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This is a review of the DrivethruRPG print of the book, not e book itself.
This is a very good product. The artwork is crisp and sharp, the writing is clear and perfectly readable. The cover is nice and colorful, and the binding is solid. This is a high quality product. The original book is white writing on black, while this product is the more standard black on white. This design/printing choice, while a deviation from the original book, is in my opinion a good one.
The book was delivered within a week, which is impressive considering it was shipped to Norway.
All in all, this was an excellent purchase, and I will be returning to DrivethruRPG's PoD offers for my oWoD purchases in the future.
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I'm liking it so far. About the only thing that's a disadvantage is that three Merits are mandatory. All in all can't wait to get a game in.
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Once again, Onyx Path knocks it out of the park. Intriguing characters with a unique perspective, compelling story hooks, well-thought-out storytelling advice...this book has it all. Looks like the White Wolf Crew has another hit on their hands!
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Mummy is the future of the WoD.
An amazing game in every respect: concept, art, writing, thematic consistency, originality, coolness. :)
Mummy turns the WoD on its head by focusing on the ironically short lives of immortal beings. it plays with the tension between being a demigod-like entity, worshiped and with profound power at your beck and call, while also losing one's own identity forever in servitude to greater, mysterious entities.
The ancient power of the world, forever shackled. What will you do when you arise again?
I've been waiting for this game for some time and it delivered more than i could have hoped. An awesome game that breathes new life into the World of Darkness gameline.
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There are already a lot of reviews for this 23 page product, so I'm not sure how much I can add... but I figure I should chim in.
The Bleeding Edge is good. It's well written and presents the core themes of Cyberpunk, along with some new Merits to represent those themes. But it's not great, and serves as an example of using a limited word count improperly.
Bleeding Edge has three broad sections - Introduction and cyberpunk themes, mechanics, and storytelling elements. The first and last sections are great - the right length and well written. The mechanics, I feel, did not use their space well.
There new mechanics are three Merits - Origin, Role, and Plug-ins - along with Alienation, a new Morality alternative.
Origin and Role are basically Merits that put a mechanical advantage to something you did anyway - create a character concept and character backstory. The mechanics are sound, but the first thing to go through my head was, "Is this really necessary?" The second thought was, "Do these two Merits need to take up 8 pages of a 23 page PDF?" Both of these Merits just feel like unnecessary bloat - why do characters need free bonus specializations when they should already purchase those based on their character concept?
Plug-ins are great. There's just enough here to give you ideas, but leaves you a system that can be easily expanded and modified. For example, I'd really be interested in giving some plug-ins a "Passive" mode, where they have an effect that doesn't require the expenditure of Willpower.
Alienation is pretty thematic, and represents how cyberpunk characters drift away from "civilized" society. It charts a course for the character's story arc as well, as they accept more daring jobs and are forced to commit more horrific acts. I approve.
All that said, I'm fairly happy with my purchase, I just felt that others should be aware of what they'll actually be getting with this product.
If you'd like more World of Darkness discussion, check out our website at http://darker-days.org
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Great content but very poor PDF quality... Come on WW, this could be a 5 stars product!!! ;-)
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I've actually got a bit of history with this one. Full disclosure, this novel, released last year on the White Wolf imprint, was something I've read a few times in the past few years. I've was a beta reader on one of the early drafts and I reread another version of the novel put up as a serial on the White Wolf website.
It's inspiring to see the book finally reach print, especially after all of the various versions appear to have improved and refined the story.
The plot of Silent Knife is steeped in the mythology of the World of Darkness, the fictional noir universe of White Wolf's many role-playing games. Silent Knife focuses more or less on the Masquerade, the treacherous and Byzantine politics of the Vampire world. Ariadne, the eponymous protagonist, is a relative newcomer to this world, changed into a vampire barely a decade previous, negotiating the relentless demands of her Prince, Liliane, during a full-scale rebellion. The leader of the rebellion, Roarke, possesses arcane powers unusual for the undead and legions of followers eager to upset the balance of Liliane's vision of a New Jerusalem. Although young by immortal standards, Ariadne is an important warrior for her Prince, possessing rare talent with the blade, and a predator's instincts for the hunt. As the body-count rises, Ariadne stumbles upon a remnant of her own old life, a man named Andrei she once loved. Even though the mortal who loved Andrei is long dead, she risks everything to be with him, to dream of some better life outside of Boston.
