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alt title(s): World Of Darkness 
Gamelines for the Old World of Darkness:
Gamelines in the New World Of Darkness:
Videogames set in the World of Darkness
A Tabletop RPG set in a world much like our own, albeit darker. Shadows run deeper, mysteries exist in every corner, and humanity is not quite the master of the world or its fate.
Humans share the Earth with various supernatural creepy crawlies that prey on them like cattle, use them as pawns, and kill them when convenient (or at whim). In an interesting tightrope walk, individual humans have little power, and human history is a series of manipulations by disguised supernaturals; but a tenet of most of the supernatural groups is that humanity as a force is dangerous and must remain ignorant. The original game was called Vampire: The Masquerade, after all...
The first game of the original or "Old" World of Darkness was first published in 1991, and expanded to a half a dozen or more game lines; the world ended in 2004 with the Time Of Judgment. In its place a new game line, the "New" World of Darkness, was created and is ongoing.
The World of Darkness, both old and new, is a setting where several Supernatural Creatures exist. Each has a unique niche, theme, and Back Story. The Old setting had conflicting backgrounds for them (crossovers were theoretically meant to be optional, and mostly were, but during the second edition of the old World of Darkness too many books used crossovers actively, creating much confusion due to incompatible cosmologies and histories), and what crossovers did happen had problems with the relative strengths of each participant.
The Old setting had a grand overarching Back Story and an ongoing Metaplot, though the latter tended to Railroad games at times, if you wanted to follow it, of course. The new setting is much more modular; there's no metaplot, but there is a (mostly) unified cosmology. Some see the new setting as a Ret Con of the old, to fix mistakes and imbalances; while no wholesale plot is lifted several themes, clans, institutions and other things are ported over. Your Mileage May Vary about that, as many key themes and features of the old games were lost and in the case of Changeling the new game is entirely different from the old. The new games also are much more mutually compatible rules-wise, which is important for those who care about crossovers.
It also leaves more room for homebrew expansions and games, though most of them aren't really worth the trouble. The ones listed here are decent, detailed and balanced enough to be worth consideration (note that there's only one at the time of this writing). Although particularly featherbrained homebrew may be worth noting.
CCP Games, the folks behind Eve Online and owners of White Wolf since 2006, are currently developing World of Darkness MMORPG.
This RPG provides examples of:
- And I Must Scream (Clan Tzimisce is particularly notorious for this, thanks to their body-sculpting powers, that allow them to reshape victims into house furniture, while keeping them alive and aware of their condition.)
- Angel Unaware — The qashmallim in Promethean.
- Animorphism — Werewolves, vampire Clan Gangrel (and other clans in the old WOD), and Changelings of the Pooka Kith and the Beast Seeming.
- Anthropomorphic Personification — Spirits in the new World of Darkness, although sometimes for very loose definitions of "Anthropomorphic."
- Geists have become, in part, Anthropomorphic Personifications of aspects of Death in order to overcome some of the limitations ghosts normally have. This causes them to overlap with spirits, which are (often much less) Anthropomorphic Personifications of things. The possible causes of this are briefly discussed, but ultimately discarded as unimportant to this particular game line.
- Arcadia — The home of the fae in Changeling: The Dreaming. Of course, this is horrifically subverted in Changeling: The Lost.
- The Artifact — Too many to count in the old World of Darkness. The Revised Edition books attempted to counter this, but it was too little, too late.
- The biggest one is probably the Gangrel clan from the old setting. Originally used to connect "werewolf" legends to vampires, they were left out in the cold when an actual Werewolf game was developed some time later.
- Artificial Human — Prometheans in the new World of Darkness.
- Atlantis Is Boring: The old World of Darkness had two books - Rokea and Blood-Dimmed Tides that tried to introduce underwater adventures and weresharks, mer-vampires, and mermaid changelings into the setting. Didn't do a heck of a lot of good making any of it sound interesting.
- Your Mileage May Vary. Rokea is one of my favourite sourcebooks, the boring narrative and silly idea about Rokea killing any of them who go ashore aside.
- Authority Equals Asskicking — Well, the vast majority of roleplaying games use this trope at least sometimes, to reign in possible sociopathic behavior of Player Characters, but in the World of Darkness it is particularly prominent. Movers and shakers of the setting tend to be on a completely different level of power than normal starting characters and the main reason this is less noticeable in the new WOD is general downgrading of supernatural abilities, which makes the scale of abilities less steep.
- Beast Man — There are a lot of these, but generally this is the stereotype held against the vampire clan of Gangrel, the Beast seeming of Changelings, and basically every Werewolf.
- Beethoven Was An Alien Spy — Happens every so often; can be done well (in Mage: the Ascension, Alan Turing's death at the hands of the Technocracy drove the Virtual Adepts to break away and join the Traditions) and horribly silly (a vampiric Heinrich Himmler shows up in the first edition London by Night; this was swiftly retconned to be an impostor when White Wolf decided it would be awkward to have World War II be an example of supernatural evils).
- Though that didn't stop Himmler, Herman Göring and Rasputin cropping up in Berlin by Night (as a Tremere, Malkavian and Nosferatu respectively for those interested - ). Though this was supposed to be leading up to The Reveal that Rasputin was all of the above and the ultimate Big Bad of Vampire: The Masquerade. Alas.
- As this troper understands the situation at some point in 2E oWOD it became an in-joke among the writers who they could feasibly associate Rasputin with.
- If I remember correctly one of the fun things about the oWOD is the fact that about five vampire clans claim Rasputin is one of them, as well as at least one Mage Tradition and a Werewolf tribe. He's eventually revealed to be a bodyriding Wraith.
- And let's not forget about what Cain's real punishment for the murder of Abel was.
