For specific versions, see Old World of Darkness or New World of Darkness.See also Grand Unifying Guesses The World Of Darkness.
Both versions
The New World of Darkness is a true sequel of the Old World of Darkness, rather than just a Spiritual Successor.
The Year of Fire was caused by Haruhi Suzumiya having a bad day. After The End of the World as We Know It, she decided to try creating a new one.- No, obviously what happened was that the reality glitches caused by power imbalances and outright contradictions in the rules, combined with multiple eschatological prophecies coming true at the same time, weakened the fabric of reality enough that a Marauder with temporary Oracle-level abilities was able to cause a Logic Bomb Time Crash, resulting in an Alternate Universe replacing the world.
- A writer explained the the old World of Darkness was "multi-faceted" and existed parallel to Exalted. Everything that was written in every book happened somewhere. It's very... metafictional.
- Maybe Changeling: The Dreaming and Wraith: The Oblivion got together and decided to pretend to be each other and the sheer horror the exchange wrought sundered the very laws of reality itself, echoing throughout all of The World of Darkness.
The Cheiron Group’s directors are somehow survivors from the Old World of Darkness’ apocalypse
Conspiracies and Compacts reveals how Cheiron Group’s board of directors could be alien beings (from another dimension) escaping a world’s destruction. The dying world they were fleeing was the old Word of Darkness.- Cheiron Group’s board of directors are Pentex’s board of directors, who survived the apocalypse – they have learned nothing.
- Cheiron Group’s board of directors are a remnant of the Wyrm, this will not end well for the New World of Darkness
- Cherion Group's board of directors are Glass Walkers, who realized the sheer stupidity and xenophobia of the other werewolves had doomed it and got out while they still could. Their schemes will save the New World of Darkness from itself, and lead to long-lost hope being found...although the path there will not be something they brag about.
- Cherion Group's board of directors are a coterie of Tzimsice antitribu who have not taken up a Path of Enlightenment and thus cleave to a more human idea of transcendence. Thus, their Vicissitude is less horrifying and more directly beneficial to their subjects, and they've taught a little of it to their ghouls, the Cheiron Thaumatech doctors. As of modern times, they finally feel that they have a strong enough foothold and favorable ideological environment to begin Embracing promising neonates, such as their more clever Hunters.
The New World of Darkness is a post-apocalyptic Old World of Darkness
The entire cosmos was restructured in some super-amazing conclusion that combined one or more of the Time of Judgement book scenarios.- Multiple Ascended mages/oracles/whatevers saving the world, but not managing to get it right thanks to their (formerly) human perspective.
- The Triat got fixed by players and the new WoD reflects a word where the three are balanced.
- Or they were considered unsalvageable and someone replaced them with the God Machine.
The WoD versions represent a split-timeline from Exalted
Depending what the player characters do at the end of Exalted, such as how things are sorted out between the Primordials and the Gods, represents a split in the timeline at the 3rd Age to either 5th Age. Return of the Scarlet Empress has a number of endgame scenarios with different victors so it'd be understandable if they led to different timelines, perhaps even additional ones by Edition to explain some of the Early-Installment Weirdness.The New World of Darkness, Old World of Darkness, and Exalted occurred simultaneously...
...and sequentially. The timeline is in fact a Stable Time Loop, but small variations in one loop echo out, causing the next loop to have significant differences (Changelings and Wraiths swapping demeanor, for example, or the regularization of how magical powers worked). Exalted sits many loops before, and many loops behind the Worlds of Darkness, which sit pretty close to each other, close enough to be recognizable. The various world-ending events at the end of OWoD were actually just echoes of the strange and bizarre events of all the other loops, as time and space began to destabilize and reset back to prehistory. This looping only serves to reinforce the basic rule of the World of Darkness: Nothing you do matters, because some bigger force wipes it away later, from a more powerful creature to the very fabric of reality.- If that were the fundamental praxis at all in two out of three worlds, you would have a point. It is not (the New World of Darkness is our world, only darker and stranger-things rapidly changing for better or worse is a part of the whole picture, and Exalted's "consequences matter" swings both ways and of course the very notion of consequences conflicts with the WMG), so this is long Jossed from a narrative point of view.
