Monte Cook's World of Darkness

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Monte Cook's World of Darkness is the oft-forgotten third main branch of the World of Darkness multiverse, alongside the original World of Darkness, its Chronicles of Darkness ofshoot, and whatever other little distinctions you want to make across the many, many different WoD titles and editions.

In the early 2000s, Wizards of the Coast was making big bank with Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition. So much so that White Wolf, one of the biggest rivals of TSR in the 90s, decided to reach out and say "hey, let's team up". Now, in fairness, that alliance, largely expressed through White Wolf's Sword & Sorcery subline, actually gave 3e fans some pretty good shit, like the Scarred Lands and an awesome revival of Ravenloft. But, in 2007, it also led to the creation of a whole new World of Darkness/D20 mashup written and headed by Monte Cook...

Rumors that Monte Cook took one look at White Wolf's abridged manual for the World of Darkness metaplot and started calling them every filthy name under the sun remain just that. But, for whatever reason, be it ego, nudgings from above, or a simple refusal to deal with the convoluted and oft-contradictory mess that was the Old World of Darkness' multiverse, Monte Cook decided he would do something totally different to the "convert WoD to D20" plan that the fans expected. Instead, he would create a brand new Dark Fantasy Urban Fantasy mashup for the d20 system, stir in some subtle cross pollination from the New World of Darkness, and then slap the World of Darkness logo on it.

This was the setting's downfall. It didn't matter how good the setting might be on its own, it was very much the RPG equivalent of going into a fast food joint, ordering a double cheeseburger, and getting a chilli dog with fries. Don't matter how good that chilli dog with fries is, it ain't what you ordered, now is it? As a result, what was officially going to be Cook's last D20 project (until he came back in 2011) hit the shelves at GenCon 2007 and promptly flopped, leading to its cancellation at only a single corebook. Even the New World of Darkness did better than that!

The Premise

A Post-Apocalyptic (technically) Dark Urban Fantasy, McWoD is set in a nebulous "modern day" Earth one year after an event called "The Intrusion", when Lovecraftian deities called the Inconnu, or "The Unbidden" tried to break into this dimension. Luckily, they were repelled by a psychic barrier subconsciously erected by the "Awakened"; humans who, for whatever reason, possess a mystically strong will that formed a protective network against such an invasion. Even with their protection, the Inconnu still broke a hole in reality in the upper Great Plains of the United States, sort of near the midpoint of North America — in the northeastern portion of South Dakota. This created a singularity of madness, which has since bled out to create the sphere of "Haunted Lands" - places where reality is noticeably askew, albeit not as heavily damaged as the Annihilation Zone, which took the full brunt of the metaphysical blast from the dimensions breaching. Its creation also caused the Nightmare Wave, which swept the whole planet and has left pockets of...weirdness, shall we say... scattered all over. They're not as strong or blatant as the Haunted Lands, but the world got noticeably darker after the Intrusion, even if it wasn't destroyed entirely.

As near as humans have been able to figure it out, the Inconnu are rather peeved that their attempt to enter this dimension was foiled, and they are trying to eliminate the problem by throwing through their agents - the spirits of dead humans, twisted by their evil in life, and the inhabitants of some otherworld that can best be described as hell - through to wipe out the humans who sustain the barrier, and allow the Inconnu to try again. However not all of their servants actually want to go through with this, and these (and the clued in humans) must now fight to keep the world alive.

The Intrusion Point

Canonically, the Intrusion Point is a 500 mile spherical "impact point" that occured in Upper North America, although the setting provided advice on how to handle it placing it in other areas and the resultant effect it would have on the setting - people will care much less if it happened in Antarctica or the Sahara, but way more of it happened in Washington DC, to say nothing of the damage it would do to civilization indirectly by manifesting at sea or up in the sky. It's broken into three parts.

The "core" of the Intrusion Point is known as the Conflagration; a 150-mile-radius area that extends almost to Minneapolis and encompasses the small cities of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and Fargo, North Dakota. In this place, reality as humanity knows it simply doesn't exist; you have an eternal maelstrom of swirling energy, churning matter and things for which we don’t have names or definitions. Inorganic matter in this region is in a constant state of flux, warping and changing state from gas, liquid, solid and energy. Needless to say, you go in, you don't come back out.

Surrounding the Conflagration is the Annihilation Zone; the 100-mile swathe of land ravaged by earthquakes, insanely violent weather, and the concentrated Nightmare Wave from the creation of the Intrusion Point. The churning of the Conflagration continues to spawn those same phenomena, which combined with the random and unpredictable warpings of reality here makes it a hellish apocalyptic landscape, inhabited only by soldiers looking to contain the Intrusion and those too dumb, deranged or driven to leave. The Annihilation Zone includes Minneapolis/St. Paul, but not quite Omaha or Rapid City.

