Due to some issues with scheduling and one of our players not bothering to put together a character for Werewolf: the Apocalypse, I decided to run a session of Howl to give a player who is 100% new to tabletop RPGs ad idea of what she'd be getting into once her own werewolf is more developed and powerful... without getting into all the really dirty details and the finer points of the rules system.
The rules are super-easy and the overall gameplay is incredibly smooth and fast, letting everyone at the table enjoy a minimalist roleplaying experience with all the flavor of the World of Darkness. I gave my group an extra 20hp to start just to let them feel a little "beefier" and to allow them a chance to make mistakes without instantly dire consequences.
They LOVED it!
We played a 2-hour session after spending about a half-hour making characters (only had one laptop and no printed copies so sharing was a challenge) but everyone was super-excited to carry on with the one-shot story I fabricated only hours prior, so it might be a plot hook for the full game. The player who was dragging their feet also decided to roll up a brand new character, inspired by their largely randomized character in Howl, and we're all super-excited to see it come to life with the full rules of W:tA.
My only gripes concern the layout and how the (ONLY) seven pages all run together with little to no formatting to denote breaks in segments and rules interjected between character creation segments. In PDF format, you can very easily scroll right past the exact thing you're looking to find. We have yet to print copies, but copy/pasting text to a word processor would allow all the edits we could ask for. Switch a few things around and it's even a perfect handout for a gaming group to enjoy a session at the table when a player is running late or unable to make game night.
Overall, it was an amazing experience in less than 3 hours of total time. We are now actually looking forward to days when the group cannot all be present, instead of just cancelling!
4.5/5
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