World of Darkness — Mini-Review.
Posted by nefchast on March 12, 2010
If you’ve checked out the earlier post this week about World of Darkness, you’d know it was free this week in celebration of Read an Ebook Week. If, for some reason, you still don’t have it — either before it was free or since it was — you still have till tomorrow to grab a copy. It’s free, why not?
I’ve gone over most of the book this week, not getting to read everything due to a certain beta popping up and the release of the Dawn of War 2 expansion, so I’ve gotten a pretty good gist of what everything is about. To be honest, more so than many rulebooks, you’ll want to read through the entire thing at least once. Player or Storyteller. (WoD’s GM/DM) I’ll explain why in a second.
The ebook itself is fairly well done, of course, since it’s basically the second edition of the game rules. My biggest complaints are the lack of bookmarks and printer friendly options — it’s a PDF copy of the print book. This is easier to accept seeing the original rulebook came out in 2004 — it’s getting close to a decade old now. Most of the art is quite good, the layout is fine, and there is an index and table of contents to help with the lack of bookmarks. If you were going to use this book a lot, I’d recommend getting the print version, too. (should be easier to navigate)
The game’s core mechanic is very simple, using d10s you build a dice pool based on: Attribute + Skill + Equipment +/- Modifiers, roll versus 8 and count successes — if any. A roll of 10 explodes allowing for more successes to be rolled. Simplicity is all around in this game, even if the above mechanic seems slightly complicated.
You have a 3 groups of attributes and 3 groups of skills, broken down into Mental, Physical, and Social. During character creation you choose your Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary groups for both sets and apply points as seen fit. There’s also Virtues, Vices, Merits, Flaws, and Equipment to go through. After you’ve finished reading everything — the longest part of the process — actual character creation shouldn’t take that long.
Practically every action you could possibly need to take during play can be found in the rules and is usually well detailed with all the information needed to use it — this is why you’ll want to really read through and familiarize yourself with the rules, Player or Storyteller. (you might find something you hadn’t thought of doing before)
The setting, for those not familiar with the game at all, is based heavily on dark conspiracy and supernatural elements. Horror to some. (not a particularly scary genre to me) There’s tons of sourcebooks out already for the general game world and the other WoD branches (Werewolf: the Forsaken, Vampire: the Requiem, Promethean: the Created, Mage: the Awakening… basically, if it has a Name: the Something and is from White Wolf, you could probably use it) to help flesh out campaigns even more. I also tend to enjoy the fiction that’s written in the books, helps get you into the mood.
If you’ve never really thought about tabletop RPGs before but wouldn’t mind trying one — I’d recommend this one especially. It’s got plenty of detailed information for players and GMs, including what looked like a bunch of beginner tips. For those that have plenty of RPG experience, but simply never cared to check into WoD before — if you want a pretty crunch light horror/supernatural game, this should work well. (though you’ll likely want some of the supplements, too)
