World of Darkness
| World of Darkness | ||
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| RPG published by White Wolf |
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| Rule System | Storyteller System | |
| Authors | Bill Bridges, Rick Chillot, Ken Cliffe and Mike Lee | |
| First Publication | 2004 | |
| Essential Books | The World of Darkness (corebook) | |
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. If any number of 1's are rolled, they cancel out a single success. No more than one success can be cancelled out in this way, so critical failures (A botch with zero successes) are relatively rare. 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
Short Version
- Vampire: You're the bad guy. Your friends are also villains.
- Werewolf: You're fighting a war, and you're losing.
- Mage: You're fighting a war you already lost.
- Wraith: You lost, you died, and trying to avoid a fate worse than death.
- Changeling: You're fighting a war and nobody is taking you seriously.
- Hunter: You're fighting a war and everyone's out to get you and bigger than you.
Old World of Darkness (oWoD)
- 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. This is also basically the only thing you can get more than one sect of vampires to agree on, and a lot of the game revolves around the resulting political intrigue.
- 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.
- 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. The game tended to degenerate into hack-and-slash, mainly as it is a author tract where the authors had conflicting messages.
- 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.
- Wraith: The Oblivion
- Changeling: The Dreaming
- 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. The concept of Banality is unfortunately somewhat awkwardly implemented and requires some work by the Storyteller to appropriately function. The series was cut short, and a number of expansions that were announced were never released. This game is and was massively popular with otherkin since its premise is their delusion, and if you know anybody in 2012 who still plays it your friends almost certainly believe themselves to be elves.
- Kindred of the East
- It is vampires... from the east. Go play vampire the masquerade bloodlines to make that make more sense.
- Mortals are imbued with weird powers by mysterious forces in a last-ditch effort to keep the world from circling the drain. Played according to the writing, it's Call of Cthulhu in the World of Darkness- a bunch of scared people who are going to die very horribly unless they're very cautious and paranoid. Played according to the art, it's, well, the licensed H:tR video games.
- Mummy: The Resurrection
- You play a mummy. Which has been resurrected. And has access to a third-level power (out of five) that levels the town you're in.
The game was almost universally met with a directly hostile response, and even reminding a WoD player of it will make him rage. Do it.
- Demon: The Fallen
- The gates of the Hell that the fallen angels have been trapped in for millienia crack open, and the fallen find human hosts and servitors for their various ends.
- Orpheus
- Zombie: The Coil - a Fan-made expansion from 2001. Brai-i-ins and grimderp ensue
- Highlander: The Quickening - Holy shit this is a fan-made supplement where life doesn't suck! You're immortal and extremely powerful, but still human. It's kill or be killed, though. So once The Gathering comes around you have to kill most of the friends you've made through the ages. Also has a neat custom sword fight system. If you've seen Highlander, you'll love it. If not, see Highlander.