Nurenberg is a big fan of China Mieville and the most compelling parts of this novel stem from a similar impulse towards detail and world-building. Silent Knife's alter-Boston is a place invested with Lovecraftian cosmic horrors and the hidden machinations of powerful forces. Like Mieville, Nurenberg doesn't just want to tell a story. He wants to bring his metropolis to life, filling it with hordes of characters, living and dead, and weaving a grand spectacle of blood, sacrifice, and flawed redemption. I am not a big fan of fiction set within pre-defined universes but I appreciated Nurenberg's attempt to breathe new life into the genre. He chose atypical characters as vampires: the obsese, mordant Bourne is particularly vivid, a former labor organizer, embraced as a kind of sadistic joke by his philosopher sire, condemned to see history's pattern repeat again and again, without having the ability to change any of it.
This is the overall theme of the book, characters trapped a few steps outside of redemption, lurching towards acceptance. The tragedy of the story is that each character seeks that redemption from the same thing most likely to condemn them. Ariadne regains some measure of humanity by reigniting an affair with Andrei, but that humanity dooms both of them in a world that feeds off of mortals. Bourne can't help but long for Ariadne even though his unrequited desire for her, serves only to drive him deeper into fury and revenge. Liliane's vision of a shining city on the hill leads to unspeakable sacrifices, and ceaseless carnage.
Overall I think this is a fresh and seductive portrait of Boston noire. Like the city, it's a tapestry at once intimate and personal, but also panoramic and cold.
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The book opens with an explanation of what gets a Mage labeled as Left-Handed and also offers some new tricks for Apostates.
The second section details the Mad (those whose Wisdom drops to 0) and the effect they have on the Fallen World as well as rules for creating and running such characters.
The third section looks at the Scelesti, the Abyss, and Mages who follow even darker creatures. I felt this section was the weakest but not a waste of space.
My biggest draw to this book was the new information on the Tremere (the fourth and final section) and this book delivers. The Legacy gets an expanded origin story and its organization gets broken down and explained.
My biggest complaint was that the book was so short. The information about Apostates, while good, didn't feel like it belonged with the rest of the material. The Tremere were given enough depth to require their own Order book but everything was so compacted I felt like I was reading the Introduction to a much larger book. The same can be said for the Scelesti (perhaps another Night Horrors: the Unbidden needs to be written to cover that aspect).
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Hunter is turning out to be one of the best NWOD books ever. I've only recived the PDF so far and it's been very helpful. I can't wait till I get the actual book.
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I thoroughly enjoyed the setting material, however I would like some guidelines for Spirit Creation. The book gives what an attribute, power, etc. cost when buying traits, but doesn't tell you how many traits a jaggling, incarnae, etc. have at creation.
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The following review was originally posted at Roleplayers Chronicle and can be read in its entirety at http://roleplayerschronicle.com/?p=30711.
You’d be hard-pressed to find a role-playing fan that doesn’t at least know about the World of Darkness. Many know it’s modern horror and many understand that it serves as the base for many different gothic horror settings published by White Wolf. However, there are lots of gamers out there that stay clear of horror games as they prefer epic fantasy or space opera and hesitate when they can’t simply kill the main antagonist (a common feature in horror gaming). Even though the World of Darkness, new and old, has been around for quite some time and many reviews have been written, I’m going to focus more on those who don’t really know about The World of Darkness and the Storytelling system and what it has to offer.
The World of Darkness presents a world much like our own, but where nasty creatures of horror and gothic horror fame lurk in the shadows or terrify people at night. It is not an alternate history whereas something in the timeline has changed, it just presents a more horrific version of the world that we know. The core rulebook presents the modern world with various horrors; other settings may add additional elements or place things in a historical era. However, the core rulebook is strictly modern and serves as the base mechanics for World of Darkness settings. Using only the core rulebook, characters are human and have standard human qualities and abilities (albeit maybe better than others). Other settings introduce supernatural concepts and abilities, but for this core rulebook, it’s all standard humans.
