Alisair Longreach said:
The campaign premise of Monte Cook's World of Darkness is that "something" happened and left 500 miles wide crater seething with unnatural energies in the middle of the USA.
Some people were possessed by the spirits of an evil person and turned into Vampires.
Some people were possessed by alien, raging spirits and turned into Werewolves.
Some people discovered that magic really works and call themselves Mages (or shamans, occultists, wizards or whatever they want).
Some people have a firm sense about what the world is and function as a kind of spiritual anchor that prevent the universe from being destroyed. They are usually dedicated and very competent.
Some alien spirits fashioned a body for themselves to infiltrate human society, they are known as Demons.
I picked up my copy today, and I have mixed impressions of it. For a D20 conversion of WoD, its not bad, and its clearly meant to bring some D20 players over to WoD by teasing their curiousity. The ideas presented for vampires, werewolves, demons, mages, and awakened are good- slightly different than normal WoD, but not so much they are unrecognizable. I especially like the nods to Demon: The Fallen- probably the most evocative of the WoD games to date. I haven't gotten too far into the mechanics yet, but at first glance it looks pretty solid, if a little overly complicated (the step method of advancement (on page 311), while interesting, would likely also be an accounting nightmare).
What is pretty lame is the backstory. A huge bubble of "something" in the midwest called the Intrusion Point opened, and is left there, which had secondary metaphysical effects that lessened as the "shockwaves" emanated out from it. Its not terribly apparent what it is from the way the book is written, but from what I can gather, its essentially a portal into the Inconnu's reality. The Inconnu are completely alien minds supposedly not any more aware of us than we would be of stepping on a piece of gum on the sidewalk- an annoyance and ugly surprise, but thats it. The Inconnu then sent evil spirits or the spirits of our own evil dead (had to work that in
) to explore our world and find out why our universe wasn't obliterated. Wait, weren't the Inconnu said to be completely unaware of us? Then how and why did they decide to send evil ghosts back to possess certain bodies (vampires). Everything within a certain radius of the Intrustion Point (the Annilhilation Zone) pretty much got nuked, turning the cities into ruins full of tech and supplies overrun with monsters. Meanwhile, the world still goes on mostly as normal outside the Zone, with occasional forays by supernatural forces into it. If the world outside is sliding downhill, but still has production capabilities, why would characters need to loot the Zone? The logic continues to break down from there.
I know the authors are different than the usual WoD ones, but this very much appears to be the frying pan to the face approach to post-apocalyptic horror- very little subtlety, with over the top "FX". The Zone is basically full of "dungeons", where the PCs venture in, kill stuff, and grab its loot, then retreat outside the Zone to "town". *sigh* I had hoped for a lot more from this product, but its the same old, same old again. I will admit it will appeal to the normal D&D audience, and hopefully get more people interested in the nWoD. But for me, the value of this product is minimal- I'd hoped for a well thought out supernatural post-apocalyptic world, but it looks like I'll have to design one on my own to use this product.
