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"Predators", a sourcebook for Werewolf: the Forsaken, goes out of its way to point out that it's not a Monster Manual. Snarky though that observation may be, it's at least kind of true; the book may be a collection of antagonists for the Forsaken of your game, but it makes a stab at giving a purpose to any given critter rather than just listing its game stats. The Pure aren't in here-they get their own whole book-but most anything else that might make a werewolf's life harder is listed. This is not a book your average player needs, and the more paranoid Storytellers of the world might actually discourage players from reading it so as not to have any surprises spoiled.

The first chapter covers the spirits, from little teeny ones with only one good trick through the higher-powered type who might be helpful when serving as totems to the really, really dangerous and powerful ones the werewolves might do best to avoid. Each spirit gets a nice complete writeup, including such things as individual bans and good ways to go about negotiating with them. And if you need a spirit but there's nothing perfect in the chapter, you can always change the names of a few powers and be ready to go. The spirits move into the material world in the second chapter, which presents the Ridden. Along with worked-up examples of Ridden antagonists, there's material presented for creating your own Ridden with interesting powers and suprising tricks up their sleeves.

The third chapter goes into the Hosts. It gives all sorts of fun details on the Rats and the Spiders both, including a bit more background on what exactly they think they're doing in the world and how to make the Hosts a bit more of a challenge when the characters get to be higher in power. Add in some extra systems for dealing with the Hosts and you've got quite a bit of meat here, plus three more possible Hosts (crow, locust and snake) to drop on your players unexpectedly.

Last but not least is the really icky stuff. Ancient gods, one-off monstrosities, that sort of thing: the kind of stuff to present to players when they're bored with the usual antagonists. Do it right, and they won't be bored; the only question is whether they'll be creeped out or just plain disgusted, when you're using this chapter. It's got all sorts of nasty surprises lurking.

One way or another, "Predators" is a lot more useful to Storytellers than to players, but those who are good at separating in-game and out-of-game knowledge might like to read through just for the creepy fun of seeing the horrid things that are out there in the World of Darkness...

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