With this in mind, the stories to be told are not going to be like epic fantasy or space opera. They are not going to be filled with mind-blowing combat or extraordinary feats of unnatural abilities. They are most likely going to resemble modern horror stories and movies, investigation thrillers, or any number of feasible media that depicts humans in a modern environment, albeit with a horrific flair. The focus here is more on the story including how the characters immerse themselves within that story and how the story resolves. Another thing to keep in mind is the separation of The World of Darkness and the Storytelling system. The World of Darkness is the underlying setting used abroad for the core book and the setting guides. The Storytelling system is the mechanics that power game-play set in The World of Darkness.
The Storytelling system is a roll-over dice pool whereas a pool of d10s is constructed according to the character’s Attribute + Skill + Equipment with any bonuses or penalties applied. This dice pool is rolled to achieve a number of successes (rolling an 8, 9, or 10) against a static target number according to the difficulty. Target numbers are not floating and are determined according to difficulty, which all players would then be able to translate into the number of successes they need (such as a target number of 5). This is the base mechanic that the entire system is built upon; quite simple if you ask me. Attributes and Skills are listed as dots on a character sheet representing the number of dice you add to the pool being constructed. You could use numbers instead of dots; either way will give you the same result, just shown in a different way. Combining Attributes and Skills is quite dynamic as the two are only linked by general category (Mental, Physical, and Social), but not defined as a combination. In other words, you can combine skills with different attributes to create different effects, resulting in a different task being performed. This is a great way of reducing the number of skills required while maximizing their possible usage. Some systems reduce the number of skills available, but you may be left with wondering what skill applies to a specific task because it’s directly linked to a given attribute (which may not apply to that task).
The Storytelling system is simple, yet powerful and the World of Darkness is an excellent setting. This core rulebook definitely presents a story- and character-focused role-playing game with no shortage of possible horror.
OVERALL
The World of Darkness core rulebook serves as the base mechanics for all of the World of Darkness setting books. There’s enough content in here to run a modern horror game without a setting book, but the Storyteller will have to fill-in the gaps concerning antagonists. The good thing is that horror games don’t need a lot of antagonists like fantasy games do and this shouldn’t be too hard of a task. It’s a fantastic presentation of an excellent game system, but more importantly it presents a setting that is a great representation of modern gothic horror. The World of Darkness, and moreover the Storytelling system, definitely focuses on characters and their uniqueness by giving you mechanics that don’t hamper your creativity. Oh yeah, it’s also a great read, even if you don’t like the mechanics or don’t plan on playing the game; there is no shortage of content that can be extracted to create your own world.
RATINGS
Publication Quality: 10 out of 10
The World of Darkness core rulebook looks fantastic. The layout is simple and effective, the formatting looks great, the majority of the artwork has a great blend of horror and modern-feel to it, and the complete package is pleasing in many regards. It’s a very easy read and I truly appreciate the mixture of narrative and game content.
Mechanics: 9 out of 10
The Storytelling system is a solid dice pool system with simple mechanics that can be very flexible. I’m not a huge fan of representing traits using dots, but it definitely drives the point across of how simple using the dice pool can be. As stated before, you can easily convert the dots into a number, but then again dots are easier to fill-in as you go on a character sheet (no need to erase to write a higher number). I’m not particularly impressed with the antagonist list, but then again this book is meant to serve as the base mechanics only, and does that quite well. If you are turned away by the dots, use numbers, and storytellers would do well to look into additional material to flesh out additional antagonists if necessary. Otherwise, I find character creation to be quite flexible allowing you to create virtually any human character imaginable.
Desire to Play: 9 out of 10
If you compare the Storytelling system to other horror games (such as Call of Cthulhu), you get a lot of the same principles regarding how those systems view characters and their inherent flexibility regarding creation (no classes here). It’s another approach using dice pools instead of other means, and the low count of dice may not allow for a lot of granularity, but then you also don’t want to get tied up in too much dice rolling (horror is meant to focus more on the story and the characters than combat encounters). If you compare the World of Darkness to other horror settings (such as the Cthulhu Mythos), again you get a lot of the same principles, just with a different face (gothic horror instead of supernatural horror).
