GoCorral

Finishing off our Chinese based review look at the World of Darkness book line!

All Together

One of my original ideas for a China RPG was instigated by Hardcore History’s Supernova in the East series on Japan’s expansion during WW2. Japanese occupied Manchuria felt like a Wild West setting with new ground to break due to the “exotic” nature of China, Japan, and Korea compared to the American West where I’ve been to most of the locations. World of Darkness could work for that sort of campaign with plots focused on real things like Japanese incursion, but also on evil spirits and monsters. Sunset Empires is probably the most useful for that time period, but I’m tired of reading World of Darkness books.

World of Darkness is difficult for the Storyteller/GM. The game is primarily about relationships. Maintaining relationships between all the PCs’ personal attachments and the relationships between all those NPCs and the other allies and villains is expansive and complicated. It would be nice if there was a published campaign with that detail ready to go, but the Asian kuei-jin stuff has nothing in that area. All the lore in the setting books is too broad strokes to run a campaign without immense work from a Storyteller.

You could wing a World of Darkness game, but the game encourages fully fleshed out NPCs to interact with. It would be hard to really wing a World of Darkness game without more system mastery by playing and GMing more structured games. I don’t feel that I have that mastery yet. Is a foe with a rank 5 attribute and a rank 1 attribute the same threat level as one with two rank 3 attributes? I don’t know.

Most importantly, World of Darkness isn’t really a setting that attracts me. I don’t want to GM a game where the PCs are basically evil power-hungry villains. That’s why I started a look at the Hunters splat books. But even then, the work required to run a World of Darkness game was a turn off. If I did put in all the work for a structured campaign like that, I’d probably use a different system. My original choice for that Manchuria game was going to be a Forged in the Dark system like Fistful of Darkness. I might still go in that direction at some point. A Medieval Age game seems woefully unsupported in World of Darkness, so I’ve abandoned that idea.

World of Darkness also feels like a poor fit for the a Chinese game I’d like to play. Wuxing elements are an afterthought in Blood and Silk. Confucianism and Daoism are largely absent. Buddhism is present but from an Indian point of view instead of Chinese Buddhism. The Zodiac isn’t there at all. Kindred of the East is a blend of China, Japan, India and other nations that it loses the specific appeal I was looking for. I might be able to homebrew my way to where I want, but at that point I should be playing a different game.

While World of Darkness wasn’t what I was looking for, it’s still a well designed game. If you’re interested in a dark game where you play one of the monsters of the night in the modern age, you can check out the books I read at the following links.

Vampire: The Masquerade, Revised Edition (1998) – https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/647/vampire-the-masquerade-revised-edition
Kindred of the East (1998) – https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/2552/kindred-of-the-east
Dark Ages: Vampire (2002) – https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/2676/dark-ages-vampire
Blood & Silk (2000) – https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/33/world-of-darkness-blood-silk
Hunter: The Reckoning (1999) – https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/639/hunter-the-reckoning
The Hunters Hunted (1992) – https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/459/the-hunters-hunted-ww2205
Demon Hunter X (1998) – https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/337/world-of-darkness-demon-hunter-x