White-Wolf is currently reinventing itself. One gets the impression that the folks running the company spent the last 9 + years watching the cheese flow in their gaming company and knew, somehow, that they were going to have to do something at some point, or follow TSR into the depths of ignomy and terror.

Werewolf: The Forsaken is their revision of the Werewolf Franchise from their perspective. And I have to say, it's rather a breath of fresh air.

Over all, the New World of Darkness is much closer to Call of Cthulhu, Unknown Armies, and Kult than it's previous incarnation...less about undead superheroes who only get up after dark, and more about personal horror and a world that you really don't want to know about. Really.

Where the old Werewolf: The Apocolypse was sort of a semi-religious war against the universe to preserve balance even as its players destroyed themselves, and all of the kludge that came with it, the premise behind W:TF is much simpler, much more refined.

There is our world, and the spirit world. The spirit world exists because of the actions of mankind, the feelings, emotions, wars, inventions, etc. And the spirits feed off of those things as well.

They feed especially well when posessing and controlling humanity.

Werewolves have always existed as the keepers of balance, keeping the spirits from possessing humans, and keeping the humans from looking to be possessed. By whatever means necessary.

As a result, humans fear them, spirits have an extreme dislike for them, and they don't even really like themselves... or rather, each other.

In the new Universe, there are actually many more things that can kill you than can't, and most of them want to. But Vampires could care less, and you aren't even really sure if there are such things as mages. But other werewolves might kill you...over religion, over power, over wanting your shoes or your car. Spirits might kill you for being a werewolf, or for getting in the way of something they want. Etc.

You're born under a cycle of the moon, and this determines your job in things, roughly. But you pick your pack and tribe, which reflect the people you want to do things with, and the way you want to do them. And every werewolf is a human. There are no more Metis or werewolves born as wolves, and breeding with wolves, or other werewolves, is a Very Bad IdeaTM.

Generally, this game gives one a lot of hope. Fewer stereotypes while staying true to the genre of loss, rage, horror, and the striving against the monster one discovers one's self to be to become something greater before your destiny eats you alive.

I can't go much more into detail, because White Wolf gets very edgy around people who use too many words or concepts from their books and start suing

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