World of Darkness
World of Darkness is an
RPG fictional
multiverse developed by
White Wolf Game Studio. \r
\r
It resembles the contemporary world, but darker. Humanity is losing hope as it is preyed upon and abused by hordes of unnatural creatures -- vampires, werewolves and wraiths. Worse, they are not solitary crazed predators to be hounded by heroes, but numerous and intelligent enough to form
societies, develop various warring factions and use hapless humans as pawns in their games.\r
\r
In effect the world is strangled in countless conspiracies - every
conspiracy theory of our world has its equivalent there. Presumably these conspiracies are run by ancient vampires or technocratic mages working behind the scenes. To mirror this the setting was made dark and desperate and there are contrasts everywhere: landscape is either
Gothic (
gargoyles on the roofs of skyscrapers are quite common) or slums, people are either rich or powerless, life is either a rat race or a bleak, hopeless existence. Decadence is common and decay and corruption is everywhere.\r
\r
White Wolf developed the following games set in World of Darkness:\r
\r
Though each of the game lines is ostensibly its own self-contained universe, as time has passed, more and more obvious connections between the settings have been made in the canonical, published material. This presents difficulties for Storytellers, since some canonical cosmologies subtly or blatantly conflict with others.\r
\r
In late 2003, White Wolf announced that it will soon stop publishing new books for the World of Darkness, wrapping it up with a a series called The Time of Judgment, which will bring the multiverse to an end. Two of the books, Vampire: Gehenna, and Werewolf : Apocalypse has already been published. The rest of the books - Mage: Ascension, and World of Darkness: Time of Judgment will be published during the year 2004, each of them containing the end of one or more facets of the multiverse. An all-new World of Darkness has been promised to launch in late 2004. Vampire : The Requiem should launch in august 2004 and Werewolf : The forsaken in september 2004. White Wolf did not gave any information so far on what the games will look like.\r
\r
See also:
White Wolf Dice Mechanics