RPG Review: Old vs. New World of Darkness

The game development company White Wolf has created some of the most popular and, in every sense of the word, successful role playing games in history. Beginning with Vampire: The Masquerade in 1991, White Wolf has taken the business into a new standard for atmospheric storytelling and streamlined mechanics. In 2003, the company decided to reboot their World of Darkness brand in an attempt to clean up a complex but extremely messy field. So, how do the two versions of the WoD compare?

The Old World of Darkness, which includes Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, Wraith, Changeling and several other games, is more in the vein of the traditional role playing model. Fantastic powers and big monsters take center stage even though the setting is a gothic/punk version of the modern world. Each individual game, while taking place in the same general setting, has its own detailed backstory, leading to a labyrinthine meta-plot that threatened to render the games nigh unplayable.

After more than a decade of frequent errata, add-ons and supplements, the Old WoD became very difficult to follow. Realizing that their customers were growing bored with playing the same old monsters, White Wolf explored just about every possible branch of expansion. New playable characters joined the fray, even if many of them were impractical or just plain silly (like an aquatic vampire). The company also had a storyline problem. Much of the Old WoD relied upon the doomsday mythology surrounding the year 2000 to establish an atmosphere of pending disaster. When that date passed, much of tension went out of the games.

So, in 2003 White Wolf decided to formally end every series in the Old WoD. They marketed this event as the Time of Judgment and took the opportunity to release a concluding supplement to each of their games. At that point, they went about developing and advertising the New World of Darkness reboot.

In many ways, New WoD is far superior to its predecessor. Mechanically, it couldn't be simpler. Whereas the old system used a special d10 variant and had special mechanics and core rules for each individual game, the new system uses a very simple d20 variant and a central core rules book for every game. As such, it's a lot easier for fans of one New WoD game to dive into another. While each game has its own unique atmosphere and special systems to keep it from being a mere cosmetic swap from the others, the brand is far more cohesive.

From a storyline perspective, White Wolf has kept the games a lot more open-ended, but many of the few plot elements that have been introduced lack the ingenuity of the original series. Players are best left to their own devices when it comes to story, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. The gameplay itself has shifted away from the overtly fantastic elements characteristic of most RPG's. In some cases, the weirder abilities and items in the games incur penalties simply for being so unreal. This is interesting in theory and it keeps a campaign from turning into hack-and-slash with horror movie super heroes, but it also tones down the neat-o factor of an otherwise imaginative setting.

The New World of Darkness games are fun and about as streamlined as any system can get. Already five years since its release, the series has remained fairly trim and easy to follow. It has yet to be seen whether or not the games will remain so accessible.