We howl, and our howl echoes Gaia’s lament. Our world, our mother, lies dying, and her murderers dance across what remains of her body, digging deeply of her wounds to forge the icons that signify to other hierophants the excess of their glee.

　We howl, our song stoking our fury.

　We howl, our packs taking the war-form, biting, tearing, killing as Gaia bid us do, but her subjugators are myriad. Those who take from the world to foster their own greed. Those who take from the world so that they can accumulate more — the better to keep taking and taking in the nights to come, until Gaia’s bones have been picked clean.

　We howl, our dances around the fires stoking our fury.

　We howl, in each other’s presence, to signal to our undiscovered Kin and to call to others of our kind, across tribe and moon-sign. We must put aside our differences, turn the killing-urge against those who paint the mark of the Wyrm upon themselves, and not against each other.

　We howl, our memories of our lost and our fallen and our spirit-sick betrayers stoking our fury.

　We howl, wondering, questioning, doubting if stoking our fury can revive our dying mother, or if our fury is but a paean to vengeance, an empty, anguished, monstrous roar at the end of the world.

　Do you howl with us? And against whom? Who stokes your fury?

　When will you Rage?

《狼人：末日怒嚎》真相

• 狼人有能力使用从狼人到人的多种形态

• 狼人属于多个世界——灵与肉，狼与人——但没有一个世界完全接纳他们

• 狼人被其部分所属的各个世界所恐惧和不信任

• 狼人是魂怒的造物，永远面临失去自控的危险

• 狼人被盖亚赋予了不可靠的更大使命，而盖亚本身就是个不可知的灵性存在

• 狼人认为妖蛆——熵和腐化的洪荒之力——是盖亚的主要威胁，迦鲁的大部分时间都用来对抗妖蛆的代理人——不管是真实的还是想象的

　Werewolf: The Apocalypse is a storytelling game about radical solutions, exploring an environmental apocalypse in which a range of injustices throughout the world provokes urgent responses and violence. And that violence is (almost) always righteous, if only subjectively. It’s a game about tearing apart your enemies and living with the repercussions. The people who’ve sold off your future because they don’t think you deserve a future at all? Rip those motherfuckers in half.

　It also is a game that explores the differences between people and the mutual sacrifices made to effect — or endure — global consequences. Who cares about a few acres of old-growth forest or the poisoning of the local water table if it drives quarterly share value ever upward? Werewolves do, and they possess unique advantages to prevent such disasters. Saying and doing are two different things, though, and werewolves are just as likely to fight among themselves as they are to take the battle to the true despoilers. Almost all werewolves agree on what’s going wrong, but they often disagree violently on how best to make the necessary changes (or even what those changes should be).

　Werewolf is also a game about spirituality. Each of the World of Darkness games provides a different perspective or set of truths it considers to be incontrovertible, and for Werewolf, those truths are animistic. The world crumbles in an ongoing environmental apocalypse because powerful decision-makers have opened themselves up to spiritual corruption through attitudes of short-term greed. Other spirits, however, seek to put the world in order, or to continuously refresh reality with inchoate creation. What was originally a cycle among momentous spiritual forces has instead become a malfunctioning imbalance, and werewolves find themselves and their world trapped within it.


　If you’re familiar with previous editions of Werewolf, let us be up front and state that this fifth edition is a re-imagining, not a continuation. You can even call it a reboot if you prefer. The truths and “lore” of previous editions aren’t necessarily true in this edition. Take this book and the world it proposes at face value.

Welcome To A Dying World

　You knew something was wrong, even before your First Change. You could taste the poison in the air and the chemicals on the streets and sidewalks. It was an alienating experience: None of your friends cared quite so much. It just didn’t bother them the same.

　Then came the First Change, and your horror at the realization of what you were: a werewolf.

　A Garou.

　After your First Change, you put the pieces together. Gaia. Spirits. The world that you inherited imposed upon you a duty to protect it and to destroy the enemies responsible for despoiling her. Your view of the world expanded, grew more nuanced, more certain as things fell into place, one by one.

　You could turn on the news, and although they didn’t speak there about it in Garou terms, the meaning was the same: endless stories of new ravages, perpetrated by monsters in human form, wearing expensive suits, ready with excuses and explanations. But this time, you could not be fooled. You smelled the greed surging inside them. You had their scent.

　Every werewolf makes a journey on which they come to understand the world in the Garou way. As their senses sharpen, they also acquire an understanding of what’s happening in the world, why it’s important, and how to interpret new information about it. They learn to disregard the well-paid PR flacks justifying the unjustifiable and to listen to those voices speaking about Gaia with the same urgency the Garou themselves feel, whether it comes from scientists, activists, or indigenous people.

