Is it worth getting back into World of Darkness 2.0? Part 1 (of 2): A Review of the WOD 2.0 Core book!
Well, lets start by the summary first. (I know most people will scroll to the bottom, read the conclusion and bugger off, so might as well make it easy for you! 
They (i.e. White Wolf) have improved the Storyteller(tm) system. Most of the changes I really like. The dice mechanic is even easier and botches are harder (you have to make a choice to make a roll that has a chance of a botch). But some of the new stuff, I loath to the nth degree.
The book itself isn’t brilliant. While the layout is exceptional and the art great (nearly a trademark of White Wolf by now), I had several problems:
1. I expected several things from a “core” book, one of which is that it contains everything that was common to the three other books; vampire, mage and werewolf. What you get instead is the World of Darkness from the perspective of ordinary mortals. In fact, it reads more like “Mortal: The something” then a core book. It contains all the common stuff between Mortals and Vampire but not Mage and Werewolf. I didn’t see anything about, for example, Spirits, Umbra or other metaphysics which I would guess is going to be common to Mage and Werewolf.
2. The genre it paints for WOD (World of Darkness), is “Stylish Horror”, “Hints of the Supernatural”, Monsters in the shadows, conspiracies in conspiracies… while this is the perfect atmosphere for Vampire, I’m not sure I want to play Mage in such a world. The supernatural is described as predators, monsters with red eyes, aliens, etc. Are Mages going to be predators in the shadows? Also the system seems a little at odds with this. It reads like a HP Lovecraftian world where mortals teeter on the edge of their sanity (see all the fiction that loads the beginning of the book), yet the system is not linked to sanity but “Morality” and a specific cultural view of Morality at that.
3. While the book itself describes the system perfectly, which would be enough yet it still tries to paint the world as a game for mortals. Unfortunately the writers stubbornly refuse to describe any supernatural creatures except for ghosts. They mix pure fiction with text so you’re not sure what is meant to be part of the world or not. Essentially, it describes the Storyteller(tm) system well but it leaves gapping holes in the world and too many questions. You can argue that’s the point, the “holes” will be filled in with the new Vampire, Werewolf or Mage but it doesn’t even provide a small summary of other supernatural types. You _could_ play a mortal game with this book, but then you’d have to make up everything except for ghosts. Luckily this means that there is no implicit meta-plot even suggested in this book, yea!
Essentially, you get more and less then what I would consider a core book for a massive world like WOD.
If we start with the beginning of the book, we have really well written fiction about mortals who experience something of the supernatural. They’re filled with hints of bigger conspiracies and mysteries. Unfortunately I didn’t find them to be particularly good but that’s my opinion. They don’t detract from the feel of the book.
(I must say White Wolf is great at stating the obvious too and taking several paragraphs where one or two lines would have done, but that’s a minor complaint).
The first problem appears here because they mix pure fiction (not just some guy explaining the world) with factual descriptions. It’s hard to know if they are describing the world or just giving a fictional viewpoint of it. They stubbornly refuse to use the words Vampire, Werewolf or Mage but instead use terms like Angels, Gods, Demons and Aliens and leave it to the guesswork of the reader. For fans of WOD1.0 (the previous incarnation of World of Darkness — I’ll call the new version of WOD, WOD2.0 for clarity), it’ll be entertaining — we know what the World of Darkness is about. But I want to get to the facts, what are the supernatural groups? How do they interact with mortals and each other? What’s the big picture? These are never answered in the book, you’ll have to buy the others books for that I guess.
It’s frustrating, there is a piece of fiction where a guy lectures about different types of “beings” that live among mortals for example. It reads like a summary of creatures but it is fiction and the terms it invents are never mentioned again.
It reads like the mortal perspective of the World of Darkness. You can even say it is the Mortal book: It has character creation for Mortals, their viewpoints and their advantages and weakness. But because of the lack of descriptions of the other supernatural elements it’s not playable as a roleplay unless you’re willing to invent everything except for ghosts (as ghosts are the only supernatural critters described including their powers and weakness).
It feels like it contains everything that is common between only Vampire and Mortal because it doesn’t talk about the bigger world that is common between Werewolf and Mage from WOD1.0, such Spirits and the Umbra.
The system, for the most part, is improved. I like the new dice mechanic: essentially you make one roll for most things, including attacking. You calculate your dice pool (the usual Attribute + Skill) and then apply modifiers which add or subtract dice from your pool. The difficulty is a standard eight. Botching is better too: your pool must be reduced to zero but in this circumstance you can make a chance roll with one dice. In this case only, if you roll a one, you botch.
