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Need a ready-made setting to drop your Werewolf game in? "Hunting Ground: the Rockies" is just what the doctor ordered, complete with writeups of cities in the region, some Forsaken packs for allies and rivals, and Pure to provide antagonists.

Chapter One is history and geography. The first part tells you how Europeans came to the area, and how the cities there were founded-mostly Denver. There's also a lot about how the history of werewolves fits into the history of the Rockies, and why this area is one of the few that's doing well against the Pure in the recent past, which is nice; given the usual relentless grimness of World of Darkness settings, it's reassuring to see a setting in which the good guys are actually ahead for once. Of course the lead is precarious and they're fighting amongst themselves, but they're not actually losing, and that's nifty. The second half of the chapter goes into things like where the loci are and how the highways are laid out-rather important stuff for a game set in the area.

The second chapter describes the aforementioned allies and rivals, with descriptions of a whole lot of Forsaken. Any that got full writeups in the Werewolf main book are just mentioned here; this saves a lot of space on writing them all out again. But there are plenty of others, like the packmates of the main book werewolves.

In chapter three the descriptions move from the physical to the metaphysical, with discussion of the spirit world in Colorado. Some of the local spirits get writeups, along with talk about what's good and bad in the Shadow of the area: where are the Wounds, and where are the loci? Plus, how the local spirit world interacts with the Forsaken and werewolves in general.

In Chapter Four are the Pure packs of the area (few, because of the aforementioned "good guys are winning" thing) and other antagonists: spirits, Hosts, all that sort of thing. This being a Werewolf book, there's nothing much in the way of vampires, mages or other supernatural critters.

The last chapter gives the storytelling advice. It's all about what moods and themes work easily in the Rocky Mountains, and how to encourage them, plus the chapter includes the obligatory Welcome To Colorado adventure, which is mediocre but usable.

The Rockies is more a ST book than a player book, containing mostly setting material. This isn't to say that a player couldn't find useful tidbits, if only in the form of NPCs to have background connections to, but on the whole the book's directed towards the person who's going to be making the world rather than those who'll be playing in it. If you need a setting for a Werewolf game, though, this is a great one.

Learn more about this author, Carrie Schutrick.
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