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2004
It was a dark and stormy night.
O'Bannon was edgy, restless in his squad car seat. He wasn't sure why. Even with the miserable, heavy rain beating a staccato on the car roof, it was just a normal night on a normal shift, the veteran patrolman told himself. Only not really. His cop intuition told him something wasn't right. The hair on his neck had been standing up ever since his partner and he had pulled up outside the abandoned factory, but for the life of him O'Bannon couldn't see anything out of the ordinary in the vicinity. Just jumpy, he scolded himself. Time to go home and get some sleep.
He was growing agitated. His partner, Johnson, had gone into the warehouse to meet an informant. Their shift was over, and they were both tired, but the snitch had been insistent that she had to show them something tonight, at this forgotten industrial crap-hole. Johnson had been gone only a few minutes, but the eerie atmosphere of the broken-down building, with its rotting machinery sticking up into the night sky like ancient bones, began to fray O'Bannon's already ruffled nerves.
Before he even consciously registered what he was hearing, his hand leapt to his gun. As the echoes of the gunshots reverberated against the crumbling walls of the factory, O'Bannon was out of the car, running through the downpour. He charged across the gravel towards the nearest wall, and three more shots thundered from deep inside the building someplace, in rapid succession. Those shots had sounded like his partner's .38, and something had clearly gone very wrong.
As the burly cop splashed through the mud puddles around the corner of the building, he saw a door hanging open, swinging in the wind. O'Bannon yanked his flashlight from his belt, and almost froze as a blood-chilling scream emanated from within the black interior of the factory. Jesus, he thought, that sounded like Johnson! What the hell could make his partner, a seven year member of the police force, shriek like a frightened child?
O'Bannon bulled through the doorway, his light illuminating decrepit, looming machinery, and casting dancing shadows across every surface. His heart pounded in his chest. "Johnson! Where are ya, buddy? I'm coming!" he roared into the now-silent darkness.
Scrambling past rusting iron and cracked plaster, he skirted the nearest wall, seeing another open doorway. Inside the door somewhere was a bright beam, from Johnson's flashlight. It wasn't moving, which meant his partner had dropped it.
Taking a deep steadying breath, O'Bannon spun around the door frame, pointing his flashlight and his pistol into the room. O'Bannon stood immobile for a moment, taking in what was on the floor before him. It was a warehouse. His partner's body lay sprawled on the concrete, one arm twisted at an impossible angle at the shoulder joint. His chest looked flattened, as though crushed between something with incredible force. Blood soaked the uniform, and spread in a horrific puddle in all directions, maybe eight feet wide. And O'Bannon had no idea where Johnson's head was.
As his police instinct began to reassert itself, the stunned nausea subsided and seething anger roiled up inside him. "Come out, you goddam murderer! If you're lucky, I'll only arrest you!" He stepped into the room, spinning this way and that, pointing his heavy pistol at every suspected movement in the shadowy darkness. It wasn't for a few moments that he heard the sound above him. A kind of rising and falling whisper, a coarse rasping sound that tickled just on the surface of one's consciousness. Looking up, he was too shocked to even raise the gun.
The ceiling of the warehouse was framed in steel girders, and something was in them. A mass of writhing, slithering tentacles, like fat pythons. Hundreds of them. Their movement was hard to follow with the eyes, almost hypnotic, as the sinewy grey limbs entwined, circled, and slipped, crawling down the walls, along the beams, into the rafters. The thing, if it was one thing, must have been twenty feet in diameter. O'Bannon saw no body, only slithering, darting tentacles.
His mind told him he wasn't seeing anything of this earth; it couldn't really exist. His mind told him to leave, to run like hell. His mind told him to fire his weapon, or else he was a dead man. His instincts told him he already was a dead man. But he wasn't responding, to his mind or his instinct. He wasn't running. He wasn't shooting. O'Bannon could only gape at the loathsome appendages, now curling towards him. For a few more heartbeats, Paul O'Bannon watched the immense, evil serpentine nightmare throb and whisper. Then, several tentacles struck at him like snakes, their sharp serrated edges driving into his flesh, puncturing organs, slicing muscle.
The patrolman began to scream then. It was too late to do anything else.
