Can anyone tell me about the game "World of Darkness?"
A kid in my group really wants to try it. And is horrible at explaining anything. So Id like to know more.

The setting and even the rules are decent in theory. It just gets a bad rap from the types of players it typically attracts (emo goth kids and elitist roleplayers). Several of the expansion books are the same way, catering to those types of players, and they usually come out really, really bad as a result.

The World of Darkness itself is just our own world, set a few years in the very near future, where the supernatural wage wars and play politics in the shadow of humanity. Vampires, werewolves, mages, ghosts, faeries... all living amongst humanity, each having their own issues to deal with, and each interacting with the others in completely different ways.

One theme that runs through each game is that each "race" is split up into multiple "subraces," each with their own unique abilities, general outlooks, and themes.

Like any game, it's worth trying at least once. Thumb through one of the books at a bookstore and see if it sounds interesting. If it does, give it a try and see how you and your group like it. In the end, that's all that matters.

Just be warned. Some of the older White Wolf books, especially those with the "Black Dog Game Factory" imprint, can contain material which is quite revolting. I still shudder when I think of "Clanbook: Baali", "Clanbook: Tzimsce", and "Path of Screams".

It's not so much the game it's self. Or the player him self. It's just that ending it all would be a better alternative than putting the two of them together. There's one thing that will instantly make me dislike a new SR player. If they sit down, start working out their new character idea, ,and utter the words "can I be a vampire". I'm not going to say it's wrong, but it's a huge pet peeve of mine.

Bear in mind that in the "new" World of Darkness, there's a core WoD book that allows you to play humans in the setting; if you want to play Vampires, then you grab the Vampire book, etc. I haven't played nWoD, but I like the core book a great deal and think it's quite well put together [and some of the art is really, really nice.]

The nWoD morality system is completely untenable, but other than that the system isn't bad.

The morality system is untenable because a character who has committed no crime other than stealing a loaf of bread in order to feed starving orphans and rolled badly is morally equivalent to a person who has committed no crime other than flaying a child alive because he wanted to turn the kid's skin into a nifty leather jacket and rolled badly. In fact, with good rolls a tailor who habitually slaughters children for their skins can end up having a higher morality score than the nun who shoplifts to feed orphans has (though this is unlikely). There is also the small fact that characters can gain derangements as morality points are lost, meaning that it is possible to gain a debilitating mental illness because you forgot to pay for a 25 cent pack of chewing gum once.



If you make some adjustments to the morality system, there is some good stuff and some bad stuff, as there is with any RPG. The rules generally encourage roleplaying over rollplaying, with specifically codified personality traits that you are rewarded for playing to (a wrathfull person can regain willpower points for getting angry and beating the crap out of someone). This is rather obvious when scanning through the main book, which has more text than is necessary and far fewer tables than would be useful. The combat system appears to be complete, but I can't be sure since I've never actually played it.

There is a great deal of similarity between the nWoD dice mechanics and the SR4 dice mechanics. If you know SR4, then the learning curve will not be terribly great, though some of the differences are rather striking.

Oh god, if only Id thought to film some of our sessions. You'd be laughing for hours.

The morality system is like the PA/Notoriety/Street Cred system in SR4 - you're better off playing it by ear and using the little chart as a guideline. In a couple of the books they actually state that if people are abusing the morality system, be sure to slam them down 2-3 points without even a roll.

IMO, some of them work better than others. Wisdom for Mages is a lot better than Humanity for vampires in terms of sensibility, especially after the lead dev went on record and said, "Yeah, all those 'sins' about hurting people with magic only count if you're doing it maliciously. Get mugged, punk a bitch, and you're still all good."

I fail to see the connection between the two. That's like suggesting that since SR4 uses device ratings as a guideline for matrix stats, even though sometimes it doesn't make any sense (Stealth RFID tags having more signal than a bottom-level commlink), the game shouldn't be played under any circumstance.

That said, Morality ratings actually play very little part in Mage, which is by far the best of the nWoD. Which may, I admit, contribute to my liking it.

Also, on the subject of RPGPundit: he SAYS a lot of things. He says a lot of things in very good language for convincing people. He also doesn't do a damn thing to support most of his arguments, and takes it as true that everyone agrees with his assumptions. Take the 'whiny WoD players chased gamers away from RPGs.' I've never met a SINGLE person that this is true of. I've heard of people getting scared away by a WoD LARP, but that's because it was a LARP, and they're scary. In fact, I know more people who now game because of WoD than any other game than D&D.
(WoD is followed closely by Shadowrun.)

To be fair, that's always been a hallmark of WW outside of Exalted. And even INSIDE Exalted a lot of the time. The unfortunate thing is that you're suggesting throwing the baby out with the bathwater, if I may use a cliched turn of phrase. The core rules and settings for the nWoD are quite nice, very interesting, and lend themselves to a lot of possibility. I personally like using the nWoD rules for Delta Green instead of Delta Green.

But you're never gonna catch me saying it's perfect. Jesus, the Armory book alone gave me hives. I don't think they did ANY playtesting on that shit.

I don't see the connection between your two statements, I'm saying the system treats murder and brutal cruelty more harshly than theft.

Right. But you also implied that the system isn't that unreasonable. One of these statements must be in error.

~J

It's one rule in a ruleset that includes vastly more than a morality mechanic. If one mechanic is enough to spoil an entire ruleset for you, you are among the pickiest of gamers I've ever met. I have yet to find a rules system where I didn't find something that was flawed and needed to be overruled or fixed.

