So I was wondering if any forum goers would mind or have an interest in playing one of the New World of Darkness lines. What is the World of Darkness you may ask? Good question, I'll give you a quick history and explanation.
The World of Darkness was started back over 2 decades ago, by a company known as White Wolf. This is the Old World of Darkness, the classic gamelines that started it all, which still has many fans and LARP (Live Action Roleplaying) events even to this day. It's also sometimes called the Classic World of Darkness. An RPG using a rather unusual system for the time, it quickly found it's niche in the then starting trend of Urban Fantasy. It included a rather rich lore that accumulated over the years, and borrowed, changed, and played with many urban fantasy concepts while introducing a few of its own. This is the world of Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, and Mage: The Ascension. Supernaturals existed in the world, often at odds with humanity as a whole or simply outright dangerous to everyone.
Mind you, the Old World had it's troubles. The system was still somewhat clunky and just starting to define itself, the metaplot eventually got flat out insane (Mages with orbital laser satellites killing a vampiric ancestor figure, the world was going to end in about fifty different ways etc. etc.), a few of the gamelines just never... well, worked, the internal balance was rather crazy and the figures for all the supernaturals made the average human actually rather rare. Other games besides the big three in this line were: Hunter: The Reckoning (Supernaturally gifted humans hunting monsters. Never really did much besides that and didn't really fit in it's supposed niche), Wraith: The Oblivion (A rather interesting game concept wise due to it's disconnect with the rest of the lines, mainly focusing on the politics and realm of human ghosts. Also has some flat out crazy awesome fluff details) , Changeling: The Dreaming (Pretty much universally agreed among the fanbase of both the Old and New type to be the worst book of the line. It's basically about people with fairy souls and dragon souls and shit and how they're all perfect and special but the world doesn't listen and is becoming dreary without them), Mummy the... I forgot the subtitle which is embarrassing as I actually own this book and haven't read it yet, and Demon the Fallen (About as Schizophrenic as Mummy and Changeling in tone and without a really defining concept.) which are all I can remember off the top of my head.
If you want to learn more about the Old World of Darkness, I recommend either finding the books or buying Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines off of Steam, though it needs a 3rd party patch to work beyond Vista. Bloodlines is pretty much a cult classic of a game and for good reason: It's the first released title to use the Source engine (Really, it dropped before Valve first published a game using the engine) has a compelling plot and mechanics that both honor the original game and pay homage to the World of Darkness at large. Worth the price
Anyway, eventually White Wolf sorta realized they needed to reboot the setting and fix the mechanics. Thus, the New World of Darkness was born. Compared to the old, it has a pretty much optional and non-existent minor metaplot. There's a LOT of passive aggressive feelings between the fanbases of both over which is superior fluffwise (Except on the matter of Changeling, the New version is pretty much unanimously agreed to be far, far better), mechanically wise, and gameline wise. The New World keeps the classic three lines of the Old World, but puts a new spin and system behind them. Vampire: the Requiem, Werewolf: The Forsaken, and Mage: The Awakening all spearhead the New World. The changes in each line are rather minor in most ways aside from the fluff (And with basically the ENTIRETY OF NEW WEREWOLF), but where the New World truly defines itself is in its secondary splats. Hunter: The Vigil (Think Supernatural mixed with Hobo With a Shotgun. Hunters for the most part now have no supernatural powers or abilities, aside from knowing the supernatural exists), Changeling: The Lost (Changelings changed from Otherkin to Abuse Victims of the True Fae. I love the fluff for this game, it's just plain awesome and a callback to every old folktale out there), Promethean: The Created (Interesting concept wise, about artificial humans trying to become a real boy, but really, really, hard to justify playing), Geist: the Sin Eaters (Wraith's spiritual successor... and just like Promethean, is not really popular, despite being friendlier campaign wise), Mummy the Curse (Haven't read the book fully, but pretty sweet from what I have read) and the upcoming Demon: the Decent (Linked into the God Machine Chronicles, the nWoD's rules overhaul. You're basically Agent Smith.)
Now after all that, you're probably thinking "So Magos, what's the point of that infodump?" Well, here's why: From what I can tell, most of our people in the RP forum are freeformers, and this is where I come in. World of Darkness is excellent in the fact that it lends itself well to transitioning from freeforming to table top play, or to giving freeform a set of mechanics behind it. I'm more than willing to run a game of pretty much any of the new world of darkness lines for you guys. Play by post really doesn't work for a system like this though, as it's far far too slow. So, I'll be likely hosting a campaign on either an IRC channel or on Roll 20. But first, I want to gauge an interest in this before I figure out which line to run.
