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Introduction

But whereas Vampire's reboot wasn't seen to be that dramatically different - although I still feel that it is quite a world away in style - Werewolf: The Forsaken is unlikely to face this criticism. It's a dramatically different setting, with some very different approaches to old concepts.

Layout and Visuals

The book opens with the obligatory game fiction, which does a reasonable job of showing the First Change of a werewolf. The artwork througout the book is stunning. The borders are tidy, and the use of shifting moon phases with the page numbers is a nice graphical touch.

The entire book is tidy and easy to read, using mostly black type with copper coloured sidebar text. This allows for ease of reading with different sections clearly marked out. I also found the heading fonts to be easier to read than those in Requiem.

But enough about the layout, let's talk about what everyone really wants to know...

Setting - The Sins of the Father

Once, as the legend goes, the world's werewolves were its guardians. They were loyal servants of Father Wolf, a mighty spirit that hunted the worlds and meted out punishment to those that broke the ancient bans. Then the first Uratha, the mothers and fathers of the race, committed an unforgivable crime. The other lords of the spirit world cast the Uratha aside, forsaking them. -From page 22 of Werewolf: The Forsaken

The book dives straight into describing the setting. In the beginning Father Wolf, greatest of all the spirits, hunted between the border of the Physical and Spirit worlds - ensuring that no being went too far on either side. Mother Luna, the goddess of the moon, was so enamoured with Father Wolf that she came to him and eventually gave birth to offspring - the Uratha, Werewolves.

Eventually Father Wolf aged, and the Uratha realised that they had to either kill him or allow the spirits to run amok across the physical world. Thus they committed a crime that they felt they could not avoid. The outcome of which that the spirit world rejected the physical - causing a dividing wall to appear between the two. Furthermore, Mother Luna turned her back on the Uratha - cursing them so that silver became an antithesis to the touch.

Eventually Luna forgave the Uratha to a degree, but required them to take up Father Wolf's role. Five tribes were formed, and the Uratha gained auspices, which also lessened the effect of Luna's curse. However most of the spirit world still carried resentment towards the Uratha.

Among their many enemies, the Uratha also have to deal with the Pure Tribes - those Uratha descended from the werewolves who refused to be a part of Father Wolf's demise. These tribes believe that the Uratha are degenerate werewolves and must be eradicated. They have not been forgiven by Luna, and as such cannot even stand to touch silver.

The modern day setting builds from this legend, presenting a number of spirit enemies for the Uratha to face, and emphasising the fact that the Forsaken are outnumbered.

To deal with the numerous spirit enemies, the five tribes form into packs - essentially the player groups - which are the tightest of bonds. Werewolves first loyalty is to their pack, which sets up its own territory and then defends it. Within this territory - be it a city block, a forest or a floor in a tenament block - the pack must guard the border between the physical and spirit worlds.

Unlike humans, Uratha can cross over into the spirit world; but they can only do so at certain points where the wall between the two worlds is weakened. These points are known as loci - where a particular item is so powerful in spiritual essence it weakens the wall.

Unforunately for a pack, these points are beacons to all manner of spirits and enemies. There are the Azlu - spider hosts - who are beings made up of the shards of spider spirits combining into a larger entity. Azlu like to build their webs around loci so as to trap spirits, ghosts and werewolves to feed on.

Or the Beshilu - Rat Hosts - who are similar, except that they seek to undermine the fabric of the wall so that the spirit world will come crashing through and drown the physical in a flood of horror.

The enemies are numerous and frightening, and even more frightening is the knowledge that the Uratha are still beings of rage, and that their bestial nature can eventually lead to them becoming monsters too...

Character - Building a monster

In character creation terms, the player then adds the werewolf template to their character. But in the setting there is more to it than that. Nobody becomes a werewolf, they simply realise that they always have been, and they just needed to gain enough essence to awaken that spirit side of their being.

When a werewolf is born, she can draw other Uratha to her, the power of her essence and blood calls to them. The book describes how various strange phenomena occur to the pre-change werewolf, things that kind of build up the spiritual pressure and act as signs that a change is about to occur.

Decided by the phase of the moon at their First Change, the newly changed werewolf gains an auspice - a kind of spiritual role within Uratha society.