I like what they did with the Attributes. They’ve renamed them and rearranged them in kind of grid so you have the usual Social, Mental and Physical but also Power, Finesse and Resistance. They’ve gotten rid of Appearance but who ever rolled Appearance anyway?.
There is one set of Skills, again split in the familiar groupings. But the Skills have been improved. Most of the secondary skills from WOD1.0 are now subsets, specialities or system examples of these Skills. Oh and you don’t need to waste that point in Drive… it’s assumed, living in the modern day, you can drive but with Drive you have expertise in Driving such as a stunt driver or chasing!
You can also use a skill even if you don’t have it but you have a penalty depending on the type of skill. Which is very nice feature. Your skills no longer define what you can’t do but simply what your good at.
Also we have the usual “Advantages” but they have been changed. Willpower is now defined by the combination of two attributes, you can’t independently buy up Willpower, you must buy up the associated attributes. This also means that Willpower can temporarily go up by using supernatural means. Likewise Health and the number of hit-points is tied to two attributes which can be temporarily increased!
In Advantages, We also have Defense which takes away from an attacker’s dice pool. We have Initiative which is not the combination of Dexterity and Wits but the lower of the two. We also have a Size. This gives me a similar feel to D&D where you calculate your Defense and Initiative on the character sheet by adding two or more traits together. Stuff like Defense is useful for speeding up combat.
There are no more backgrounds or even merits and flaws. Instead you have Merits which include all the backgrounds and traditional merits. They have ratings which you must buy and some can only be taken at character creation. Fighting Styles with special moves are Merits. It works, I like it a lot. Flaws are optional but give extra XP which is an interesting.
Character creation follows similar approach as WOD1.0. A nice trick is that it gives a little box of Experience Point costs for having more developed characters which I assume this is carried into the other games.
Combat is much improved. You roll only one roll to attack and do damage. The target’s defense (and armour) gets taken from your attack pool and any successes become damage. No longer do you get the situation of hitting really, really, well but then doing little or no damage!
For Mortals, at least, there are no supernatural powers. There is no faith, numina, hedge magic or psychic abilities, familiar from WOD1.0. Perhaps these will be included in supplements if they are to be included at all. Some of the Merits provide some supernatural abilities but not much.
They haven’t gotten rid of priorities in character creation. You must still priorities between the categories of Attributes and Skills. While I understand why the Attributes and Skills are grouped, why must we prioritise? The only reason I can figure is that it helps guide people who don’t have a solid character in their minds. I’ve been gaming for ages and I often have a fully fledged character in my mind but then become unable to create it as I’ve got to stick my character in to one of three “class” i.e. social, physical or mental and spend points in Attributes (or Skills) I don’t particularly want. But this is a gripe with WOD1.0 as well as WOD2.0.
The first thing that pissed me off about the system is the Morality trait. This will be replaced in each other game by the different systems but I really don’t think Mortals need this trait at all. Morality defines how “humane” a mortal is; what they are capable of as a human. If they lose a point of morality due to doing something they wouldn’t do and failing some roll they can gain a derangement. It reads like a conversion of Humanity from Vampire WOD1.0. It also works with the Virtues and Vices which have replaced Nature and Demeanour.
I don’t like the Morality trait. It’s not that I think characters should be free of morality in games and stories but I don’t think it suits the setting they’ve painted nor is it something I want to play. In vampire Humanity makes a lot of sense, it’s about the inner beast, the terrible acts a vampire must do to survive, etc. Mortals don’t need to do terrible acts to survive, killing a monster is not immoral nor is defending yourself. It feels more like a big stick the GM (Game Master which is the same as Storyteller in the Storyteller(tm) system) can use to whack players who attempt to play what could be considered immoral characters. Ask yourself this, do you want to play a character that strives to be “moral” (and in the modern day western world sense only) in an adventure where you’re fighting and dealing with monsters? I think a sanity trait like form Call of Cthulhu might have been better, where characters struggle to hold on to their sanity when faced with the supernatural or the horrific.
The Morality trait also relates to obeying the laws of the land which is okay, I guess.
Beyond my personal opinion, I think Morality may work okay as long as you also use Virtues and vices. It’s just not something I would use or want to play nor do I think does it truly model fictional or real characters sense of morality and their approaches to the world (and genre of horror).
