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Werewolf: The Apocalypse review...
“... We are, all of us, Garou, of wolf and human blood both. But we come from three different breeds. Some are born homid, of human parents, not knowing their blessing or the truth of their blood. Tainted with evil, the crimes of their people are theirs to bear. Some are born lupis, of wolf blood, wild in spirit and form, knowing only fear and hate of the silent death. They are pure as the forest, but they understand little of the city. Some are born metis, of Garou parents, deformed in soul and form, a bastard who was not meant to be....” (p. 105, “Breeds,” Werewolf: The Apocalypse, First Edition.)
Werewolf, I feel, was developed as an intentional counterpoint to the role that humanity plays in the Original World of Darkness game, Vampire. With the setting describing a very modern (post-modern?) world of long-cast shadows and urban dungeons, the role of the natural world go short-changed. The early ‘Nineties had some great moments of roleplaying, each moment was more like those before it, rarely struggling beyond the fantasy-styled hero (yes, cyberpunk is fantasy folks). The crew at White Wolf set down a path using monster archetypes to make for better gaming. Each supernatural element from myth and folklore was given a modern twist, giving an old monster-of-the-week gaming audience some monster-as-the-main-character action. Sadly, though, the setting was merely a veneer—little more detail than could be covered a catch-phrase of “Gothic-Punk.” The urban sprawl lack definition beyond gritty, and nature was painted black.
Enter the Werewolf. Werewolves represented a voice for nature that she couldn’t have otherwise—the archetypical rescuer of a damsel in distress. Whereas vampires represented the core of human evolution, build to a point where things maintain themselves through social inertia—nurture taken to an extreme. Vampire’s characters were defined socially, as their actions were elements of social contention, why else the masquerade, beyond social preservation of an assumed identity.
Werewolf covered the destruction of the social identity—the core of one’s identity given over to the werewolf pack and tribe. As characters awoke the wolf within, the identity that he or she understood was torn away by the tearing of sinew and shifting of new muscles. As the wolf emerged, the human was consumed, until all that remained was a hybrid identity, stuck between these two worlds—the world of man and the world of Gaia.
It was these two extremes that gave Werewolf scope to its savage horror. The savage nature, as defined by the lack of humanity or the reversal of human nature to control nature, of the werewolf was given the unnatural task of controlling nature and the expansion of humans into the natural world. With their penchant for combat, werewolves battled their dual natures while battling the forces that sought to destroy the very world itself.
Okay, so it doesn’t play that simple in Werewolf, as the werewolf of legend is mixed haphazardly with the sullenness of a disenfranchised people (the Native American Indians). The result is a very haunting game, where hyper-violence overshadows the quiet call of a beckoning, natural world.
Werewolf started off its existence as a “Storytelling Game of Lycanthropy,” which is stated on the copyright page of the first book. While the game progressed beyond that simple depiction, it would always be plagued by the underlining need to showcase the other shifters in a game for werewolves.
This review tries to look at the books making up the core rulebooks of Werewolf: The Apocalypse, by using Werewolf itself as a lens through which to see how it unfolded.
Wyld...
“... Renown is very important to Garou. Without it, they are unable to move upward in their society and find it difficult to establish a permanent dominance within it. Renown is gained simply through the normal course of events, as it is a reflection of others’ attitudes about you. However, it can actively be sought as well. Garou will sometimes seek out circumstances and events that will help them build Renown...” (p. 170, “Building Renown,” Werewolf: The Apocalypse, First Edition.)
The first editions of White Wolf’s Original World of Darkness books were oversized paperback rulebooks that packaged the theme-focused supernatural creature for gamers to pick up. Werewolf’s first book featured a die-cut cover that gave the impression that a battle had gone into the book, even if this great reduced the book’s appearance after several trips to and from the bookshelf. Like the other first editions, the book packed in the fledgling Gothic-Punk elements and tried not to let the modern world sensibilities get in the way. The tone of the book was rushed, heady exploration into the underpinnings of what made up a monster—here, a werewolf.
Werewolves in the book began developing from typical folklore and Hollywood versions of le loup-garou, skin-changers. Stripping away the need to pull new skins on, but keeping a Hollywood moon fascination, Werewolf took its characters to odd developed points as the new warriors for the world itself. A battle form, Crinos, was generated and other hybrid forms came from the five phases of the moon—which also gave Garou, as these werewolves call themselves, a place in their own society.
