Learning World of Darkness

[TheGateKeeper70]

So recently 2 of my friends and myself stumbled across a box of nWoD books at a yardsale. They were like 10$ so we bought them, because we had considered playing D&D recently but really didnt want to invest all the money into it. Plus I was the only one who had any experience with D&D or any RPG before and didn't really enjoy it. So we thought it lucky when we stumbled upon these books.

So now he is the dilemma. We have no idea how to play....

My experience with PnP Rpgs was about D&D was about 2 sessions where I was just told what to do essentially, and a game of Paranoia which I dont even remember that game aside from just yelling at each other, laughing, and not actually doing anything constructive ever (At some point Cthulhu was also involved...)

It was decided that I should be the Game Master. But I'm not really sure how to create a good start to get the players and myself familiar. I've flipped through some of the books, on things like Mysterious Places (I love the room idea concept and want to work that into a campaign at some point), Antagonist, etc. But Im not really finding much to help me get started. Can anyone offer some ideas on getting started?

We have decided to keep the characters as humans first, or potentially forever, but definitely for now as it is easier for everyone to grasp I think.

Anyway I've read through most of the WoD core book and it is all still pretty confusing.

[Juhn]

Starting everyone as Mortals is a good idea, unless everyone has their hearts set on a particular type of supernatural. nWoD's mechanics work best when modelling mortals.


Anyway I've read through most of the WoD core book and it is all still pretty confusing.White Wolf is pretty notorious for bad formatting, yes, especially mixing fluff in with crunch so it's really hard to find a specific rule when you need it. If I remember correctly the actual rules in nWoD core don't start until you're 30-something pages into the book.

What I suggest doing, especially if none of you have ever played before, is downloading one of the free quickstarts from White Wolf's websites. Not only are the explanations simplified a lot, but all the mechanical stuff is included up-front in an easy-to-find section, as opposed to strewn haphazardly throughout the text. I don't know how well-balanced they are (I've only got experience with the Mage quickstart and that one was... less than ideal. Spirits are really overpowered compared to starting characters).

You say you've only got two players? White Wolf's expected party size is 5 (for some baffling reason - in my experience trying to line up six people's schedules enough to play a regular game takes miracles, and from what I've found the ideal party size in terms of giving everyone an equal share of the spotlight without anyone else getting bored is about 3 players), so you may need to do some adjusting of the pregenerated scenario to account for the fact that there's only the two of them going through it.

Looks like Nightmare on Hill Manor (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/92564/Nightmare-on-Hill-Manor) is free, and it's a Mortals quickstart about being trapped in a haunted apartment building. Given that you mentioned liking Mysterious Places, this sort of opener scenario might be up your alley. It's designed for five players, though, and I'd have to read through it when I've slept better to see how well it'd work running two people through it instead. You could always have the other three people there as NPCs for that one story (as fellow tenants of the apartment), who then don't decide to stick around with your two players after they decide to do whatever it is they're going to do. Maybe have one or two of them come back in later stories. Maybe one of them decided to look more heavily into banishing ghosts and is a Hunter or something by the time they meet her again.

EDIT2: looking through it, some of these pregenerated characters are a bit wonky, mechanically. Michael Nero should have Addiction (Painkillers) under Flaws, although it's possible the Flaws rules are optional and I just forgot, in which case the quickstart assumes they're not being used. Rachel O'Hara has no skill specialties (You start with three), Nicky Sims is missing four merit dots (I get the feeling they originally gave him the Giant merit and then decided against it, and remembered to drop his health back down but not to give him the four merits dots back). He's also missing one dot in Physical Skills, if I've counted correctly. Thomas Booth, having 4 dots in Academica and a specialty in English Literature, is apparently one of the foremost experts on English Lit in the world (or at the very least the country).

But then White Wolf has always been bad at NPC writeups. I strongly suggest having your players make their own characters rather than using these, if they're not hostile to the idea.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

So, for starters, focus in on the core rules. And get about 10-12 d10s. The core rules work like this...


Everyone plays a character. When your character attempts to do something that's a bit risky (something that could have bad consequences if it goes wrong), you roll a pool of ten-sided dice. (The number of dice you roll is equal to the two appropriate attributes, such as Stamina + Wits or Dexterity + Presence. If it's a task that requires you to use a skill, then the Storyteller tells you what stat and skill to use.)

If any dice come up as an 8, 9, or 10, you successfully manage what you were going to do, no problem. Otherwise, you fail to do what you were attempting, and something bad happens.

If there's a complication in the scene that makes the task difficult (such as rain-slicked streets, low visibility, or the residual horror and evil of a supernatural monster), you have to remove dice from your pool before rolling. Remove one die for something annoyingly obstructive. Remove three dice for a major impediment. Remove five dice for something that's seriously messing you up, like a bewildering haze of evil magic.

Some of that's actually my own devisement. I like to lay on the penalties, because it not only creates an atmosphere of dread but also encourages players to burn through their Willpower, which then means they have to engage their Virtues and Vices. But don't worry about those subsystems straight off the bat. You can work them in later.

I'll second the recommendation of using a pregen like Nightmare.

[Juhn]

Note that those aren't the standard rules; normally you roll one appropriate Attribute and one appropriate Skill, for one thing, and for another the penalty for failure is usually just "you fail at whatever you were attempting, and may not be able to try again." Major negative consequences are usually the result of a Dramatic Failure, which only occurs when you're trying to do an action that has enough penalties to bring your dice pool down to zero dice, and then you try anyway. In this case, only a 10 is considered a success (in which case you reroll it like you always do with 10s, and that reroll is treated like a normal die - 8, 9, and 10 are all successes, 1 is just a failure like 2-7, and if you're lucky enough to get a 10 you keep rerolling until you don't get a 10); while 2-9 on this die are all regular failure, and 1 is Dramatic Failure - not only do you not succeed at what you were trying to do, but something goes really wrong.

In any case I'd suggest learning the basic rules from a quickstart regardless, as they tend to do a better job of explaining those than the core rulebook actually does. You can use the core rulebook for figuring out what happens when you try to run somebody over with a car, or light them on fire, or anything else that has its own special rules.