*OP Croatan Song

Werewolf: The Apocalypse

by Bill Bridges, Nicky Rea, Jackie Cassada

Croatan Song is the story of the werewolves of Native America and their territory before the coming of Columbus. In these pages, players will find the history of the Pure Lands, the tales of the human tribes there, the struggles and battles that were waged before the Wyrmcomers came, and the final sacrifice of the Croatan. The New World awaits.

Genres: Gaming, Role Playing Games, World Of Darkness

128 pages, Paperback

First published May 22, 2000

About the author

Bill Bridges is a writer and game designer, most known for developing White Wolf’s World of Darkness setting and the Fading Suns science-fiction universe.

Reviews

[Andre · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am divided about this book. It surely is not another Rage across Australia; Native Americans here get treated much better than Native Australians were in that book (as well as the native werewolf tribes). Their representation is closer to that of actual people and not just poor victims without any drive or pure eco-propaganda as the Native Australians were in the earlier book. We still get not much about the Croatan werewolves, but at least they have some voices of their own (unlike the Australian Bunyip werewolves) and we learn a bit more about their role and their culture, as well as their human kinfolk. Native Americans are also not treated as all being the same all the time, however, I personally think the book is nowhere near as diversifying as it should be, not really acknowledging the fact that much, if not most, about Pre-Columbian people is lost despite saying how many died due to disease, they simply act as though everything there needs to be known is known. They do show you several different nations, whether all of them I of course cannot say, but on many occasion, quite often in fact, the book acts as though they all have most stuff in common, despite them being spread over an entire continent and not even all having the same ancestry and of course living in vastly different climates. Like I said the book did better than previous ones of similar nature (probably because it was published later) but I think since most depictions of Native Americans are fictional, exceptional care has to be invested in stuff like this and this was not done here. Especially since it looks like the writers did not always consider whether what they wrote actually is consistent, for instance they say that most natives had no concept of breaking agreements or telling lies because they word was literally their bound (of course Europeans with their written language are always liars here) which is pretty hard to believe when you consider that they also talk about the existence of monsters, tricksters and the popularity of trickery in Native American heroes, and a trademark of tricksters is that they lie and generally deceive, so apparently these concepts which the book claims not to exist actually were known. In addition they often talk as though the entire continent was always peaceful but at other times they mention several conflicts and wars. Sometimes it was just plain stupid what they wrote, e.g. they actually said that Native Americans had no plows because they had no large domestic animals, which is pretty ridiculous since often plows and similar tools are used without such animals, humans simply pull them, btw. the domestic animals and most plants (except corn) they did have are mostly ignored here and South Americans did know the wheel, they simply never used it for laboring as it seems and just because some tribes/nations where alleged to have had "moon eyes" (blue) and pale skin does not mean that they were Europeans, they could simply have had those features (respectively "pale" might not mean the same to e.g. an Apache than it did to an English men), after all blond is not exclusive to Europeans/Caucasoids and neither are blue eyes and pale skin. In addition although the whole game line has a very strong environmental theme, the problem is that here they once again went too far, bringing Native Americans too close to being eco-propaganda than having them be actual people. Also there seems to be this theme that when a Native American does it, it is nearly always environmentally healthy, like their cities(they seemed to have ignored the fact that such cities come with the specialization in trades), even when Europeans did the same and they get condemned for it. Of course the mass extinctions of the past are once again ignored. Actually considered the publication date of this book, it is noticeable that they completely ignore the existence of vampires in North America (mostly Gangrel and Nosferatu vampires) which they had established in earlier books of the game line Vampire The Masquerade, which definitely plays in the same universe.
But enough of the bad stuff and let's get to the good stuff, the reason why I am divided about this book. In many ways it is actually done very well both in style, writing and theme. Considered how short this book was they actually did a good job in at least introducing quite a lot of nations, something still not common even more than 13 years later. And although they focus on the werewolves the other Changing Breeds and even other sorts of shapeshifters (something ignored for the European material) and monsters get a short and well done introduction that give you a lot of opportunity to make up your own mind about them and therefore so to say train yourself to be more inventive. I wouldn't bet on it that the bibliography of this book is good though, I guess today there are better sources on pre-Columbian America. The introduced powers, merits, flaws (albeit we have another example here of the franchise not being clear on what belonging to a tribe means, often they say it's entirely spiritual but like here they speak of being born a member of a tribe even when no other tribes members are there for introduction) and mystical tools and weapons are nice ideas and this book seems to be more fitting to a Chronicle were the players make-up a lot themselves so it seems to keep the guidelines broad enough to allow more individual customization for the players as well as their antagonists. The sample monsters actually look quite good and it’s a quality I was missing for the books on the European world where lots of stuff was just thrown at the readers. In addition they do not seem to be so quick on saying "use brute force" as they did in many other werewolf books and diplomacy, contests and tricks are often recommended tactics for overcoming antagonists. Furthermore, while short, what we see of the different beings in this chronicle seems to hint at a place where there are more opportunities for diverse storytelling than in many others around this universe.
Also even the worst artwork is of decent quality (often very fitting to the current topics and with many nuances you would not see at first glance), albeit people might not like many of the styles, and the whole structuring of the book and its short stories are easy to follow and entertaining to read.
So basically, sadly common with this game line, when it borrows only slightly from real world mythology and makes most of the supernatural stuff up its very good but whenever it goes closer to the real world and wants to show "real" people it pretty much fails.
Therefore I can only give this book an ok, so 2 stars, since I think the good and bad stuff basically are of equal proportions.