Following last week’s expansion of the preloads (and various additional changes), this week we’ve made a lot of other minor improvements to the World of Darkness.
We have expanded the list of rituals to include a category, and added a new type of magic powers similar to them, which incidentally allows us to set an autocomplete list for Werewolf rituals. Additionally, we’ve added lists for Merits and Flaws which are likewise used in the sheet for easy entry. Each of these options includes loading the numeric value of the associated type, saving you from having to check the book each time.
The most notable for campaign managers though is the functional overhaul of the World of Darkness game system configuration. Gone is the four tab layout, with everything relevant crammed into the Types & Clans tab. Instead, each supported creature type now has its own set of tabs to configure the sheet header, attributes & abilities, magic and other advantages. Our goal with this change of layout was to reduce the clutter on each page and make these details — which have expanded quite a bit especially with the addition of ritual and merit / flaw autocomplete lists — a bit easier to digest and manage.
While there are further improvements to be made on the new layout, we want to let the new functions rest a moment to see how they are used and whether there are any issues, before we do any further changes — and as always we would love your feedback!
Also added were the “secondary types” from the books we already supported, in particular in 20th Anniversary. This includes the Kinfolk from the Werewolf book, the Ghoul from the Vampire book and the Spectre from Wraith.
Incidentally, if your character changes creature types from a matching version, you will find it is very easy to convert the sheet. When your Wraith becomes a Spectre, most fields convert automatically, Angst, the energy from your Shadow aspect is neatly converted to be your new main source of Spectre energy, while your old Pathos is neatly transferred to your new Psyche aspect. Likewise, Ghouls who are turned will find their transition will be quite smooth indeed!
The list of changes goes on though: the gestalt subtype rule was moved from a global to a creature-based variable, allowing you to mix vampires with a Clan and Bloodline with Ghouls that merely belong to a Clan and we even added an option to support sub-typeless creatures like Kine. Naturally the various preloads were updated to make use of this.
A full list of changes is listed in this week’s changelog. As mentioned, we will leave World of Darkness alone for a bit after this, but if you have any suggestions as to what would make the game more fun or the system more usable for you, please don’t hesitate to let us know in the Community Forum!