• Rahu - Full Moon: The warriors of the Uratha. Overrun with fury, these werewolves live for battle and will seek out the Pack's foes. They have the innate ability to measure up the strength and ability of an enemy.
• Cahalith - Gibbous Moon: The Oracles and priests of the Uratha. They seek knowledge and are the spiritual guides of the pack. They have the natural power of prophecy, able to summon up dreams of portent.
• Elodoth - Half Moon: Leaders, diplomats and envoys of the Uratha. The Elodoths often act as the intermediary. They have a natural affinity towards spirits, allowing them to act as go betweens for the pack.
• Ithaeur - Crescent Moon: Masters of rituals and the shamans of the pack, these powerful Uratha have ultimate mastery of the Forsaken's rituals.
• Irraka - New Moon: The scouts and assassins of the Uratha. The Irraka are the cunning tricksters and guides of the Pack. They have an innate knowldge of how to track spirits.

Each of the auspices has a natural ability and a place within the pack. Interestingly, none are natural alphas, allowing for different packs to have different auspice leaders based on the make up of the pack.

Once a werewolf has gained some knowledge of her place in Uratha society, she may choose a tribe to join. While a werewolf's first loyalty is to her pack, the tribe is like an extended family of those who share the same core philosophies. There are five tribes. However a werewolf need not belong to a tribe, and can choose to be a Ghost Wolf - a loner. Ghost Wolves can still belong to packs, and there is no prejudice, but other Uratha will pity the Ghost Wolf for not having a tribe to support her. Especially if anything were to happen to her pack...

The tribes are:

• Blood Talons: Warriors, the Blood Talons believe in the natural order of conflict. They are vengeful and live by the motto of the strongest survive.
• Bone Shadows: Mystical searchers of the underworld and seekers of the unknown. The Bone Shadows are intent on developing strong ties with the spirit world.
• Hunters in Darkness: These werewolves believe that the natural world is sacred, and that it is closer to the eden like savage paradise of Uratha legend. They see humans as cattle who should be kept in check before their careless destruction of the sacred places of the earth upset more spirits into rampaging.
• Iron Masters: Kind of opposite to the Hunters, the Iron Masters believe that the Uratha should be keeping up with the times - crossing the benefits of being a werewolf with the power of modern technology and social change. After all, the Uratha are all partly human... right?
• Storm Lords: The politically minded Uratha who believe that there needs to be leaders, and that they are the ones strong enough to lead The People.

To further allow for more diversity in character concept, each tribe also has a series of lodges - these are camps within each tribe that eschew to even more refined philosophies based upon the overall direction of the tribe. Initiation into a lodge is something that occurs later on in a character's development. Mechanically, lodges are somewhat akin to the concept of bloodlines in Requiem.

Systems - Presenting a unified front

Don't make the mistake in thinking that werewolves are simply vampires with different names for all their abilities - they aren't. But it is clear that there is a unified system at work here and that balance has been considered.

Primal Urge and Harmony

Primal Urge is similar mechanically to Blood Potency in Requiem. It's uses are different, but it effects things like Essence, maximum stats that werewolves can have while in human form and such like. The numbers are the same as for blood potency - meaning that a werewolf of Primal Urge 1 is likely to be of around the same degree of power as a Vampire of Blood Potency 1. Now a storyteller can better scale vampiric opponents to his Werewolf players.

The other aspect of Primal Urge is a little different to potency - as a werewolf's primal urge increases, his aura of "otherness" does as well. This means that humans become more and more unsettled around the werewolf, even when she is in human form. The other element is that at particularly high levels of Primal Urge, the werewolf begins to bleed essence, so strong is their spiritual side that they need to keep close to the spirit world or have their essence bleed away. If the character loses all their essence, they fall into a torpor like state of sleep until they regain their lost essence.

This acts as an interesting control on more powerful werewolves - essentially, elders become limited to certain places like loci to keep themselves from falling into a deep slumber. Thus a pack can have an elder at the locus they guard, but not be completely under the elder's thumb.

Harmony, the other trait, is the morality/humanity of the werewolves. Again, the mechanic is the same as in World of Darkness and Vampire: The Requiem - however it relates to how well the werewolf is being true to its dual nature. Spend too much time as a human, that is a degeneration roll as you lose your link to your shapeshifting nature. Threaten another Uratha with silver, risk a roll. Again, this goes to strengthen the idea of unity that seems to pervade the game.

Shapeshifting, Gifts and Rites

A death rage is a terrifying thing - it is when the Gauru formed werewolf can no longer distinguish the difference between enemy and ally. She will attack anything and everything until she is either brought down or her rage runs out.

But this isn't all that a werewolf has to help her battle the numerous enemies that her pack will have to face.

