Werewolf the Forsaken 2nd edition is, IMO, a perfect werewolf roleplaying game. It's emphasis on the Hunt and how each pack member and even each different form plays a different role within the hunt makes it feel more like "playing a werewolf" than the other werewolf roleplaying games available, even the ones that blatantly ripped off Forsaken.

I write this review as one coming from the old White Wolf: World of Darkness games and books, so some of this review touches on differences between this and Werewolf the Apocalypse.

I won't go into exhausting detail but these are my general observations regarding this book. First, I must state that I HIGHLY recommend picking up the Chronicles of Darkness (also known as the revised New World of Darkness) rulebook and becoming at least functionally familiar with the basic rules of the game from that book as this book claims to be a complete, stand-alone game, but it falls short of that goal. This book is built on the framework of the Chronicles of Darkness rules, but do to bad editing, it frequently leaves out bits and pieces of the core rules (such as fire damage, gaining willpower for each night of rest, etc.) This book is meant to be a template of sorts applied to the core rules of Chronicles of Darkness to facilitate playing a werewolf, and it does that, but in a somewhat sloppy manner.

That said, a short list of observations:

1) It is a fresh take on the Werewolf setting, and a flavorful one. It changes the scope of the narrative from being an apocalyptic, furry war machine in its predecessor to focusing on being a pack creature and an apex predator, a born hunter. You guard the world against intruding spirits and other monstrosities, but the focus of your personal story as a character is on your pack and maintaining the delicate balance between your wolf nature and your human nature (and all the supernatural implications of that in the book's world). This, to me, is a refreshing change, and has more narrative drama baked into it.

2) The werewolf specific rules, gifts, rites, auspices, merits, forms, and various other supernatural abilities all work well together to reinforce the pack hunter themes, world building, and baggage that comes with being a dual-natured monster always trying to keep itself on a leash lest it lose control and go on a rampage (also known as Kuruth or the Death Rage). They aren't always balanced, and can be a bit clunky (tracking and perception interacting in unclear ways because the perception pool is not even mentioned outside of the character sheet) and even nonsensical at times (looking at YOU high-stress or low-Harmony mandatory shapeshifting) in my opinion, but they get the themes across, and ultimately that's what matters in an RPG. Just be prepared to house-rule, hand-wave, or refer to the Chronicles of Darkness book for more clarity where this book falls short. Some of the replacement rules like blood and bone instead of virtues and vices (in CoD) are a bit redundant, but they reinforce the themes, so I give them a pass.

3) The wold building is lovely, if a bit shallow in some places (mostly where they could have added more details or examples), and does a sufficient job of getting you into the gist of where and how the werewolves fit into the story and cosmology of the setting. I particularly like the new antagonists (hosts, spirit-ridden, the idigam). What are the idigam? Think conceptual being meets Lovecraftian horror, and you're well on your way to playing with these abominations, and the sample write-ups for them are great (if a tad redundant a couple of times). I could do with more samples of the other critters, but between this book and the core Chronicles of Darkness rulebook, there's plenty of monsters to start you and, importantly, rules for making monsters to keep players and GMs busy.

4) The core rules founded on the Chronicles of Darkness work fine and are generally a good step towards simplifying the mechanics compared to their predecessors, though they can get lost in fiddly details and modifiers at times, and aren't always well explained (I blame the shoddy editing as I mentioned in my preface). They really could have used more gameplay examples (there hardly are any), and far tighter editing and review for consistency and completeness. That said, fixed target numbers, graded success and failure results, and modifiers adjusting dice pools do a pretty good job of making the system flow well.

5) I tend to think it favors gunplay over melee in offensive combat because of how defenses work (guns ignore defense ratings, melee doesn't), but that has to be qualified with the fact that werewolves are damn hard to kill (unless you've got silver) and get to use their defense rating against firearms in many of their body forms (where many other creatures simply don't). It just seems that their teeth and claws serve them less than simply firing a shotgun in many situations, but as they are meant to hunt spirits much of the time and their bite (though not their claws, oddly) hurts supernatural things without assistance, it's not completely imbalanced. It's just a bit...odd feeling for a game about being a furry man-beast of death.

6) On the point of forms, like its predecessor I love that each form has its uses (even more so in this edition which is a plus) and that the gauru form (big wolf-man vis a vi The Howling) is a short-term killing form that's prone to going into rage if held too long or provoked. Think furry Incredible Hulk. You don't want to make them angry, you (and they) wouldn't like them when they're angry. Mechanically, I feel as if it's a tad weak offensively for its purpose (again melee just seems a bit hamstrung), but it is damn near indestructible, soooo...and the other forms are fun, so it pretty much works (I favor urshul - dire wolf myself).