That being said, The World of Darkness and the Storytelling system do both of these things extremely well, presenting an excellent game package to Storytellers and players. Those who like dice pools will find an excellent dice pool system. Those who like horror will find a setting with plenty of twists, turns, creepiness, and horrific possibilities.
Overall: 9 out of 10
The World of Darkness is one of those games that is well-known for a reason. It has solid mechanics and an expansive setting, both of which fully embrace their fundamental goals. It’s not going to replace your epic fantasy, space opera, or even Cthulhu Mythos games, but it definitely gives you a perfect outlet for experiencing gothic horror in the modern world; all done with a focus on story and characters.
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Much of the foundation of this book will feel familiar to any existing fans of D&D's planar adventures (Planescape in particular) but pushed through the particular dark and dynamic lens of the Scarred Lands. The core cosmology is an abbreviated great wheel - Etheral, Astral, Shadow, Dreams, 4 elements and 8 aligned planes (each home to one of the gods of the pantheon). If it had just left off at that, this would have been an excellent resource for someone looking to jazz up Planescape, or to run a Planescape style game with a harsher tone, and it would have been worth 4 stars for that (and the supporting rules material). The extra star is earned by the Zodiac realms, one for each of the 16 constellations of Sharn and accessabel only when their sign is ascendant. Each of these realms is a bounded space, and while some are just extended lairs for Big Extraplanar Thingees, a handful of them are really quite interesting as idea seeds and potential adventure hooks.
I picked this up because I'm a planescape nut who enjoyed the Scarred Land material I'd read previous. I only accidentally discovered that this book existed, but it was definitely a good find.
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Not quite a sharp or specific (lots more seeming main characters) as the first novel. However, still good and does well at describing the aftermath of the fall of Constantinople. Lots of the knight orders are mentioned, some fuller than others. It also covers three types of Assamites with main characters and some non-Alamut....
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The only real bad thing about this book is its poorly scanning. Also, If you want more rituals and paths that's not a book for you.
However, it's great if all you need is to improve your campaign's mood and setting. Also, the history chapter really makes the Cappadocians (as a Clan) make sense.
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The God-Machine Chronicle Anthology is The Onyx Path’s opening salvo of a new series of products for the World of Darkness under the auspice of the God-Machine Chronicle. Since the launch of the new World of Darkness White Wolf/CCP has released a plethora of products as part of their toolbox approach to game design while shying away from developing an overarching “meta-book.” While some books have strayed close to the line between the two for the most part each product was a package of tools each troupe could play around with to build the World of Darkness they want to explore. Now Rich Thomas and the many creative forces behind The Onyx Path are stepping over that line and producing a chronicle book, a setting in which we can explore a particular vision of the World of Darkness (which some tweaks to the core rules to match). This anthology begins the exploration of that vision, wetting our whistle for the upcoming chronicle book which we will not get to see until sometime in 2013.
The God-Machine Chronicle Anthology collects nineteen works of short fiction which continue to “intrigue, tantalize and inspire readers” from start to finish. Seven of these tales originally appeared in other works produced by White Wolf/CCP and twelve of them are all new creations. Fans of the company and their game lines will recognize many of the writers and game designers who have lent their talents to the creation of this tome. Each piece ranges in quality from good to great but I cannot express how impressed I am with the anthology as a whole. Each story really is a piece of a much larger puzzle. This is a puzzle which we are only now starting to see its outline and there is still so much more to reveal.
Does the anthology answer questions about the God-Machine? Yes and no. If anything I have a thousand more questions than before I started reading. That is probably a good thing because I am even more excited for future releases now
Upon completion of the anthology I poured myself a glass of wine and decided to lounge on my futon with the television buzzing in the background. I realized a feeling of melancholy had crept over me with a touch of hopelessness. Not too much but just enough that I wanted to relax and let the cogs keep turning on their own without interruption. Obviously the anthology had the intended effect and I was very much in the right mindset to begin exploring this new setting.
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