My next problem is with Virtues and Vices. They replace Nature and Demeanour. I really liked Nature and Demeanour. They were a great roleplaying guide to what you wanted to portray your character as. Pity.
Virtues and Vices share many of the same complaints as the Morality trait. Virtues and Vices are based on the classic Christian view or morality, i.e. the seven deadly sins and their opposites. You have at least one virtue and one vice for your character. You use this to regain willpower points, virtues will give back more. I didn’t like the fact that there are only 7 virtues and 7 vices (but then each virtue and vice has “other names” which, I believe, give subtly different virtues and vices and so they can be expanded from 7 to 21 or more but that’s not the system). I think the system is limited because they impose a fixed view of morality. For example I would add, Love, Hard-Working, Dedication and Loyalty to Virtues and Stupidity, Confusion, Ignorance and Fear to the Vices.
I also tried to imagine what my Virtue and Vice would be and I couldn’t really. I found it too limiting to describe myself like that. I tried a few fictional characters and found it equally difficult. While for some the Vice or Virtue was easy, both I found hard to specify.
On a tangent, your not allowed to gain willpower points when you actually try to gain willpower points. Is this a catch 22? Essentially to regain willpower, you must act out your vice or virtue but if you do it to gain willpower you can’t. Why is this is? Surely you want your players to act out their virtues and vices and willpower is the “carrot”?
The book is filled with little systems for everything. The Attributes and Skills all have little subsystems to deal with nearly everything from bribing, seduction, fast-talking to lifting, pushing, hacking, etc. And all the examples give “Skill + Attribute + equipment”. So I guess will all be gearing up then.
Personally I think if you throw out Morality, Virtues and Vices and bring back Nature and Demeanour, the system is very solid.
Chapter 8: What is Roleplaying…. gak!
Normally with White Wolf books I ignore these sections because I find they detract from the rest of the book. And they do. They are arrogant, tunnel-vision and highly pretentious.
They say that Storytelling(tm) is a different kind of roleplaying. It is? How so? (I always thought storytelling is about telling stories not a specific brand of roleplaying…) Well apparently a lot of other games are “roll”-play as opposed to “role”-play. They focus on stats and dice instead of story and character.
But… so does the Storyteller(tm) system. This is important distinction. They is very little in the system that promotes roleplaying over system. The text throughout the book says, use the system as you need. Well with that logic any system can be a “storytelling” “role”-play. You can take an implementation of D&D Modern and say in the text: “take what you need from the system”. Walla, its a roleplay according to this book, but in no way does that differiate the Storyteller(tm) system.
What makes the Storyteller(tm) system is that it is simple to grasp and use. The dots are a great visual cue to how good your character is in a trait, the mechanics of the system are easy to grasp, the more dice you have, the better you are and the more chance you have of succeeding. This is the strength of Storyteller(tm) system. I use to say that I could do anything I like with the Storyteller(tm) system because I knew how to bend, abuse and break it to do what I want.
The system itself has got subsystems for nearly everything (oh how rules-lawyers love that) that you may use in a story. Combat is laid out step by too many steps with turns, health points and a few contested rolls. They took away nature and demeanour! Combat is simple enough, but there are better systems that do focus on story.
A favourite system of mine is FUDGE (which is free btw). Fudge emphasis taking what you need from the system. Many see it as a “toolkit” rather than a system though it is complete. It’s combat is not fixed set of turns with initiative. In its simplest form it is a description of the combat plus a single or contested roll.
You don’t need a system at all to roleplay and tell stories!
This chapter also talks about how the gaming hobby evolved. The Storyteller(tm) was a good evolution from the wargamming days. A great intermediate between that and systems that do focus on stories and characters and a great way to get people into the hobby who enjoyed some gaming but wanted more. I don’t think it’s evolved much since. There are subtle improvements such as being able to make unskilled rolls so you don’t have to worry about having all the skills you need but only the skills that define your character or getting rid of backgrounds and having merits. But there are no systems to support roleplaying for example there are no bonses for “good” player behaviour.
You can of course modify the system to suit your group and the way you play… but that doesn’t make the system roleplay as opposed to roll-play. Just makes it easy to change.
The next thing that rubs me up the wrong way about this chapter is the pretentious side to it. They say trying to achieve a story is better then just having fun but don’t deride those who do it for fun. What’s implicit in this comment is that White Wolf GMs (and players) are on a different plane to people who just want to have “fun”. I found this insulting, personally. I play for fun, always have, even when I used to buy this line hook, line and sinker.