Using moon phases as character roles was a nice change from the bulk of mythos surrounding werewolves. The face the moon revealed to the character at his or her birth tainted their selection of sept roles and their place along the path to glory. A new moon, no light, gave its character to the role of questioner of the ways; while the full moon, maximum light, granted the unbridled rage to the warriors of the Garou—the other roles bridged the distance between the two.
It was this shift of folklore that gave Werewolf its unique setting of warriors in the last days of the world, but the additions to the werewolf legend was dubious at the beginning as the lack of detail could have shortened the impact on the characters. With the werewolves world made up of three entities that basically became unhinged as time progressed, the Garou were embedded in a war with the basic foundations of their own cosmos. The Wyld was the force of creation, unbriddled; the Weaver was the form of stasis and understanding and the Wyrm was the force of entropy and destruction. In order to better do its role, the Wyrm took to destroying the Weaver as it took to madness and began paving the world. The Wyld raged on as the two, stasis and destruction, warred on. Gaia, the World Spirit, tasked her warriors to fighting the Wyrm, seen as the worst of the Triat. These warring elements are also made manifest within the Garou themselves, as they are characters of two worlds, tasked to save one, possibly at the cost of excluding the other. Garou are both spirit and flesh.
The very creative take on the werewolf probably took some gamers by surprise, as they were only expecting war machines of fury and sound, not a robust nature of which to find conflict and challenge. Werewolf filled the book with a host of spirit powers, reflecting the “new” werewolf, as well as a host of items and action for the player to try and gain as their characters grew.
However, do to the way the book presents itself its was very hard to get a grasp on the theme of Werewolf at the beginning. The book was filled with a host of layout issues—like the multiple page flipping for the character’s gifts. The book was unclear as to the nature of the Garou as the descriptions became clearer after the game was published.
Werewolf took a leap forward in changing the way a person perceived the role of werewolf, war and nature. As the game line moved forward, it became clear that these roles would need better shaping, even if they undercut the better parts of the setting.
Weaver...
“... The Litany is a complex and often convoluted thing, but its intricacies serve the purpose of poetry moreso than pontification. Practical application of the Litany is much simpler than the hours-long chants of the Fianna would seem to indicate. The Garou are a fairly straightforward people and have little patience with convoluted legal maneuvering. In most cases, a violator of the Litany is well aware of the consequences of his actions...” (p. 33, “The Litany,” Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Second Edition.)
While the framing comic story gave an inkling of what a Garou’s life could be, it doesn’t touch on all that such a life could contain. The Garou lacked a strong base from which to strike out, just as the first edition shows, so in this edition took a stronger stance on the nature of the werewolf. The roles of Garou had grown with the wealth of supplements that spanned the growing game line, the enemy had been refined in its own book, so the werewolves needed more of a go at their war this time, in its die-cut hardcover.
This edition of Werewolf did offer better understanding into the roles that Garou Nation hoped that its septs would take. The roles gained more, and improved, gifts and broader descriptions that allowed players to get into the mind set of the dual natured character. The spirit world gained a better prominence as did Renown—which was greatly strengthen by revising the Renown point system between editions.
Touched on topically was the nature of the werewolf in this game, as the book needed to give enemies stats and abilities space to be abused by players on a war-wolf kick. The very dualistic nature of werewolves, taken to a degree of savage horror (not splatterpunk-horor, notice), tried to incorporate the previous editions strengths without cleaning up a number of its weaknesses, the one I kept disliking was the needless page flipping of the werewolf gifts.
Savage horror became Werewolf’s theme, a counterpoint to the horrific styling of Vampire. The tone of the displaced nation of would-be/would-have-been heroes is drifting in a vast gauntlet of creepy verisimilitude of B-grade horror. Characters became hard pressed to not have killer chins or wonky one-liners. Not saying that this edition wasn’t fun to play, or hack-and-gore a way through endless enemies that are in fact part of the same whole that made the main characters in the first place, their nature versus the Garou’s nature in one battle for who gets eaten first.
A sad facet of the werewolves in this edition is that the savagery that was hinted at in the first book took comic-like directions in this one. The framing comic was just a hint of that hokey-heroism, tentacle-horror that comics often bring to the table, so to speak. Werewolf didn’t need a visual story, so much as it needed a complete story that hooked the reader to get out of the chair and throw a couple of characters into harm’s way (or the nearest maw of the Wyrm).
Luckily, several of the authors hooked on other, if smaller, facets of the Garou’s plight and made up for this editions high-handed (or is that backhanded) heroism. A character’s dual nature unfolded with a rage frenzy in front of their kinfolk and broke them away from the identity that they once held so dear. Comic-book heroes, while great in their own right, didn’t unhinge the role that the Garou had fated for them, it just took another edition to set the scales right.