- Apparently, part of what drove Hitler to evil was the fact that he was the only actual normal human in the old WoD.
- Badass Normal: Non-Imbued hunters in the old WOD. At least those few of them who weren't using some form of magic or the True Faith. The majority of hunters in the new WOD.
- Slashers deserve a mention- most of them are ordinary humans who can be just as dangerous and terrifying, if not more, than inhuman horrors.
- The Beautiful People (and/or heavy subversion of Beauty Equals Goodness) — Requiem's Daeva and Lost's Fairest are typically supernaturally gorgeous and get powers to match - but have trouble resisting their Vice or staying on top of their Karma Meter.
- Be Careful What You Say — Changeling: the Lost is full of this trope, most explicitly in the ability for Changelings (and Gentry) to bind ANYTHING you say as a magically enforced Pledge as long as it's phrased in a way that can be taken as a statement of intent. Most of the subtropes end up being used by players and storytellers, too.
- Being Good Sucks
- Blessed With Suck (It is not fun to be a supernatural being in the new WOD, at well as in many gamelines of the old WOD (in particular, in Wraith and often in Vampire, in other lines becoming a supernatural is more of a mixed blessing). In theory. As about common practice, see Cursed With Awesome below.)
- Again, unless you're a Mummy.
- Or you happen to be a Sin-Eater. "Enemy Within? Yeah, sure, whatever you say pal, I'll just enjoy being not dead anymore."
- Blue And Orange Morality: The various alternate morality systems in Masquerade.
- Body Horror: A large part of the Tzimisces' hat in Vampire: the Masquerade is inflicting this on their victims. (See "And I Must Scream" above.)
- Canon Sue (Strong presence of CanonSues is responsible for many of the negative reactions to the old WOD's metaplot. The most hated example was probably Samuel Haight. Many people vilified him for turning from an almost normal human to, in effect, a ghoul-werewolf-true mage combination, breaking quite a few of the rules that forbid such hijinks to player characters in the process. This troper is indifferent to Haight's crazy powerup, but hates him for the fact that authors made him an untouchable, unstoppable villain in adventures where he appears, going as far as specifically reminding gamemasters to save his bacon from the fire at all costs if players manage to corner him somehow. No wonder that almost everyone hated Sam Haight. When authors finally figured this out, they killed him by an overpowered vampire, turned him into a normal run-of-the-mill wraith after death and got him soulforged into an ashtray instead of giving players an opportunity to get the bastard.)
- Granted that Samuel Haight is by far the worst, still... how did Lucita miss the cut?
- The "Rules for Fighting Caine" solely consist of "You Lose."
- This actually is pretty justified for the whole idea of vampire generation to work. Not to mention the fact he is pretty much one of the oldest characters in the Wo D.
- A big part of the reason Caine is also right out of the Bible with the curse of the sevenfold.
- Caine is supposed to be so powerful, the game system literally cannot model him.
- If someone hits Caine, God hits them seven times. Extrapolate from there. See why you lose no matter what?
- Any second generation vampire in the old World of Darkness. The plot basically seems to just assume that all of them are dead or incapacitated most of the time, and that Caine hasn't been inclined to make anymore. Second generation vampires would be stronger than any vampire, excluding Caine, and would not be subject to the various clan curses.
- That's because they're dead. The fact that the Third generation murdered the Second is the entire reason clan weaknesses exist at all.
- Children Are Innocent (Well, the sourcebook for playing as children is called Innocents)
- Church Militant (The Inquisition in the oWOD; the Malleus Maleficarum, the Order of St. George, and the Long Night in the nWOD)
- Clap Your Hands If You Believe:
- In both Mage: the Ascension and Mage: the Awakening, Paradox, the backlash created by the subconscious disbelief of non-mage humans, can be the strongest force against mages. (Although in Mage: the Awakening, Paradox changes from being caused by the subconscious disbelief of non-mage humans to merely being aggravated by it, and is ultimately caused by a flaw in the structure of the universe.)
- In Vampire: the Masquerade, vampires are only affected by crosses/stars of David/credit cards of the truly faithful, who are rare.
- This is actually a matter of life or death for changelings in Changeling: the Dreaming, as the central premise rests on the fae being driven into human forms by the growing unwillingness to believe in the fantastic amongst humanity. This tendency, referred to as "Banality," can drive a changeling to an early grave, and must be overcome if they wish to work magic on a target. On the other hand, in Changeling: the Lost, the changelings who were originally humans can become more like the fae they are attempting to escape if they lose their grip on the true world, called "Clarity."
- And, of course, in Hunter: The Reckoning, their powers worked on their willingness to stand against monsters and belief in themselves.
- Complete Monster (At least one whole faction of them is mandatory to every gameline in both WODs.)
- Cosmic Horror (The old WOD has tons of them - most game lines offer their own brand of this.)
- The Cracker (Virtual Adepts)
- Crapsack World (The oppressive helplessness of the setting is what appeals to many. However, the old World of Darkness features some exceptions. There is Changeling: The Dreaming, where the object is to prevent the world from becoming a Crapsack World. There is Mage: The Ascension, where the characters strive to remake the world so that it stops being a Crapsack World. And while in Werewolf: The Apocalypse the titular Apocalypse is inevitable, you can win the Last Battle.)
- Mummy: The Resurrection was primarily written as a direct subversion of this trend. The main tagline for the game is 'Where there is life, there is Hope', the NP Cs are folks who lived crappy lives in the crappy world and returned with the mandate to change the world for the better, and the entire setting treats the idea of changing the world as something more than the seeming impossible.
