Last week, we re-released the World of Darkness preloads, allowing both new and established campaigns to load character sheets for existing World of Darkness settings and versions. Back then though, we only had three systems: Vampire Revised, Vampire 20th Anniversary, and Werewolf Revised.
This week, we expand slightly on that list by adding every single version of every single system we could get our hands on. Four versions each for Vampire, Werewolf and Mage, three for Changeling, Wraith and Mummy, and one for Hunter, Demon and the Orpheus agents. While working on all these different creature types, we noticed some differences between the systems which weren’t perfectly supported—we have been working on that as well, and will continue next week.
For example, wraiths, being incorporeal undead, do not track bashing, lethal and aggravated damage. And not all systems support the addition of Merits and Flaws or make use of rituals. Oddly enough, Mage doesn’t seem to either. To keep the sheets clean, all of the sections dedicated to these systems are now optional and can be disabled.
Going through these different systems revealed some of the evolutionary process of the World of Darkness system. If you check the first edition vampire books, health levels have a -1, -2, -3, -4 and -5 wound penalty, instead of the -1, -1, -2, -2, -5 used in all other systems that came after. A lesson learned perhaps?
Likewise, around the change of the millennium, newer editions of systems start rolling 1d10 + Dexterity + Wits instead of rolling Wits + Alertness against DC 4, simplifying and speeding up initiative somewhat. Both models are mostly supported, though the older one still needs a bit of tweaking so stand by on that!
As a final thing we picked up on, manual abilities appear to be the default, not the exception. Almost every system supports them either directly or through a common sourcebook. So we have enabled this ‘houserule’ by default for new campaigns.
There are some additional changes coming to help streamline your game system, but those will have to wait for another week. To see what we covered so far, why not check out this week’s changelog. While there, we’d love to hear from you on our community forum as well!