Greetings gamers! Last time we began a discussion comparing the differences between the classic World of Darkness (WoD) and its reboot, the Chronicles of Darkness (CoD) settings. I gave my thoughts on ways in which the WoD setting, while being one of my all time favorite TTRPG settings, suffered from some pretty significant problems. Mainly these problems are down to narrative inconsistencies between gamelines and a bloated metaplot. That being said, the WoD setting has provided me with countless hours of gaming enjoyment over the years. Onyx Path Publishing procured the rights to the pen and paper IPs of White Wolf games in 2012 and still publishes new products for the WoD. Currently, Onyx Path has released a new edition of Vampire: The Masquerade (V5) that updates the setting and introduces new design elements into the game. In the interest of full disclosure, I must admit that I haven’t played V5 or even given it more than a cursory glance. Why? The reason is simple. Since Onyx Path took the rebooted World of Darkness (nWoD) setting and made it their own (rebranded as the Chronicles of Darkness), I have become thoroughly invested in the CoD setting. I simply can’t see playing in the classic WoD setting when I could be playing a game in the CoD setting. What makes CoD so awesome? To answer this question, we need to look at the design philosophy behind the rebooted “nWoD” and the subsequent changes to the setting that were implemented when Onyx Path took creative control of the nWoD setting.

nWoD

When the WoD reboot was announced after the conclusion of the classic WoD in 2004, I was skeptical that the “reimagined” setting would be anything more than a joyless cash-grab. I was wrong. Rather than being a joyless cash-grab, it was more an attempt to reboot the WoD by way of correcting the WoD’s flaws. While it is true that I found the splats books (vampire, werewolf, mage, etc.) to be lackluster, the design philosophy of the nWoD gamelines was entirely sound. The game designers at White Wolf Publishing took the lessons learned from over a decade of publishing WoD games into account when designing the nWoD. First and foremost, the core rulebook for the nWoD, titled World of Darkness, placed mortals as the protagonists of the setting. Mortals are the default PC in the nWoD. From its inception, the nWoD was designed to be modular; giving storytellers all the necessary tools with which to tell quality horror fiction tales. The splat books (Vampire: The Requiem, Werewolf: The Forsaken, and Mage: The Awakening, etc.) follow a simple 5×5 design architecture: 5 splat-specific types, and 5 splat-specific social groups. Every game in the WoD follows this design architecture, and in conjunction with a streamlined ruleset, the resulting product is a far more homogenous setting from a design perspective.

In addition to a streamlined design, the very idea of a metaplot was dispensed with altogether, and the splat books were designed narratively to be exclusively local in scope. There are no world-spanning conspiracies in the nWoD and the supernatural beings of the nWoD are portrayed as being almost singularly concerned with their own little corner of the world. This is not to exclude the possibility of crossover campaigns. The power level differential between splats is greatly reduced as compared to the WoD, and most local settings are host to a number of supernatural beings, making crossover campaigns easily justified. In keeping with the toolkit nature of the nWoD, this emphasis on the local was consonant with the modular game design philosophy of the nWoD. Unfortunately, as a consequence, the narrative particulars of the splats often felt a bit too generic. In the attempt to avoid an intrusive metaplot, the various mythologies of the splats were watered down to the point of blandness. One exception to this was Mage: The Awakening 1e, wherein the explicit Atlantean origins of Awakened magic were, to my mind, somewhat silly (thankfully the Atlantis aspect of MtAw was made implicit and purely symbolic in 2e). From a design perspective, the nWoD was a testament to good game design, but from a narrative perspective, there wasn’t much holding the setting together. That is, until Onyx Path took the wheel.

CoD

When Onyx Path Publishing obtained the license for the nWoD IPs, it began by releasing a new edition of the nWoD core rulebook (rebranded as the Chronicles of Darkness), followed by new editions of VtR, WtF, and MtAw. These new editions contained an updated ruleset that included a revamped experience mechanic and rules for character conditions, as well as providing meta-rules to make crossover campaigns easier. In addition to the refinement to the Storytelling System ruleset, Onyx Path introduced metanarrative elements that served to make the CoD a coherent setting where the nWoD was not. The Chronicles of Darkness features a campaign setting called the The God-Machine Chronicle that serves as a sort of “default” setting that explores one of the deeper mysteries of the CoD setting. The implications of The God-Machine Chronicle are global in scope, yet these implications are subtle enough (and little enough known) that they won’t intrude on a story unless the storyteller wants to include them. In this way, the mythologies of the various splats are woven together in a canon of implicit narrative elements that serves to bind the supernatural beings of the CoD to a common setting. For example, it is implied that vampires in the CoD trace their origins to an ancient curse bestowed upon the first ancient vampires by malevolent shadow beings called the Strix. The Strix themselves come from an obscure layer of reality called the Lower Depths. Certainly, the vampires themselves are unaware of their own ultimate origins, and while the Strix are whispered about anxiously among the vampire community, few understand what they are or why they enjoy tormenting vampires. Almost no one in the vampire community knows about the Lower Depths. Yet the Lower Depths are known to mages, even if few mages are aware of the Strix. The inclusion of the Lower Depths within mage lore speaks to a shared setting, and even though the entirety of the CoD setting is shot through with these sorts of subtle connections, they are never really made explicit and thus are not intrusive in the way the explicit metaplot of the WoD was. These metanarrative elements represent layers of mystery and conspiracy that comprise the CoD setting. While the conspiracies range from local to the cosmological in scope, no one in the CoD knows enough to connect all of the dots, or even most of them.

The implicit canon of the CoD strikes a delicate balance between modular, building block style game design and the metanarrative elements necessary for a credible shared setting. The game designers at Onyx Path Publishing have done a superb job combining these two aspects and have produced, to date, ten gamelines within the CoD setting. The narrative blandness of the nWoD has been replaced by a rich mythos that provides each splat with subtle connections to each other and to the shared setting; all while maintaining the sense of mystery and conspiracy that serve as the coin of the realm in the CoD. As the latest incarnation of the World of Darkness, the CoD is the culmination of lessons learned in terms of game design and narrative development of a setting that has been evolving for over two decades. The end result of this evolution is a highly polished series of TTRPGs that the classic WoD simply cannot compete with. If you are a fan of horror fiction and haven’t checked out the CoD setting and gamelines, I highly recommend you do. You won’t be disappointed. Until next time, happy gaming!