As a physical product this book is pretty standard White Wolf fare an artistically tasteful cover that looks like a blurry photograph in blue dominates the hard cover book. The inside is black and white (which is a better choice for horror anyway) and is up to the normal white wolf standard for quality of art. The layout is crisp and clean with an eye toward artistic darkness. Also gone (unless I missed them are the obvious page (XX) references common to White Wolf. It’s obvious they wanted this game to look as clean as possible. But as we all know art and layout are only part of the battle and the real question is does this pretty little book deliver? In a word yes.

The first thing that many may notice is the clean up of the system. Since trinity the Storyteller system has been leaning towards a one difficulty and making the amount of successes more important than the difficulty number to get revision. It is now a universal part of the new system the difficulty is 8 or better with no discernable botch for ones. 10s however now are open ended if you get a ten roll again and see if you get another success. This means it’s possible however unlikely for a character to end up with more successes than he has dice for. Another new change is the stats, yes they changed the stats removing attractiveness and charisma and replacing them with presence and composure. Skills also got some revision say good bye to knacks talents and skills, and hello to physical mental and social skills. With only 8 skills to a category it will make cross game play a lot easier (no more hey I’m a werewolf I don’t have legerdemain what skill can I use) Specialties also take a front row in the new system giving you an additional dice to a more specific version of the skill (I.E. a player with 3 dots of firearms and a specialty in pistols adds 4 dice to his dice pool when firing a pistol.) Equipment also can give you a bonus to your dice rolls. Such as a good lock pick might add 2 dice to your larceny dice pool or a Sword might add 2 to your combat dice pool. Which brings us to combat. It’s handled a bit less realistically but it works better for consistency and speed. The attacker rolls attribute+ skill+ weapon damage- his opponent’s defense in dice. Every success is 1 damage depending on the type of damage of the weapon. (Example a man with 2 dots of dex 1 dot of firearms and a pistol (damage 2) vs. a character with a defenses of 2 and no armor rolls 3 dice every success counts as one lethal damage.)

Adding to the horror element players now start out as humans without any idea of the supernatural horrors that await them The GM’s section talks a lot about using ambiguity and hiding the truth for as long as possible and a few new mechanics help out with that the biggest being morality which forces you to roll when your character does something that he/she finds morally reprehensible. This system is unique but could be seen as a mirror for sanity or other such systems from other horror games. It also helps for players to focus on humans and humanity something too few Storytellers thought about in the previous editions. As it stands just reading the core book it seems like a suitable idea for a revised hunters hunted campaign as it stands alone (though you’ll still need rules on vampires and the like for monsters.

As far as downsides that hit me were the lack of introduction to new players. This game pretty much assumes that you know a bit about their previous games or at the very least have been roleplaying before you picked this up. It is odd for such a core book to ignore a how to roleplay section. Especially since the first 32 pages of the book are short fiction and setting that doesn’t really need to be here this early on. I’d rather use those pages for more rules and a better intro to new players who are undoubtedly going to try this. Also keep in mind that this is not a game for kiddies, and White Wolf pounds that home by using a few choice words in descriptions and the naked chick on page 99.

All in all this introduction to the new World of Darkness has me anxiously awaiting the next volume and trying to figure out where I can dump off my old books (gotta make room on the old shelf) In short The team at White Wolf has done just what it set out to do bring the game back to a blank slate, a very dark blank slate but a blank slate none the less.

In 9 reviews, average style rating is 4.00 and average substance rating is 3.67.