My one gaming group has always had an uncomfortable issue with the way lycanthropes have been portrayed (both fluff & crunch-wise) in 3.5 and PF. The dissatisfaction with PF's Blood of the Moon Player Companion further cemented that dislike. So my suggestion to try and playtest the Bite Me! series was met with some trepidation. I was able to gently persuade two of my players (both of whom are excellent judges of balanced game mechanics) to try lycanthrope PCs. One player chose an Afflicted Wereviper, the other chose to play a Natural Weregorilla. I also introduced a "runt of the litter" Werecrow Wizard into the campaign as an NPC.

Using just the Bite Me! Playing Lycanthropes PDF for the majority of our lycanthrope gameplay needs (Core Rules were still used for baseline needs), we've had a lot of fun reintroducing ourselves to lycanthrope-immersion in PF. There's a tremendous amount of both PC and GM advice (especially in the PDF preface) on getting lycanthropes properly integrated and played in a given campaign setting. This was useful to help scrub my players negative predispositions and start fresh. For me as a GM, it's an extremely valuable resource due to its detailed depth, meta-psychology and pragmatically helpful tone (I'm not fond of harsh preachiness in advice pieces).

It's interesting to see how much my 2 were-PCs use this PDF as a frequent go-to reference for advice on RP and campaign integration (especially since both players have around 18 years combined RPG experience). That's a sign of a useful game supplement. It's refreshing to see some of player's actually enjoy "properly" playing traditional were-creatures.

As for the crunch part of the PDF, it's mechanically solid and thoroughly covers the primary bases of playing either an Afflicted or Natural were-creature. We found that just about any kind of feat, archetype. magic item or gear piece that a were-PC would want - is in this book. I would love to see an expansion of the spells ... and even more options for non-martial lycanthropes (i.e. primary spellcasters), personally - but perhaps the other Bite Me! supplements will cover that territory.

While writing this review, I found myself pretty-much echoing Endzeitgeist's remarks way too often. Lol. Albeit in a less-refined fashion. So I do reference you to his more comprehensive review for the drilldown on the book's minutaie ... as I'm pretty much in lockstep with 95% of what he wrote about this terrific book. Finally, since this review is really an amalgam of 3 people's opinions (mine and my 2 were-PCs), please note that our final rating of 4.5 stars is allocated thusly .... GM (Me) = 4.5, Afflicted Wereviper = 4.0, Natural Weregorilla = 5.0.

In closing, we're happy to include Bite Me! Playing Lycanthropes into our PF Campaign's allowable library of quality 3PP supplements. And that's saying something. I highly recommend it and I look forward to checking out the rest of the Bite Me! line as well (I bought the WereMantis book - but haven't playtested it enough yet to comment on it).