- Unfortunately, Mummy wasn't especially well written. Since mummy powers are fairly weak (except for their ability to come Back From The Dead, of course - but while that one certainly ensures that you will always live to fight another day, it doesn't really help you to win) and mummy organisations are described in only the most sketchy way, it's very unclear just how mummies are supposed to go about saving the world. And since they have barely any identified antagonists, only references to some general "spawn of Apophis," it's also a bit unclear just what they're supposed to save the world from...
- And when the second edition of Mage: The Ascension specifically mentioned in the Storyteller notes that Crapsack World needn't be the default, some players actually rebelled against it, claiming it was pandering to a more mainstream audience. And it probably wasn't merely one group, seeing that the third edition scrapped all the hopeful bits.
- Creative Sterility (Vampires, Prometheans, True Fae, and assorted others)
- Crossover Cosmology (Each game line in the Old WoD had a long, intricate Back Story, which was notoriously full of (intentional, in all likelihood) internal inconsistencies, and an independent cosmology. Needless to say, they did not play well together. This was a reason for several Ret Cons and probably a contributing factor for ending the world with a bang — although, in some people's opinion, it was more of a whimper.)
- Cursed With Awesome (At least frankly that's how most groups play it. Creators of the new WOD attempted to tune this down by downgrading powers and installing Karma Meters in every game line. This troper somewhat doubts they were entirely successful.)
- The Morality systems hilariously backfired in this regard: they were supposed to punish the character for committing certain evils, but what actually ended up happening was players having a mechanical point at which thier characters stop caring about committing mass murder.
- Lampshaded in Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines: A number of other vampires you meet are convinced that their condition really is a pretty sweet deal, what with having a good chance at an eternal or at least really long life of doing whatever the hell they want.
- By the time Geist rolled around, White Wolf seems to have said "Who are we kidding?" and points out that Sin-Eaters will likely find the suggestion of Supernatural Angst hilarious.
- Darker And Edgier (Being this, by comparison with Dn D and its clones, became one of the main marketing points for World of Darkness games, when they first came out in the beginning of 1990s.)
- (And the new World of Darkness plays this role to the old one. Changeling games stand in particularly stark contrast, but the difference in attitude is noticeable in every game with the arguable exception of Vampire, where the new version, at least, offers much lesser chance of being eaten by some ancient vampiric demigod. If in the old WOD the world sucked, but in most game lines you had a chance to do something about it, in the new WOD the world sucks, period.)
- (Then again, there's Hunter: The Vigil, which is pretty much built around the idea people can do something about the world's suckiness, and have done so for time out of mind. Or Promethean: The Created, where it's possible to go from being a monster to being human. You may make a difference on a smaller level in the nWOD, but you /can/ still make a difference.)
- ("Being able to do something about the world's suckiness" and "doing so for the time out of mind" don't mesh together, if the setting still consistently sucks.)
- Also, there's no five deadly, inevitable apocalypses looming over the world like there was in the Old World of Darkness. Which makes the New World of Darkness relatively more positive in many ways, since the good guys can actually make lasting improvements and differences to the world that won't be wiped away by ancient vampire gods or the Wyrm bursting out of the ground and killing everyone. The more pessimistic activities of day-to-day life were probably increased to compensate.
- Now that Geist has more info coming out, it seems that ghosts and fairies swapped places in the new World of Darkness. Fairies used to be joyful humans comprised of dreams fighting against banality and are now mentally scarred half-human survivalists fleeing from inhuman captors. Ghost P Cs used to be angst-ridden horrors tortured by both the unholy hellish afterlife and their horrible living pasts are now happy half-human hybrid shamans who are more like magical versions of the Ghostbusters.
- Dark Is Not Evil: The Moros "Necromancer" mages, who have the capacity to be as good or evil as any other mage. That said, there's a Moros-only Legacy of Black Magicians (Tremere Liches), but that's because of what they do to sustain their immortality - they eat souls. Yes, you read that right, they eat souls. If that doesn't fall under Immortality Immorality, nothing will.
- Similarly with the Mastigos warlocks: You would think a guy whose entire schtick is the "Mind Control" half of Psychic Powers and deals with The Heartless on a regular basis would be a Manipulative Bastard, but their Awakening actually helps counteract that, and they have the unique distinction of having a Mastigos-only Legacy of Good Black Magicians (the Fangs of Mara), who enter the nightmares of Abyssal beings to find what they fear and use it against them.
- Same thing with the Darklings from Changeling: the Lost. They've been shaped to be nightmares, but that doesn't mean they're necessarily bad guys (although having the ability to, for example, heal yourself by sucking the life out of others certainly does make it easier.)
- The Dark Side (Every supernatural in the new WOD runs the risk of degeneration and turning into something fully monstrous by losing all points on his Karma Meter. Vampires in the old WOD were the same. Partially subverted, as in both cases the degeneration carries nothing but severe penalties. Other beings in the old WOD had their own ways of falling to The Dark Side - wraiths turn into spectres by giving in to their shadows (sentient embodiments of their negative emotions), mages can turn themselves into Nephandi by inverting their Avatars, werewolves can be turned against their will by forcing them into the Black Labyrinth... And of course, there is good old getting drunk on power.)
- Dark World (Several in both settings.)
- Deadly Decadent Court (Most of them, though the Masquerade's Camarilla and Requiem's Invictus fit the stereotype best. And Lost's Gentry.)
- Demonic Possession (Used in the Old WOD in Demon: The Fallen as a means for them to come into existence, in Werewolf: The Apocalypse by malevolent spirits, and extensively in the new setting when spirits, ghosts or demons urge or fully take over people.)
- New World of Darkness Has World of Darkness: Inferno, a very very nasty form of possession which might as well be a Trope Namer
- Depending On The Writer (Storytellers and writers generally painted the other types of supernaturals with different colors than their "home" books when they showed up in other continuities, especially in the Old World. Hunter: The Reckoning is a particularly sharp victim/benefactor of this, as many of their books encouraged STs to make sure that the players saw the hunted as monsters.)