7) Overall, it's a fine thing for $20, but I can't stress enough to pick up Chronicles of Darkness first to familiarize yourself with the core rules and THEN see how this game tweaks them for the werewolves. You'll save yourself some headaches and page flipping. The editing and rule writing is simply BAD and/or lacking in some places. It's not the worst I've seen by a country mile, but the incompleteness of parts, the sparse examples, the odd inconsistencies and grey areas where rules (such as success levels for specific tasks as opposed to success levels for general tasks) overlap, etc. make it a game where, if you're like me, you'll find yourself house-ruling or simply ignoring parts of it entirely. When the general function of the dice pool rolling can get so much basic work done, some of the subsystems are superfluous or needlessly convoluted (e.g. why does tracking have its own dice pools when you already have a perception rating modified by your werewolf form that can do the job?). It's supposed to be a narrative, flexible system, but it seems like they get lost in their own woods more often than they should (ironic), overcomplicating the simple with needless details (pointless dice pools for things already handled by other pools) or sloppy inconsistencies and missing rules (fire...really?). It's very much a game where I think the spirit of the rules will serve you more than the letter of the rules. Fitting, perhaps, for a bunch of spirit hunting werewolves.

I could go on and on about my love and hate of aspects of this book, but this is long enough already.

That said, if you're willing to buy another book to get a basic feel for how the systems work and then apply the parts of this book that make werewolves tick, it’s generally a fine and serviceable game with fun world-building and delicious themes. Just expect to tweak it some because its incomplete and sometimes needlessly convoluted. Do as the werewolves do, and follow the spirit. ; )

Un gran avance en cuanto a tematica, reglas y lore. El unico fallo que le veo es el apartado visual que es reciclado, malo y no transmite el sentimiento de contar historias sobre cambia formas a diferencia de como ocurria en el lbro de primera edicion o como ocurre en Hombre Lobo El Apocalipsis.

Me encanto la nuevas nuevas mecanicas de dones y auspicios, aunque siento que la administracion de dones y las Tribus puede mejorara para que tengan un peso relevante en los personajes

Overall a great book. I know Forsaken gets a fair amount of hate, and while I don't blame the haters, often its not the game itself, but the way it was presented to the community that is the main issue. The game itself is solid and fun. The relative lack of Meta Is a good and a bad thing. It makes setting a little more vague, ut also allows for a great deal more freedom in the stories told. All in all, its a really good game that runs smoothly, and is very fun. Biggest downsides are that the book has some orginization issues and a lack of more books. 2nd edition didn't get a lot of love and thats sad. It had a lot of potential.

I bought both the PDF and Premium Hardcover. I'll mostly be talking about the content, so I'll say a quick word on the hardcover. The art is a little sparse but the premium hardcover is worthwhile since it has much thicker paper than other standard quality print-on-demand titles I've purchased. Thicker paper makes the book much more durable as you're passing it around at the table - which happens a lot, even though my group has multiple copies.

Since picking this up, Werewolf: the Forsaken Second Edition has become my favourite RPG bar none. I read Werewolf: the Forsaken First Edition, but never played it as I had trouble grasping what the game was supposed to be about. Second edition fixes that. This book constantly emphasises the core themes of the game; the Pack, the Territory, the Hunt. You are a Werewolf and The Wolf Must Hunt.

The game wonderfully ties its themes into the core mechanics. For Werewolves, the Hunt, the Pack, and the Territory are all real mechanical things that your powers interact with. These core ideas are incredibly effective at drawing you in and getting you invested in the game. You will want to protect your Territory because it's your territory. You will look out for your Pack for the same reason. And when you go on the Hunt for some Spirit who didn't get the memo about keeping in his lane, the game offers up a whole host of abilities that make you feel like a badass apex predator.

One of the things this game excels at is getting you into a very non-human mindset. The game tells you repeatedly that your character is an apex predator and the mechanics back that up. All Werewolves have access to the killing form - Gauru - and even the most timid and bookish character becomes an unstoppable rage monster in Gauru form. During play, your character is keeping a lid on their rage, and as a player you have to constantly resist the urge to change into Gauru form and murder everything in your way.

Werewolves are not humans, and unlike Vampire where maintaining your Humanity is one of the main themes of the game, Werewolves make no pretense of maintaining their humanity. Instead they have dual nature as humans and wolves, flesh and spirit, that they need to keep in balance - represented by Harmony. Unlike Humanity where higher is better and zero means your character is no longer playable, the goal in Werewolf is to reach and maintain a Harmony score of 5. If your Harmony gets too high or low you'll have trouble controlling your character's shapeshifting, and be more prone to lose control of your rage at an inopportune moment. However there's no point at which your character becomes totally unplayable.

