The Inside Scoop on Gaming

The old west is certainly gaining popularity these days, at least among gamers. The runaway success of Deadlands has prompted several other companies to develope their own twist on the Western genre.

One book that was actually in the works well before Deadlands is Werewolf: the Wild West.

The book starts with a bit of fiction wherin a bunch of Werewolves (Garou, as they call themselves) explaining the way of the world to a youngster who just discovered his "were-ness." The fiction is interspersed with newspaper clippings relating to the events being related in the story. After that, the book breaks down into the standard WW format; Introduction, Setting, Storytelling, Rules, Character Creation, Traits, The Sorm Umbra, Systems, and Drama.

I wanted to like this game. I really did. But, sadly, WW has dropped the ball in a huge way. For starters, I have trouble figuring out who their target audience was with this book. Fans of Werewolf: The Apocalypse? Then why bother filling four fifths of the book with the same material that is found in W:tA? Fans of the western genre? Then the least they could do is spend a bit more time talking about the west; in the Setting chapter, there are seven pages that deal with the history of the west itself, and later, two pages (!) speaking about geography. The bulk of the background info in the book is centered on Garou society, which, again, most of us know from earlier books. In fact, in many places, the text appears to have been pasted entirely with a global replace done to switch you for "y'all" (okay, that's a small exageration, but only a small one).

The differences in Garou society in the Wild West as opposed to Apocalypse can be summed up as follows: All the same Tribes are around except that the Wendigo a still alive and the Glass Walkers are called the Iron Riders. The Wendigo and the Uktena hate all the other tribes because they came over with the White Man and have brought the Wyrm to the new world. The Black Spirals are still around, and as ugly as ever. And Fomori are now called Mockeries.

There. Could have saved them a lot of space.

The book seems to be heavily weighted (and I mean heavily - it's 296 pages hardbound) towards character generation. There are a grand total of 13 pages dedicated to describing the foes of the Garou, and one-third of those are devoted to the Black Spiral Dancers and Mockeries.

(An additional aside; throughout what little bit of background text they included, they casually mention the Pinkerton Detective Agency, which is just fine, since the Pinkertons were a real and visible part of the Old West, but in the Antagonists section, they introduce the Armbruster Detective Agency, which is mentioned nowhere else in the book. One wonders; did they see how prominent a role Pinkertons played in Deadlands and decide to change the name so they wouldn't appear to be copying?)

Speaking of character generation (I was, just above there, remember?), The Merits and Flaws that became so popular with WW players are absent. Presumably, this will be remedied in a Player's Guide, but why? Vampire: The Dark Ages included them in the main book, so why couldn't this one? This is just another feature that makes it seem like they just swapped out some of the text from the second edition Apocalypse book.

In conclusion, If you want to run a western game with werewolves, get out your Time-Life "Old West" books for reference, and use the orignal Werewolf rules. That's what _they_ did.

Or better yet, just get Deadlands.

Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 2 (Sparse)

Werewolf: The Wild West
Author: Justin Achilli and Ethan Skemp Category: game Company/Publisher: White Wolf Game Studio Reviewed by Lee Garvin on 06/23/97. Genre tags: none	The old west is certainly gaining popularity these days, at least among gamers. The runaway success of Deadlands has prompted several other companies to develope their own twist on the Western genre. One book that was actually in the works well before Deadlands is Werewolf: the Wild West. The book starts with a bit of fiction wherin a bunch of Werewolves (Garou, as they call themselves) explaining the way of the world to a youngster who just discovered his "were-ness." The fiction is interspersed with newspaper clippings relating to the events being related in the story. After that, the book breaks down into the standard WW format; Introduction, Setting, Storytelling, Rules, Character Creation, Traits, The Sorm Umbra, Systems, and Drama. I wanted to like this game. I really did. But, sadly, WW has dropped the ball in a huge way. For starters, I have trouble figuring out who their target audience was with this book. Fans of Werewolf: The Apocalypse? Then why bother filling four fifths of the book with the same material that is found in W:tA? Fans of the western genre? Then the least they could do is spend a bit more time talking about the west; in the Setting chapter, there are seven pages that deal with the history of the west itself, and later, two pages (!) speaking about geography. The bulk of the background info in the book is centered on Garou society, which, again, most of us know from earlier books. In fact, in many places, the text appears to have been pasted entirely with a global replace done to switch you for "y'all" (okay, that's a small exageration, but only a small one). The differences in Garou society in the Wild West as opposed to Apocalypse can be summed up as follows: All the same Tribes are around except that the Wendigo a still alive and the Glass Walkers are called the Iron Riders. The Wendigo and the Uktena hate all the other tribes because they came over with the White Man and have brought the Wyrm to the new world. The Black Spirals are still around, and as ugly as ever. And Fomori are now called Mockeries. There. Could have saved them a lot of space. The book seems to be heavily weighted (and I mean heavily - it's 296 pages hardbound) towards character generation. There are a grand total of 13 pages dedicated to describing the foes of the Garou, and one-third of those are devoted to the Black Spiral Dancers and Mockeries. (An additional aside; throughout what little bit of background text they included, they casually mention the Pinkerton Detective Agency, which is just fine, since the Pinkertons were a real and visible part of the Old West, but in the Antagonists section, they introduce the Armbruster Detective Agency, which is mentioned nowhere else in the book. One wonders; did they see how prominent a role Pinkertons played in Deadlands and decide to change the name so they wouldn't appear to be copying?) Speaking of character generation (I was, just above there, remember?), The Merits and Flaws that became so popular with WW players are absent. Presumably, this will be remedied in a Player's Guide, but why? Vampire: The Dark Ages included them in the main book, so why couldn't this one? This is just another feature that makes it seem like they just swapped out some of the text from the second edition Apocalypse book. In conclusion, If you want to run a western game with werewolves, get out your Time-Life "Old West" books for reference, and use the orignal Werewolf rules. That's what _they_ did. Or better yet, just get Deadlands. Style: 4 (Classy and well done) Substance: 2 (Sparse)

Werewolf: The Wild West