Loved reading this! It's got a great breakdown of pack dynamics. I cannot wait to run it.

Solid implementation of the Apocalypse World Engine for BSG style games with demonstartions via their two offered settings of how to adapt the general story style for genres from Sci-Fi to Fantasy. All in all a very good game for people looking for a campaign with rising tension and high stakes.

This is another game which so beautifully captures the genre it is encapsulating, in this case the soap-like dramas of an ongoing werewolf serial. And conveniently I had just watched a couple.

Sadly this game is not for me, the soapiness of these shows started to irritate me by the end. But I admire the craftsmanship and if you do want to replicate those shows you aren't going to get half as good anywhere else.

Character-ful Werewolf game, free from metaplots and giant political whatevers. This is about the Werewolf and the Pack, as it should be.

Pbta is a super system for this. Focused at Werewolf storytelling, and the character level. IMO, it's hard to find better than this if you want to tell the story of a Werewolf Pack.

This book is absolutely gorgeous. I really like the art style and the way the pages are laid out. The writing is also very visceral and at times descriptive while still being easy to understand. If that wasn’t enough it’s also about werewolves! Hooray! My current obsession!

I haven’t played it yet (still trying to organise a group... or should I say pack?) but I’m excited to try it out. The author clearly put a lot of love into this and it shows. I especially love the way the players figure out shared traditions (such as slang, how the pack shares meals, etc) and the prebuilt scenarios in the back look really exciting.

Werewolf the Apoca-who?

I ran Bite Marks during the KS when itwas known as Bite Me and had a wonderful time. The game is about werewolves, sure, but its also about family. For the first PbtA game I've seen with a move which can force someone to do something, its more of a "pick your uncle up from the airport" style of obligation. the types of werewolves, like in Masks and Monsterhearts, aren't just about what kind of supernatural widgets you have but the person you and your family think you are. The game I ran was charming and friendly, with some bits of investigation and light horror. The pack were pondering overthrowing their leader who'd been a zealous dick at times. Then when the family needed to come together, they were amazing. Family trumped any kind of petty sauabbles and this game reinforced those themes in the rules and the telling of them. Like other Black Armada games, this game taught me how to play it better than most. BA run incredibly-organised Kickstartrrs and its always great to see the finished product,

I've run this game a few times off of the early version of the rules that were released as part of the kickstarter campaign. I've had a great time with it every time I've got it to the table. It's got a very high energy feel to it, which is perfect for the genre it's emulating. It encourages and incentives playing big, whether that be through high-octane action scenes, or exposing the emotional vulnerability that underpins the pack.

It's a really nice, agile set of PbtA moves that cover pretty much all the ground I've wanted to in a wolfy urban fantasy game, without devolving into bloat. The playbooks are evocative, and have some really nice little touches to them - I'm a particular fan of the Heartbeats each playbook has. These are a list of character traits and roleplaying prompts from which you choose three, and earn XP when you bring them into play. It's a great way of giving people a starting point for each playbook, really good for one-shot play.

My favourite element of the game is the Spill move, however. This rewards characters for being open and honest about their relationships to their pack members - when you tell them how you really feel, or reveal a secret, you generate Pack Pool. This in turn can be used to pay for big scene-changing powers when fighting side by side with your packmates. It both lends a raw, feral feel to character interactions, while the pack moves themselves allow for streamlining of climactic combat encounters so they don't bog down and lose energy.

All in all, I heartily recommend this game!

Hello!

Please note that the review is sorted from negative to positive. So, please do read it till the end where the good stuff comes.

The most significant weakness of the book lies in the lack of actual play examples. Together with the overviews missing some details (like the roles moving to the left after each scene), this makes visualizing game play and checking on the rules sometimes difficult. Mind you, generally, the rules are clear and usable as written, but sometimes obscured by those design decisions.

Some things are actually not really explained, for instance the list of locations you generate in the beginning - is that an exclusive list, should you try to include all of them, or what other impact do they have on the game? I had to ask for support there and was informed that it was not an exclusive list.

While some may argue that the following is the biggest problem of the book, after analyzing it, I have come to the conclusion that it is not as bad as it feels. Lovecraftesque discusses two problematic issues found both in Lovecraft and his writing as well as in many derivative works, including RPGs. These are racism and distorted depictions of mental illness. There are quite interesting articles on them in the book, which I consider useful. However, that useful look behind the curtains (which even includes some thoughts on real life PTSD) is overshadowed by a preaching tone. In addition, when the book discusses the hopefully standard discussion before playing a horror rpg of what things are to be avoided because players feel uncomfortable with them, the authors seemingly belief that allegorical racism and comic depictions of mental illness are the main issues people may have. Personally, I find it much more import to check if anyone has arachnophobia or something similar, as the game is meant to provide detailed descriptions, which could easily make people with the appropriate phobias feel uncomfortable or even get a panic attack, rather than delve into academic fields like allegorical racism. Combined with the rather unfortunate "should" instead of "may" in the sentence introducing the examples of items to be banned, we get that unfortunate impressing of heavy-handed preaching. On a personal note, if you wish to avoid allegorical racism, I am not sure you are well-adviced to play a game that features alien creatures/monsters, as they can always be seen as allegories for other races or groups of people.