The setting is split between the physical world, and the Shadow which is inhabited by animistic spirits. Werewolves are creatures of both flesh and spirit, and generally you'll want to keep both sides of your territory in order. Much of the day-to-day conflict comes from balancing what's good for the humans on the physical side of your territory with what the spirit courts need and want. You can mistreat both and throw your weight around, but a mob with torches and pitchforks or the spirit equivalent will drive out your pack fairly quickly.

To keep things simple the key elements of the setting are presented in the form of short stories that Werewolves tell each other about who they are, and where they come from. For players it's easy to get up to speed on what your character knows and believes, but if you are planning on running this game you'll probably need to read the setting chapter a couple of times to get the full picture. You don't need any other books to run this game, but picking up the supplements The Pack and Night Horrors: Shunned by the Moon will give you a more complete picture on how to handle the characters' allies and prey respectively.

One drawback some in my group found is that the game has a fictional language called First Tongue, and switches between First Tongue and English terms throughout the book. Personally I find that using First Tongue terms like the Hisil, instead of the Shadow, or referring to characters by their auspice renown names like Rahu or Cahalith helps to stay immersed, and First Tongue terms are always in italics when they do show up, but if it's giving you trouble there's a complete lexicon on page 76/77 that you can bookmark or print out.

Character creation is about as complex as in other Chronicles of Darkness lines - you first create a mortal character and then add the Werewolf template. Werewolves get a lot of abilities at character creation compared to some others - they can shapechange into five different forms (including Human), and will typically start out with a plethora of Gifts, Rites, and other miscellaneous abilities. Werewolves have access to one of the widest toolsets at character creation of any Chronicles of Darkness game, but a drawback of this is that there are a lot of abilities that are easy to overlook as a new player. I found this was not a big issue as things like Hunter's Aspect are highly situational and so it doesn't matter if players focus on other abilities early on. When you become familiar with the game and the system, the wide array of tools is extremely welcome and being able to sidestep certain kinds of problems on the Hunt entirely through a Gift, Rite, or simply due to the innate abilities all Werewolves possess is very satisfying and helps to hammer home that feeling of being the ultimate predator.

One of the downsides of this book is that it could have used more material focused towards the Storyteller. The Storytelling chapter is good, but many Storytellers will come away feeling unequipped to portray the Shadow based solely on the material in this book, and the chapter on foes is woefully short on details for how foes like the Pure work. If you are planning on running the game I highly recommend picking up the Night Horrors supplement as it will give you the information needed to portray The Pure and a whole host of other foes for the player characters to deal with.

The layout can also be confusing to new players. If you're familiar with any of the other Chronicles of Darkness Second Edition books this one is laid out in the same way. During play you'll mostly be using chapter 3 - which details character creation and Werewolf abilities, and chapter 4 which covers the core rules systems. Navigating the PDF is fairly easy due to the plethora of bookmarks, but it can be harder to find information in the physical book.

Those issues aside, this is an incredible game and an absolute blast to play. I would write more, but you should try it out for yourself! Urum Da Takus - The Wolf Must Hunt

The splats, character creation, and the basic rules are all great, an improvement over the classic game. The setting is not as cool - you've traded in being cosmic warriors raging against spirits of corruption, for... well, just being territorial supernatural gangsters. That could be kind of fun too (if less epic) if it weren't for the fact that you're at a serious disadvantage in fighting your primary enemies, spirits: they can hop between worlds anywhere, and you have to do so at special loci, which means they can always escape with minimal effort. No more running down your prey and tearing it apart; now you have to... wind silver wire around it three times?

i bought both the PDF and Hardcover, so i'll primarily reviewing the hardcover.

this is a game about werewolves, fighting spirits, and family. i really love the themes that are presented in this game! firstly i LOVE LOVE LOVE the artwork! i think this is a toss up between Vampire the Requiem and this book in terms of amazing artwork.

the game itself is very fun! i love the mechanics of fighting the urge to not give into the werewolf rage and the hunt. also when the player does fail, they lose control and reap the consquences of that rage. it reminds them that they need to be smart and not let their triggers get to them.

my main complaint, and this is a constant problem, is finding information in the book. it's pretty confusing on explaining werewolves, the death rage triggers, rites, and so on. it isn't very clear, and when you do read it, the section is in a weird part of the page, where you could have easily missed, or the appendix doesn't give you what you need on what page a certain information is. this complaint is with the book, with the PDF you can always Ctrl+F and look for the keywords.

overall very fun game, and it's one of the main three of the CofD/WoD lines, if nothing else, the artwork is amazing!

