Ian Reads World of Darkness: An Introduction

Hey everyone!  So there’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a while: finally get a chance to actually read the World of Darkness books.  And to make it so I’m accountable for reading them, I’ve decided to start a series, where I talk about each book chapter by chapter as I go.  I’m not sure how many books I’ll end up covering, or how fast I’ll be able to get through them, but I figure it could be a fun way for me to read the books and provide people with a more granular view than they usually get.  This isn’t going to be a critical review of the books, just my impressions as I go through them.  (There may end up being moments of critique or comparison, but that’s not my main focus here.)

This has been harder than you might think, given that a lot of the books are out of print and Onyx Path Publishing’s print on demand offerings, while extensive, still have some weird gaps (like not being able to get a print copy of Werewolf: The Forsaken).  However, I got lucky.  I’d never been able to find the core New World of Darkness book before.  However, Seattle, it turns out, has an extensive number of stores that carry used RPG books, from Gary’s Games to pretty much every Half Price Books in the area.  I was able to finally find the core book at the Half Price Books in the University District, and while I missed out on getting a copy of Werewolf there, I was later able to grab Vampire: The Requiem, Werewolf: The Forsaken, and Mage: The Awakening from the used games shelves at Gary’s.

So I now have a lot of reading material in the hopper, though after the core book I make no guarantees as to what order I’ll be reading them in. Right now my tentative plan after reading through the core book is to read Werewolf, as it’s the one I’m the most excited about.  After that I’m not sure which’ll be next.  Vampire is super-iconic, but what I’ve read about Mage sounds absolutely fascinating.

You might be curious as to why I’m going with the New World of Darkness. Honestly, it’s because I’d heard on 2 GMs 1 Mic that the mechanics were more cohesive and tended to be more fun in play.  The idea of a unified base system also appealed to me, as well as the option out of the box to play the poor mortals being driven crazy by the whole experience.  The tone of the newer books also seemed more appealing, but I’ll plead guilty to not knowing a ton about the differences between the two lore-wise.

The tentative schedule right now is for a new chapter post every Friday.  This might vary based on my available time, though, and how long each chapter ends up being.  I currently have a buffer as far as chapters read, but given that I don’t have the posts for those chapters written yet, it may well be a meaningless bit of padding.  We’ll see!

So there you have it.  I hope it’s going to be as interesting and fun for you as it is for me.  See you next week (hopefully)!