In terms of Farrenj's refutation, Kagetenshi, here's what he's saying:
Let's assume we have Joe and Bob. Joe steals things to feed his family. Bob eats babies, because he hates humanlings and thinks they're tasty. Let's assume Bob and Joe indulge in their respective crimes once a week for 2 months. This cements Joe's rep as a petty crook, and Bob's rep as a serial killer.
Joe has the virtue of Charity - he's a family man, and only wants the best for them. His vice is Greed - he likes taking shortcuts in his pursuit of wealth.
Bob has the virtue of Faith - he thinks he's taking the babies to a better place inside his soul by eating them. His vice is Gluttony - they also taste great!

So we get both of them to check for degeneration eight times for the eight instances of their crime.

Joe: Joe engages is both burgulary and shoplifting, so he has a chance to drop in morality twice. His actions will never force his morality lower than 5, because he will never commit a crime intentionally that is worse on the morality chart than burgulary.

Bob: Bob does whatever it takes to eat them babies, culminating with his own culinary escapades. Every roll is treated as a '1' on the chart - "heinous acts of perversion."

Both characters can be said to gain a slight bonus on their degneration rolls because of their virtues. Joe gains a +2 as assigned by me, because Joe ONLY steals to feed his family. He doesn't get a +3 because he could probably shoplift enough if he wasn't so damn lazy. Bob only gets a +1, because while he's faithful to his wacko creed of helping the tasty babies, a lot of it has to do with the taste and not a religious thing.

I'm gonna actually bust out some dice, now. Here are the results:

Joe's 2 months in successes, rolling 5 dice, which is the die amount for the level of the sin he's comitting plus virtue bonus: 4, 1, 2, 2, 1, 2, 2, 1
Final result: 7 morality. Joe does feel bad about stealing to feed his baby and his wife. But he knows he's doing what he has to, in order to make sure they live how they deserve to in a cruel world.

Bob's 2 months in successes, rolling 2 dice, which is the die amount for the level of the sin he's comitting plus virtue bonus: 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 2, 0.
Final result: Morality drop to 2. Bob occasionally had a pang or two of guilt about murdering the babies, but really it's all fun and games. Now he only pauses for killing babies, genocide, serial rape, et cetera. Murder, random acts of violence and rape... they're just like going to the store for him.

So we can see that the system does work as it's supposed to. Really what we're seeing here is that while the system works as intended, it doesn't work as well as some players would like it to. That doesn't mean the game is broken and is a piece of crap, it means that maybe you'll have to houserule something.

The problem -- the ENTIRE problem -- with the World of Darkness rulebooks is that they beat you over the head with the fact it's for "role players, not roll players," and that's their gigantic excuse for every rule that sucks. They've marketed their game that way, built up a following that firmly believes RPing is all about angst and inter-party-politics (and can never, ever, be about combat or anything else with dice involved), and they've convinced all these fans of theirs that the setting, not the rules, is what matters...

...which gives them carte blanche to fuck up whatever rules they want to, consequence-free.

WoD has always had a cool setting. They've always had interesting (some good, some bad) artwork, tons of mood and character and imagination, and their games have always made me want to roll up my sleeves and dig in. But as soon as I do, I'm reminded that (1) their rules don't matter to them at all, so gameplay sucks, and (2) in order to play any WoD game, I've got to be surrounded by the type of people that want to play a WoD game.

I've got a ton of their books. A ton. Between my wife and I, I'd say over a thousand bucks worth, easily (most bought used, mind you). I can sit and just read their Clan books for hours. But then I get to the "crunch" and there's so much shit that just doesn't make sense, it makes me want to burn the whole pile of them.

Well, that's a point I'd never dream of arguing against, since it pretty much hits the nail on the head with regards to why I have a love-hate relationship with most of their games. I mean, the fact that the oWoD combat system was actively designed to discourage combat by making it a major pain in the ass is seriously one of the more retarded design decisions anyone's ever made.


Mage is about the only one I'll regularly open up and ooh and aah over, although I do love me some Wraith. I dunno, Kafkaesque dead guys amuse me.

Yum, babies.


As an aside, and not to pick a big fight, how does the D&D morality system support anything but confusion?

Hyz: Yes, moral relativity is always something to consider. But that's why the system isn't perfect, it's just a guideline. Some of the devs have gone on record answering questions like that and basically have said, "Intent is more important than result. If you kill someone to save them, your morality score is fine." So I guess they aren't blind to the simplicity of their system and all it doesn't take into account. I didn't say I liked the rule, I just said that as far as those kinds of mechanics go, it works okay.

Kagetenshi: Okay, I gather that you're either making a joke or trying to make some kind of point about the moral relativities of theft and murder-as-art, but I'm missing it. I'm sorry.

That old chestnut? I had forgotten that there were so many people that played every single RPG using every single rule as it was perfectly created by its omniscient author.

The attitude quoted above certainly disincentivizes spending the time to make rules of a quality that would permit that.

~J

Umm.. isn't there a thread in the sr4 forum about what people use as houserules? Saying that a system isn't perfect and that sometimes house ruling is ok, maybe even a good idea, does not invalidate the whole thing.

It's all a matter of degree—of how much of the core is fundamentally rotten. The amount of houseruling that is a good idea is a good inverse indicator of the quality of the product (but not a perfect one—some systems are fragile enough that the fact that houserules are a bad idea doesn't mean the original rule is good enough). If you're going to straight-up not use the canon rules, why buy them in the first place?

~J

Although I agree the morality system is rather "odd" (But hey, DnD's Alignment System isn't much better considering that it's an Lawful Good act to slaughter entire villages of women and children provided that belong to the "correct" race.), it's easy enough to ditch and all-in-all personally I really like the nWOD rule-set, it reminds me of Shadowrun Fourth Edition in many ways.

However, with that said, I've come to loathe the core settings over time, with the notable exception of "Mysterious Places" which in my opinion should be required reading for every DM no matter what ruleset he is planning on running.