White Wolf Publishing has recently redesigned their "World of Darkness" line of role playing titles, including such well-known games as Vampire: the Masquerade, Werewolf: the Apocalypse, Mage: the Ascension, Changeling: The Dreaming, and Custodian: the Tidying Up. Now all of these games have been republished as individual settings, but utilizing a core rpg rulebook called The World of Darkness. This core book houses the game mechanics and standard rules for all of these games, rather than each rpg having their own similar but varied rules renditions, as they did before.
This core rulebook serves not only as the basic rules to the other White Wolf games, but also as its own rpg of spookiness and things that go bonk in the night. As a stand-alone game, it's designed to let you craft your own world of mystery and horror without the need to use one of the other settings above. In other words, you don’t need to play as a vampire, mummy, fairy, or any other fantasy critter to enjoy the mood and environment of the World of Darkness.
Overview
As the name implies, this is not a setting of gumdrops and sunshine, Sparky. This is an rpg of thrills and chills, but exactly how gritty you want to make it is up to you. This World of Darkness is a mirror reality of our own, except that things really do live under the bed, and going into the woods alone at night may not be such a good idea.
This would be an excellent way to run a Call of Cthulu-style campaign, which is the pulp-fantasy genre, or something such as role playing in the Salem witch trials, which is more historical-fiction genre. The basic premise though is for something modern, along the lines of the X Files or one of my current favorite shows, Supernatural. You can easily design adventures based off "thriller" movies, like The Thing, or perhaps Thirteen Ghosts. Steal the plot off any late, late show horror B-movie, and you're ready to roll.
The point is, it's s'posed to be a thriller/horror/scary rpg, so anything that you think will give your players the willies is a great idea. Of course, like all rpgs, there's nothing stopping you from using the core rules to design any type of game at all, like going hi-tech and placing your PCs in a near-future setting such as the Aliens movie. But the mood of the rules and the material presented here really beg for a darkened room and some low music while your intrepid ghost hunters approach the abandoned manor house at midnight.
The Characters
Characters' stats are separated into three categories: Mental, Physical, and Social. Under each of these categories are three Attributes, such as Mental's attributes of "Intelligence", "Wits", and "Resolve". Each of these Attributes in the game are rated one to five, with two being an average human score and five being world-class. All PCs begin with one free point in each attribute.
Players need to decide which of the three attribute categories (Mental, Physical or Social) they're best at, second best at, and worst at. They get a certain number of "Points" to increase their Attributes depending on which order they choose their categories. Your primary category gets five points that you can spend to increase your attributes, with your second and third choice categories getting four and three points respectively.
For example, if I'm creating Ralf the Insurance Salesman as my character, I would give priority to his Social attributes, because he's got to charm people into buying his insurance. That means my Social Attributes of "Presence", "Manipulation", and "Composure" would get five points divided up however I want among them. Next I'd choose his Mental category, so I'd divide four points up among his mental attributes. Since the only workout Ralf gets is clicking the remote control at home, his Physical attributes are last, only getting three points to divide up between the "Strength", "Dexterity", and "Stamina" attributes.
PCs then choose Skills. There are no "classes" in the World of Darkness. So if you want to create a PC who's a paramedic, or a college professor, or a high school dropout working as a cashier at Burger Queen, you simply choose the skills that that type of person would have.
Like attributes above, Skills are broken down into Physical, Mental, and Social categories, and you get various amounts of points to buy skills and skill levels depending on your attribute order. Again, Skills are rated in levels from one to five. Level one is a novice, while five is a master and a leader in his field.
Skill choices are exactly what you'd expect, real-world things like research, hacking, investigation, medicine, politics, climbing, throwing, shooting, driving, stealth, larceny, survival, animal empathy, intimidation… there's nothing new to the skill list in this game, but it's certainly complete and useable.
PCs then choose Merits. These aren't necessarily learned skills so much as personality quirks or innate characteristics that your PC has. Merits can be things like fame, having a mentor, good looks, fighting techniques, strong stamina, natural immunities, danger sense, languages, that sort of thing.
In the World of Darkness, all tasks are resolved using ten-sided dice. When attempting any action that requires a dice roll, any roll of 8, 9, or 10 is a success. The more dice you roll, the more chances you have of succeeding. Modifiers add or subtract from the number of dice you roll, but not the number you need to succeed. So, eight or above is always a success, but you may have one die to try to get that eight, or you may have six dice to try to get that eight, depending on the difficulty level of the action and your skill levels. A roll of ten always allows you to re-roll that die, possibly gaining extra successes.
