VelvetViolet
Adventurer
Of the urban fantasy games that have come out in the last three decades or so, the one that seems to dominate the market is World of Darkness. Well, that and Shadowrun. I could be wrong, that's the impression I get. What sets World of Darkness apart from something like Dungeons & Dragons, All Flesh Must be Eaten, Urban Shadows, Monsterhearts, or Feed is that it isn't a "generic" game which supports a variety of settings. It has a three decade old convoluted comic-book style continuity baked in. There are two other continuities, Chronicles of Darkness and Monte Cook's World of Darkness, but those are also baked into their own set of rules and seem to inexplicably court edition wars.
World of Darkness had a number of competitors like Nightlife, C.J. Carella's WitchCraft, The Everlasting, Nephilim, Immortal: The Invisible War and so forth. Those are all out of print now, maybe available at e-retail if the publisher cared to upload them years ago. All of them had their own takes on the paranormal, their own settings and creative ideas. World of Darkness doesn't reflect any of that variety of thought and doesn't support playing outside of its idiosyncratic sandbox, all three or so of them.
The less said about the mechanics the better. Especially the superpowers. It you want my opinion at its most succinct, then I believe a mechanic like Godbound's words is vastly superior to the mess that is World/Chronicles of Darkness.
I find all that rather grating. I don't like World/Chronicles of Darkness because I don't like being restricted to play in someone else's arbitrarily narrow sandbox. I don't like playing a game that is firmly stuck in an early 90s zeitgeist when the urban fantasy genre is so much more diverse than that and roleplaying games have expanded so far in that time. I like having loads of options, like how Dungeons & Dragons has a bazillion campaign settings both official and third-party. I don't a have a problem with extensive lore in the abstract sense, but the World of Darkness fandom seems more interested in discussing the lore than actually playing the game or creating homebrew settings. The vitriolic edition wars pretty much destroyed any interest I had years ago and sent me running into the arms of Dungeons & Dragons.
Maybe it would make sense to use a concrete example. Take Werewolf. In horror movies and paranormal fiction at large, werewolves have typically been pigeonholed as a viral curse with uncommon exceptions. In either of Darkness setting, the standard character is a lycanthrope. Lycanthropy is hereditary and tied to a deity like Gaia or Father Wolf. There aren't other options, except maybe in a obscure sourcebook for a specific edition like Hengeyokai or Skinchangers. You definitely can't play anything like the lunars from the sister game Exalted. (I'm not touching the tribes with a ten-foot pole. Suffice to say, White Wolf/Onyx Path/whoever has never been able to write believable political parties.)
Meanwhile: Nephilim had selenim (emotion-eating shapeshifting immortal necromancers), WitchCraft had ferals (who could be hereditary, cursed, possessed, etc and flowed like water rather than assuming fixed forms), The Everlasting had manitou (spiritual warriors who bound themselves to spirits, including plant or mineral) and wer (horror movie-style viral werewolves), and Dresden Files had five or so different kinds of "werewolves" as a starting point. Recent Netflix original series The Order has werewolves as people bonded with magical sentient wolf pelts passed down through an order.
There simply doesn't seem be any game approximating Dungeons & Dragons's diversity for the urban fantasy genre, or at least none that have achieved anywhere near as much success as World of Darkness. Somebody once tried to make a retroclone under the OGL called Opening the Dark, but that never made any impression. Urban Shadows, Monsterhearts and Feed were the most interesting to me because they devised unique mechanics to better support their intended themes. Urban Shadows focused on politics, Monsterhearts focused on monsters as metaphor, and Feed focused on humanity versus vampirism. In my opinion this was implemented in a superior manner to World of Darkness.
So I find myself stuck between a rock a hard place. World/Chronicles of Darkness dominates the market, but the awful rules, restrictive setting and toxic community absolutely repulses me. The indie games are a breath of fresh air but remain stuck in obscurity.
I don't know what to do, so I come here to ask for advice.
World of Darkness had a number of competitors like Nightlife, C.J. Carella's WitchCraft, The Everlasting, Nephilim, Immortal: The Invisible War and so forth. Those are all out of print now, maybe available at e-retail if the publisher cared to upload them years ago. All of them had their own takes on the paranormal, their own settings and creative ideas. World of Darkness doesn't reflect any of that variety of thought and doesn't support playing outside of its idiosyncratic sandbox, all three or so of them.
The less said about the mechanics the better. Especially the superpowers. It you want my opinion at its most succinct, then I believe a mechanic like Godbound's words is vastly superior to the mess that is World/Chronicles of Darkness.
I find all that rather grating. I don't like World/Chronicles of Darkness because I don't like being restricted to play in someone else's arbitrarily narrow sandbox. I don't like playing a game that is firmly stuck in an early 90s zeitgeist when the urban fantasy genre is so much more diverse than that and roleplaying games have expanded so far in that time. I like having loads of options, like how Dungeons & Dragons has a bazillion campaign settings both official and third-party. I don't a have a problem with extensive lore in the abstract sense, but the World of Darkness fandom seems more interested in discussing the lore than actually playing the game or creating homebrew settings. The vitriolic edition wars pretty much destroyed any interest I had years ago and sent me running into the arms of Dungeons & Dragons.
Maybe it would make sense to use a concrete example. Take Werewolf. In horror movies and paranormal fiction at large, werewolves have typically been pigeonholed as a viral curse with uncommon exceptions. In either of Darkness setting, the standard character is a lycanthrope. Lycanthropy is hereditary and tied to a deity like Gaia or Father Wolf. There aren't other options, except maybe in a obscure sourcebook for a specific edition like Hengeyokai or Skinchangers. You definitely can't play anything like the lunars from the sister game Exalted. (I'm not touching the tribes with a ten-foot pole. Suffice to say, White Wolf/Onyx Path/whoever has never been able to write believable political parties.)
Meanwhile: Nephilim had selenim (emotion-eating shapeshifting immortal necromancers), WitchCraft had ferals (who could be hereditary, cursed, possessed, etc and flowed like water rather than assuming fixed forms), The Everlasting had manitou (spiritual warriors who bound themselves to spirits, including plant or mineral) and wer (horror movie-style viral werewolves), and Dresden Files had five or so different kinds of "werewolves" as a starting point. Recent Netflix original series The Order has werewolves as people bonded with magical sentient wolf pelts passed down through an order.
There simply doesn't seem be any game approximating Dungeons & Dragons's diversity for the urban fantasy genre, or at least none that have achieved anywhere near as much success as World of Darkness. Somebody once tried to make a retroclone under the OGL called Opening the Dark, but that never made any impression. Urban Shadows, Monsterhearts and Feed were the most interesting to me because they devised unique mechanics to better support their intended themes. Urban Shadows focused on politics, Monsterhearts focused on monsters as metaphor, and Feed focused on humanity versus vampirism. In my opinion this was implemented in a superior manner to World of Darkness.
So I find myself stuck between a rock a hard place. World/Chronicles of Darkness dominates the market, but the awful rules, restrictive setting and toxic community absolutely repulses me. The indie games are a breath of fresh air but remain stuck in obscurity.
I don't know what to do, so I come here to ask for advice.