- Dhampyr (The dhampir and revenant.)
- Dying Like Animals (Almost every human is a Bat, the vampires are all Moles to humans and Mice to their elders, and Hunters are the rare humans who can see pass the masquerade and try to stop the bad supernaturals.)
- Empty Shell: Soul loss turns a person into this over a period of time.
- The End Of The World As We Know It (Imminent throughout the Old World of Darkness... and then in Time of Judgment, it happened.)
- In at least five different apocalypses. All at once. Each race got 3-5 different apocalypses for a story teller to choose from, with the results ranging from bittersweet to incredibly depressing. Only one of the Mage endings was totally unambiguously happy. Sadly, WW did not write a comprehensive end of the world featuring all of the lines's shits hitting the fans simultaneously, because that would have been epic, and one has to applaud any GMs who tried to sort through that on their own.
- That's because crossovers were optional for most of oWOD books, and the Revised edition emphasized this more than ever, so unified end of the world made absolutely no sense.
- There was a full-on semi-officially sanctioned ending for all the game lines used in the official New Bremen Digi Chat online text-based game run off of the White Wolf website, since it catered to all the game lines together and crossover (while discouraged) was frequent and inevitable. In the end, the Antedeluvians rose up to devour their vampiric progeny, werewolves had their final battle with the Wyrm, Lucifer's Black Cathedral rose out of Los Angeles as a base from which to fight his Earthbound former captains, the changelings headed off to Arcadia, mages found their powers overflowing now that humanity's belief in the supernatural was restored and either killed each other or Ascended, the sun went out, untainted humans disappeared to some unknowable reward or destination, and the Metatron showed up to collect all the Fallen who were willing to come with him to take another crack at this whole "Creation" thing before the world simply collapsed. It was, in fact, fairly epic.
- Enemy Within — All vampires suffer from The Beast, animalistic, ID-like force with a hint of supernatural malice, that attempts to compel them into immediately satisfying their instinctive urges, such as craving for blood, fear of sunlight or anger at a slightest provocation, no matter the circumstances. The Shadow from Wraith: the Oblivion, and the P'o from Kindred of the East, fit this trope even better; in both cases, it is intelligent and consciously attempts to turn you to The Dark Side.
- Hollow Mekhet have another Enemy Within: part of their soul is detached from their body and exists in reflective surfaces. They can only subsist on carrion and stagnant water and generally do not like their hosts.
- There's also "The Other," from the Vampire The Requiem Storyteller's Guide, which can optionally replace the Beast, and is a bit like the Poisonous Friend within.
- Everyone Is Bi: While not outright stated or heavily enforced, it was implied in a lot of places that most of the Fae were bisexual in Changeling: The Dreaming. Especially since a husband and wife could reincarnate as two men or two women, among other reasons.
- Evil Counterpart (Sabbat, Black Spiral Dancers, Nephandi, Spectres...)
- Evil Feels Good (Morality, in gamelines with Karma Meter, is lost by not showing remorse for misdeeds. You also can lose it anyway, if the dice screw you.)
- Evil Tastes Good (Vampires and blood)
- Evil Twin: Entire race of 'em, the Enemy Within/Without (it depends on the spell used to summon them) Goetia in Mage, who are literally the emotions a person hates about himself given a form similar to his own and a mind. The minor ones just annoy people while they're in the Onerios, while the big ones personify his Vice and cannot truly be defeated as long as he lives.
- Cannot be defeated as long as he lives? The quickstart begs to differ on that count, with a character who has the listed Vice "None" because he beat it. Granted, if it was originally Pride, it may have come back with a vengance...
- And then there are Changeling: the Lost's Fetches, who are created to be replacements for those taken by the True Fae. These can either reinforce or subvert the Trope, depending on how aware and how moral the Fetch is... and how moral the Changeling they replace is when they get back.
- Eviler Than Thou (Default playable factions in both Worlds of Darkness tend to be morally dubious at best and outright evil at worst. Then there are guys like the Sabbat, the Technocracy and the Pure, who are firmly lodged in the "outright evil" camp, despite their rhetorics. But even they pale before the crazy, dog-raping, demon-worshiping, apocalypse-mongering CompleteMonsters that usually serve as each game's worst faction.)
- The Technocracy certainly started out as "outright evil", but this was ameliorated steadily over time; when they actually became player characters with the Guide to the Technocracy book, the designers made it very clear that as world-straddlingly huge a conspiracy as the Technocracy must contain multiple factions, and that your players were intended to be firmly in one of the better-natured ones (Friends of Courage, Harbingers of Avalon or Project Invictus).
- Similarily, the Sabbat got this treatment in the Revised Guide to the Sabbat. The book presented the idea that the Sabbat isn't just a howling mad group of nutcases who want to murder humans 'cause it feels good, but rather they want to destroy the Camarilla due to feeling that it is a pawn of the Antediluvians. And because they think they're better than humanity. There are plenty of examples of Knight Templar Sabbat.
- The new World Of Darkness averts this to some extent, though, since with five factions in each game instead of just two, most of the game lines have at least one faction that is nominally good - but misguided, naive, and lacking tact.
- How so? All factions in Requiem fall in one of the categories above thanks to being, you know, vampires. Forsaken has three actual factions, although one is unplayable (tribes of the Forsaken are more like the second set of character classes and don't really matter for anything, besides the distribution of powers). And the Forsaken are not nominally good, just not outright evil. Etc, etc. And, also, I don't remember any oWoD game with just two factions. Masquerade, for example, has the Camarilla, the Sabbat and the anarchs, counting only those who got their own Player's Guides.
