by dragon I'm by no means the expert here, but maybe if I say something, the ones who are will be able to correct me. ~g~ The World of Darkness systems are based (primarily) on modern-day events, and are well enough thought out that real-life can be easily incorporated into in-game storylines. Each supernatural creature: mage, wraith, werewolf, vampire, or changeling, has its various reasons for staying undetectable. Thus, there are no world-altering events made by individuals every other day. If you blow up a tower, someone's going to be mad and come after you. There are consequences. But the best part about the systems is the focus it puts on the individual character, no matter their powers, and how they deal with the World of Darkness around them. An excellent series of books, which I suggest to anyone even for pleasure reading. The authors spent a good deal of effort researching various mythos and legends from a VAST range of cultures. There are also, in each, good descriptions of the actual "stats" so that you can put a number to just what your character can do. ie: Normal mortals average 3 'dots' in their attributes like appearance, intelligence, strength, whatnot. (But not all at once!) Anything higher than that is rather very impressive. 5 'dots' is the maximum that can be obtained by mortals...anything above that is OBVIOUSLY otherworldly. I have a character that has an appearance of 0 and strength of 1. And the 'lack' of numbers on its character sheet do nothing to keep me from having a lot of fun with it. Another thing I recomend. (a correction added by Barry): The average human has an average of 2 in a given stat. Having a zero in a stat means you have no hope of ever being able to pull it off. A 1 means you can do it, but you suck at it. A 2 is average. A 3 in a stat is above average. A 4 means you're damn good. A 5 means you're one of the best IN THE WHOLE WORLD at that particular ability. As such I feel 5's in any trait of a WoD character should be extremely rare. Consider a character that has a 5 in Strength, a 5 in Dexterity, a 5 in Intelligence and a 5 in Wits. That character would be able to bench-press a world-record in one hand while flipping three coins simultaneously in the other hand while at the same time solving complex mathematical formulae and cracking witty jokes that would put Eddie Murphy to shame. On a second note, if you do want to buy WoD books, make sure you get your hands on the more recent Revised versions. The Revised line-up of WoD books is invariably a vast improvement over the old 2nd Edition. 2nd edition Vampire for example was turning into X-Men with severe sun allergies instead of a game about personal horror. - Barry |
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