Chronicles of Darkness (and why you should be playing!)
For a long time you were a knight, a cleric, a barbarian, a wizard, a mage, or any of the various classes in fantasy role playing games. Maybe you were an intergalactic warrior bent on stopping some evil space tyrant in a science fiction game.
The point is, you were always the hero protagonist in a story where you had to crush some evil force or another simply because it was evil.
Twenty-eight years ago that all changed, when in 1991 White Wolf released Vampire: The Masquerade.
The release of Vampire: The Masquerade changed everything in tabletop role playing games, a departure from the traditions of playing the role of the good guy protagonist, and descending into the role of a villain. The shift into a setting of personal horror put players for the first time in a position of constant struggle.
Vampire: The Masquerade coined the phrase, “A Monster I am, lest a Monster I become.”
The game was a hit, and grew a massive following that ensured a broader world where eventually there were Vampires, Werewolves, Changelings, Mages, Wraiths, Demons, and Mummies. The award winning World of Darkness as it was called (also called Classic World of Darkness, now called One World of Darkness) cemented itself in the annals of gaming history.
Each of the games were standalone games, never intended to crossover, though creative players and storytellers could do it if they tweaked a few rules here and there.
The World of Darkness was held in a setting of urban decay, a gothic punk atmosphere of subculture genres that ran in all directions.
It held the mantle until 2003 when the games were finally given an appropriate closure storyline.
In the ashes of the one world of darkness rose up the New World of Darkness in 2004.
The award winning New World of Darkness would undergo a couple changes before it was the best version of itself.
Version 1.5 saw the addition of The God Machine Chronicles, and finally version 2.0 changed The New World of Darkness to The Chronicles of Darkness.
The New world of Darkness / Chronicles of Darkness changed how the world of darkness tabletop role playing game functioned - but not in a bad way.
Feel free to argue here, I’m listening. Really.
In the One World of Darkness (the Classic World of Darkness) all of the games are standalone. If you’re playing Vampire: The Masquerade, that’s what you’re playing. The same goes for all of the other games in those particular collections.
There’s nothing wrong with that, and I’ll swear under oath they’re all good games. I like them, I really do... but.
There is a but in this, and a big one. I prefer the Chronicles of Darkness over One World of Darkness, and I’ll tell you why.
- The Chronicles of Darkness sourcebook is in and of itself a self contained sourcebook. Standalone, you could play this game as a human in the Chronicles of Darkness. Not a mage or a hunter but just some average schmo off the street abuout to be inducted into a living waking nightmare. It’s intense.
The expansion for the core rule book is World of Darkness: Innocents. You want to up the horror of this game?
Play as a child in the world of darkness.
Shadows are already long, deep and dark to kids all the way into their teens sometimes. Did you like Stranger Things? Stephen King’s “It”? The Shining? Stand By Me? These aforementioned movies are all about kids facing insurmountable odds with adults who either won’t help, can’t help because they don’t believe, or can’t help because the antagonist is beyond their imagination and rationale.
In the world of darkness, playing as a child means you’re largely helpless to face against the odds, but if you have a good Chronicler, and you’re a good player, you’ll get an epic terrifying story and if you survive it, your child can grow up and become an adult in the world of darkness. Someone with lasting traumas.
- All of the expansions are interchangeable: because Vampire, Werewolf, Changeling, Promethean, Demon, Beast, Geist and Hunter all run around the Chronicles of Darkness core rulebook (in fact cannot be played without it), your previously traumatized child character that grew up, (or just your adult character if you didn’t play World of Darkness: Innocents), you can choose from any of the expansions that your character may become.
Vampire is no longer Vampire: The Masquerade.
It’s Vampire: The Requeim. The Masquerade is still in effect, but the Camarilla fell with Ancient Rome.
Gone are the days of generation, replaced with blood potency.
Caine? Yeah, sure. He could be one of the reasons for vampires.
So could The Crone.
Or Longinus.
Or Dracula.