- Demon: The Fallen had five factions, not two.
- Not entirely accurate. There were the five factions that represented general goals and beliefs, but these tended to be vastly overshadowed by the big, two-way split: Demons who had broken free from their Torment and those who had not.
- Changeling: The Lost tends to avoid this on the large scale. The 'society' of the Freehold is based around 4 Seasonal Courts who differ in general approach to goverance and how one should deal with the threat of the Others, but aren't outright malevolent (Autumn Court nonwithstanding). The 'other' factions are depicted as individuals or tiny groups of loyalists still beholden to their True Fae abductors or privateers out for themselves. There is no large scale 'Court of Evil' for the setting. One can point to the Gentry as the darker side of the coin, but they aren't a faction per se, unless one wants to argue that the Wyrm of Apocalypse or the Antediluvians of Vampire: The masquerade were a 'faction' of their respective gamelines.
- Evilutionary Biologist (Pentex in Werewolf: The Apocalypse has the trappings of this trope, but is actually run by outright evil cultists. Developmental Neogenetics Amalgamated is a straight example. The Cheiron Group of Hunter: The Vigil is another. Progenitors and Etherites in Mage: The Ascension could be this.)
- Extra Strength Masquerade (Depending on the game, you're sometimes left wondering "okay, how the hell can they cover that up?")
- The Fair Folk (Changeling: the Lost)
- Fantasy Kitchen Sink (Each game line in the original was incredibly insular, Vampires could go centuries never meeting a werewolf. The new one made the setting modular to help "write in or out" other supernaturals as the ST needs.)
- Fan Wank (Several actually got noticed by the authors and mentioned derisively in the canon, among them a male offshoot of a female only Vampire bloodline, and a "pact" or "understanding" between Gangrel and werewolves, undermining the usual state of affairs.)
- Fetish Fuel
- Final Death: Possibly the Trope Namer.
- Five Races (The new setting only.)
- It could be argued that this applied to the old World of Darkness on a broader scale - Vampires, Were Beasts, Mages, Faeries, and Muggles (since Jiang-Shi, Wraiths, Mummies, and Demons were relatively rare and less influential than the others).
- A stronger case can be made for Wraiths as the fifth race, who were an incredibly common 'species', one of the five 'core' races introduced for the original gameline, and whose metaplot ending was used as the springboard for numerous later games- among them Hunter, Mummy, and Demon.
- Functional Magic
- Game Face
- Genre Savvy — Changeling: the Lost characters almost always have at least some, with some being downright experts; the Talecrafting rules are literally a way of making this into an actual magic power.
- Goddamn Orks (Goddamn humans!)
- Gollum Made Me Do It (Shadows and Spectres, in Wraith: the Oblivion.)
- Gothic Punk (The old World of Darkness defined this trope.)
- Growing Up Sucks (In Changeling: the Dreaming, changelings tended to lose their fae side as they grew up, succumbing to banality and becoming dull adults.)
- Arguably inverted in the new Changeling, in which the focus is no longer on keeping your innocence and naivete in a harsh and dark world but rather about finding the way back from the loss of innocence and the pains of life and learning how to put yourself back together and discover what comes next.
- Half Human Hybrids — Every game has at least one sub-class of mortals who have some of the parent supernaturals' strengths, but none of their weaknesses. It's worth noting that most of the following examples are not exlusive of each other or even the main supernaturals (Mages can be ghouls, Changelings can be Kinfolk, etc., though too much crossing over is frowned upon):
- Werewolf: the Apocalypse has Kinfolk, relatives of werecreatures who inherited the gene but not the ability to shapeshift. They're immune to the Delerium/Lunacy effect that befalls most humans who see shifters in their war form. They sometimes have access to Gifts. At best they're treasured allies, family members, and lovers of the Garou; at worst they're treated as brood mares to make make more werewolf babies.
- On a side note, some Werewolves are the offspring of a Spirit and another Garou, and will have some spiritual boon from the ethereal parent's side and improved relations with other spirits of that type.
- Mage: the Ascension has Sorcerers, humans who lack the "spark" of mages, instead practicing linear paths of magic like tarot cards or weathercraft. They can't rewrite reality and their spells tend to require more preparation, but they're immune to Paradox backlash. Mages who scoff at their perceived weakness sometimes don't live to make that mistake twice.
- Changeling: the Dreaming has Kinain, people of True Fey blood (diluted now, but the True Fey were horny bastards when they were still around) who have the ability to interact with fae existence to a degree without experiencing the risk of Banality.
- Vampire: the Masquerade has Ghouls (mortals who gained a portion of supernatural power and longevity by feeding on vampire blood) and Dhampyrs (the offspring of Vampires conceived under very specific conditions, which vary depending on whether they're the Eastern or the Western variety). Both Ghouls and Dampyrs [sic] have returned in Vampire: the Requiem.
- Demon: the Fallen has the Nephilim, offspring of Angels and humans, considered an aberration by both.
- Demon also had Thralls - humans who had made pacts with Demons in return for (sometimes supernatural) gifts.
- Hunter: the Vigil has the conspiracy known as "the Lucifuge," who are humans that have demon blood in their family trees but have chosen to turn their heritage to good ends. Inferno gives us their dark counterparts, "L'Enfants Diabolique," who embrace their heritage.
- Wraith: the Oblivion has Mediums, who are not hybrids but follow the theme: humans who can speak to the dead and often give them a hand on the other side.
- The Heartless (New World Of Darkness demons are like this...Sort of. They either begin as nameless, formless creatures called Whisperers or corrupted versions of spirits and ghosts until they gain enough power through tempting sinners that they gain a True Name and become Dominions, which then do whatever they please.)
