Werewolf: The Apocalypse is White Wolf’s game of savage horror. In a darker version of our own world — where every conspiracy theory about greedy corporations and evil politicians has at least a note of truth to it, and where the Earth is dying right before our eyes — there’s a small, vastly outnumbered group who know the truth and might still have the power to change the future. But in order to succeed, they have to overcome their own flaws, often starting with the recognition that they have any.

One of the most pessimistic of the World of Darkness games, Werewolf is fundamentally a tragedy. The Garou are not only fighting a hopeless struggle against entropy itself, they’re also weighed down with the fractiousness, impatience, shortsightedness, and bad tempers that are partly responsible for their plight. The Apocalypse will come, and when it does the werewolves will be swallowed up by the Wyrm along with the rest of creation. But if you fight to the very limit of your endurance, you can push that fate back one more day.

What Should I Expect From The Werewolf Sphere?

The struggle to save the world can end only one way — with the triumph of the Wyrm. That’s a far cry from saying that everything you do is futile, though. We view Werewolf as a game about fighting against terrible foes, making hard choices, and treasuring whatever small triumphs you can achieve. It’s about getting the chance to rip into genuinely, uncomplicatedly evil opponents without having to worry about whether they deserve their fate or not — after all, they’re minions of the Wyrm; they quite literally exist to destroy all of creation. It’s about giving a fittingly horrific face to the ills of the modern world and then destroying them. It’s about being able to make a difference, even a small or temporary one, in a world that desperately needs difference-makers.

It’s also, however, about the players (not necessarily the characters) recognizing the flaws in Garou society that make their struggle more difficult. Werewolf without conflict among the Garou themselves — often over things that are minor or even trivial next to the fate of the world — isn’t really Werewolf at all. Their Rage, the motivating force in their lives and the thing that makes them tireless warriors for Gaia, has also led them to repeatedly harm their own cause — killing or alienating real or potential allies and spending as much time fighting one another as they do the Wyrm. The Garou may believe that they’re the good guys and that anything they do is justified, but the world isn’t that simple a place, and that belief is almost certain to backfire on them.