cattle barons, brave settlers, desperate miners and ambitious railroad projects. Cowboys and cavalry skirmish with Indians and as they do, European werewolves fight with native Indian werewolves over the spiritual sites of the West. Needless to say, WWW shares the original Werewolf the Apocalypse thirteen 'tribes' of Garou, the 5 different moon-auspices and the 3 different breeds. It has lengthy tribal customs, vast multitudes of magic powers (Gifts) and the usual group views and prejudices.

RULES

WWW also inherits the 2nd ed. Werewolf system, a refinement of the now ubiquitous WW Storyteller system. Character generation is points driven and with all the choices and details required it can take up to an hour or more. The Storyteller systems uses d10's exclusively and players roll dice equal to the total of their relevant ability and score. Those dice that exceed a difficulty number given by the GM count as successes, the number of which measure the overall success of the action. I should note that because Garou gain substantial attribute advantages from their different shapes and powers, its not uncommon to see players rolling 10 or so dice, leading to 'lag-time' as they count their successes. Combat is very complicated compared to D&D as people must first see if they hit, if their opponent dodges, how much damage they generate and how much damage their opponent can soak or ignore. Various maneuvers and Gifts further complicate the system until any excitement or drama generated from the fight is drowned out by the endless succession of throwing buckets of dice. This is a pity, because of all the Storyteller systems, combat occurs the most with Werewolf.

MAIN RULEBOOK

The main WWW book is a fairly hefty tome of nearly 300 yellowed pages punctuated by a bullet hole. It has all the basic rules, background and adventure ideas and makes for a competent read. Unfortunately I feel the designers paid too much attention to converting Werewolf and including its rage and angst to actually making the setting come alive. You wont find inspiring leaders, insidious evils or western grit in here. Instead the Garou seem to be monumentally stupid as neither European or Indian werewolves communicate with each other, instead despoiling each others spiritual sites, thus allowing the archenemy and spirit of evil, the Wyrm to prosper. Something that apparently the Garou have a divine mission to prevent. I sometimes get the idea that WW is trying to make a dangerous real life point here about race relations, and individually how we can get blinded to greater evils by pride and relatively petty squabbles. I say dangerous because I don't believe the game is made for fun or entertaining by real life social comment, nor am I sure its the appropriate arena for such a discussion.

The good news is that you really only need the rulebook and some knowledge of the western setting to play a campaign. Unfortunately the material fails to come alive in the same way as Deadlands brings its Weird West to life, or L5R brings to its setting. I think the problem isn't just politically correct, uninspired writing, but trying to fit angsty werewolves into self-confident Clint-style gunslingers boots. While you can dress a Garou up in a dusty Stetson and poncho, he knows that he's still doomed to the Wyrms eventual victory and Apocalypse, and more often turns into a giant wolf man and rips people apart instead of pulling his irons. I actually think they could have done better if they had used this setting for Mage, or even Hunter.

Having discussed the main rulebook, lets now turn to the Frontier Secrets product. The GM's screen itself has serviceable information on the back, but an atrocious picture of bright green and purple fomori (wyrm corrupted humans) on the front. Its sheer bizareness reminds me more of Deadlands than WWW. The booklet you get with the book is surprisingly good, filled with info on the other supernaturals in the West. We are given usable rules for generating other Changing Breeds (such as were-ravens, were-cougars and coyote) and a passel of Gifts for all. Next comes an overview of the other supernatural critters that WW have written books for, such as Vampires, Mages, Wraiths etc. By and large this is a good section, more enjoyable than the werewolves back in the main rulebook. We also have quite a good villainous organisation that infiltrates and controls a variety of western towns, leading to some nice adventure ideas. Finally we have the expanded timeline of the West, including the destiny of the uber-monster spirit thing 'Storm Eater' and why Garou don't talk about the savage West in the 1990's. Overall this book is essential, giving the ongoing storyline and a little less navel gazing, interesting bad-guys. A real must buy, though a pity about the screen.