When using a skill, the PC adds his levels in that skill to one of his attributes governing that skill. For example, Ralf the Insurance Salesman has the Fast Talk skill at level three. Fast Talk is based on his Manipulation attribute, which is a three as well. So, his total for using Fast Talk is six. This six is the number of dice the player gets to roll when using Fast Talk.
Combat is resolved the same way. Each PC has a Defense score (their Dexterity or Wits attribute score, whichever is lower.) This score is the number of dice subtracted from your opponent's attack dice pool when they try to hit you.
If they do whack you, your Health (hit points) is determined by adding your Stamina attribute to your Size rating. But there're three types of injuries in WoD. Bashing damage is the type of bruising you take from fists and beer bottles, which might knock you out but heals rapidly. Lethal comes from bullets and knives and sharp pointy objects, and takes longer to heal. Finally, aggravated damage is really nasty stuff from supernatural monster claws or other unearthly sources. Aggravated damage will mess your ass up good. Once you lose all your Health to lethal or aggravated damage, you're pretty much a goner.
The game has an interesting mechanic called Morality. This is the PCs sense of right and wrong in civilized society. Everyone starts with the same Morality rating of "7". You actions during play may alter your Morality. Doing something illegal or immoral may call for a Morality roll. This act might be something as simple as shoplifting, or something as heinous as serial murder. If you fail the morality roll, your Morality score drops lower, and you have to roll against a possible Degeneration effect. If you fail that, your conscience is so disturbed by the acts you've committed that you pick up some "Derangement", such as depression, a phobia, anxiety, or even schizophrenia. This derangement can be cured if you do something to redeem yourself and thus regain your Morality score, but if you keep doing evil and slide down the morality chart too far, you'll eventually become bat-crazy, and possibly degenerate into one of the monsters that inhabit the World of Darkness.
Much like the Force, this dark world has a light and a dark side. Each PC has a Virtue and a Vice that you choose when creating them. Your Virtue may be charity or faith, for example, and your vice perhaps envy or sloth. Yes, those quick-witted amongst you may recognize that these are the Seven Heavenly Virtues and the Seven Deadly Sins.
What good are these? In short, PCs have a Willpower score. (This is their Resolve plus Composure attributes added together.) PCs may spend Willpower points during the game to roll extra dice on task checks, either to use skills or in combat. This is useful, but the only way to get these Willpower points back after you spend them is to satisfy your Virtue or your Vice. During the course of role-playing, if your PC acts in accordance with either your Virtue or Vice in an appropriate and dramatic way, the GM will reward you by returning spent Willpower points. Acting in accordance with your Vice during a game session earns you only one returned point, while acting nobly and fulfilling your Virtue will regain you every Willpower point you spent during the game. (To continue my Force analogy, evil is much easier, but good is more rewarding.)
I like the tone of this rpg. It's a great horror setting without the need to get specifically into the undead Masquerade or lycanthropy mythology that the White Wolf products were inherently geared to before the product line revision.
You don't need anything more than this book to have your players stalking vampires or hunting werewolves, but if you want to incorporate those monster elements long-term into your game, you just pick up the new Vampire or Werewolf books that use this core book's rule system.
The book is complete, with sections on vehicles, weapons, game master advice, examples galore of both play and character crafting, lists of common animals and NPC types to use in play, as well as a thorough informational section on ghosts so you can start your players right in on a good ol' haunting.
I've been looking for a solid "spooky" rpg for quite some time, and never found anything that quite fit the tone and mood and simplicity that I was looking for. This game does that, exactly.
The NEUTRAL
If you're a fan of the *old* published World of Darkness games, this new system is just a wee bit different, mechanics-wise. I actually feel it's improved, although some veteran gamers in online game forums disagree. I honestly don't see any radical changes between the old stuff and the new stuff that would keep old-timers from checking out the new product line.
However, using old products with the new books will require some tweaking; the effective power levels may be different for certain skills or monsters if you mix and match the old line with the new.
The EVIL
Just the GM, grinning deviously as you announce that your player will check out the sound she heard in the dark tool shed…
The Mechanics
The GOOD
