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Review of Savage Age Bundle
FULL DISCLOSURE
*I got a comp review copy of this game. *I would probably review any game if you gave me a comp copy.
First, a quick story: One time a friend and I were strolling through the Denver Museum of Natural History. In the "post-dinosaur" wing, you turn a corner to see a diorama of an eight-foot-tall prehistoric pig monster that's nothing but giant blunt tusks. As both of us have read about boars and watched that "nemesis" scene in Snatch, we both laughed at how horrible that must have been in real life. Must have sucked to be a cave man!
Then it oinked.
For a split-second, we both looked at each other, afraid that it wasn't a speaker but instead the beginning of the Precambrian time war. We realized it was just a speaker, and rapidly left anyway because the ancient past was a horrible time filled with horrible monsters.
This is a review about a game about that feeling.
INTRODUCTION
I love riffs on a theme. Alternate Histories, different timelines, what-ifs, worlds that take something familiar and play with it. Not to brag, but I think I'm pretty good at taking someone else's work and playing with it to find something new. Not all the time of course—some works seem so locked in place, I never know which string to pull. Werewolf: the Apocalypse was one of those settings for me—A game of Garou waging war against blatantly evil corporate America. I read Wild West and glanced at Dark Ages, but it never really clicked for me—Werewolf to me needed to be able to attack a McDonald's. Which is why I'm so angry at AUTHOR for being able to write the Savage Age and make it look so easy. They quickly took the concept that's been barely glanced at for over two decades and riffed into being a very interested and deep and complex world that I now want to play in more than standard Werewolf.
SO WHAT IS IT?
The Savage Age is an alternate setting dealing with the pre-history of Werewolf: the Apocalypse. Since the first edition, there has always been a paragraph or two about the "War of Rage": a time when the Garou killed all the other shapeshifters (until you bought the other books). This was never addressed in any of the editions—no one really paid attention to it other than go "Well, that was probably bad" and moved on. Until now.
This is Werewolf at the very dawn of history. Some of mankind is doing insane stuff like...farming. Silver is all but non-existent. The difference between Umbra and "reality" is just barely there, so humans get by with clubs and spears and Gifts. It is a harsh, dangerous time, and you are one of the few that get to walk around regenerating damage and casting spells taught to you by talking animals. The Wyld is just as dangerous (if not moreso) than the Wyrm and the Weaver. As the title says, it's a very bloody, violent, dangerous age.
The Savage Age Bundle is three books—Tribebook Khara, Tribebook Nagahluu, and "The Savage Age: Volume 1". I'm going to review this as a complete book though, since honestly it works best that way—without the other books I feel like you're missing a lot of the setting.
PRESENTATION
The three PDFs bring in a total of almost 200 pages of clean, easy-to-read facts about stone-age shapeshifters. The Werewolf fonts and border art are present. There's not a great deal of art, but the art that is there is professional and helps motivate the setting—and considering the setting is "prehistoric shapeshifters that aren't werewolves", that's a big deal. It's not like there's a lot of clip art of that. Each PDF is well done for a indie publisher—it's missing that element of "big professional company", but just barely, and looks very polished for what it is.
CONTENT
First, Tribebook Khara—were-Sabertooths (*cue lightening bolts, sick guitar riffs)! The Khara were the keepers of secrets for Gaia. Dangerous secrets. They would then decide if something needed to stay secret or not, and didn't believe in letting anyone else know about what they knew. You can see why this race is extinct with behavior like that, and that's before we get to the real doozy of a secret they found. I won't spoil it, but there's a fantastic MacGuffin piece that once I read I went "...of course they would have done that!", and it really adds to the overall mythology of Werewolf. The Khara, of course, get this secret, and you can see just how this could impact the War of Rage. Add on to this a really harsh Yava, and it's no wonder this tribe isn't around today.
The Tribebook deals with how they found and dealt with Secrets, how they interacted with Neanderthals (badly) and Garou (worse) and Mokole (oh lord no). It gives you the rules to create one, including a few Tribe gifts that are really flavorful and give what is already a pretty cool concept (were-sabertooth!) into some unique. I enjoy the "I'ma pull my Sabertooth out and use it as a knife" gift especially—it's both thematically appropriate and crazy enough to fit Werewolf at it's best. The book has rites, trinkets, totems, character concepts—everything you'd need in a tribe book.
Tribebook: Naghaluu (were-dire wolves! Guitar riff! Throw some horns!) is next. Their job was to deal with Wyld thresholds and Wyrm-blights—essentially going to put down where reality got too unbalanced. As a result they were used to biting first (before Wyld changed itself) and maybe not asking questions. However, they weren't berzerkers—they have a quiet stoicism that might one day have become scholarly...if they had survived to an era where they had scholars. Again, we get information on how the Tribe works and thinks, what they do, the mistakes they made, and how they died. Character creation, rites, totems and more are again waiting for us, and how they work with other tribes (again—they're all extinct).
