I'll start this off with some clarification. The World of Darkness I'm spotlighting is "New World of Darkness." It appears only LARPers play Old World of Darkness, and I've never met a LARPer I like.
World of Darkness is a fairly solid system. The beauty of dice pool is that no matter how powerful you get, you can still fail. The chances are very slim, however. I was first exposed to World of Darkness, or nWoD, by a friend that had joined an online roleplaying community. I joined as well, and the system actually preformed well without a table. I can see why it makes for a good LARPing system, but again that is not for me.
Obviously, I couldn't stay online forever, so I bought the core book and contemplated starting my own game. The thing about nWoD is that there are so many choices. The premise of nWoD is that the world of monsters and nightmares exists in the shadows of our own world. Iconic monsters, such as vampires, werewolves, frankensteins, and ghosts exist, and some lesser known monsters such as the changelings are also around. I explored how each was portrayed, and by whom (as in, I observed which players preferred which style of play), and I eventually decided that I really couldn't get behind any particular group, except one.
The environment of nWoD that is created in most games is that of drama. The community I gamed with for a while did love their drama, and I felt like I was back in high school. This is why the one group I decided to pursue was the Hunters. Hunters were everyday humans that knew about to World of Darkness and joined together to protect their communities, or just outright hunt these monsters. So, I purchased Hunter: The Vigil, the core book about playing a hunter.
I have to say, playing a hunter was awesome. Hunters break down in to three categories, based on the size of the organization. The smallest is the cell, which works locally, with about half a dozen hunters. A national group is called a Compact, and there are a variety of pre-made compacts to choose from. The largest, global, organization is the Conspiracy, and there are also a variety of pre-mades to pick from. Once you reach the Conspiracy tier, you start having access to gadgets and powers that aid in your fight against the creatures of darkness.
When I played my hunter, I made my own rules, decided what lived and what died, and avoided threats I couldn't handle. It was very much a vigilante experience. When I GM'd a hunter game, I was able to run it with relative success, however there were a few hic-ups.
The nature of nWoD is that it takes place in the now, and each type of player, hunter, vampire, werewolf, etc, exists within and outside of the normal society. My players had a very hard time grasping that they were not actually above the law, but rather were going around it. I was able to run one really successful campaign, where I even had the players becoming paranoid of anyone that crossed their path, to the point where one hunter actually committed murder out of sheer paranoia. That's good, by the way. The World of Darkness is a horrible place to be, and it should never be taken lightly.
The concept of nWoD, and specifically Hunter: The Vigil, is very cool, and if you're looking for a game of hidden supernatural in the normal world, look no further. The system, however, has a few flaws, most of which can be remedied with a few GM rulings.
First of all, there is no rule, that I have found, that regulates how characters improve. They get experience, they spend experience, nothing more. DragonQuest has a regimented system for how a character must train, and find trainers, and I adapted that concept to a lesser degree. I also implemented a rule that you could only increase a skill or stat by one bubble per scenario, after I had a player bank his experience and go from having no bubbles in Brawl to having five bubbles (maximum).
The game works with bubbles instead of numbers (though the number of bubbles is really the same thing). You roll a number of d10s equal to the number of bubbles of Attribute + Skill, and every 8, 9, or 10 is a success, with 10s letting you roll an extra die. The problem I found was the progression of things. If a character had one or two bubbles, they had difficulty succeeding, and three bubbles went either way. Then, suddenly, with four or five bubbles, you became something close to a demigod of successes.
Another thing that was poorly represented is a character's status of well being after being shot, stabbed, or otherwise injured. There are three tiers of injury, Bashing, Lethal, and Aggravated. No matter what type of damage you are suffering, it only matters if one or more of the last three health bubbles begin to take damage. These bubbles give you a very minor penalty. I would have preferred something more brutal, truer to form, than simply a small penalty until you eventually fall unconscious, or die.
So, all and all, its a great start for its type of campaign, and I would love to run another game under Hunter: The Vigil. After writing this, I think I'm going to make my own, home-brew, damage system, and maybe post it here for all to use, or not.
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