Wyrm...
“... Now, the characters need not always triumph. Werewolf is naturally a game chock full of Pyrrhic victories, and Gaia’s warriors are constantly on the defensive against impossible odds. But the triumphs and the tragedies should generally be the result of what the characters did or did not do, not Storyteller deus ex machina...” (p. 251-252, “Climax and Resolution,” Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Third Edition.)
Just as the comic-book heroes are beaten out of the wolf in Werewolf’s third edition, so to are some of the tribes that make up the Garou Nation. The End Times, they say, are nigh—so this edition highlights the changes to the shape-shifters that the coming Apocalypse brings. Namely, a change in the rank and file headed off to war with the Wyrm.
The amount of war themes that have crept in, hell charged in headlong, is not a silent component in describing the make-up of the characters in this edition. The werewolves are warriors, started off as such, will die as such, so what else could we expect from the last revision to the game line’s core rules?
Luckily, with a change in the rank and file, a shift in tactics on fighting the Wyrm and its allies occurs. The numbers of warriors dwindle and the fires in many warriors’ hearts goes out. A sad fact of war, those wanting it most often don’t live to see it’s end and those who want it least, survive to see the results and casualties. This edition’s werewolf is not just a creature of Gnosis and Rage, but of the final ranks to lift a spear against the heavens.
This edition marks the beginning of the end for the Original World of Darkness Werewolf. It bears out all that a player would need to face the end as a wolf of war. Sadly, the finer points that made Werewolf a fun game get swept under by minor points or overshadowed by the new, urgent tone. It’s too late to save the world, just get ready to fight for it. Within the context of the Time of Judgment, it’s a fitting mood. One that readers familiar with Werewolf’s more aggressive tones might have mistaken for rehashing of the original game’s hunt-and-rend feeling.
Not a bad work, but the game’s dueling with itself in presentation. A werewolf in this edition gets selected into a new order that is adapting themselves; while the character flounders, so to is his or her world—septs are rocked by the Stargazer’s departure from the Garou Nation, the Wyrm is getting stronger and there is no more hope in many eyes. The duel within the dual nature, here, is paramount. With an identity ripped away at the First Change, the social identity is being broken into bits as wells as many are not yet ready to face the final days as they should have.
It’s good of this edition to allow so many opportunities for a character to grow into the role of the Last Warrior, but it’s also a missed opportunity for werewolves to branch into a more meaningful role than combat weary, rage-fueled fighters that happen to be stuck between two worlds. I enjoyed this edition very much of the three core rule books, but looking back over the text, feel that the specter of both its previous editions and the drawing closer to the Garou’s End Times cut away from a nice way to explore the dual nature of heroism in a savage world.
Apocalypse...
“... The pack is the most important concept to a Werewolf character. The pack is a fundamental unit in Garou society, just as the family is meant to be among humans. Playing a member of a group as tighly bound as a pack can be difficult for the more rebellious among us, but such rebel spirits can serve to make the process all the more interesting...” (p. 83, “The Pack,” Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Second Edition.)
Werewolf, for me, holds the best memories of the Original World of Darkness. Times of fighting nameless creatures, the were-others, and various humorous and touching moments, come back to me as I reflect on the times I spent as a player in a friend’s troupe. The very act of storytelling Werewolf became times of mirth and shotgunning cans of Mountain Dew with a “Tell Me A Story!” cheers.
It’s hard to go back to those times, and even the werewolves of the setting can have empathy. Once, these creatures held sway over humans, and kept their developments in check. Now, those times are past and all that remains with them is a terrifying memory that causes humans to shake in fear and forget that werewolves exist. The werewolves here are as lost as the humans, trapped in a role that they couldn’t chose, couldn’t fight, so their feelings of being trapped and confined makes them boundless creatures of rage.
Werewolf is fully trapped by its “gothic-punk” setting, as the game line aged, it grew strength and tested the cage that the first edition put it in. While the setting felt limited, the game grew strength as the supplements began to step beyond the tiny moments of definition, but these new sources of ideas came with the heavy hand of metaplot and tired signature characters. Werewolf started trapped and ended jaded, as the warriors of the world began to feel the unending wars drag their spirits into the ground.
Werewolf longed to be more than just about shadowy monsters and sick aberrations of the Wyrm, but it was fated to end in a terrible way. Should every gamer run out and save this classic of Savage Horror, probably not, as not every gamer would want to explore the possibilities that are within themselves should they be placed in the cage.
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