Promethean: The Created

The New World of Darkness' attempt to do something exotic, in the form of "Frankenstein's Monster: The Roleplaying Game". You are a Promethean, an incredibly rare unliving (not undead; your body isn't really alive, but you are a whole new entity, albeit of artificial origins and often made from corpses in some way) creature stumbling through the World of Darkness. In lieu of a soul, you have a storehouse of Pyros, the raw energy from which all life springs, but which isn't meant to exist in such a concentrated form. As a result, reality itself hates you - and that's not hyperbole. People hate and despise you on sight, animals flee from you, plants wither and die in your presence- even hanging around in one place too long eventually fucks it up as the land is corrupted and unbalanced by your presence.

Your goal, then, is to master the understanding of humanity. Through this, you can use spiritual alchemy to hone your Pyros, and eventually transmute it into a human soul, giving up all your mystical powers to become just an ordinary human... but at least reality no longer hates you, so, it's worth it, right?

As is usual for the NWOD, you have about five different sub-types, each connected to a different Humour (bodily fluid believed once to be responsible for measuring health) and Element, which also influences your Disquiet (how people freak out for your presence), Wasteland (how your presence fucks over the world), and Torment (what you do when you finally get sick of shit and start trying to fuck people over on purpose).

Frankensteins are associated with Choler (Yellow Bile) and Fire. Descended from the famous monster (in the NWoD, Mary Shelley wrote "Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus" based on testimony given to her by the actual Bride of Frankenstein, who's become a Centimanus), who goes by the name "Verney" and is still running around. Their Disquiet causes people to become increasingly petty, small-minded, shallow and selfish. Their Wasteland manifests as distortion of electricity, causing unnatural thunderstorms and "dead spots" where electronics just won't work. When they succumb to Torment, they become stubborn, petty, vengeful and sadistically spiteful, dedicated to torturing whoever's pissed them off.

Galateids are associated with Blood and Air. Claim descent from the Greek gods via the myth of Galatea, and so are one of the vainest types. Their Disquiet causes people to lose self-confidence and courage, becoming overwhelmed by shame and increasingly self-degrading in their pursuit of some form of licentious release. Their Wasteland makes the air grow still and messes with peoples' heads, erasing their ability to recognize anything or anyone. Their Torment manifests as unwholesome fixation - we're talking "stalk someone you find attractive to the extent of sneaking into their house at night, yanking their spouse out of bed and trying to rape them" fixated.

Osirians are associated with Phlegm and Water. Their Disquiet makes people increasingly incapable of rational thought, compelling them towards insane, irrational emotion-driven outbursts. Their Wasteland fouls the water, causing droughts and transmuting standing bodies of water into noxious, undrinkable slime. Their Torment makes them thoughtlessly cruel, completely crushing any emotional feelings they have even as they fixate upon some particular problem that they need to solve.

Tammuz (Golems) are associated with Melancholer (Black Bile) and Earth. Their Disquiet compels people to hunt the Golem and try to control it. In a Golem's Wasteland, the earth itself sickens and dies; mines go empty, sinkholes swallow whole buildings, once-fertile soil becomes lifeless dust and stone sculptures/buildings start to crumble and rot. Torment makes them go berserk and try to destroy everything in sight, lashing out in mindless rage until they burn off their energy and sink into fatigue.

Ulgans are associated with Ectoplasm and Spirit. Their Disquiet has either of two effects; the close-minded become increasingly so, winding up as virtual mindless zombies just begging for the spirits to hop into their heads and run around in their bodies, whilst the open-minded find themselves increasingly able to see into the spirit world. Which isn't good for any average Joe's sanity. As you might expect, their Wasteland rips open the barrier between the worlds of flesh and spirits, allowing the denizens of both to intermingle. When controlled by Torment, they begin acting randomly, in emulation of some mad spirit, which leads them to perform incomprehensible rituals and bizarre actions until they snap back to their senses.

A later splatbook introduced the Zeka, whose associated element is Radiation and whose Humour can be any of the above, mixed with more radiation. Disquiet? Unreasoning paranoid fear, ala the Red Scare of the 1950s but worse. Torment? The Zeka goes into a mindless killing spree, exhausting all of his/her Pyros in the pursuit of killing anyone and everyone he/she can find. Wasteland? Quite literally so: the land becomes smothered under cold, sun-blocking clouds that rain down poisoned ash and snow, mutant insects proliferate whilst everything else dies, killed by the spiritual radiation contaminating the land.

Other splatbooks introduced Constructs (any of the above, but made from inanimate matter rather than flesh), Extempores (created by natural disasters), the Unfleshed (robots and machines who have become Pyros-souled "Promethean kinsfolk") and even weirder variants, like Prometheans that were dreamed into existence, or created by supernatural demiurges.

Promethean has the dubious honor of being the NWoD's equivalent to Wraith: The Oblivion or if you're generous, Mage: The Ascension, in that it's a game where people read it, but don't play it. The setting is incredibly bleak, even if the tone the game is trying to go for is optimistic (since it is canon that you can achieve the New Dawn and become human... except if you're a Zeka, since you suffer a dose of rads equal to your Azoth [power stat] when you transform, and the bare fucking minimum Azoth you need to succeed at the New Dawn is one dot below the "instant death due to radiation" level), the rules are complex, it requires a hell of a good Storyteller to be run successfully what with the whole "the world despises you" thing, and frankly not a lot of people actually want to play a game where your goal is to go from a superpowerful monster to a squishy human. Especially when that squishy human then has to live in the fucking World of Darkness.

Promethean is also the only game that does not have an earlier version in the Old World of Darkness. Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, Changeling, Hunter, Mummy and Demon all have a version in each. Geist is more of a spiritual successor than Wraith, but they deal more or less with the same subject. Orpheus is the only unpaired in the Old World of Darkness, but it deals with the underworld and is more akin to Wraith and Mummy.