TWO Werewolf: The Apocalypse offers

In February 2016 our customers got their Rage on with two separate offers, running in parallel, featuring the Revised (2000) edition of Werewolf: The Apocalypse and a companion Werewolf +2 collection of many top-quality supplements. Between the two, these offers gave you everything you need to wage the Apocalypse War against the Wyrm.

Werewolf: The Apocalypse, originally published by White Wolf Game Studio in 1992, was the second of Mark Rein-Hagen’s landmark World of Darkness games using the Storyteller system. In Werewolf you become a lupine shapeshifter, a Garou. In the Gothic-Punk World of Darkness, the Garou are eco-warriors for Gaia (the Earth) fighting a two-front war against both urban civilization and supernatural corruption. The Garou are Gaia’s immune system. Hidden from the public eye, the Garou hunt and kill humans and supernatural creatures that are either bringing the Apocalypse or unwittingly contributing to it: vampires, evil spirits, fallen Garou, possessed humans, and the sinister megacorporation Pentex. Meanwhile, younger werewolves struggle with their identity and the rigid traditions of Garou society.

Ferocious in combat, attuned to the spirit world, werewolves are doomed heroes screaming defiance against impossibly powerful foes. The world is falling apart, poisoned by powerful corporations and spiritual evils alike, but each werewolf is determined to sell her life dearly. They cannot win, but they will never give up.

When we offer a game that has seen multiple editions, we prefer the best-regarded version. Our two past offers of White Wolf’s World of Darkness games — Vampire: The Masquerade (February 2015) and Mage: The Ascension (December 2015) — presented the 2nd Editions of both games. These two Werewolf offers focus on its third edition, Revised, published in 2000.

We always knew we’d need two offers to adequately present Werewolf. White Wolf published a hundred books in the Apocalypse line, not counting novels, anthologies, comics, and the Rage trading card game. Our original plan was to compose one offer with the rulebook and major supplements, and a second with the 13 Tribebooks. But the Tribebooks fit awkwardly in the Bundle’s divided format of core and bonus collections — which Tribebooks would be “core,” anyway? In the event, we filled both offers with just the supplements we desperately wanted to include, the highlights of Apocalypse. It was a terrific line! Ask experienced Werewolf players to list the books you need to play; they’ll say “You only really need the core rulebook, but you might also want –” and then they’ll name these two dozen books.

#1. WEREWOLF: THE APOCALYPSE

Our first Werewolf offer was an ideal starting point for those new to the game. It included the complete Revised rulebook and the essential supplements. There were three titles in this first offer’s Player’s Collection (retail value $50), presented as DRM-free, non-watermarked .PDF ebooks — and by the way, the .PDF scans of most of the books in both these offers were pristine, the best quality we’ve ever seen for White Wolf’s 1990s-2000s titles:

• Werewolf: The Apocalypse (Revised) (retail price $17): The complete 307-page rulebook in its acclaimed Revised Edition (2000) about Garou shapeshifting eco-warriors fighting the Apocalypse War in defense of Gaia. Includes the free introductory kit.
• Werewolf Players Guide (Revised) (retail $15): The 219-page sourcebook of the Garou, their 13 Tribes, and the other werecreatures of the world.
• Players Guide to Garou (retail $18): Much more about the Garou Nation, their septs and cairns, spirit lore, and new character options.

Those who paid more than the threshold (average) price rose in Gnosis and also got this offer’s entire Storyteller’s Collection with six more titles (retail value $66.50):

• Storytellers Handbook (Revised) (retail $16): Expanded systems for and information on Garou life that make it easier to run a Chronicle.
• Storytellers Companion (retail $9): Tons of extra information to enhance your game.
• A World of Rage (retail $12): A rundown of the Apocalypse War on all seven continents.
• Umbra (Revised) (retail $9): The spirit world, from the Realms to the Dark Umbra, and the hierarchy of its resident spirits.
• Axis Mundi: The Book of Spirits (retail $11): A bestiary of the Umbral entities who grant werewolves their powers.
• Guardians of the Caerns (retail $9.50): The sourcebook of septs and caerns that shows the daily lives of werewolves — and what they’re fighting for.

#2. WEREWOLF +2

Our companion Werewolf: The Apocalypse +2 offer presented the rest of the top-quality books from the voluminous Apocalypse support line. The Player’s Collection in this second offer included four complete DRM-free, non-watermarked .PDF ebooks:

• Players Guide to the Changing Breeds (Revised) (retail price $18): The world’s many other werecreatures, from the mysterious Bastet to the insane Ratkin and many more — tiger and dragon, raven and fox.
• Possessed: A Player’s Guide (retail $12): About mortals inhabited by the spirits of the Triat and Gaia — fomori, Drones, gorgons, and Kami.
• Book of Auspices (retail $12): The five roles assigned to the Garou according to the blessings of the Moon.
• Hammer and Klaive (retail $12): The guide to fetishes, magical weapons and tools empowered by spirits to do the impossible.

The Storyteller’s Collection for the +2 offer had six more titles, including all three Triat supplements (total retail value $66):

• Book of the Wyrm Second Edition (retail $11), Book of the Weaver (retail $9), and Book of the Wyld (retail $11): All the sourcebooks of the Triat, the threefold forces that shape the cosmos.
• Book of the City (retail $12): For creatures of the wild, werewolves venture into town a lot. This sourcebook tells how they handle it.
• Subsidiaries: A Guide to Pentex (retail $11): All the dirty doings of the evil megacorporation that serves the Wyrm.
• Rage Across the Heavens (retail $12): A sourcebook of Garou prophecies and celestial influences tied to White Wolf’s 1999 “Year of the Reckoning” crossover event.

Between them, these two collections presented ebooks worth over $200. Both these offers supported a charity new to the Bundle of Holding, The Bodhana Group. It’s a nonprofit organization that improves the quality of mental health services by using tabletop gaming as a therapeutic approach. Bodhana advocates tabletop gaming as a directed clinical practice that can benefit personal growth. Ten percent of each payment (after gateway fees) went to support gaming as a real force for good.