Finally, surrounding the Annihilation Zone are the 250 miles of the Haunted Lands, a region that encompasses Kansas City, Denver, Winnipeg and Chicaco. Whilst still plagued with unpredictable weather, sporadic earth tremors and the occcasional monster outbreak, it's far more hospitable than the Annihilation Zone, and as a result there is still life here.

The Supernatural People

Obviously, this being a World of Darkness title, the big focus is on playing things that go bump in the night, and there are several different kinds. They are collectively known in-universe as "The Shadow Cultures", and fortunately for humanity, despite the common origins of most of them, they follow the grand old WoD tradition of absolutely sucking at working across faction lines.

Mechanically, each Shadow Culture is treated as its own class.

Vampires

Because of course this setting has fucking vampires. What else were you expecting? These are the spirits of dead people - of evil, murderous bastards and bitches, specifically - who have been released back into the world of the living and taken over the body of a once-living human being, usually with the original soul crushed and subordinate to the older soul. Vampires were "created" (though that implies a purposefulness that the Inconnu don't really seem to have) as spies and assassins, existing to hunt down and slay the Awakened - we'll get to them.

Much like in Vampire: The Requiem, vampires in McWoD are divided into five clans; Daeva, Gangrel, Mekhet, Nosferatu and Ventrue, with each clan typically corresponding to a particular kind of evil soul - Nosferatu were typically the most terrifying of mortal sinners; child murderers, pedophiles and cannibals.

Vampires who turn against the Inconnu, either actively by trying to stop their plans or passively by just refusing to help the Inconnu's loyalists, are known as The Broken.

Werewolves

Like vampires, werewolves in McWoD are the result of a human being being possessed by something. Unlike vampires, the "progenitors" of werewolves aren't human ghosts, but instead bestial spirits from some unknown otherworld. As a result, the native soul is pretty much annihilated, leaving only its memories, knowledge and emotions to influence a very confused spirit, who is now trying to understand concepts it never could have possessed before. Werewolves are the "shock troopers" of the Inconnu; created to kill, rampage and destroy, but restrained by instincts of self-preservation and lingering impulses from their host's soul.

Werewolf: The Forsaken loaned McWoD the Auspices; Irraka (New Moon), Ithaeur (Crescent Moon), Eolodoth (Half Moon), Cahalith (Gibbous Moon) and Rahu (Full Moon).

Werewolves who decided they like this world as is and don't want to help the Inconnu are called The Calm, which even the viewpoint character in their subchapter notes is a pretty ridiculous choice.

Mages

Unlike the vampires or the werewolves, mages are human, 100% human. It's just that, ever since the Nightmare Wave washed over the Earth, they found they could work magic. Now, this has obviously endeared the Inconnu to some mages, who worship them for various reasons, and other mages are arrogant enough to believe they could exploit or control them. But the majority either want nothing to do with the struggle or actively oppose them, and thus mages are broken into two major groups; The Strangers (those who work with the Inconnu) and The Bound (those who fight the Inconnu).

Whilst most mages are heavily shaped by real-world magical traditions they believed in before the Intrusion gave them power, and others style themselves after fiction, in practice mages can be boiled down to five archetypes; Enchanter, Warlock, Necromancer, Theurgist and Shaman.

Demons

A third "race" unleashed by the Inconnu, demons are, like werewolves, natives of some hellish otherworld unknown to humanity. Unlike werewolves, demons don't bother possessing a human host, but instead fashion themselves a body to occupy through sheer will. Demons are closer to vampires, in that their "assigned" role is one of deception and manipulation - they're the ones who work to cover up the Inconnu's forces at work in the world, maintaining the shield of public oblivion and ignorance that lets vampires and werewolves and the Strangers work their wicked wills with relative impunity. Their biggest enemies are mages, especially the Bound. They are the rarest of the supernaturals walking in the post-Intrusion world.

Demons are divided into Temptors (who favor corruption and seduction) and Scourges (who favor destruction and violence).

Demons who decided that "hey, I actually like this world; I don't want to let it get destroyed!" and go off-script are simply known as Rogues.

Awakened

Finally, there's the 1% of humanity whose presence preserved Earth from the Intrusion. These are the Awakened, those whose souls are just that little bit... "special". Their willpower is enough to make them capable of resisting the dark powers of the Inconnu's agents, and achieve heights that other humans can only boggle at. They are the pillars that reinforce Earth's reality... and, thus, their destruction is the goal of vampires, werewolves, demons, and those mages who have become Strangers.

Awakened are the "everyman" of the race-classes of McWoD, lacking the flash and dazzle of the others. They get tons of bonus Feats, can make Concentration checks to buff themselves, sense places/things altered by the Nightmare Wave, gain some Skill Monkey attributes, and as their climax ability can add +20 to any d20 roll once per day.