　Eventually this path leads to a view that the world is in a catastrophic state and the time to act may have passed. This generation of Garou dwells in the midst of Apocalypse. It’s too late to avert the end.

　That’s no cause for fatalism, however. The Apocalypse may be upon them, but that means every victory now becomes that much more important. Garou before them have failed Gaia, but this generation of Garou still has purpose. Take back lost places of power, repair the blights in the spirit world, and rip the goddamn throats out of the death merchants who profiteer their way through a world their actions make miserable, even — especially — the pack’s home territory.

　Otherwise, there will be no tomorrow.


Walkers Between Worlds

　Most Garou see themselves as having a distinct purpose in service to Gaia, yet another part of the undeniable tragedy in being Garou is the fact that they straddle multiple worlds but are truly native — or welcome — in none. Part human, part wolf, but not wholly either, they are at once feared and even reviled by both wolves and humans. As creatures also partially of spirit and partially of flesh, they often find themselves at odds with creatures connatural to one of those realms or the other — spirits remember the ancient pacts that bind them into service to the Garou, and physical creatures experience delirious memories of the terrors wrought upon their kind by werewolves in times long past.

　No surprise, then, that the pack has become a social unit which offers safety and belonging to the Garou. Even as flawed as most packs are, Garou find company and fellowship in one another because the worlds they inhabit are terrified by them. At the same time, though, they find potentially violent rivals in those fellow Rage-driven territorial creatures they know all too well.

What Do Werewolves Do?

　The most immediate things that werewolves do is fight to take back what has been lost. The Apocalypse has happened or is happening, and now it’s up to each pack of Garou to strike back in
a way that its members find meaningful. This sort of conflict is often the crux of a story or chronicle. This often, but not always, involves confronting the influence of the Wyrm or stopping rampaging avarice from feeding it further. The pack may need to reclaim a site of spiritual importance that’s been overrun by corrupt werewolves, kill their way through an occupying enemy force, or retake a Garou-claimed territory that a multinational wants to strip-mine or deforest. It’s also the part of their lives that has the most immediate fallout with “normal” people, who are likely to see the Garou as dangerous radicals or, worse, rampaging, blood-spattered monsters ready to tear humanity asunder.

　Over the course of the story, werewolves are building their own legend. Renown is especially important to the Garou: It represents the deeds they’ve accomplished that have value in werewolf society, and it represents spirits’ esteem for them and willingness to help them perform special Gifts and Rites. It’s said that the greatest Garou don’t die but, in fact, live on as spirits themselves and practically become the legends they have made for themselves.

　The spirit world plays no small part in a werewolf’s life, and packs almost invariably find themselves exploring the mysteries of the Umbra. Garou have any number of reasons to venture into the increasingly scarred and alien Spirit Wilds, whether on brief jaunts to engage capricious spirits; on treks through the spiritscape to ambush unwary enemies in the physical world; or on epic undertakings whereby they fight spiritual malignancy at its root, eliminating hostile spirits that nourish themselves off corruption’s sway in the physical world. The spirit world is home to enigmatic secret-keepers, bellicose tempests of emotional power, and fickle beings who might be convinced to grant their boons in service of a righteous cause.

　Speaking of mysteries, werewolves must be forever vigilant for others of their kind who don’t yet know what they are. Kinseeking Garou are always looking out for others of their kind, whether to mentor them in the ways of their pack or Patron Spirit, or to keep them out of the clutches of the so-called fallen tribes. Werewolves are few and far-between, and there’s almost nothing so ruinous as the loss of kin-wolves to the extreme ideologies of wayward tribes or to the realities of being a werewolf with no knowledge of how to handle it.

　All of these exploits and more belong to your troupe, as you gather to tell stories around the table, virtually, in a live-action format, or in any number of other ways.

Storytelling Games And Roleplaying

　Storytelling began with humanity, as language transformed us from fire-wielding apes to something else. Those stories, we tell ourselves, began around a fire as warnings of real or imagined dangers and temptations waiting in the surrounding darkness. Our stories changed from campfire warnings to epic poetry, plays, novels, operas. They added new dangers and temptations, many of them now waiting inside us. In the 20th century, stories moved out of human voices and minds into display and spectacle. Movies, comics, television, and the limitless reaches of digital entertainment still kept that flickering light in the middle, even as they carried our stories almost as far as our imagination could go. Almost.

　The roleplaying game, as one of the newest storytelling art forms, completes the arc from those first firesides to the glow of modern monitors. In roleplaying games, players tell or act out stories for an audience of themselves, guided by the rules or logic of the game, but limited only by their imagination. If you’ve never played a roleplaying game, don’t worry. It’s as easy as playing house or bang-you’re-dead was when you were a child — but with more sophisticated stories and greater emotional significance.