- Hermetic Magic
- Horror Hunger — Vampires and blood, among whom the Noctuku in Requiem take it to new levels. They're not only blood drinking monsters, but addicted to cannibalism. That's right, they need to eat the flesh of the living (animals, humans, and vampires) or suffer crippling hunger pains and worsening social and mental abilities. Worse, they still can't digest, so it all comes right back up.
- Hypnotic Eyes — The vampire discipline of Dominate works entirely via eye contact.
- I Know Your True Name — One of the power branches in Mummy: The Resurrection is called "Nomenclature," where knowing anything's True Name (which requires varying amounts of time invested in study to learn - it's easier to learn the Names of simple things like plants and animals than, say, the Name for humans, which is even less complex than an individual human's personal True Name, and so on) allows for varying effects, culminating in (at the highest level) total erasure from existence. Of course, that last one automatically costs the Mummy a permanent dot on the Karma Meter, no matter who you do it to.
- Also shows up in Mage (where knowing someone's true name makes magic easier to use on them) and Changeling: the Lost (where swearing Pledges on your True Name has specific effects, and many Storytellers expand the concept considerably in keeping with its importance in fairy tales)
- Immortality Immorality: Oh, where to begin:
- Firstly, vampires. While it is possible to live by drinking the blood of animals and to only drain humans of minute amounts, most are so greedy for Vitae that they don't really care.
- From Immortals, we have Blood Bathers, who have to kill people to fuel their life, but the "curse" aspect rings hollow when you realize that they choose this on purpose.
- It is actually possible — although not terribly common — to have a Blood Bathing ritual that doesn't require you to kill the subject... but generally, that only means you're guilty of Serial Assault and Mutilation, rather than Serial Killing. It's still one of the explicitly recommended options for Player Character Blood Bathers so they don't fly screaming off the "Unplayable" end of the Karma Meter in a handful of sessions.
- Also from Immortals, we have Harvesters, who extend their lives by killing other immortals.
- And finally, Tremere Liches. Two words: Soul. Eaters.
- By the time a Tremere is old enough for immortality to be useful (Age 100+), they are eating a soul every month.
- Immune To Bullets (Vampires tend to take less damage from gunfire than some other forms of attack. Werewolves can easily shrug off most non-aggrevated damage, including gunfire, except when faced with silver bullets.)
- Karma Meter (Universal in the new WOD, and comes with various mechanical punishments for bad behavior. More optimistic/more action-oriented gamelines of the old WOD, including Mage and Werewolf, avoided this.)
- Katanas Are Just Better (In those gamelines of the old World of Darkness where mundane weapons did matter; in the new one, not so much.)
- Kill It With Fire (The most surefire way to kill something in the WOD is with fire: if it isn't extra vulnerable to fire, rest assured it's probably not invulnerable to it either.)
- Averted with the Devils in Demon: The Fallen, whose apocalyptic forms are completely immune to fire. Otherwise, Demon is actually the one old World of Darkness gameline that uses aggravated damage where fire isn't a source of said damage.
- Also subverted in Changeling: the Lost. Fire is not a common weakness among changelings. It might work fine on most of them, only that sometimes it doesn't. But things might get more drastic. Instead of just shrugging it off, the changeling might throw it back or end it all with a true Infernal Retaliation. Of course, these powers have a short duration, but still...
- Overall, much less true in the NWOD than the old; now only vampires are specifically burned and blighted by fire as much as they are by sunlight. Other supernaturals have their own banes, of course (Werewolves don't like silver, Fae don't like Iron, Mages don't like....reality) but fire specifically only harms vampires more than, say, getting stabbed in the chest does.
- Except Prometheans, who also take aggravated damage from fire. Being instantaneously healed by electricity is a nice trade-off, though.
- Killed To Uphold The Masquerade
- Knight Templar (In Hunter: The Reckoning, even normal imbued that had Zeal as a primary virtue often leaned towards this. But they paled in comparison to Waywards, who were prepared to eradicate every last supernatural on the planet - and didn't care about humans who got in their way. In Werewolf: The Apocalypse becoming a Knight Templar is a major occupational hazard, considering that werewolves were created to defend all existence from Cosmic Horrors that are indeed every bit as cosmically horrible as werewolves believe, and also extremely good at corruption, seduction and infiltration.)
- Not to mention the Inquisition and the actual Knights Templar, who are a small craft of Mages.
- Literal Genie - The Wyrd in Changeling: the Lost behaves this way. Characters are generally actually at least somewhat Genre Savvy about this, however.
- Lord British Postulate: There are rules for fighting Caine: You lose.
- Mad Scientist (The Sons of Ether. Within the Tradition, Mad Scientist is an official designation.)
- Magic Versus Science (The Traditions vs Technocracy.)
- Manipulative Bastard (In some gamelines, including both versions of Vampire, being this is almost a requirement for obtaining any power within your supernatural society.)
- Masquerade (Vampire: The Masquerade is the trope namer. Each supernatural enforces their own, but Vampires and mages are typically first to do clean up. Still, sometimes the ability of supernatural beings to maintain it stretches the suspension of disbelief, considering their penchant for superpowered violence.)
- They don't always maintain it - storytellers were suggested to use both kinds of hunters in response to Masquerade breaches, and even then, you have the capital H Hunters that are capable of nearly ignoring it.
- May Contain Evil (Taken to insane lengths by the Pentex Corporation in Werewolf: The Apocalypse.)
- Metaplot (In the old World of Darkness; possibly the most infamous example.)
