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| Werewolf: The Forsaken | 
 enlarge | Author: White Wolf
Publisher: White Wolf Publishing
Category: Book
List Price: $34.99
Buy New: $14.99
You Save: $20.00 (57%)
New (31) Used (16) Collectible (1) from $14.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  29 reviews
Sales Rank: 48082
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 317
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.7
Dimensions (in): 10.9 x 8.5 x 0.9
ISBN: 1588463249
Dewey Decimal Number: 793
EAN: 9781588463241
ASIN: 1588463249
Publication Date: March 14, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Full Moon Rising
The world is in shadow. To one side stretches the forest, to the other the city. Your claws are stained with blood. Your senses whisper of prey that runs before you, and of predators who stalk even the likes of you. You hear the howls of your brothers and sisters. Luna rises. Your blood boils. It is time to hunt.
Wolves at the Door
Werewolf: The Forsaken - the game of bestial violence and supernatural terror - is the second core setting sourcebook intended for use with White Wolf's new Storytelling System . Werewolves are creatures of original sin, tainted by ancestral crimes and driven to hunt by the shame of being abandoned. This book details what it is to be Forsaken, one of the Tribes of the Moon. Create your own werewolf pack and seek redemption or give in to your savage nature. Hardcover. For use with the World of Darkness Rulebook.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 24 more reviews...
 Good for non-Werewolf WoD Veterans April 25, 2005
40 out of 56 found this review helpful
The previous reviewers have all be right, at least is some respects. This edition of Werewolf does try to be more streamlined, although the way they did Gifts (which reminded me of D&D/d20 domains) was overly complicated. The revision will definitely help those veteran Vampire and Mage players who wanted a sourcebook for Werewolves.
However, this book is not for those who played Werewolf: the Apocalypse. For starters, there are only 5 tribes instead of 13. Unlike the new Vampire, where they tried to keep old Vampire tribe names, they did not bother with this. They simply renamed Get of Fenris (Blood Talons), Uktena (Bone Shadows), and Glasswalkers (Iron Masters). The other two tribes for PCs are a Red Talon/Bone Gnawer cross (Hunters in Darkness) and a Shadow Lord/Silver Fang cross (Storm Lords). The only bright spot is that they gave werewolves their own Hollow Ones (Ghost Wolves). The Gifts are far rigider than they needed to be; the Apocalypse Gifts were right on. The enemies ("Pure" Werewolves and spirits) are lacking the depth that the Wyrm and Pentex gave. Apocalypse had an overreaching goal; Forsaken simply tells the Werewolf player to either hunt bad werewolves and spirits or be hunted by them). The only real addition for veteran Werewolf players is the ability to create custom totems.
To put it bluntly, for those WoD players who haven't played Werewolves before, the book is a 4-5. For veteran Werewlf players, it's a 1-2. Averaging it out makes it a 3.
 Not Apocalypse but something BETTER July 6, 2005
37 out of 46 found this review helpful
This is NOT W:tA. This is even better in so many ways. First, it is a game set IN the World of Darkness, so it is about horror and similar themes, not furry power rangers. There is a focus on personal themes, such as what happens to ME when I become a werewolf, not inter-global werewolf politics. The emphasis of the game is on figuring out your place in the new savage and very brutal world of werewolfs and your place in the pack. Overall, this game is strongly personal, not all the challenges that you'll face (unlike the old game) will be physical, many will be psychological.
Second, the game finally becomes playable in other settings, such as Vampire or Mage. No longer are werewolf powers incompatible or disruptive when your character meets a vampire or sorceror. This makes it a game that is VERY crossover friendly and the mechanics within the World of Darkness Corebook support this. I dont know why all the criticism that you now have to buy two books (the WoD Corebook + the Werewolf book) to play. In Dungeon's and Drangons you need 3 books to run a game. Furthermore, amazon.com offers really great discounts so buying both books will cost you slightly less than full price for the main setting book. Now Im dying to see what the new Mage book will look like!