　Most importantly, and making them distinct from traditional, told-to-you media, storytelling games are about making choices. A group of players and its Storyteller — the troupe — collectively tells a tale of environmental apocalypse, spirits and secrets, the ravening monsters humans perceive and the complex personalities motivating them.


The Storyteller

　As a Werewolf: The Apocalypse player, you take on the persona and role of a character that you create, and you then pretend to be that character during the course of the story. One of the participants, the Storyteller, creates and guides the story. They build the setting and populate it with a cast of supporting characters. The Storyteller describes what happens in the world as a result of what the players say and do. It is the Storyteller who arbitrates the rules and brings horrifying new challenges into the game.

　The Storyteller’s primary duty is to make sure the other players have a good time. They do that by telling a good story. Unlike novelists or film directors, however, they don’t simply tell the story from hook to climax. Storytellers create the setting and set the plot in motion — leaving a “player-shaped hole” for the other participants to make their own decisions in the roles of the primary characters, defining the story outcomes and setting as they go. Storytellers maintain a careful balance between narration and adjudication, between entertainer and umpire, between story and game, between planning and improvisation. Sometimes Storytellers set the scene or even describe the action, but mostly they decide what occurs in reaction to the words and actions of the characters, as fairly and impartially as they can. Storytellers are co-creators, not tyrants.


The Players

　Although the Storyteller plays the game and indeed portrays dozens or hundreds of characters, the term player refers to those participants at the table who assume the roles of the central characters in the story. As a player in Werewolf, you create one main character and then roleplay them. You speak for them, you impel them to action; you decide what they desire in the world of the game and how they want to attain or accomplish it. The Storyteller tailors the story to those desires; the players build characters who have a role in that story, and whose actions complete or transcend it.

　Often after you describe the actions you want to take, the Storyteller may ask you to make a dice roll to see if you succeed in doing what you have described. Your character’s Traits — descriptions of their strengths and weaknesses — dictate how well your character can do certain things. Knowing your character’s abilities, both natural and supernatural, gives you the tools to choose from in providing that character the best chance of success. As a werewolf, your character is definitely good at high-grade violence, but violence very rarely proves to be the best solution to the problems they face. That’s important. As a player, you’re not trying to “win,” necessarily (though your character may well be...). Instead, you’re working with the other players and the Storyteller to tell an engaging story. Success is great, but failure cre ates consequences, which usually make more story in turn.

　Thus, a good player balances acting and strategy, considering their character’s personality and desires alongside their Traits and werewolf nature. You employ your character’s strengths and work around their weaknesses to achieve your goals, even as the world remains hostile and dangerous. Your character’s actions help shape the world; as a player, you can also add ideas and elements to the story. The Storyteller incorporates them (or chooses not to) in fostering the most dramatic, engaging, and challenging narrative possible.

　As with all World of Darkness games, the potential for intensity and intimacy in Werewolf rewards player focus: on their own character, and on the dramas and desires of their fellow players’ characters. Much of the game’s mystery and flavor is lost when players must compete for the Storyteller’s (and one another’s) attention. The story likewise can become unfocused if the spotlight must be shared among a large entourage of “main” characters. We find that Werewolf plays most enjoyably with one Storyteller and a troupe of three to five players.



Play Aids

　In the format we detail in this book, Werewolf is designed to be played at a table; on a virtual tabletop; or via some emergent format, such as online chat servers. The game has no board, but dice, pencil, and paper (or their virtual substitutes) require a table (or virtual substitute) for proper use. Tables also provide a common focus for player attention. You need photocopies of the character sheets (located at the end of the book or downloadable from the World of Darkness website) and something — a large piece of paper, a cork board or whiteboard, a tablet screen — to house the Relationship Map (see p. 111). The dice required are 10-sided, available in any game store. You need two colors of 10-sided dice: one color for regular dice, the other color for Rage dice.

Mature Content Warning

　For the past few decades, World of Darkness games have addressed the darkness in the real world through horror stories. These games have addressed AIDS, capitalist exploitation, sexual predation, the resurgence of far-right political extremism, religious fanaticism, state and private surveillance, and many other issues. This entry in the World of Darkness series doesn’t shy from any of these themes, and we believe exploration of such subjects is as valid in roleplaying games as it is in other media. Inclusion of a problematic subject in a Storytelling game is not the same as glorifying it, and if you take the chance to explore it critically, the result can be the exact opposite. If we understand the problems facing us, we are better armed to fight them.

