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Werewolf: The Apocalypse
Subsidiarias: Una guía de Pentex
Corrupción de Marca
¡Tenemos lo que necesitas! ¡Fabricamos productos que te hacen la vida un poco más fácil! ¡Podemos hacerte feliz! Somos las grandes empresas de Pentax, creadas para traerte a ti, consumidor, exactemente lo que buscas. Come nuestra comida, bebe nuestro alcohol, toma nuestras píldoras y juega a nuestros juegos; todos estos productos son perfectamente recomendables para ti. ¿Crees que mentiríamos?
Grandes empresas en su apogeo
Para aquellos Narradores que deseéis dar más complejidad a los villanos empresarios de Mundo de Tinieblas, iéste es vuestro libro! Subsidiarias: Una Guía para Pentex detalla el estructura, productos, declaraciones de delegaciones y los más íntimos tejemanejes de seis de las más dañinas filiales de Pentex. Si te gusta que tus antagonistas, empresarios manchados por el Wyrm, sean increíblemente poderosos e influyentes, como Magadon o Endron, o prefieres que sean crueles de un modo más sutil, como Destilerías King, Juguetes Avalon y Electrónica Tellus, tenemos lo que necesitas. Y aún peor: ¿te atreverías a visitar el lado oscuro del rol en el Estudio de Juegos Black Dog? Podría ser demasiado para ti...
¡Tenemos lo que necesitas! ¡Fabricamos productos que te hacen la vida un poco más fácil! ¡Podemos hacerte feliz! Somos las grandes empresas de Pentax, creadas para traerte a ti, consumidor, exactemente lo que buscas. Come nuestra comida, bebe nuestro alcohol, toma nuestras píldoras y juega a nuestros juegos; todos estos productos son perfectamente recomendables para ti. ¿Crees que mentiríamos?
Grandes empresas en su apogeo
Para aquellos Narradores que deseéis dar más complejidad a los villanos empresarios de Mundo de Tinieblas, iéste es vuestro libro! Subsidiarias: Una Guía para Pentex detalla el estructura, productos, declaraciones de delegaciones y los más íntimos tejemanejes de seis de las más dañinas filiales de Pentex. Si te gusta que tus antagonistas, empresarios manchados por el Wyrm, sean increíblemente poderosos e influyentes, como Magadon o Endron, o prefieres que sean crueles de un modo más sutil, como Destilerías King, Juguetes Avalon y Electrónica Tellus, tenemos lo que necesitas. Y aún peor: ¿te atreverías a visitar el lado oscuro del rol en el Estudio de Juegos Black Dog? Podría ser demasiado para ti...
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First published February 1, 2000
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
July 30, 2011
Um, time has proven this book to be a little too close for comfort.
I re-read this Werewolf: The Apocalypse supplement last week as research for a game I'm planning to run, and though I remembered enjoying it upon its release in early 2000, on the whole it's even better than I recalled. Briefly, this sourcebook covers a handful of corrupt and corrupting companies associated with the ultimate evil megacorp: Pentex, a company whose "bottom line" involves inflicting all manner of social, economical, environmental and spiritual disaster upon the world at large.
A few weeks ago, I made a crack about the recent activities of large corporations, their owners, their media mouthpieces, and their political yes-men. "It's almost," I wrote, "like these folks played Werewolf as kids and then decided that they wanted to be Pentex in real life." Companies like BP, Koch Industries, Blackwater Securities (under whatever name it operates this week...), News Corporation and the Kingdom Holding Company conduct business in manners disturbingly similar to Pentex and its subsidiaries. Now, as one of the original White Wolfers myself, I realize that satire was almost literally the name of the game; in the near-dozen years since this book came out, however, the reality has damn near equaled the satire. This alone makes Subsidiaries worthy, if uncomfortable, reading.
Beyond an introduction that lays out the foundation of Pentex and its essential structure, the book involves six chapters, each one covering an evil corporation:
* Endron, a vicious oil-and-energy megacorp (written by Richard Dansky)
* Megadon, a literally sickening health-and-pharmaceutical company (by Clayton Oliver and Will Van Meter)
* King Breweries, a grotesque producer of toxic intoxicants (again, by Dansky)
* Avalon, a toy company bent on corrupting and dispiriting children (by Deena McKinney)
* Tellus, an evil videogame and computer company (by Ethan Skemp, Owen Winkler, Brian Urbanek and Jesse Heinig)
* ...and Black Dog Game Factory, a vicious self-parody of White Wolf itself (by Justin Achilli)
The book's tone vacillates between deadpan revelation and snarky madness. In its most effective entries (Endron, Megadon and King), Subsidiaries reads like a corporate profile written from hell. Dansky's work is by far the strongest material in the book, veering sickeningly close to real-life practices. Achilli's Black Dog entry provides the sourcebook's wildest, most demented ride, and although it's more cartoonish than the three strongest entries, it's both laugh-out-loud hilarious and disquietingly accurate. (I myself wound up parodied in one section of this entry - a section Justin ran past me to make sure I wouldn't be offended; I did think it was funny, but that's partly because his observations were somewhat insightful...) The Megadon chapter is the book's most straightforward entry, and what it lacks in over-the-top satire it makes up for with a disturbing resemblance to reality.
