What is the World of Darkness?

If you are coming in from a D20 game set, such as Dungeons and Dragons, you might be a little confused, if you were attracted to the World of Darkness through a game such as Geist, or Scion, or Mage the Awakening.

All of these are under the main game "World of Darkness". The WoD is the main rule set, and game sets or storylines such as Geist, Scion or Mage the Awakening, or any of the others are all sub-sets or storylines operating under (or probably better put "inside") the World of Darkness. So, to play any of these other games which are being put out by White Wolf, you need to acquire the main manuals for World of Darkness.

This is a bit different, and like I said, probably confusing at first, but also I think you will find (like I did) that the storyline options this creates are very cool, as a player, a storyteller or a storyline writer.

Right now, not all of the storylines fit with the main rules exactly. For the most part they do, and I am personally in the hopes that this adherence to the main World of Darkness source book will become cleaner for the existing storylines as well as those that may be coming out in the future.

However, that said, it is rather easy to intermix the character types between stories, the storylines will need little puzzeling to do just about anything you want with them as pieces of the world. Your Cabal of Mages can come across a Sin-Eater, possibly using him as a guide to bring you into the Underworld through different paths, and open up new areas of knowledge you may not have had access to before.

Your group of Sin-Eaters may be on a storyline which brings them up against a mercenary group of Scions, while on their way to deal with a Spirit-God (this is more than possible, it is in fact one of the storylines we have created here on Scarn).

Your group of Vampires may come across a group of unknown human-type-creatures, who emit an amazing amount of Death energy, yet appear to be nothing more than a bunch of beer drinking young people who play a rather strange Beach-Keg-Party game -- after investigating you discover that these young people are the source of the new drug that is afflicting your people in places like New York and Chicago ... and perhaps the ones behind the deaths of many of those "Chum" users.

So, is the World of Darkness core books, just a set you have to buy in order to play these other games? Is in just another way to get a few Jerferson notes out of you, so you can get to the places you really want to go? No, not really -- and Yes -- because you will need them.

The World of Darkness core books cover the world we live in (only.. well.. darker). But le't say that you want to put in an NPC that is Human... I'm not talking about a drug store owner or a biker, but someone like the Punisher. Some guy who has just had it with all these fricken monsters, and vampires and geists and titanspawn... And Gods? Now we got little want-to-be Gods running around! Enough already! ... and he decides to start bringing some light back into this World of Darkness, using the flash of a .306. For this man, all you need is the World of Darkness core set of rules.