You’re no longer bound to a single cause for vampirism, and it’s up to you how you want to spin it. Maybe it’s all of them, none of them, or maybe it was something else.
A lot of Vampire: The Masquerade fans cried blasphemy - and still do - at the changes made between Masquerade and Requiem. I loved Masquerade, but I like Requiem better. Masquerade held intrigue, action, power, horror and lots of blood... but for me it wasn’t personal horror, it was being the monster in a horror movie.
The struggle to maintain humanity wasn’t ever as pressing as it should have been, I think. Vampire: The Masquerade was often akin to vampiric superheroes, rather than the damned fighting against their personal damnation. I’m not talking about hellfire and brimstone, either. I’m talking about struggling against their condition, and slowly - to their each and every individual terror - losing. There was never enough of that.
Requiem is a struggle, the struggle and that struggle is real. Starting vampires can drink up their fill in animals, never having to face the trauma of drinking down a person - but alas, blood potency.
Blood potency is the replacement for vampire generations.
The checks and balances are there to keep that struggle going. As your blood potency grows, your vampire can no longer sustain itself of animal blood and has to consume mortal blood. As your vampire does so, they have to face what they’re becoming. As they further become what they are, and that potency strengthens, mortal blood is no longer enough. From there on, it’s a struggle to survive off vampire blood, avoid diablerie, and blood bonds (never mind trying to find willing vampires from whom to feed). Finally, it’s a battle against torpor. As a vampire ages and it’s blood potency grows purer, the stronger torpor calls to it. In addition to having to consume the blood of lesser vampires, eventually vampires like itself and all while constantly fighting torpor.
Vampire: The Requiem is personal horror.
Fighting the monster inside yourself, losing your memories and yourself to the throes of time until nothing you “remember” is exactly as it happened.
Oh and by the way... the Strix are hunting you. Witch Hunters are hunting you. Werewolves are hunting you. Other vampires are hunting you. In my opinion, this is a superior game to Masquerade.
- Werewolves. Here we go again. Same old song again. Bitching down the avenue, the classic world is never through.
Now, you’re the Uratha, the forsaken. Your goal is to restore Pangea, the world as it was before the veil between this world and the spirit world became further apart. In a time before time, Father wolf roamed the border between Pangea and the Spirit world, keeping flesh and spirit separate. The spirit of Luna descended in mortal form, and found a mate in Father Wolf. From them came the first pack, part wolf, part mortal, part spirit. The Uratha. The Werewolves. As Father Wolf ages, the Uratha killed him. Luna cursed them all with a weakness with silver. The murderers of Father Wolf swore an oath, the oath of the moon to Luna.
Werewolves have many enemies, much as the Kindred (vampires) do. Of course there are the Spirits. Werewolves travel between the real world and the spirit world, and it is a necessity of their spirit nature.
Then there’s the Anshega - the Pure. The Pure hate you. They have forsaken Luna and have chosen to avenge Father Wolf. Some of the pure won’t necessarily kill you outright, others only want you to end in violence slaughter. Make no mistake, though. Unless you’re willing to foreswear Luna, give up your Auspice and join the cause, you’re the enemy.
- Changeling: The Lost
In the classic Changeling you are the soul of a Fae (faerie) reincarnated in human form. In this storyline, the practice was performed as a way for the Fae to protect theirself as magic became less and less common in the world.
In game, before puberty the character undergoes the chrysalis, a metaphysical change where the dormant Fae soul awakens, and coexists with the changeling’s human soul. From this point forward the changeling exists in both our reality and the world of the Fae simultaneously. The classic Changeling game had two courts.
- The Seelie Court
The concept behind the Seelie court in this game follows classic tropes of justice, defenders of the weak, peacekeeping and chivalry. The goal of the Seelie court is to restore the connection between the mortal world and their own (The Dreaming as it were) where there is no longer distinction between the two.