　Werewolf: The Apocalypse may include in-world references and expressions of the following: child harm, substance abuse, sexual violence, mental illness, pandemics, political extremism, physical violence and gore, mind control, torture, abuse, imprisonment and kidnapping, racism, sexism, homophobia, and spiders, to name a few. It’s a game about monsters and the cruel things those monsters do to people. It’s also a game about people who may have to endure circumstances caused by others’ actions, and who do so with incomplete knowledge. For example, an individual might become so desperate that they “invite” spiritual possession, but that doesn’t mean they “deserve” being turned into a monster.

　“Why are you telling me this?” you might be thinking. Someone at your table is not familiar with this game. Someone at your table has dealt with some of these issues in real life. Someone at your table wants to know that you read this warning and that you will be considerate to them as players, even as you put their character through the wringer.

　In the third Appendix, you can find specific techniques on how to handle difficult subjects in your game in a fashion that’s respectful to your players and their experiences. Determine beforehand which techniques your group wants to use. People have different needs, and not every method works for every person.

　This is a game about monsters. But it is only a game.

　Don’t use it as an excuse to be a monster yourself. ■

Lexicon

Apocalypse: The physical and spiritual end of the world, brought about by relentless human greed and consumption

Auspice: The moon-sign under which one experiences one’s First Change into a werewolf; an indicator of one’s role in werewolf society

Bane: A foul spirit in service to the destructive cosmological force known as the Wyrm (see also)

Caern: A place where the spirit world and the physical world are in close accord or proximity; to many werewolves, a “holy place”

Crinos: The war-form of the Garou; the nigh-mythical “wolf-man” form; up to nine feet tall

Delirium: Confusion, terror, and/or fugue state that afflicts humans who see werewolves for what they are

First Change: The initial time that an individual transforms into a werewolf and, thereby, realizes what they truly are; the First Change can happen almost any time after the age of maturity

Fomor, Formori (plural): An individual or animal suffering long-term possession by a Bane

Gaia: The mother-spirit of the world, of earth itself; believed by many werewolves to be dying or dead

Gaia’s Howl: An audible indicator (capable of sometimes affecting other senses) of the age of Apocalypse, perceptible only by Garou and perhaps some spirits

Garou: A werewolf; a creature both wolf and human, Rage and spirit

Garou Nation: A loose coalition of Garou tribes, ostensibly with common goals in service to Gaia; the Garou Nation has sundered in the age of Apocalypse, and invoking it now can come across as idealistic or backward-looking

Harano: A state of werewolf misery or despair in which they believe that nothing matters, so why try?

Hauglosk: A state of werewolf fervor or fanaticism in which they believe that they must take urgent action immediately

Homid: The “human” form of the werewolf

Impergium: In times of legend, a vicious culling by which werewolves slaughtered humans, seemingly resulting in the generational terror that now provokes the Delirium

Kin: A Werewolf who has not yet been accepted as Garou — a werewolf who doesn’t yet know that they’re a werewolf

Kinseeker, Kinseeking: A werewolf who looks for nascent, unknowing werewolves; the act of looking for Kin

Klaive: A ritual dagger made of silver; prized among traditional Garou

Litany, the: A set of maxims and mores by which werewolf society conducted itself in the past, but viewed askance in a modern context as insufficient to help the Garou prevent the Apocalypse

Lupus: The “wolf ” form of the werewolf

Moot: A cultural, political, or practical meeting of werewolves, often at a caern and hosted by a sept

Pack: The basic social unit of werewolves; packs may form from a sense of duty or be mandated by elder Garou, or they may emerge out of dependency, self-preservation, or mutual alienation

Rage: The werewolf’s fury made manifest; the raw, destructive force of being Garou, at once a blessing and a curse

Sept: A number of packs sworn to the protection of a caern; a sept can consist of a lone pack or many

Spirit: An incorporeal entity believed to consist of thought, emotion, or other resonant force; a component of the animistic worldview of the Garou, who understand the true substance of reality

Talisman: An object of supernatural power, spiritual significance, or other wonder, held in high esteem by Garou

Triat: Three cosmological forces — Wyld, Weaver, Wyrm — that form a sort of cosmological cycle or state of reality

Tribe: A faction of werewolves pledged in service to a particular Patron Spirit; a tribe’s outlook represents a way of facing the Apocalypse

Umbra, also Spirit Wilds: The spirit world; the shadow or reflection of the physical world, seemingly caused by emotional resonance

Veil, the: A euphemism for the human world’s ignorance of the supernatural, especially werewolves, reinforced by the Delirium

Weaver: The cosmological forcer of order, structure, and stasis; part of the Triat

Wyld: The cosmological force of creation, change, and chaos; part of the Triat

Wyrm: Ascendant in the age of Apocalypse, the cosmological force of destruction, decay, and entropy; part of the Triat