What would YOUR World of Darkness look like?

[Griffith Dragonlake]

Wraith: The Dark Ages

I'd start with Vampire/Werewolf/Mage/Changeling: The Dark Ages and bring back Wraith but place it in 14th Century Europe. The Inquisition hunts down Vampire, Werewolves, Changelings as well as Witches & Sorcerers. The Black Plague is now a Romeroesque Zombie Plague due to some maelstrom that opens up the wall between the land of the dead and the land of the living. The Inquisition gets side tracked and might even have to ally themselves with the hunted temporarily to destroy the Zombie/Ghoul Plague.

I'd also allow PC knights, priests, monks, friars, bandits, brigands, etc. Based on d20/OGL (not d20-logo) but perhaps using Iron Heroes or Conan rules for a dark heroic low magic item feel.

The Church has been infiltrated (up to the storyteller) and uses the Inqusition to hunt down enemies, rivals, cometitors, etc. Banking houses, major guilds, and the Hanseatic League have also been infiltrated.

Come to think of it, this resembles a 2nd Edition AD&D campaign I ran from 1994-2000.

 

[Wayside]

Oh, I didn't like Near Dark as a movie, myself, but I think it makes for a much more interesting game setting. (And if I'd referenced the comic book Vigil, alas, only two or three people would have any idea of what I was talking about.)

And I would not have been one of them . Is this the Vigil from Duality Press? It sounds like a tough one to track down:

Vigil is a long story that runs through many series. It starts with the TPB, which collects the first six or seven comics. The next few episodes were published by now-defunct Millennium comics and have not been reprinted, but the story picks up again in Scattershots 1 and 2, then leads into the eight-issue Bloodline series. Luckily, the missing stories don't contain much of consequence, so skipping them doesn't hurt the readability of the series at all.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Yeah, that's the one. A great gritty vampire tale.

 

[YourSwordIsMine]

It would have Darkness....

no shadowy illumination....

 

[YourSwordIsMine]

Oh. And the were-chickens....

Definitely the were-chickens....

Bkahk!

 

[Jondor_Battlehammer]

Present day I would start with the Dresden Files as a base, and then darken to taste. For future, Babylon 5 would be more of an inspiration. I can't really say from experiance since my group treats anything resembling the horror genre less like Dracula, and more like the Monster Squad... The Dresden Files may rope them in, thou.

 

[Nuclear Platypus]

Something along the lines of Hellboy with some room for oddball stuff like a Jackie Chan Adventures er... adventure.

There are forces that go bump in the night and it is up to the few to bump back.

 

[Kheti sa-Menik]

Honestly? I'd make it modular, based on taste and PCs.

I'm not a huge expert on WoD, but I have played Mage and Vampire and know the basic assumptions and such.

Mechanics-wise, I'd use MC WoD. I picked it up at Gencon and love the mechanics, especially magic.

What I'd do is start off asking: what do the PCs want to play? If my four Players (A, B, C, D) all want to have their PCs be normals caught up in things beyond them, then the world is layed off thusly: vampires are, for the most part, brutal killers who want to corrupt, destroy, or simply use humans as food. They are like people: some smart, some dumb, some planners, some folks who want to just destroy. Maybe in the whole campaign, the PCs would run into one vampire who felt remorse or was angsty about his condition, he'd be special in some way (vamp with a soul, half vamp half human, etc). Werewolves are animalisitc predators. Vampires/werewolves are not explained, that is, the condition is not understood very well. Is is soul-based ie when a vampire makes another vampire, the human soul is gone but the body keeps walking around or does something else happen?
Maybe one of the PCs starts using Magic..thus becoming a Mage, or starts off as a Mage.



BUT if all four PCs want to be vampires, the game changes. Vampires are just like humans: some good, some evil, all trying to get by in this world. Trying to hide from the world.
Werewolves are either the enemy or another danger to be avoided.
Humans are food, are to be pitied, protected, or hidden from..or all four.
But beware of humans, some might be mages wielding magic.


Basically the world assumptions change based on what the PCs play.

The second item is taste/tone.
Is it like Angel (tv series)? Supernatural stuff under the surface, unknown to the major populace, but once you know about it, can find it fairly easily?
More rare? Do the races wage a war on each other? Or do they ignore one another? How dark do you want it?


So, my WoD would incorporate:
PC choices + tone. The main rulebook would examine aspects of these combinations, maybe with a chart determining the type of game suitable for that combination.

I like MC WoD but hate the apocalypse angle. I would have prefered normal WoD in D20 mode.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

I like MC WoD but hate the apocalypse angle. I would have prefered normal WoD in D20 mode.

Actually, I wouldn't. The reason is simple: With his take on the WoD, we got another view on the WoD and an alternative ruleset. Not one, but two great components, each usable separately, if you so choose.

Now, if all you want is WoD20, use the OWod or NWod with d20 Rules. If you love the idea of a near-apocalypse with Strange Things From Beyond but prefer Storyteller rules, you can do that. It should not be too hard to mix and match.

I can totally see myself playing Vampires and Mages with Manipulation 5 and Resolve and skills that go up to 5 dots in a World that is being invaded by another reality, and I can totally see using Monte's WoD20 rules for a world where vampires had an organisation called the Camarilla once, where lycanthropes killed their father way before time, and where Mages try to awake from the cursed slumber that is a result of the downfall of Atlantis.

 

[pallandrome]

Ok, the main problem I saw with the original WoD is that it was a setting where normal people are scared of what goes bump in the night. Unfortunately, since you PLAY the thing that goes bump, it either turns into an emo drama, or a superhero game.

I would alter it so that the humans in power know about the supernatural world, and they are PISSED. They roast sabbat gangs with flame throwers, and bulldoze the Prince of the City's house at high noon. Werewolves get hunted down like dogs, and Mages eat sniper rounds if they are discovered. It's a shadow war between the Human run Technocracy (no longer related to the mages in any way) and the supernatural races, and the humans are winning.

Hunters are no longer psudo-supernatural humans. They are just people that specialize in offing the various monsters of the world.

The Camarilla still survives by hiding in plain sight, though the enforce the Masquerade more brutally than before.

The Sabbat is in open war with the humans, but are losing in all but the poorest, most corrupt countries.

The Werewolf populace still tries to fight the Wyrm, but do so more carefully than before, and are more closely tied to the spirit realm.

The Seelie court fo the Changelings has a tinuous pact with the Technocracy, and is allowed to survive because of it. This cas also caused them to be seen as traitors by the rest of the supernatural community. The Unseelie court has maintained autonomy, but since they hide amongst the Seelie court, no one has really noticed too much.

The Wraiths, having the least to do with the human world, has been largely unaffected by the changes.

The Traditions feel largely responsible for the current state of things, since the Technocracy evolved from one of their branches. They mostly try to hide, and act as a police force against Nephandi and Marauders when they are needed. The older ones see the Mage hunts as punishment for the past hubris of the Traditions, but some of the younger ones are starting to gather the other supernatural races to organize a resistance of some sort.

It's a grittier sort of feel. The supernatural races exist in the shadows, same as always, but it's no longer because they fear the other shadows. What they fear now, is the light.