Customer Reviews
Excellent! - By: Mr H Collings, 01 Apr 2006 
Having played & owned many RPG's I can only say that this is excellent.
Unlike most of the other reveiwers, I've never encountered World of Darkness before, so this is my first foray into the Storytelling system.
The system is a cinch to learn & use. Rolling all those dicein your dice pool gives a feeling of such power!
The book itself is well written & laid out. The 'snippets' of stories used for background info are excellent. Just creepy & dark enough to whet your appitite & get you looking at the world around youin a whole new light (or 'dark'!)
Allin all, a must have for any serious gamer.
The New World of Darkness - By: , 09 Feb 2006 White Wolf’s announcement of discontinuing the old World of Darkness line was somewhat of a shock & annoyance to my seasoned players & myself.
How could anything hope to replace our much beloved Vampire, &in general the World of Darkness as a whole?
Scepticism & phobia of the re-released WoD was inevitable, & my first reading of the new World of Darkness Rulebook only helped to deaden my reaction.
But time changes many things, including my outlook.
I bought The World of Darkness Rulebook & Vampire: The Requiem as soon as they were releasedin the UK, but it was not until a month ago I decided to finally give it a try.
With much apprehension but a burning desire to make it work, I set out to tell my first storyin the revamped WoD.
After eventually shunning my preconceptions & generally ignoring the sneers of my fellow players as I passed out the new character sheets, we started.
The World of Darkness Rulebook takes everything that made the old Storyteller system great & given it an overhaul. The result is a slick, beautifully written system that is not only simple to use but wonderfully adaptive.
The lack of meta-plot, something at first that actually turned me off it,in fact frees the Storyteller & players from searching through endless source books to make sure their story fitsin with the pre-made background material.
It encourages Storytellers to be as creative as possible, making a setting & plot that befits their style of play &in essence, makes for a more enjoyable & fulfilling experience.
To publish the World of Darkness Rulebook separately to the other core books (Vampire, Werewolf, Mage) may at first seem like an attempt to squeeze an extra few pounds (or dollars from our US cousins) out of the gamers’ pocket.
What it does do is enable you to create & tell stories centred around the mortal ilk of the World of Darkness, an unforgettable & sometimes foreboding experience as your near-helpless human characters are faced with unimaginable power & terror.
When it does come to the point where you wish your characters to become one with the darkness itself, you are no longer faced with buying a book that repeats the rules all over again & gives you very limited background & theme material for the said game.
Everything you need isin this one book, & never before has a fully functional slim-lined system been bound under one cover.
The revamped d10 system is near flawless, & enables dice rolls to slip seamlesslyin between the drama. No longer does the story & pace have to suffer as you rummage through separate to-hit & wound rolls, counting up 6+ scores & deducting annoying 1’s.
In essence The World of Darkness Rulebook is as near perfect as one could expect from White Wolf.
It’s background has brought back the horror & mystery that the old WoD had started to lose.
The system itself is such a vast improvement you may feel that the game element has been virtually removed as dice rolls happen on the fly.
What is at the forefront now is the drama, the story. And that is way it was meant to be played.
The old World of darkness will always have a special placein my heart, but I can say it’s progeny is a beautiful thing, something White Wolf can be proud of.
Revised and looking damn good... - By: , 08 Sep 2004 When I first heard that White Wolf were ending their ever popular World of Darkness series, I was pretty astounded. I mean, this is a series of books that has gone on for many years, & has earned them a lot of money. It takes guts to just up & end something like that. We all knew that they were going to release the next stagein the timeline, & we were wondering what it was going to be like. When they released names for the next line of books, my admiration for their courage waned slightly; World of Darkness, Vampire: The Requiem, Werewolf: The Forsaken, & Mage: The Awakening, all signiature names for the flagship games they have been touting since they released the World of Darkness originally all them years ago. Apprehension abounded...was this just going to be the same as the old Storyteller games? Was it just the next new edition? How much is going to really be new?
The World of Darkness core book is the main system book, detailing the world, the system, & the main population of the World of Darkness - the Mortals. Thingsin here will look very familiar to long time fans of the WoD; a worldin darkness, gothic-punk, hidden conspiracies, things not being as they seem, the supernatural menace etc. So far, it's fairly typical fare, & doesn't give much reason to own the book if you already have all the old WoD books. But this,in my opinion, is only a surface similarity. Let me get this clear, it is similar to the old World of Darkness, it is similar to the Storyteller system...but this isn't a mere update, this isn't a simple revision. This is an overhaul. Ending the old line gave White Wolf the opportunity to start at the beginning, keep some of the things they liked, & completely change things they didn't. The book itself is very stylish, cover to cover, it's a work of artin itself, with a glossy front cover, & incredible artwork, as you would expect from a White Wolf publication. The stories inside are very well done, & the information is portrayed neatly. As far as the system is concerned, there is much here that old WoD players will recognise, but there are still many changes, mainly used to streamline the rules, making it so that when they come into play, they are over with quickly, bringing the focus back to where it should be, playing the game. And i think making the main book concentrate on mortals is a stroke of genius. It brings to mind the fact that although there are super powers at workin the WoD, the world is primarilly made up of normal, human, mortal masses.
I might have given this book 4 stars on it's own, because although it is an astounding fount of information, there are still many common threads that run between this book & the previous WoD incarnations. But I upped it to 5 because of it's potential. With what's changed, to the system & the world, I can't wait to see what White Wolf do with the upcoming Vampire, Werewolf & Mage sourcebooks, as well as any other expansion books. It's a revolutionin the Storytelling system, it's not a simple update at all, it opens up whole worlds of possibility now that White Wolf have more or less restarted after the old WoD became too cluttered with metaplot. If you have the old systems, & you like the old systems, then I suppose you could do away with buying this book. But for new & old gamers alike, I would advise buying this book. It has so much potential, & so many possibilities, & new players will be able to slip into it no problem. Even the old players that like the old system may like to get this simply because I believe the rules make a great deal more sense. In summation...only if you're a dyedin the wool old skool WoD player would I advise against this book, as there are quite a few changes...but if you're a role-player, old or new, buy this book, & have fun...