To keep it in perspective, this isn't about the quality of the rules themselves, but about the quality of the premium hardcover POD.

I had high expectations of a tabletop RPG book that costs $60+ that is print on demand, yet I was left disappointed to see that the entirely-adhesive spine (there's no other material reinforcing it) has already begun to split upon the first time opening the book. Considering this is the rulebook that will be present at our table during every game night, I'd expect there to be a bit more resilience to it. Since the cost of production is being leveraged heavily onto the customer, I'm disappointed by the low quality the 'premium' option has to offer.

I have finally received the physical copy of Werewolf the Forsaken 2nd Edition, and now I feel like it's time for me to give my personal review of this book.

Honestly? I loved it. I loved it in a way I never even expected I would. This book embraced everything that was done right in the first edition and corrected or improved everything that was wrong or somehow lacking. Now, let me say that I've always been a fan of the World of Darkness Werewolf line. In fact, Werewolf the Apocalypse was the first roleplaying book I ever bought, and one of the first roleplaying games I ever played. I'm saying this to show that I have a great deal of affection towards these games. However, despite always enjoying them, there was always something I never quite liked. They were never perfect, in my opinion. Always fun, yes, but never perfect in my opinion. In Werewolf the Apocalypse, it was the tone and the tribes; in the 1st edition of Forsaken, it was again the tribes and some mechanics that were a bit off (such as progression with the gifts and the fact that the werewolves just felt too weak).

But Werewolf the Forsaken 2nd Edition is different. I can say that, for my expectations, it's the best Werewolf game so far. The tone is perfect, the tribes are fascinating and engaging, the lore is introduced in a very creative and immersive way, and it finally reached a beautiful balance between the overpowered Garou from the Apocalypse and the relatively weak Uratha of Forsaken 1st edition. The game also gives the players a lot of reasons to play as a pack and cooperate, which I think is essential for a game like this. Gifts now follow an ingenious non-linear progression, with the exception of the Moon Gifts, and every single one of the werewolf forms comes with its own set of special abilities that make all of them equally useful for different situations.

I could go on and on about many of the improvements, so I'll just finish this review by saying: this book is a great game and a great read. If you're a fan of the World of Darkness style of games and especially if you liked Forsaken 1st Edition, I absolutely recommend it.

I read Apocalypse and Forsaken 1E, but didn't play either. This game, though, deserved to come down off the shelf and stay off, dammit.

In Werewolf: the Forsaken 2nd Edition, you play the ultimate predator. You don't have a sacred mission as in Apocalypse--not really. You're just a killer with a sense of community. That sense of community is omnipresent in both the core book and the first supplement, The Pack, and it comes up organically when roleplaying, which is nice.

Although I didn't have a lot of Werewolf experience, some of my players have, and they've noted with no small amount of pleasure a few differences here. In particular, they've hailed the changes to the Oath of the Moon over previous werewolf codes of honor. The meaning of respect your prey and the low honor the high; the high respect the low can be interpreted in enough ways to effectively be tailored to every group. For example, our ithaeur (shaman, effectively) is a smart-assed Brit that threatens spirits with inconveniences or worse; some groups might call that disrespecting prey, but we think it's fun.

My personal favorite part of the setting is the sheer variety of spiritual resonances. You don't just deal with the spirits of animals, or of objects, or even of emotions. Spirits of cybersecurity usher bit-motes on luminal pilgrimages. Spirits of HIV crowd out and suffocate spirits of excitement at a South African cultural celebration. A spirit of the local college's biology department, bloated with funding, trades essence with spirits of scientific observation to taste their secrets. The spirits of a company's shares swarm over the corporate spirit itself, commanding it in a terrible cacophony. And these ideas are just from the first few sessions!

If you're new to Werewolf, buy this. According to my players, if you're 20-year Werewolf veterans, you should buy it too.

While I own the 1st ed Werewolf: The Forsaken game and some supplements, I never had much chance to play. I did like the basic concept though, so I picked up 2nd ed. with hopes that it would fit my normal roleplaying group. I was not disappointed, the GMC rules make the game crunchier, while still maintaining a focus on narrative play. The focus on the consequences of being a raging monster and apex predator allow for stories of personal horror that fit my storytelling style well.

My main complaint is with the organization and layout. The book is laid out in possibly the most confusing possible way for a reader who is coming in fresh (ie. not being familiar with 1st ed.). The chapter order is bizarre, leading with Auspices makes little sense when you need to establish what the Uratha are and how they fit in the world, which is covered in chapter 2. Jargon is frequently used before it's defined and often in ways where the meaning cannot be derived from context. It was frustrating to have to go back and reread sections of the book that made little sense without the knowledge from later in the book. It feels disorganized and confusing. Which is unfortunate, as the rules themselves are very good if you can piece them together.

