White Wolf

After the pleasant surprise that was Vampire: The Requiem, I had high hopes for Werewolf: The Forsaken, White Wolf's loup-garou entry for the new edition of the World of Darkness game. But while this Werewolf has laudable improvements to the nuts-and-bolts of shapeshifting, raging, and pack politics, I find myself disappointed that the underlying assumptions haven't changed enough.

The Forsaken's werewolves are fallen guardians, avenging spirits trapped in mutable flesh. They take out their show more aggression on malign spirits who overstep their bounds in the real world, thus protecting humans who nevertheless fear and reject them. The wyrm-weaver-wyld vs. Gaia tension of the previous edition is gone, but unlike the deletion of the Camarilla/Sabbat/Antediluvian metaplot from Vampire, this move hasn't made the format of the game feel freer to me-- just less urgent.

I think my complaint against Werewolf has always been that where vampires are made, werewolves are born, thus nudging campaigns quite strongly in one direction. What would a Werewolf game have looked like without the complication of the real world/spirit world duality? If lycanthropy were a curse one suffered, rather than received? Making the spirit-guardian werewolves merely one option out of many would have been a welcome change. show less

This is the main source book for White Wolfs RPG Werewolf the Forsaken. It expands the base rule book World of Darkness to include the Forsaken, a race of werewolves that try to keep the physical and spiritual world in balance.

Overall, a fairly interesting book and game mechanics. It is a lot more dark and 'hopeless' than the game it replaced "Werewolf the Apocalypse", but it is well written and very well thought out and put together. If you like playing the supernatural and want to try out show more having a killing machine inside that can override your better instincts or jump to the fore when you're in trouble this is the game for you. show less

One of the best role-playing games that's rarely played. Ars Magica is set in a medieval Europe, where Magi, Companions (characters who have unusual talents, highly developed skills, or other benefits), and Grogs (your typical armored soldier/mercenary) adventure in search of magical places, items, or necessary components. With an actual magical system (not a collection of spells; players could and were encouraged to design their own spells), and 'troupe-style' play (each session, one player show more would be a Magi, another a Companion, and the other players got to handle the Grog guards; the players took turns in who was whom) Ars Magica was a game and world-setting all in one. show less

This was one of the early RPGs dealing not with superheroes, but people with super-powers; a significant difference. The meta-plot, and the feeling of futility created by later releases in the series (no matter what you did, everything was going to turn out badly) limited the game more than it deserved.