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The Good: Wolfsbane features a high degree of creativity, good variety of entries, and immediately useful tools for play.
The Bad: The Idigam (six entries) are probably only worth including in a game as a major, recurring antagonist (and thus an ongoing theme). They also tend more towards the epic in scope, depending on how characters are meant to interact with them, which is a little odd for a setting that defines itself largely in terms of local territory.
The Physical Thing
At 160 pages, this black and white hardcover showcases good production values for its $27.99 price tag. Atmospheric artwork, good writing, and an easy to read format result in a simple but engaging book. As with other White Wolf products, Wolfsbane does an excellent job of matching art to concept.Under the Cover
Following in the wake of other antagonist books across the World of Darkness lines, Wolfsbane is an excellent addition in that it perfectly reflects the tone of Werewolf: The Forsaken. The entries here make excellent use of the setting, are each distinct in the challenges they present, and sport enough imagination to make each one interesting and worth using. As there are 28 entries here I'll be focusing in on just a few of my favorites for the purpose of this review.Bloody Mary is an excellent example of a serious threat that isn't a physical adversary. She pulls off a damsel in distress routine to get picked up by a pack, only to use her tricks of sexual seduction to spread distrust and infighting throughout the pack. While this will work best with primarily male packs where players are fairly into character, it's a wonderful change of pace and a threat that may be difficult to detect until it's too late thanks to Mary's penchant for subtlety.
This encounter gets even worse when Mary's troubled family is introduced later on, likely after pack cohesion has been dropped to its lowest value. These disturbed, inbred, and xenophobic werewolves will be out to rescue their wandering daughter back from wherever she has found herself and they will leave no survivors in the process. While it's a simple formula, this 1-2 punch could make for a very challenging encounter and might be especially fun in a game where Mary is allowed to sow mistrust for several sessions before the Family comes calling. That the family has just enough detail to be interesting really helps to bring all of this together into a thread that I would be happy to drop into a Forsaken game.
Little Shadow is interesting in that he may be an antagonist, but he isn't an antagonist most packs will want to kill so much as find a way to aid. He received the change at the early age of 10, and then spent time being tortured by spirits in an asylum before finally being rescued by a local pack. The local pack took care of him for some time, but were ultimately slain in battle with only Mark and the totem surviving. Now Mark continues to fulfill his role as a werewolf, but the strain has resulted in a being far more enslaved to its spiritual role than to any shred of humanity.
Encounters with Little Shadow interest me because they're particularly nice to use as rumors first and then a slow broadening of territory second. Once a pack encounters Mark they'll have to make some interesting choices, the very thing that makes for great roleplaying, with compassion and utility playing key roles. To make things more dangerous, Little Shadow's former totem spirit was corrupted in the battle that slew his pack mates and he now defends it out of ignorance as to what it has become. This results in a variety of additional considerations, one of which is whether it's best to leave the whole situation alone so long as the region is being sufficiently maintained. This might be a particularly hard choice for a pack unable to expand to defend the area.
The idigam are perhaps the strangest and least useful for a one off antagonist, but they have great potential as a recurring threat or as one foreshadowed through a Chronicle. Their backstory involves Father Wolf and Luna together banishing particularly troublesome, shape changing spirits to the dark side of the moon where they dwelt in exile. Over the eons they changed, taking on aspects completely alien to even the spirits of Earth and absorbing concepts from meteorites flung from distant places.
Manned missions to the moon changed everything for the idigam, allowing them to piggyback on humanity's innovative machines in order to escape their long prison. Reintroduced to the world, idigam have a variety of different goals but ultimately exist as truly alien entities. Wolfsbane does an excellent job of discussing how a Storyteller can drive this home and offers a lot of suggestions of actual motivations along with six example idigam presented in quite a bit of detail.
The idigam included here are very detailed, and the description is absolutely kickass. The author truly captures the alien madness lurking inside each of these creatures, and just reading through the entries is entertaining. While I can't promise that all readers will feel the same way, if you're like me and want your alien entities to really feel alien then you'll enjoy the work done here. This is definitely an excellent option for a more epic Forsaken game.
My Take
As with the other Night Horrors supplements, Wolfsbane does a great job of providing a host of different imaginative antagonists for a Storyteller to work with. While the idigam are my favorite, and are a group I'll be making use of in my next Forsaken game, the book as a whole shines at providing solid Storyteller support with a wide variety of potential antagonists.Help support RPGnet by purchasing this item through DriveThruRPG.