Another item that some people may have a problem with are a few pieces of poetry in the vein of Lovecraft's own poems. Some people may find them a waste of space, while others may find them useful to get into the mood. In either case, it is a noteworthy and unusual design decision.

One very good thing about this product was customer support. I mentioned above that I had a rules question. I went to the homepage to see if I found some clarification there, and as that turned up no result, I used their contact form to ask the question. I received an answer within 24h and got the impression that they cared about their customers.

The core rules are rather versatile, the game is statless, allowing players to change the premises of the game. If you stay within a framework of horror or mystery, you will probably not need to do much beyond agreeing upon such a story. Otherwise, you may need to alter the rules for Creeping Horror or the Force Majeure. The one element that is rather inflexible are the special cards - each player gets one card and by playing the card, an element can be introduced into the game that would usually violate the rules for the (early) game. The elements that are added by the special cards are focused on supernatural horror; while some can still be used more generally, others may be a bit more difficult to port. Still, that is not an insurmountable hurdle, so I could imagine even warping the rules so far to do a classic tale of dragon slaying.

As I said above, the game is statless. The main character, called Witness, has traits that describe their personality and gains them through play, but they have no mechanical meaning instead being a guide to keeping the character consistent. Conflicts and challenges are judgment calls for the current game master, called Narrator, and much is based on the phase of the game (3 phases with fixed number of scenes (with some variations in the second phase)). This means that the game does not come to a halt when a stat is needed or statistics for a roll are calculated. The game is diceless and has no randomizers besides the special cards which are introduced at the whim of the player that holds them. It is an unusual approach, but one that clearly puts the story in the forefront.

The game does include advice/rules for campaign play - which could refer to the horror or to the witness or to both.

The game itself has a clear structure with three roles that are rotated after every scene: The narrator, who is the game master, the witness, who plays the one and only player character, and the watchers, who work as kind of assistants to the narrator adding atmospheric details to the narrator's description and playing NPCs in multi-NPC situations to lighten the burden of the narrator. The roles are clearly defined and each one has their space within the narration. This, in turn, makes this unusual game relatively easy to play and keeps things orderly. Having just a single NPC keeps players from arguing about what their characters will do next, and indeed, the game itself is in general about narrating separately but building on each other - no one is to discuss what someone else says (unless the rules are violated) and within their realm, each one rules supreme.

With a rotating narrator, any concept of a prescripted adventure is bound to fail. Instead, the game is about an emerging story which is rather cleverly handled. In the first two phases, clues are generated, which are explicitly marked as such. And after each scene, each player is tasked to interpret the clues presented thus far - alone and for themselves without any sharing or discussing. This may seem insignificant, but is actually a very clever design. By actively interpreting the clues, each player thinks about the story and develops a logical interpretation. And when it is their turn to provide clues, those clues are likely to be logical. At the same time, the rules ensure that the clues are not too explicit, leaving room for various interpretations, so that no one can tell where the tale will lead in the end.

This leads to another nice aspect. Scenarios for Lovecraftesque are not complete adventures. Instead, they are adventure seeds with most of the setup information as well as some inspiration for the later game provided, so that even a single seed can be reused and yield completely different tales. And the book comes with a lot of scenarios and there are even more on the homepage, even two that were published in other magazines. So, there is a lot of material you can use for inspiration if you don't want to play a freeform adventure.

All in all, this points above make it also a good candidate for solo roleplaying and maybe also a good game to practice playing/emulating several players while soloing. With the roles being so strictly separated, you are less likely to worry about when one player or the other may shout in. With no finished adventures but rather adventure seeds, it has exactly what you want for normal solo gaming. And the clue mechanism yields itself to forcing you to explore different lines of thought and in the end surprising yourself. Finally, the lack of stats can be refreshing as you don't need to stop to consider whether climbing that wall is a difficult or very difficult challenge. Mind you, soloing is not an officially supported option, but I think it shouldn't be too much a problem with some outside material like a player emulator, oracle, or random content generator.

My vote is that it is a recommendable product, especially for solo gamers, despite its flaws.