It was quite a while ago that we removed preloads from the World of Darkness game systems — back then, we only supported different versions of vampires, and they proved an obstacle for the repeated changes to the system we were making.
Still, the empty page notifying users that preloads were disabled were not very satisfactory, so over the past “too long” we’ve been working on reintroducing them in an entirely new way. Revisiting the preloads had a lot of interruptions, as mentioned in various previous blog posts, but has finally been completed, with some major improvements to boot.
First off, you can now preload creature types from various books at campaign creation, a feature we previously released for the dice rolling selection. This means when you start a werewolf campaign (for example), you can start it with most of the data in place at the start. Just add house rules!
Do not despair if you already built your campaign though. The preload tab in the game system configuration allows you to load in new creature types right away. And unlike the old system, the preloads now work with multiple creature types, each being loaded separately. You can even have multiple versions of the same creature (if you really want to mix classical vampires with 20th anniversary ones, for some reason)
To allow this, each creature now lists a Base Type and a Source. The Base Type is chosen from the available types (or Custom for anything you please), while Source allows you to enter what you want. Some of the supported versions have been added as auto-complete. The tool can recognize if you have a known type and check mark it in the preloads.
If the tool detects you already have a creature type loaded, it allows you to reset it to the ‘factory defaults’, getting rid of any changes you made. Naturally since this would override your work, there is a warning pop-up to make sure that is what is intended.
Rather than have you wait another week, we release the option now, but you can expect some additional creature types to be added to the list in the near future, Mages and Changelings being at the top of the list. Are there any creature types you’d like to see in particular? Let us know in the community forum. While there, why not check out this week’s Changelog!