The setting material is solid, painting a picture of a world of often malevolent animist-spirits that have to be handled by the Uratha before they get out of hand. The addition of the idigam to the setting is interesting, but takes up a large amount of space for an antagonist that seems geared towards an experienced and jaded W:tF group. The idigam take up 33 pages while the Pure, Spirits, Shartha, Humans and Claimed combined only get 12 pages. This suggests that the idigam are the primary opponent of the Uratha instead of the spirits and claimed that the Tribes chapter says are the most common prey.

Overall, the new edition is an improvement over the previous edition and the book is written to appeal to players who are already familiar with the game and the setting, but players and storytellers who are new to W:tF may struggle with some of the design choices that were made.

While I did enjoy WtF 1st edition, I find that this one really grabs me. It gives it a sort of personal gravitas, makes you really want to read more about the world's premier hunters. Yet it doesn't beat you over the head with backstory. I like how their heritage is revealed in snippets here and there, each time making you want to learn more. The tribe write ups are equally interesting, with the multiple ideas on possible tribe origins and views about chosen prey being particularly interesting.

Mechanically there have been some cool improvement as well. Gifts seem more useful and even powerful than before. Plus you have more freedom in how you choose them(aka, not always having to take them in order). Healing ability is also more powerful, given that werewolves can now heal more bashing damage the higher their primal urge stat is, can spend essence to heal lethal rather than bashing for the turn, and heal all damage each turn in garou form! Combat is streamlined, but still dynamic, and the social maneuvering rules give you a system to add a little importance to social interactions without being overdone or overly complex. There are other things of course, but these were some highlights for me.

Over all, I really enjoyed this edition and I think fans of any editions of this franchise will enjoy it too!

I was a big fan of the previous edition, but also felt it lacked substance and a bit flimsy. This edition and it's add-ons and changes create a more meaty, juicy game that fans and interested people alike can enjoy.

Also, now I'm hungry.

An excellent update that makes the game far more playable, and takes full advantage of the 2nd edition rules.

A full review can be heard on Darker Days Radio.

http://podcast.darker-days.org/e/darker-days-radio-episode-64/

This new version of Werewolf: the Forsaken is truly heads and tails better than its predecessor. While the lore stays the same for the most part, the Tribes and Auspices have undergone some much needed tweaking both with their histories and with their roles in the pack. The pack means so much now in this game, and the Hunt is where the game is truly centered. Gifts are so much better now (they don't suffer anymore from the 1e problems of super-specific conditions, all over the place Renowns needed in each gift list, nor do they require you anymore to buy up all the earlier gifts in the tree (or pay more to avoid those gifts) in order to get what might be the only thing you want in the tree). Rites are no longer tied to Harmony, and Harmony itself is now way more important as it measures how close you are to the wolf or the man and there are different game effects depending on where you are on that scale that really fit into the theme of being part wolf and part man.

The reason I have always loved Werewolf is because of its co-operative nature. The pack has far more emphasis now - a lot of the mechanics now complement the idea that you are a part of a bigger whole. Working with others is more built in now than it was in the previous version, especially when you bring Conditions into account. Being able to include humans, Wolf-Blooded, spirits, and others into the pack is also a great change. Wolf-Blooded are so much better now through their Tells and their own special abilities, and for the first time I really want to do a Chronicle where everyone starts off as Wolf-Blooded and may or may not make the shift to Werewolf during the game.

I also really love the new Totem building rules. I always found the 1e rules for building totems confusing, but they are much more streamlined in 2e and easier to understand.

I'm giving this game 4 stars out of 5. While mechanically I absolutely love the new edition, I found that the antagonists section did not meet my expectations. I know that it's the Idigam Chronicle, but a lot of page count was used up by the Idigam, an enemy that I can really only see pulling out near the end of a Chronicle for the pack to face off against at that point, even if they may be calling the shots throughout the game. The Pure were pretty much a footnote, as were the spirit claimed and the Hosts. I think the Bale Hounds got a couple of sentences. It will make it really great when OP puts out an antagonists book in the future for them, but for a core book I'd hoped to have more "street-level" enemies included in greater detail in the book than so much page count devoted to "epic-level" enemies. The art also could have been better spread out through some of the sections, though that's a minor quibble.

Overall: I really love this new version - it fixed almost every problem that our group had with the first edition of the game. It's a gorgeous book and well worth the wait!