Archived from groups: alt.games.whitewolf (
More info?)
Maarten wrote:
> Hallo all,
Hello!
I don't think we've seen a New Guy in, like, half a year. Stupid
imminent death of USENET.
> I'm new to this group and to the World of Darkness. Currently I play in a
> couple of D&D parties, so I'm familiar with roleplaying though.
> I was browsing the White Wolf internet site today, and I downloaded the free
> introductionary scenario. I would like to ask a couple of questions about
> the World of Darkness, and White Wolf in general.
'Kay.
> If I'm not mistaken, the world of darkness is the campaign setting, for
> which several other books are available. What books do you need to start a
> campaign?
That depends on what version you want to play in.
Up until very, very recently, the World of Darkness was a set of six or
seven game lines with massive numbers of supplements. You can ignore
the next four paragraph if you're not interested in past versions of the
game.
IGNORABLE PARAGRAPH #1: Each game had its own corebook. The games (and
corebooks) were called Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The
Apocalypse, Mage: The Ascension, Changeling: The Dreaming (discontinued
early), Wraith: The Oblivion (cancelled), Hunter: The Reckoning, and
Demon: The Fallen. There was also a limited series game called Orpheus,
and several supplemental games without the core rules built into them
(requiring another corebook to play), called Kindred of the East and
Mummy: The Resurrection.
IGNORABLE PARAGRAPH #2: These games started thirteen or so years ago,
and had a huge following. However, they got really clogged with
material, and it became very intimidating for new people to start -- who
wants to start playing a game where the basic set of books is considered
to be the corebook plus five or six more hardcovers?
IGNORABlE PARAGRAPH #3: So White Wolf ended those game lines, by
destroying the world they were set in. Since the last edition of all
those game lines had been about the imminent end of the world, this
wasn't inappropriate.
IGNORABLE PARAGRAPH #4: If you want to play one of the previous versions
of the World of Darkness, you'll have to track down one of the
above-mentioned corebooks. Be aware that the systems and settings are
incompatible with the current WoD, and the books themselves are out of
print and may be hard to find.
(That's done, now, on to the current stuff.)
In order to start playing a (current) World of Darkness game, you just
need the corebook, called The World of Darkness. It looks like this:
http://secure1.white-wolf.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=488
It contains the a brief description of the setting (which boils down to
"Like our world, except kinda like in those horror movies where nobody
believes in ghosts and things but they exist anyway behind the scenes,
and occasionally somebody runs into them and bad things happen"), and
the core rules for mortal characters.
Only mortal characters, mind. It also has rules for ghosts, but not as
player characters.
(It's a good set of rules, BTW.)
If you want to play a monster, you'll need one of the supplementary
books. At the moment, there is only one. It's called Vampire: The
Requiem. It looks like this:
http://secure1.white-wolf.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=489
(Only a bit shinier, because the cover is printed in metallic ink that
you can't really see on a computer screen.)
At the moment, those two are the only two books published so far for the
(current) World of Darkness. You need The World of Darkness in order to
use Vampire: The Requiem -- it's not stand-alone. (This is a major
departure from previous versions of the game.)
Additional World of Darkness games will be published in the future.
We're all eagerly waiting for Werewolf: The Forsaken (due out in April
2005), and Mage: The Awakening (due out probably summer 2005).
In addition, supplements for the existing game lines will be published
-- they're all going to be hardcover, and White Wolf is trying for two
every month. November is kinda weird because it has October and
December's release schedule squished into it, but we're looking at
Coteries, Nomads, and Rites of the Dragon (all Vampire supplements) and
Ghost Stories and Antagonists (both general World of Darkness
supplements) all due out by the end of November.
But as usual, you don't need supplements. I could see running a solid
mortals-only horror game with just The World of Darkness, and I can
easily see running a solid game of vampires with just The World of
Darkness and Vampire: The Requiem.
> Do you need a sort of 'dungeon master' as per D&D to run a game? Is there a
> minimum number of players required?
The dungeon master / game master / referee player is called the
Storyteller, and yes, you need one. The minimum number of players would
be 2 -- one player and one ST -- and the maximum is, as usual, however
many you can get together in one room and not have the game dissolve
into endless arguments over what'll be on the pizza.
> I think WoD is more story telling than D&D, am I right about this?
It /aims/ to be. It's even in the name -- the system behind the
(current) World of Darkness is even called the Storytelling System
(previous versions used a slightly different system called the
Storyteller System).
However, in practice, you can use it to do the same sort of play style
you can do in D&D, just as there isn't really anything in D&D that
prevents you from running it as a story telling game.
The system /is/ somewhat tailored more towards coherent narratives, though.
> I'm a total newb, please excuse me for any silly question.
You haven't asked any silly questions yet.
> Thanks in advance,
This is a "You're welcome" in advance, then -- I hope you found my post
helpful and informative.
--
Stephenls
Geek
"I'm as impure as the driven yellow snow." -Spike
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