The book's weakest entries both left me wanting more than what I got. Tellus wasn't bad per se, just not up to the level of the other chapters; that said, it reads almost like an early business plan for Rockstar Games, producers of the Grand Theft Auto series and a video/ computer game analog of White Wolf itself. I felt disappointed by the Avalon Toys entry, partly because its format - a combination of flavor fiction and straight-on info - didn't quite work and felt jarring in comparison with the formats of the other entries, and partly because it felt skimpy in comparison. The concept of an evil toy manufacturer has devastating potential for fun... but although the entry made references to dangerous toys like Action Bill and Gooshy-Gooze, it didn't provide nearly enough detail to be usable. Both toys were mentioned in an early edition of Book of the Wyrm, but those entries were also too skimpy yet over-the-top for practical application. Updated info would have been appreciated.
Overall, however, Subsidiaries is a useful and grimly enjoyable sourcebook for one of my all-time favorite RPGs. While the format is inconsistent (I wish editor/ developer Ethan Skemp had mandated the same format for each author) and some entries work better and read better than others, this is one of the stronger books from the Werewolf: The Apocalypse line. Its occasionally chilling accuracy just makes it, in this day and age, that much more worthwhile.
I re-read this Werewolf: The Apocalypse supplement last week as research for a game I'm planning to run, and though I remembered enjoying it upon its release in early 2000, on the whole it's even better than I recalled. Briefly, this sourcebook covers a handful of corrupt and corrupting companies associated with the ultimate evil megacorp: Pentex, a company whose "bottom line" involves inflicting all manner of social, economical, environmental and spiritual disaster upon the world at large.
A few weeks ago, I made a crack about the recent activities of large corporations, their owners, their media mouthpieces, and their political yes-men. "It's almost," I wrote, "like these folks played Werewolf as kids and then decided that they wanted to be Pentex in real life." Companies like BP, Koch Industries, Blackwater Securities (under whatever name it operates this week...), News Corporation and the Kingdom Holding Company conduct business in manners disturbingly similar to Pentex and its subsidiaries. Now, as one of the original White Wolfers myself, I realize that satire was almost literally the name of the game; in the near-dozen years since this book came out, however, the reality has damn near equaled the satire. This alone makes Subsidiaries worthy, if uncomfortable, reading.
Beyond an introduction that lays out the foundation of Pentex and its essential structure, the book involves six chapters, each one covering an evil corporation:
* Endron, a vicious oil-and-energy megacorp (written by Richard Dansky)
* Megadon, a literally sickening health-and-pharmaceutical company (by Clayton Oliver and Will Van Meter)
* King Breweries, a grotesque producer of toxic intoxicants (again, by Dansky)
* Avalon, a toy company bent on corrupting and dispiriting children (by Deena McKinney)
* Tellus, an evil videogame and computer company (by Ethan Skemp, Owen Winkler, Brian Urbanek and Jesse Heinig)
* ...and Black Dog Game Factory, a vicious self-parody of White Wolf itself (by Justin Achilli)
The book's tone vacillates between deadpan revelation and snarky madness. In its most effective entries (Endron, Megadon and King), Subsidiaries reads like a corporate profile written from hell. Dansky's work is by far the strongest material in the book, veering sickeningly close to real-life practices. Achilli's Black Dog entry provides the sourcebook's wildest, most demented ride, and although it's more cartoonish than the three strongest entries, it's both laugh-out-loud hilarious and disquietingly accurate. (I myself wound up parodied in one section of this entry - a section Justin ran past me to make sure I wouldn't be offended; I did think it was funny, but that's partly because his observations were somewhat insightful...) The Megadon chapter is the book's most straightforward entry, and what it lacks in over-the-top satire it makes up for with a disturbing resemblance to reality.
The book's weakest entries both left me wanting more than what I got. Tellus wasn't bad per se, just not up to the level of the other chapters; that said, it reads almost like an early business plan for Rockstar Games, producers of the Grand Theft Auto series and a video/ computer game analog of White Wolf itself. I felt disappointed by the Avalon Toys entry, partly because its format - a combination of flavor fiction and straight-on info - didn't quite work and felt jarring in comparison with the formats of the other entries, and partly because it felt skimpy in comparison. The concept of an evil toy manufacturer has devastating potential for fun... but although the entry made references to dangerous toys like Action Bill and Gooshy-Gooze, it didn't provide nearly enough detail to be usable. Both toys were mentioned in an early edition of Book of the Wyrm, but those entries were also too skimpy yet over-the-top for practical application. Updated info would have been appreciated.
Overall, however, Subsidiaries is a useful and grimly enjoyable sourcebook for one of my all-time favorite RPGs. While the format is inconsistent (I wish editor/ developer Ethan Skemp had mandated the same format for each author) and some entries work better and read better than others, this is one of the stronger books from the Werewolf: The Apocalypse line. Its occasionally chilling accuracy just makes it, in this day and age, that much more worthwhile.
Displaying 1 of 1 review