Enjoy!
 A much-needed update March 17, 2005
25 out of 35 found this review helpful
With Werewolf: the Forsaken, White Wolf has revamped (pun intended) the Werewolf system. It is now a game that will appeal to a much wider audience. Honestly, until I read this book, Werewolf was the one White Wolf game I refused to play. The previous rules were *terrible*. The new rules of course build off of the World of Darkness core rules, and are in some ways similar to the rules for Vampire: the Requiem. One advantage of this similarity is that when vampires and werewolves meet, there might not be so much frantic searching for the rules that govern a contest of Gifts versus Disciplines. If you were in any way interested in the previous Werewolf system, this update will be a revelation. If you're new to White Wolf, while Vampire is their flag-ship, Werewolf is a relatively simple and direct game with an incredible amount of potential.
Nice For Newbies and the Disgruntled WoD Gamer, Bad For Fans of the Original August 12, 2005
20 out of 20 found this review helpful
As a veteren Vampire: The Masquerade and Werewolf: The Apocalypse player and storyteller, I was very distraught when I heard that White Wolf was bringing the much feared End of Days to the World Of Darkness. When I heard they were replacing the World of Darkness with a new, streamlined version I was more distressed. This seemed justified as I read Vampire: The Requiem and failed to be inspired by its lack of conflict and the feeling of eternal ennui it seemed to provoke. I held out hope that Werewolf: The Foresaken would be different.
While I appreciate White Wolf's attempt to create a more unified and coherent set of rules for the World Of Darkness, I find that they have left the setting for the games released so far unfinished. I find no fault with the new backstory, which has the five tribes of Werewolves exiled from the Spirit World for the "justified" murder of their progenitor Father Wolf. It just lacks something viceral that the original had. Something that inspired me to sit down with my friends and play these monsters who so desperately wanted to save the world and their Goddess from the destructive, sentient, metaphysical forces that had gone mad, and could never really see eye to eye on how to do that.
Gone is this conflict that was as central to the original incarnation of this game as was the premise that your character had to live in two worlds, but could never really be a part of either. Not fully human, not quite a spirit. But something inbetween and sometimes just as feral as the wolves whom the Garou shared part of their blood with.
Granted, Werewolf: The Forsaken does capture the essence of its predecessor. You are still a spirit made flesh, able to change forms between your human birth form and a wolf. When the need arises, you are able to assume another hybrid form that you may use for brief periods to vex and defeat your adversaries, or turn your prey into convenient bite-size morsels. The feral nature of werewolves and their inability to fully participate in the world of mortals or the Spirit World (also called the Shadow Realm, not the Umbra) is maintained.
The Wyrm and the Weaver, the terminally obsessive and psychopathic metaphysical entities that served as the Garou's archnemesises are, in Werewolf the Forsaken, still present - if you know where to look for them. But they aren't on a suicide mission to ruin Gaia's Creation anymore. They just seem hellbent on turning humanity and the material world into toys they can play with however they want. The Uratha - which is what the werewolves of Forsaken call themselves - constantly hunt the servants of these powerful spirits. That is, when they aren't busy keeping other spirits from straying across the Gauntlet that separates Spirit and Matter, some of these spirits also like to possess mortals and use them to sate whatever desires the spirit imbodies - kinda like fomori.
And then there's the matter of the other tribes, who didn't participate in the murder of Father Wolf, and continue to harbor a big grudge against the five tribes of the Uratha and would like nothing more than to make shish-kabobs out of the lot of them.
For conflict, this is decent but there really isn't much for the Uratha to lose either way. If they fail at their job of being Spiritual Border Patrol the world doesn't come to an end. Sure it won't be a pleasant place for mere mortals, but it won't change anything for the Uratha. They'll keep on being reviled by the spirits for their crime and hunted by their cousins. There's really nothing to fight for in Forsaken, just a job to do and a bunch of people angry at you for doing it.