I think the problem lies on defining “those that do it for fun” as opposed to “pretentious gits”. People who do it for fun, do it for many reasons. What person doesn’t do it for fun? They do not have to be pretentious (as in looking for some thing “meaningful”) to do so. Some are gamers, some are simulationists and some are narrativist. It has nothing to do with creating a “meaningful” story in any way. A dramatic and “meaningful” story can appeal to all types of players. You can get a meaningful story out of most roleplaying systems. Also, in games of horror, you need to sometimes break away and have a little laugh. Sometimes people just want to play a game. Just because people don’t always want to roleplay for more than fun, does not make them lesser beings or unable to enjoy a meaningful game.
(I always wonder if the people who playtest at White Wolf are shit-hot GMs with five dots in manipulation and their players are professional methods actors to able to create these apparently powerful stories!)
It also talks about plot, character, theme, mood, etc. I often used to skim these chapters for the occasionally useful piece of advice. For me, I didn’t really find anything new from previous WOD books.
My relationship with White Wolf WOD roleplaying books, I must say, is a rocky one.
My first roleplaying game I ever played was werewolf 1st Ed. My friends had all been playing for years and we were stuck in a hostel together for a night. So someone suggest playing Werewolf. I agreed, eager to play along with the crowd and have some fun.
I enjoyed the experience so much I was in love. I built a collection of WOD1.0 games, my favourites being Mage, Wraith and Changeling. I enjoyed Vampire but it was not the top of my list (though it followed the other three closely).
Eventually, or unfortunately, “Revised” came out. I had already enough books for me to play or run anything in World of Darkness that I felt like. I bought Vampire Revised and it was actually very good imho. I bought Mage and my heart sunk.
Things had been drastically changed, not necessarily a bad thing if done for the right reasons. Unfortunately it felt like they were done for the wrong reasons: the glourious meta-plot. I had no interest in the meta-plot before. I loved free-form, on the fly, stories and roleplaying. Meta-plot had no place in such chronicles I felt. Then Wraith and Changeling were discontinued. I started to grow cold to WOD and then the final nail in the coffin, the End of Time series. Everything was now wrapped up in the meta-plot and another excuse to buy all the books again for the wrong reasons (imho, yet again).
I had also begun exploring other systems and expanding the types of games I played and the way I played them. I discovered and enjoyed games that really do focus on character and story such as Fudge. I also went backwards and found enjoyment in older, more system-oriented games like Shadowrun, SLA and D&D. I read up on roleplaying in general, joined newsgroups and webforums, etc. The long and the short of it was that my knowledge and experience of roleplaying had expanded well outside of what I knew from White Wolf and their Storyteller(tm) system.
So now I’m coming back to WOD. I still don’t know if its worth re-investing time and money in the new WOD.
The core book and vampire set me back 55 euros which is twice as much as I would have ever forked out for a roleplaying book before. The core book cost me 20 euros and Vampire 35 euros. So, this has tempered my opinion a lot of the two books and it is why I’ve decided to review them independently.
I had my expectations: This book is meant to be the core World of Darkness Storyteller(tm) System book. This implied to me that it would serve several functions:
1. Easy Reference to the System.
2. Contain all common system stuff to Vampire, Werewolf and Mage. This would include Mortals, obviously, but also other stuff such as the Meta-world of WOD, how the different types interact, Spirits (which are common to Werewolf and Mage), etc. Basically solve all those cross-game problems that existed in WOD1.
3. Contain common texts such as “What is Roleplaying” and “How to Roleplay” (so I only have to read them once).
Well it fulfils 1 and 3 but not 2. Instead it gives the mortal perspective of WOD. So I got more and less then I expected.
Is it worth getting? And if your like me and you grew a little cold to White Wolf’s marketing, is it worth getting back into WOD?
To the first question, no not really. Borrow it if you want to understand the system. If you want to GM, you can still survive on borrowing, thanks to dice-pools and the total lack of any setting information.
Is it worth getting back into WOD? Well on the strength and weakness of this book, I don’t know. The system is better (but then Mage revised system was greatly improved to previous versions, yet the setting was drastically changed). But it doesn’t give much more than that.
All I can say is wait and see.
[Update: (September 23, 2004) Wrote up a review of the new Vampire here with a much more positive outlook!]
I originally posted this on moc but I think it’s kinda lost there so I’m posting it here on my own personal site.