- MIB (In the old World of Darkness, the Technocracy had them. In the new World of Darkness, Task Force VALKYRIE are the men in black, and work for the US government. There's also Division Six, but they're not a real government agency and actually are the pawns of a Seer of the Throne)
- Mind Control (Almost everyone can potentially do this, particularly in the old World of Darkess, but vampires and mages are particularly notorious for this.)
- One of the big edges of oWoD Hunters over normal people was total immunity to mind control as long as second sight was running. A sourcebook tells of a Hunter that was once Dominated while off-guard by some mid-rank vampires (who had heard about the Imbued and wanted one as a pet), then activated second sight (or had it activated by the Messengers) eight months later, used a candlestick and the Cleave edge to dust ten vamps, and got away alive.
- Not to mention that oWoD Fallen (demons) are immune to mind control at all times, period. Suck it, Ventrues.
- Monster Lord: Vampire bloodlines, or just plain elders above Blood Potency 6. Changelings with Entitlements, at least in the eyes of the Gentry.
- Mr Vice Guy: Potentially any and every player and character.
- Mundane Utility (Subverted in Mage: The Awakening: while it's possible to use magic for everyday chores, doing so is considered an (extremely minor) act of hubris and dings the Karma Meter.)
- Nightmare Fuel (Goes without saying)
- Specific examples in the Old WOD: the Baali and the Sabbat in Vampire, the Black Spiral Dancers and the Wyrm in Werewolf, the Nephandi and Marauders (and MAYBE the Euthanatos) in Mage, the Spectres and Oblivion in Wraith, the Unseelie Court in Changeling, the Akuma and Yama Kings in Kindred Of The East... It's pretty much easier mentioning which factions are NOT Nightmare Fuel.
- The New WOD offers: Belial's Brood in Requiem, the Hosts and Bale Hounds in Forsaken, Abyssal intruders in Awakening, the Pandorans and qashmallim in Promethean, the Gentry in Lost, the Kerberoi in Geist, the...everything in Hunter...
- Not So Harmless (In the New WOD, this is the effect the Hunters have when brought into play against the supernatural protagonists of the other game lines-suddenly, the "mere mortals" have very sharp teeth and can completely level the playing field against supernaturals... if not imbalance it the other way when vampires and the like go up against the plasma cannons, biotechnological augmentations, and less... mundane weapons the Hunters can bring to bear.)
- Less?
- The Malleus Maleficarum, Lucifuge, Aegis Kai Doru, Ascending Ones, Cainite Heresy, and Knights of Saint George all bring considerably less conventional tools to the fight. Or ask where the Cheiron Group gets the things they implant into their agents. In no particular order, the Conspiracies mentioned use things like mini-Eldritch Abominations on a leash, on-the-spot divine intervention from God, blood magic rites even vampires don't understand...
- Our Souls Are Different (In the new WOD, they can be affected by powerful magic, and every supernatural race has different troubles involving theirs.)
- Our Vampires Are Different (Thirteen clans worth of "Different" in the old setting, five in the new. However, the differences between political views and origins are much more pronounced in the new WoD. All vampires share the same common weaknesses, but each clan has a unique new weakness and each Bloodline (a sub-group of a clan) has an extra one.)
- Our Werewolves Are Different (Moreso in Werewolf: The Apocalypse than in Werewolf: The Forsaken. The nWOD also provides werewolf options beyond the Forsaken.)
- Personality Powers (In Hunter: The Reckoning a hunter's edges — the supernatural powers they use to fight evil — are determined by their beliefs and personality. In Mage: The Ascension the ways a true mage used his power also depended on his beliefs.)
- Point Build System
- Positive Discrimination (White Wolf went far out of its way to avoid talking about ethnic minorities in the Mage sourcebook Destiny's Price, which deals with street culture. As a result, it came across as a generic reprint of the Splatbooks for the Brujah or Bone Gnawers. It'd be interesting to know if this came before or after the much-maligned Gypsies, which would explain their fear of stereotyping, though it could have been avoided if done right.)
- Destiny's Price was 1995; Gypsies was 1997, so not the reason.
- Power Born Of Madness (The Marauder mages and the Malkavian vampire Clan in the oWOD.)
- Power Perversion Potential (White Wolf was willing to acknowledge it sometimes. There even was at least one supernatural power specifically aimed for this. Just please don't dwell on Tzimisce body-altering powers for too long.)
- Red Right Hand (All of vampire Clan Nosferatu, more so in the Old setting; in the Old setting, Tzimisce deliberately do this to themselves.)
- Recycled IN SPACE! (Every game has one or two historical supplements [the Dark Ages and often one other]. Plus, The Year of the Lotus event gave Eastern counterparts for every gameline. Some, like the Kuei Jin, are a totally different type of creature but conceptually similar, while others, like the Hengeyokai, are the same creatures as before in a different setting)
- Rich Idiot With No Day Job (Ashwood Abbey are a bunch of rich kids who have fun by screwing, killing, and/or eating monsters - not necessarily in that order.)
- The Hunt Club are a gentleman's club who have fun by hunting and killing humans. They see Ashwood Abbey as poseurs.
- Science Is Bad (In the old WOD pretty much - if it is not used by a fascist Ancient Conspiracy to control humanity, then it is a tool of a Cosmic Horror that strives to eliminate free will and change. In the new WOD, not particularly,
although it is still wrong.)
- Not so. See the bit about Mage below.
- In the oWoD, science is generally associated with the principle of Stasis, which serves as a sort of Well Intentioned Extremist to the Complete Monster that is Entropy - it's not actually evil, but if it gets its way it will remove change from the world and steal everyone's freedom. This idea gets a bit jarring at times, since science has historically been responsible for most of the changes to human society, and those changes has resulted in the average person having far more freedom and choice than ever before. Conversedly, the default heroes in the games that has this theme (mainly Mage, Werewolf and Changeling) are assumed to represent the freedom-loving, change-embracing principle of Dynamism - despite being members of extremely hierarchal societies that hasn't changed for the last several thousand years.
