World of Darkness: Skinchangers

New World of Darkness

by Chris Campbell, Jess Hartley, Peter Schaefer

"Ahahaha! You, too? I knew I wasn't alone!
Oh, look at you - you're magnificent.
Where did you get those wolf pelts?
Mine isn't nearly as pretty, and I couldn't find a wolf, but look! Let me show you!"
- Fred Gahagan, Skinthief

This book includes:

* A detailed look at the skinthieves who achieve animal transformation on their own, including rules for player creation

* The traditions and powers of those skinchangers born from spirit possession

* A selection of unique skinchangers and strange origins, as well as collected animal lore to help Storytellers customize their own shifters

For use with the World of Darkness Rulebook

Genres: Role Playing Games, Horror, Games

Hardcover

First published July 1, 2006

Reviews

[Andre · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book for the first time several years ago and it was the book that captured my interest on the book shelf and introduced me to the new World of Darkness game line.
Now I read it again, nearly 6 years later, and is it still as good as I remember? Yes!
It is not the same but all in all it is similar. During the second time I noticed some flaws I had overlooked back then, but I also noticed merits that I did not notice either, e.g. what level of horror this book contains.
Even if you do not play this game line I think it's an inspirational book to create your own little gallery of skinchanging monsters, whether they be physical or spiritual.
The editing could have been better since occasionally there were grammar and spelling errors but I doubt a quick/casual/first time reader would even notice them since they are pretty rare. Also I noticed that it contradicted itself once, in the first chapter it at first stated a transformed skinthief knows the language of the animal he/she transforms into by instinct, but later it stated different information and that its only a trait of some skinthieves. But that was that one time, after that I never noticed that again. I must say that the recommended source materials for inspiration are not always the ones I would agree with, e.g. Brad Steiger's werewolf book is a not something I would recommend to anyone since I doubt the validity of his sources, respectively in some cases (like the werewolves of Greifswald) I could check the sources and I found that he changed the story (e.g. in the story they used inherited silver but there was no mentioning of them actually melting them into bullets and some other details were changed as well).
There is one very big flaw this book has but before I go to that I will speak about the positive aspects:
1. The horror stories. Here I found some nice little horror stories that were short and to the point, the book starts with one and it is gruesome, I think it’s a retelling of Red Riding Hood but its integrated into the World of Darkness and I guess if it weren't for the grandmother you might never know, introducing some characters you will see later and also showing the horror aspects of what is to come. Shortly afterwards we get a good little introduction about the potential that the Unknown has in creating fear and how things can create suspense when it turns out that they do not fit what you belief and how even supernatural creatures tend to place things they see into known categories to get some semblance of control over the situation.
2. I like the rules and powers for the skinthieves, how they become what they are (it is always a choice) and what price there has to be paid (some forms literally make you spin towards madness and there is always the danger that you develop derangements and lose yourself and your intelligence in the stolen form), as well as the examples the book shows us and what a wide range it covers, e.g. a homeless man transforming into the dogs that come to him to die, people that crawl into elephants to possess them, a materialized wolf spirit that literally tears your body open to crawl inside it, a family of thieves that change into crows by devouring them, a man stealing the power of the spirits and of course much more, much more. That so much time was spent to give these skin-thieves powers, a morality system and even rules for character creation makes me wonder why this was done as a supplement book for the line Werewolf the Forsaken, since it could easily be a book on its own. It really had everything it needed and the rules work well for creating both player and non-player characters.
3. The shapeshifters coming into being by being claimed by spirits are a good mix of made up and existing legends (e.g. the Bouda are women claimed by hyena like spirits who give the women the power to transform into hyenas or a line of ravenshifters that go back to a powerful raven spirit that sought to escape death) and these shapeshifters give it a good new twist, e.g. the South American Kanaima cannot possess humans and so to perform vengeance they possess and transform the bodies of the dead, with the permission of the now dead human I might add.. Also I think they work well with what was shown about the Spirit World and its denizens in previous books of the game line, after all if usually humans being claimed by spirits tend to display physical aspects of said spirits and in previous books some even developed the power to liquefy I would say shapeshifting into an animal is really no big deal and it fits also the spirit in question. I mean if a cougar spirit enters the physical world to "hunt as flesh", why claim a human? Sure the intelligence is higher but humans basically lack all the weaponry of the spirits physical counterpart and when a cougar is not smart enough for the spirits liking it can just as well make it smarter just like it could make a human stronger and if there are no cougars to claim, just give the human the power to transform into a cougar. Thereby you solve two problems: 1) you have a body suiting your need to hunt and b) your human body can easily blend in and is harder to detect.
4. The third chapter on the unique skinchangers is called Freak Gallery and it fits, the chapter covers a wide range of sample skinchangers and some of the topics you would not have expected from such a game line, the book shows us a being that might very well be just a "living" coat made out of faces, the creature can skin your face in mere seconds, integrate the face into its coat and thereby transform into you. We also get an introduction into the topic of people being transformed into animals by wizardry, possibly forever, as well as family curses transforming their victims into murderous beasts, new viruses that transform the humans they infect into shapes more suitable for their own needs, territorial monsters switching between shapes and last but not least modern chimeras brought about by genetic engineering, something I haven't seen so far in any game line that deals with magic. So basically this deals with occultism as well as science fiction so they have skinchangers that you would not expect when you think of a book like this.

Now I could have given the book 5 stars despite the flaws but the appendix on animal lore ruined it. I know this book is tailored for the US-American market but this appendix is ridiculous. This animal lore, often meaning animals in legends and folklore, is severely limited and thereby very misleading in my eyes, in the US alone you would find many cultures that e.g. have views on dogs that are different from the ones depicted here. In my mind they should have left this appendix out or instead have a few more powers or maybe inspirational sources again to help the reader customize the self invented monsters better. Or, since they mentioned some powers from other game lines, they could have listed some examples here.

But that appendix was the only big flaw I could find with this book, so overall, I can happily give it 4 stars.