World of Darkness

World of Darkness is an RPG fictional multiverse developed by White Wolf Game Studio.

It resembles the contemporary world, but darker. Humanity is losing hope as it is preyed upon and abused by hordes of unnatural creatures -- vampires, werewolves and wraiths. Worse, they are not solitary crazed predators to be hounded by heroes, but numerous and intelligent enough to form societies, develop various warring factions and use hapless humans as pawns in their games.

In effect the world is strangled in countless conspiracies - every conspiracy theory of our world has its equivalent there. Presumably these conspiracies are run by ancient vampires or technocratic mages working behind the scenes. To mirror this the setting was made dark and desperate and there are contrasts everywhere: landscape is either Gothic (gargoyles on the roofs of skyscrapers are quite common) or slums, people are either rich or powerless, life is either a rat race or a bleak, hopeless existence. Decadence is common and decay and corruption is everywhere.

White Wolf developed the following games set in World of Darkness:

• Vampire: the Masquerade
• Werewolf: the Apocalypse
• Mage: the Ascension
• Wraith: the Oblivion
• Changeling: the Dreaming
• Hunter: the Reckoning
• Demon: the Fallen

All of these games are variations on the same pattern: get a type of critter, make it an imperfect yet playable beast, devise a society of such critters, make several castes of it, give the each caste various supernatural powers, and finally devise a unique antagonist. Although even more common elements can be found, it cannot be said that WoD of Vampire will be compatible with WoD of Werewolf or Mage, because each game presents a reality as seen by given critter type. See above links to games for details.