Werewolves gain a number of special powers known as gifts. These are granted by spirits who have allied with the Uratha or spirits that have been beaten into submission have then agreed to give to the werewolves. Mechanically these, again, work like the powers from other games. Like Disciplines, you pick a list - then the number of dots you have dictate where along the list you can reach. The difference is that gifts are more varied than disciplines. The lists are broader in scope - and some lists are unique to certain auspices, tribes or lodges.

Gifts allow werewolves to see into the spirit world while on the physical, to command people's emotions, to call upon the elements and various other such powers. Most of the gifts are of a very primal nature, which is to be expected given the system. An interesting aspect of gifts is that their rolls are governed by a combination of attribute + ability + renown. I will discuss renown in a moment, but I'll mention here that this seems to link to the concept that a werewolf's renown is partly a spiritual thing as well as a mark of respect among the Uratha.

Rites are specialised rituals that tend to produce fixed, but often potent, effects. Rites are bought as a merit, and are similar to the blood rituals in Requiem in a mechanical sense.

These rituals allow werewolves to share knowledge of another's scent, summon spirits, and even banish humans from the spirit realm.

Renown

Renown is more than a number or social ranking, it represents - to a degree - the spiritual respect accorded to a particular werewolf. Renown is increased by both achieving the appropriate feats - which is dictated by the players and ST together - and then spending the requisite experience points.

Storytelling - Understanding the wolf

I would have to say it succeeds admirably. Opening with a strong discussion about character creation and the world of the Forsaken, the chapter also provides a lot of handy hints about how to convey the information that scent can provide - better helping players get into the mindset of a wolf.

There are tips about how to plan adventures that will bring out the best for each auspice, and advice on handling packs and territory.

The advice in this chapter is broad and of an excellent calibre - showing the experience and understanding of the writers regarding the problems and pitfalls that can arise in a game. The chapter rounds off with a number of antagonists - pure breeds, spirits and hosts for the players to deal with. All proving to be challenging and inspirational for games.

The Spirit World

The Spirit World is full of dark places called shoals, where negative events and feelings cause the landscape to warp - yet the worst locations are Wounds - places where the spirit world is damaged from some major atrocity. Here spirits are corrupted and warped by the negative essence, some even falling thrall to powerful entities call Maeljins - beings that are similar to the Wyrm Aspects in the old Werewolf: The Apocalypse.

As mentioned before, crossing over to the Spirit World isn't easy, first a werewolf needs to find a locus.

Much of the games politicking will be based around making deals with spirits. The Spirit World and Physical World have a strong connection. What happens in one will effect the other, meaning that often werewolves will need to talk to spirits and find out what needs to be done in the physical world to appease the spirits. Sometimes driving spirits off can also heal the physical world.

This leads to some interesting potential stories - what about a spirit that is causing the children of an orphanage to suffer nightmares, yet to attack it will attract more physically violent spirits. The werewolves will have to hold back their rage and drive to violence to make a deal where they need to remove an item from the building that offends the spirit. Then in the next session they may be facing a horde of spirits who are feeding off the addicted teens that visit a crack house. By attacking the spirits, they might cause the crack house to lose customers and move on - freeing up a valuable locus.

Rules for spirits are also provided here, and once again the unified nature of the Storytelling system is shown. Spirits are built in the exact same manner as ghosts - providing again a standardised base mechanic that has flexibility and allows for potential of mixing elements to create whichever stories the ST and players want to play.

The Rockies - Example setting

The spirits in the area are angry and not willing to simply lie down for the Uratha after having just been liberated from torment by the alien idigam. The Pure Tribes are moving in and there may be some conflict developing between the local packs.

The introduction provides a solid starting point for a new campaign, with obvious scope for development.

Final Verdict

It literally outshines its predecessor as a slick and cohesive setting with a better and streamlined system. There is scope for development, and the quality of this book leaves me feeling that it is one of the best books to come out of White Wolf for a long time. It is certainly now my favourite of the new World of Darkness line. I feel that the team behind it deserve congratulations for providing a fantastic new vision of their game, that I look forward to playing for some time to come.

This will sit on my shelf in the same league as Unknown Armies second edition. Which I think really says how highly I regard the quality of this game.

Should I buy this book? Heck yes. White Wolf have definitely raise the bar with this book - which may be a tough act for Mage: The Awakening to follow. If this is an example of the quality to expect from the werewolf development team, they have guaranteed themselves a portion of my income each release.

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