- Science Is Wrong (But of course. Mage: The Ascension features an extreme, but still subverted, form of it, where the laws of physics as we know it were literally shaped by human belief, guided by a group of unorthodox mages. Even so, two of the traditions, the Sons of Ether and the Virtual Adepts whose entire magical paradigm was based on science.)
- ...And they go and subvert it in its sequel. While other books did hint that science may have been a device of the Exarchs to keep humanity in line, the book about their servants makes it explicitly clear that they actually hate them, since as science helps humanity grow into the truth, the better chance they have of Awakening, something the Exarchs do not want. Well, actually it's their servants who hate it, but the odds of their masters not sharing their opinion are slim at best (to Luddites).
- This Take That to the old game really makes no sense. How can science, that is completely blind to a huge chunk of real laws and realities of the world can help humanity "grow into the truth"?
- Because the Fallen descends from the Supernal, and so by learning about the Fallen world, you learn about that one. You also forget that just beacuse science discounts the supernatural, doesn't mean there's anything wrong with it, it just hasn't learned of its existence yet. (This message brought to you by the Free Council, who is beginning to suspect the above troper is a Guardian of the Veil.)
- Science dosn't discount the supernatural, Null Mysteriis membership includes many top scientists in their field and when it comes to the supernatural they're arguably one of the most informed human factions there is, which means they still don't know all that much but they've had some real breakthroughs recently.
- Naturally, Genius has a field day with this. Inspiration and its ilk, though, fall firmly into the "just doesn't make sense" category — attempts to analyze any of the associated phenomena results in unsatisfactory answers at best and very bad things happening at worst.
- Serial Killer (The slashers of Hunter: The Vigil. The Wayward creed from Hunter: The Reckoning were pretty much this, too, just... focused on supernaturals.)
- Shout Out (the new World of Darkness has Division Six and Panopticon, nods to the Technocracy from the old World of Darkness, as well as the Cainite Heresy, which is a nod to vampire history from the old World of Darkness as well. In fact there are a fair amount of nods to the Technocracy in Hunter: The Vigil, up to and including arguably the entirety of Task Force VALKYRIE and the entire Cheiron Group.
- Look closely and you'll see this happening all over the NWOD. Werewolf- The Forsaken's 'Hosts' are essentially two of the changing breed races with completely monstrous personalities. The Lancea Sanctum is most certainly a latter day Sabbat (tweaked to be a little less 'evil by evil's standards', of course). And then there's the pinnacle of this trope: Mage: The Awakening has their 'Supernal Realms', which amongst other things are pretty blatant shout outs to Changeling: The Dreaming, Wraith: The Oblivion, Demon: The Fallen and arguably Werewolf: The Apocalypse.
- Sliding Scale Of Turn Realism: Action by Action.
- The Soulless
- Sourcebook
- Special Snowflake Syndrome: Almost every game has several smaller splats mentioned in the various sourcebooks, for players who somehow can't create interesting characters otherwise. Vampire has Bloodlines, Mage has Crafts, Changeling has Thallain, etc.
- Splat Essentially the Trope Namer, more or less.
- State Sec: the Technocracy definitely has elements of this trope, I mean what with the secret agents, cyborg and bio engineered soldiers and what-not.
- Super Loser
- They Changed It Now It Sucks The transition from Old World to New World was not well received by
some a lot of fans. However, the new generation has gotten into the New World of Darkness, and the 'old guard' has more or less gone from "Nerd Rage!!" to "Eh, whatever."
- Thirteen Is Unlucky
- Touched By Vorlons: The origins of Changelings in Changeling: The Lost.
- Un Equal Rites
- Unpleasable Fanbase: The Camarilla, White Wolf's official fan club, constantly has this problem with its global LARP game. It's extremely difficult to enforce an interpretation of the rules that will please The Roleplayer, The Real Man, and The Munchkin (and no one wants to please The Loonie: the World Of Darkness is Serious Business). Might even qualify as a Broken Base since the two most vocal factions are The Roleplayers and Real Men/Munchkins.
- Unstoppable Rage (Vampires when they frenzy, Werewolves in frenzy/Death Rage, and certain Prometheans (mostly Frankensteins) in Torment.)
- Werewolf's crossover rules lampshade this by mentioning that mages do not quantifiably explode in Rage.
- Urban Fantasy (Authors prefer to define the genre for most World of Darkness games as Horror, but actually WO Ds fit this trope.)
- Van Helsing Hate Crimes (Hunters generally don't know the difference between the good supernaturals and the bad. Can't really blame them.)
- Villain Sue (the Old WOD was often heavily criticised for having incredibly overpowered antagonists and side characters, who had the potential to make the players irrelevant. Mostly averted in the new one, where most [NPCs] have the same powers and limitations as player characters.)
- The Big Bads on the other hand get this accusation leveled against them, at least in Mage and Changeling.
- Walking Wasteland (If a Promethean settles down for too long, the world around them begins to suffer)
- The Wall Around The World: The borders between the physical realm and the spirit worlds.
- Well Intentioned Extremist (Waywards especially, being willing to kill hundreds of normals just to take out -one- supernatural.)
- Wolf Man (The Garou)
- Wolverine Publicity (The vampire Becket, who appeared in various Source Books and novels, sometimes without adding anything to the story or even advancing his own quest to uncover details about Cain. Most egregrious was his apearance in a Hunter/Mummy crossover [forgot the title], where the only purpose he served was to stretch it into a trilogy, rather than one or two books it would have been if all the arbitrary vampire scenes had been cut.).
- Your Vampires Suck
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