Meanwhile, the rules are really something else. I applaud the designers for really tweaking and finally fixing many of the things that were broken in the previous set of rules. Primal-Urge clearly has a use now, which it really didn't have before. Where it once was simply used to determine how fast your character could shift between forms, now it measures your character's level of power in a way similiar to Blood Potency in Vampire the Requiem. While it feels a little artificial, you have to remember it is a rules mechanic and not meant to actually imply anything plotwise. However gifts feel less organic now. Previously grouped by breed, tribe, and auspice they are now grouped into paths, similiar to vampiric disciplines, which certain tribes and auspices have access to. You needn't take them in order necessarily, unlike disciplines, but some gifts require that you possess another gift earlier in the path or a sufficiently high rating in a combination of traits in order to learn the gift. And forget getting gifts from paths you do not have access to.
Breeds are gone. All werewolves are born from the union of a werewolf with a mortal. You select one of the five tribes, very losely organized extended families of Uratha who share similiar outlooks on life and not necessarily blood. Then you choose an auspice; which does not represent what phase of Mother Luna you were born under, but the phase under which your First Change - that life altering event that revealed your character for what he truly is - occured, and generally says what role you will be performing in your pack. You may choose a lodge to join as well. These are similiar to sects in Vampire the Requiem, as they are groups of werewolves who share similiar interests and ideaologies across tribal lines.
Rites remain, as does renown. Rage is gone but gnosis remains. It is now known as essence, but it's there and it does the same thing - powers gifts, used to move through the Gauntlet, etc. Primal Urge, along with providing a game mechanic for rating you character against other creatures and characters in-game, also determines how long your character can stay in the wolf-man Gauru (previously crinos) war-form. This is important because it isn't a natural form for Uratha. And you are also in a frenzied state for the duration.
The developers believe that all the new games require a morality scale, so werewolves have Harmony. This trait basically measures how "good" the character is. Do your job, keep spirits and humans from being too much of a nuisance to each other, and your Harmony stays a nice, healthy high number. Do something bad, like killing humans and wolves and making snacks out of their corpses, and your Harmony goes down. This makes you more feral, more prone to scaring humans just be being around them in your human skin, and generally makes you unpopular with almost everyone. In a really bad, Jeffery Dahmer kind of way.
Generally speaking, it's not a bad game for those who've never played one of White Wolf's World Of Darkness games. It's also great for those who were bored with the old games and who'd like something else to do with it. There's plenty of places to go in and really do something different with the game if you've had your fill of the Wyrm and the Apocalypse. The rules are solid and easily learned, something the Storyteller System is famous for. They are also an improvement for the most part.
But for those of us who still love the original, or who are looking for something close, you will do well not to play this game. While there are similarites the themes, conflicts, and personality of the line is different and while not totally alienating, doesn't encourage a long time fan to convert rapidly.
Rage builds toward a new dawn! March 29, 2005
15 out of 28 found this review helpful
THe reviewer who said "if it ain't broke..." apparently hasn't taken the time to re-read 10 years of old Werewolf books. THe system was clunky and overwritten. The new "Werewolf: The Forsaken" is lean and hungry.
The basic premise of forsaken is the control of territory. No giant evil to be killed, no forlorn, relentless, unyeilding destruction just over the horizon. You exist to patrol your territory against those whom would harm it, be them spirit or mortal. This is a GIANT improvement over Apocolypse's general themes that I previously stated.
Some things I enjoyed the removal of: Geographic tribes (no more 'The Celtic Werewolves', 'The Japanese werewolves'), the Wyrm, complete vile hate of Vampires, and best of all: no more Apocalypse!
The dice system is as clean as V:tR, with the games being made for working togeather. And with Uratha (re: Garou) no longer killing vamps on sight, well, it's nice. Uratha probably have more antagonism with Mages now, and it'll be interesting how M:tA treats us.
Overall, this is a giant improvement. I don't see one thing that lets me see how W:tF is a backstep, only a giant leap forward. I honestly think W:tF will be the herald of the new line, not Vampire. It's that good.
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