The Wild west Companion is one of those pieces that companies produce when they cant think of anything better. It has sections on life in the real west for those too lazy to visit the library, extra character options, merits and flaws, some new spirit monsters and natural animals. It also fills out all the obscure Changing Breeds that you can otherwise safely ignore. In other words its a book that has 'more of the same' to the rulebook. All of the information is nonessential for an imaginative GM. 'Tales from the Trails: Mexico' is a shorter book and concerns itself with the southern border of the US and Mexico. Unusually it has very large margins and big fonts, leading to surprisingly few words per page. Half of those are wasted on the thousand year old history, and boring places that players wont go to. It also represents the last gasp of White Wolfs multi crossover books as it lists all the supernatural creatures in Mexico but uses Werewolf stats. Numerous references are indirectly made to some older material set in Mexico, namely the prehistoric 'Diablerie:Mexico' and 'the Chaos Factor' and its nice to see some of the NPC's 'before they were famous'. The best of the bunch are the vampiric Boot Hill gang whose Assamite leader knows how to make an entrance, tip his hat to ladies, before filling a Garou full of silver. Mummies are slightly extraneous, and the Black Spiral dancers are average snarling villains. Overall a reasonable book, but unnecessary for a good western campaign.

Last of the official WW stuff is 'Ghost Towns' a proper crossover with Wraith the Oblivion. While this requires the GM to own Wraith as well, the book makes up for this by creating 5 spooky, disturbing small towns for the posse to wander into. As I read it I had images of 'the Sixth Sense' (one girl hears dead people), 'American Gothic' (the Sheriff of the town runs a tight ship both here and in the after life) and 'High Plains Drifter' (Risen return to wreak vengeance on the town that killed them.) Because it details locations, people and plots, this makes Ghost Towns the most usable of the books for the busy GM. Also it breaths new life into Wraith, as previously I had always found it to be slightly dissociated from the world as Wraiths battled and politicked in an alternative dimension. With this book, they interact with their former homes, haunt people and make good their mistakes. Brilliant.

Finally, we have 'Under a Harrowed Moon' a crossover trilogy of dime novel adventures with Deadlands. Basically a Garou escapes the Savage West (WWW) and ends up in the Weird West (Deadlands). He then tries to link the two worlds together in order to empower the Werewolf Indians with the abilities of their Weird counterparts. Its written as such that the characters can come from either game and is an amusing fusion of the camp comedy and pulp horror of Deadlands contrasted with the angst and seriousness of WWW. Written by PEG's Matt Forbeck, Deadlands clearly comes off best, though he does an excellent job with the characterization of the Black Spiral Dancers in the second part. Well worth getting if you want to interact with Deadllands, otherwise it will ruin your players angst for the rest of the campaign.

To summarize therefore, if you buy the main rulebook only, you'll have a perfectly serviceable start for a campaign though you'll have to work out the details yourself. Frontier Secrets gives some good villains to fight and Ghost towns some wonderful spooky locales. Mexico and the companion are extraneous and you wont miss anything by not getting them.

CONCLUSION

What then can we say about the WWW gameline? Well its a worthy attempt at a Western genre game, but is burdened slightly by its extensive Garou mythology that distracts from western conventions. Comparing it with other games, then Werewolf the Apocalypse players will find little difference, though its a slightly obscure period. Compared to Deadlands it comes off particularly badly as it lacks the variety (and hope) of that game. Furthermore Deadlands has a stronger 'western' atmosphere, with greater concentration on poker games, high noon showdowns and other staples. Finally, WWW lacks the humour of Deadlands and so becomes a less enjoyable game. If on the other hand you prefer serious, sober minded games that make moral, social and philosophical points, then stick to the original Werewolf with its environmentalism and spirituality. Comparing it with unrelated games its a bit better than Traveller, Mechwarrior and 'Chivalry and Sorcery'. Yet it doesn't quite make the rank of first class games such as Vampire, Cthulhu, or D&D lacking the mix of simple rules, coherent background and sheer enjoyment.

Summing across the games, I give it style rating of 3, despite the margins and attempts at 'western' writing, the Garou background distracts from the western milieu making an uneasy partnership.

For substance, you get a big solid book with all the rules and stuff you need. However it lacks a coherent theme and campaign to play through and so loses out. It also suffers from padding and uninspired ideas with not enough Western cinematic opportunities. Therefore I award it a substance rating of 3 too.

Style: 3 (Average)
Substance: 3 (Average)