- The Unseelie Court
The Unseelie court mocks the code of the Seelie court to its face. Whether viewed as tired old traditions, or outright disbelief in their cause, the Unseelie court believes in the tenets of change, chaos and impulse. The Unseelie court backs the ideals of radical change, viewing their selves as visionaries in a mundane world. Where the Seelie court longs for the dreaming, to restore their Arcadian home, the Unseelie court sees the dreaming as it has abandoned them, and Arcadia is lost.
Urging chaos, inciting war and encouraging madness, weakness has no place in their court and they resent (if not hate) those who are weak. For their court, they believe change is good. Glamour (from where Fae draw their power) is free, and free to obtain however they like, honor is a lie, and that the true nature of faeries lies within the idea that passion comes before duty.
The Unseelie court sees life as fleeting, and at the attempts to exist within it without regret, consequence and to live their lives to the fullest regardless any obstacles.
The Kiths in Changeling: The Dreaming are based on the Fae of legend. Boggans, Eshu, Nockers, Pookas, Redcaps, Satyrs, Sidhe, Slaughs, and Trolls. Each of these kiths have their own traits akin to the Fae of old, and each lend to the drives what motivate the character.
...dreaming no more.
Changeling: The Lost changes all that. No longer are you the soul of a faerie reincarnated in the body of a mortal being. Of all the personal horror settings in the Chronicles of Darkness, I personally find Changeling: The Lost to be the darkest, and scariest. Unlike the movie monsters such as vampires, werewolves, mummies, and monsters born from pyros in Promethean: The Created, here there be monsters. True monsters.
In Changeling: The Lost, your character was taken at some point in their life (usually childhood) and placed into the servitude of a Faerie keeper. In no uncertain terms - and let me be clear - the Fae are your enemy.
Your captors.
You were stolen and replaced with a fetch, a conscious replicant of you. No one looked for you. No one knew you were gone. While you suffered, your life was lived by another. It married your high school sweetheart. It got the job you wanted. It lived the life you wanted.
It knows you exist, even if you’ve not learned about it yet.
You are The Lost, escaped from your keeper in Arcadia, always looking over your shoulder. Never resting with both eyes closed. You are defined by your court - no longer Seelie or Unseelie - but by the seasons. You are defined by your kith, no longer a Fae born soul coexisting in symbiosis with a mortal soul.
Your kith is elemental, animal, darkling, fairest, ogre or wizened. Each and every one of these kiths has a number of different forms the Changeling could take from a being of fire, to a clockwork doll that looks like a living puppet or doll; it is only their seeming that keeps their true face from the eyes of the public at large that would panic were they to see them as they truly are.
...and so the Changeling exists in a world that would not accept them, and longs for a world it could not return without dire consequence.
Changeling: The Lost is the right dose of personal horror that I feel The Dreaming simply was not... and why can’t it be? The creators of Chronicles of Darkness have had a lot of time to grow since creating Vampire: The Masquerade.
For those of you curious of the predecessors, good news: those games are still available (in their fifth edition now), and you can get them and the Chronicles of Darkness here and here.
I would love nothing more than to explain to you each and every game in the classic / one world of darkness and the Chronicles of Darkness. If I did, this already-too-long entry would amount to a book. If you consider all of the games produced thus far in both classic and contemporary systems, it would take pages upon pages. I would have to write a book.
I don’t want you to think I have any problems with the classic / one world of darkness. As I said when we first began here, the Classic / One World of Darkness is to Chronicles of Darkness as High School is to College.
Check the system out, but be warned. This one is an investment. If you buy the core rulebook and then a new expansion every month, you’ll have a complete collection before the end of the year. Then you can decide whether you want more books for each expansion.
If you want every book in the classic / one world of darkness, purchasing one a month each and every month, it will take you years (including expansions to each stand alone) before you own them all.
If you’re a fan of horror, if you enjoy telling scary stories, writing horror stories and watching scary movies, this is for you.
If you’re willing to take my advice, start with Chronicles of Darkness, and Vampire: The Requiem and then go from there.
Enjoy.
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