Finally, there's the Savage Age Volume 1: Accounting for the Dead. This is all about the other extinct tribes. It includes a bit about Khara (enough to use them without the Tribebook), the Apis (destiny-shaping cows/minotaurs), Grondr (boar Wyrm-fighters extraordinaire), the Anpu-ba-el (jackals that kept the afterlife clean, destined to fold into/become the Silent Striders), and...Neanderthals. They're not shapeshifters, but like humans in the Savage Age they might have access to gifts or trinkets, and this helps define them and how they're different than humans.
At the end is a chapter devoted to playing in the Savage Age, including recommendations for what's different (a LOT), the needed talents and skills, and how some things might work. It's very brief but it gives you enough to get a good feel for how this setting would work.
Through each of the three books, there's constant flavor-text, stories told by a variety of story-tellers. I was impressed how each felt like a different voice, and they all had that sense of sitting around a small campfire in a cold, ferocious night. Secrets are told, histories remembered, and regrets felt. They really breathed life into the setting.
Each book also has an appendix that gives you information about the real-life animals, why some decisions were made, and how this fits (and doesn't fit) into the real world. It's quickly apparent that at least one writer is a (self-described) paleo-nerd, and that they're taking this time era seriously. Finally it discusses how you could implement some of these tribes into modern nights.
DID THE EDITOR DO THEIR JOB?
Yes. Alicia Howell did her job, as I didn't notice any spelling errors or weird grammatical hiccups. Good work.
WHY TO BUY THIS
This is a solid collection of work. Each PDF is an excellent example of fan-published work, and while it's missing the polish and bling of a "real" RPG company, they're not missing it by much. Like I said, I'm angry at this for how easily they made this setting come to life. The detail is crisp and relevant, the art is solid and cool, the writing flavorful and brief in a way that helps solidify the setting.
I recommend it to two groups—people who want more shapeshifters, and people who want to game in the Precambrian. While the books are focused on their relevant time, there's no reason you can't use the basics to introduce were-boars in Central Park if you want with only a modicum of work. The tribes are unique and well done, and the new tribes aren't lazy—if you had asked me to make were-dire wolves, I would have probably done something simpler with them. I'm glad this team didn't. The tribes are unique and feel fleshed-out, and reading them you feel the bittersweet insight of the mistakes made by everyone involved, how they could have helped the Garou in modern nights, and perhaps most importantly why it seems they were always destined to die.
COMPLETELY FAIR ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT
The bundle is in three parts, and while I get why (I'm sure SOMEONE out there only wants dire worlds but not sabertooths in their game, but...who??), it would work better if they were merged into a single book. Probably then merged with Volume 2. Basically this should be a whole book is what I'm saying.
It's clear from the beginning, but this is spice and not a main course. This is an advanced book for professional WW players. You NEED WW20, and the shapechangers book, and Hengeyokai, Shattered Dreams, and a Ratkin book to get the most of this. I'd like more detail in some of the chapters, but I also understand that's not really the point of the book—these books are about the tribes, not the world.
Like all prequels, this isn't the first Werewolf you should play. I mean, you could—the world is strong enough to support it—but like watching "the Phantom Menace" without knowing who a Skywalker is, you're going to miss some of the fun of the setting. It's also a deep cut into WW:tA lore, so this is one of those settings that would probably work best with a few lore grognards to really get the joke, as it were.
None of these are showstoppers, though—the Savage Age is just a really cool idea that has some great ideas and new rules and gifts and toys, and would absolutely be a great purchase for anyone who loves Werewolf:the Apocalypse.
UNFAIR DEMANDS FOR IMPROVEMENT
Savage Age is set in the "normal" World of Darkness—that is, a world that like ours but meaner, and with monsters. As a result, this game is "World of Darkness, but in the stone age". It does that very well.
But if you ask me what the game really needs, I would say that it needs to be unleashed.
Whoever owns W:tA as of when you're reading this should give these people a brief case full of money, some more art, and let them develop this world into the bleak-and-bloody stone-age doomsday game that it could be. They only barely touch on this, but in the stone age a shifter is essentially a god—silver's rare, weapons break, and life is very short.
This game could be Exalted through a blood-soaked obsidian mirror. The idea of "werewolves in the stone age" is already gonzo, and cranking up the metal could create an awesome and really unique setting that begs to be played. The interaction between humans and neanderthals, wandering tribes versus the city-dwellers, and the fact that there's no real Gauntlet is enough, but start throwing other elements into the Savage Age—there's a City called Enoch out there. There's impossible works being done by clever men and women. There's 20-foot-tall elk fae gods hunting you. All that and more in a lethal and miraculous world. Making the Savage Age as it's own game, letting it free of some of Modern WW:tA and letting it be its own Hyborean Monster could be groundbreaking.
So should you buy it? Yes. We all should. So there's enough money in this for them to write this awesome game that it created in my head. Is this fair of me to ask? No. But I want it anyway.
