World of Darkness

World of Darkness
RPG published by White Wolf
Rule System	Storyteller System
Authors	Bill Bridges, Rick Chillot, Ken Cliffe and Mike Lee
First Publication	2004
Essential Books	The World of Darkness (corebook)

Cover of the nWoD core book

The World of Darkness is an RPG published by White Wolf that focuses on deep roleplaying and, depending on the specific sub-game, horror. The setting can only be described as the modern world, but worse in every aspect. Every creeping suspicion you have is probably true, and the world is dirty and corrupt as we often make it out to be. In recent years, specifically with the release of the new ruleset (the Storyteller system) the line has been trying to avoid the old Gothic feel for which it was known (specifically with Vampire: The Masquerade) in favour of a slightly more traditional form of horror. This has manifested in many ways, but most explicitly in the detail that the supernatural isn't quite as omnipotent as it was in the previous incarnation. In addition, the new World of Darkness is more of a unified setting than the old World of Darkness games; while in the oWoD each game was meant to be played separately (with possibly conflicting fluff) with no central core book, nWoD fits more cleanly together and attempts to balance each game against the others.

The nWoD core book gives an overview of the system and is designed to deal with normal human beings in horrific situations that may or may not always be supernatural in nature. This has little established fluff, making it the most malleable for Storytellers (the in-game term for GM; abbreviated as ST).

The System

The basic system in both the new and old World of Darkness revolves around a dicepool of d10's. Your dice pool consists of a number of dice equal to your relevant ability score plus your skill and other relevant modifiers.

In oWoD, the Storyteller sets the difficulty for each roll depending on the circumstances, with the default being a difficulty of 6. A success is a roll of that difficulty or higher (6 or above, on most rolls). A roll of 1 is called a botch. Every botch cancels out a success. The net number of successes determines how well you succeed, with one success meaning that you are barely able and a greater number indicating better achievement. When you get zero net successes (if you get no successes or if your 1s cancel out your successes, or if you get at least one success and more ones than successes), you fail the roll. When you get zero successes and at least one 1, you botch-- a critical and spectacular failure. If you have a specialty in either your attribute or ability that is relevant on the roll, you may reroll all 10s to gain extra successes, and rolls of 1 on these rerolls do not count.

In nWoD, a success is an 8, 9, or 10, and 10s explode. A critical success is made when you get five or more successes. Instead of altering the target number of the roll, difficulty and circumstances increase or reduce the number of dice in the pool. When your dice pool is reduced to zero or less, you get a chance die. You roll the die normally, but only succeed on a ten (which still explodes) and if you get a one you get a critical failure. All other rolls are called simple failures.

Game Lines

Old World of Darkness (oWoD)

• Vampire: The Masquerade

The original World of Darkness game. Covers playing vampire characters in the modern day World of Darkness. It gains its title from "The Masquerade", an in-game set of rules and guidelines dictated by the Camarilla sect in an attempt to keep the mortal populace unaware of vampires and their influence on society.

It is heavily influenced by gothic imagery and by a variety of different vampire mythos, including the romanticised version of the vampire popularised by Anne Rice. As a result the game attracts emos like flies to shit.

• Werewolf: The Apocalypse

Second game to be released set in the World of Darkness. The game covers playing werewolf characters known as Garou. It gains its title from one of the major antagonistic themes in the game where supernatural forces of corruption are attempting to bring about the Apocalypse. Unfortunately the game didn't do much in the way of discouraging the antics furries get up to when roleplaying anthropomorphic animals so it is well known for attracting undesirables. The game tries to play on an ecoconservative angle through animism, but in games where that's the highlight it usually ends up being a game about playing giant bloodthirsty ecoterrorists. Which is awesome enough to almost make up for furries.

• Mage: The Ascension

Player characters in this game come from a variety of backgrounds, both mortal and immortal and are unified by the fact that they all practice magic of one form or another. Magic is defined by the game as a force that can shape reality with the willpower, belief or special magical techniques of the user. It is commonly agreed on /tg/ that this version of the Mage gameline is superior to its New World of Darkness counterpart.

• Wraith: The Oblivion
• Changeling: The Dreaming

Otherkin, the game. Seriously. The characters are fairy souls 'trapped' in human bodies to survive in the cold banal world. The game's theme centered heavily on the concept of Chimera, where things weren't magical or mundane, but both at once. So the real world would see an old butterknife, and it would be - but in the realm of faerie, it would also be a mystical longsword. Think of Hobbes, and you're getting close. The series was cut short, and a number of expansions that were announced were never released.

• Kindred of the East

Basically Vampire, only for weeaboos.

• Hunter: The Reckoning
• Mummy: The Resurrection
• Demon: The Fallen
• Orpheus

New World of Darkness (nWoD)

Principal Games

• Vampire: The Requiem

More Vampire. Less superheroes with fangs. 13 Clans with fleshed out, restricting histories become 5 archetypes with open-ended histories. The Camarilla becomes 5 Covenants with mutually exclusive goals. The Sabbat becomes VII, the Infernalists become the more sporadic, less-organized Belial's Brood. Arguably the biggest difference is that you can't just make someone a Vampire by draining them and feeding them your blood, now you have to spend a dot of Willpower.

• Werewolf: The Forsaken

A slightly more "balanced" version of Werewolf. You can't run around in 8-foot tall invincible war-form all the time, and you see humans as a flock of idiotic sheep that you have to protect. The "adjustments" resulted, possibly intentionally, in the average werewolf no longer being a match for the average vampire, a fact that has already been pointed out a million times, so just shut up already. White Wolf wisely decided to drop all the other shapeshifters this time, much to the dismay of furries everywhere (until they decided to bring them back, much to the dismay of normal people everywhere).

• Mage: The Awakening

Superior to its predecessor in every conceivable way, except for the fluff which is stupid beyond comprehension. While the Paradox rules were cleaned up, it's no longer a real threat as you can just soak paradox as bashing damage.

Limited Release Publications

• Changeling: The Lost

No longer are the Changelings faeries, but humans kidnapped by the True Fae and twisted into something not quite mortal. Managed to do the exact opposite of its predecessor and sell enough copies that they extended the series instead of cutting it short.

• Promethean: The Created

Frankenstein: The RPG. You're a scorned mockery of humanity, most likely abandoned by your creator, left to fend for yourself in this cruel world. You're perpetually dazed and confused, always trying to pick up the ways of humans, but that's not happening because you have a disquieting aura that makes every sentient being in the world eventually hate you, so you can never make real friends and have to live as a nomad. Oh, and it's not just humans that hate you, not just animals, not just the earth which becomes a desolate wasteland because of you, it's the entire fucking universe that's out to get you, with angels from heaven and evil entities hunting you down and trying to eradicate your unwanted existence. Your final goal is to become a real human, losing all those cool powers which you just so happened to have, at which point you'll probably forget everything and start hating other Prometheans too.

• Hunter: The Vigil

Hunter, without the ridiculously overpowered gifts. You're just an average Joe with more information than other people. For instance, instead of having the power to smite people with holy fire, you might have bullets that are extra-effective against vampires. That, and you can break every conceivable human moral code without going insane, provided you can justify it in light of your "Vigil." Though, of course, this slowly makes you inhuman. How much are you willing to give up to fight back the darkness?