Your RPG is Yours, Not Mine

As I started writing about the two role-playing campaigns that helped me get a job as a Games Master (GM), I realised that some readers might take exception to me claiming I ran a complete, or united, World of Darkness games. The old World of Darkness was not designed to fit neatly together, and for years crossover rules were non-existent. I don’t recall when the first official guide was released, possibly The Chaos Factor in 1993; it could be argued a guide was needed since Samuel Haight had caught the attention of so many different supernatural types. I don’t count the 1993 release of Under a Blood Red Moon, as it was Vampire and Werewolf focused. These guides were quite lacking, being more suggestions of things to think about, but at least it was something. I found my own path in fitting things together, and things worked well enough for me in some complex games.

With Paradox Interactive’s purchase of White Wolf IP, the World of Darkness (WoD) labels have been changed. The old(oWoD) is now called classic (cWoD), and the new(nWoD) from 2004 is now called Chronicles of Darkness (CofD).

My article’s title is to emphasise that I do not claim to represent the ‘only way to play the World of Darkness’, nor how crossover rules have-to-be done.  To some readers it may feel redundant for me to clarify my reasoning, but from personal experience I’ve met enough players that fixate on this, as well as reading numerous posts on the Net, to really impress upon me that a clarification is useful. Although this issue particularly applies to the cWoD, it also applies to every other RPG when we get past the gaming group level.

I have had a lot of experience with this topic, whether locally, at game conventions, or Live Action Role-Play(LARP), so I appreciate why it is an important subject for a lot of role-players. In my late teenage years I changed my phrasing to emphasise “I prefer”, or “in my games, I feel”, since I appreciated that it was a subjective topic, never mind that some people want to win the chat. Add to this that it’s all too easy to end up talking at cross-purposes, especially if people fail to mention they are not emphasising an interpretation, but they have ventured in to house-rules, or changes to the setting; it’s understandable if you consider how over time it is easy to forget the list of tweaks carried out. I am reminded of common role-play encounters, which I’ll write about and link here later.

Obviously people having different opinions should not be a surprise, since it happens with practically everything. Crucially the old White Wolf company repeated the point that each game belonged to the players playing the game in each of the core rulebooks, as well as elsewhere. This covered everything, whether it was an opinion about the mechanics to the game’s setting, covering everything from cosmology to theme emphasis. So it could be argued, that between the game lines being designed without a focus on connectedness, and the rules promoted debates because of The Golden Rule:

“This game should be whatever you need it to be…”

I appreciate the Golden Rule is abhorrent to some role-players, but that is too big a topic for this post. I’ll go in to detail on this topic in my future role-playing guide.

I do appreciate why standardisation matters, and I am all for it for specific situations, since talking at cross purposes is a time sink and can balloon up in to bad blood. It can be bad enough when a new player joins a group, but this is a much bigger problem when at conventions, or large LARP. Years ago I used to play continuing convention campaigns like the Dungeons & Dragons Living Greyhawk, D&D Sarbrenar (Forgotten Realms) and later Living Force (Star Wars). Roughly: you played the same character at each game, earning XP, being part of loose collection of connected stories with other PCs that over the years you may play with on multiple occasions.  Those games were quite accessible, in large part towards having an emphasis on clear rules interpretations. There were a lot of players that had been playing together for years, and overall I found there were a friendly community; the opposite of the anti-social label role-players are often labelled. Directly related to the point of this blog is that at conventions I found players only really cared about games they were involved in, they were rarely interested (if ever) in the anecdotes of another random player.

There has already been plenty of debate about how the new One World of Darkness could work, as well as how some people think it should work. Since very little is known, it is understandable that people are passionately debating. After all so many players already have invested years in to the official three different versions: old, new, Monte Cook’s WoD. Also we should keep in mind the experience of so many WoD LARPers, they have been a major part of the WoD scene going back to Mind’s Eye Theatre in 1993; an important point when you consider Martin Ericson’s LARP passion and experience.

Returning to the article’s title, no matter what happens with the oWoD make it ‘Your World of Darkness (yWoD)’. Personally I am not worried about the future of the World of Darkness, and whilst I am somewhat impatient to get specific information about the One World of Darkness (WoD), I am not panicking.

Humanity has been repeating and altering stories since the dawn of civilisation, from simple tales to epic myths. In addition to retelling the ancient classics, consider the countless versions of Shakespeare’s work alone, or the comics-industry’s obsession with reboots and alternate realities. So it is normal human behaviour for role-playing to be receiving the same treatment via new editions, and even complete cosmology redesigns. Since there are already different versions of the World of Darkness, I have no issue with having something new to explore, again. Following on from this is an often cited opinion about the importance of legacy. Personally, I find debating the legacy of things to be odd, more so when the logic involves highlighting different predictions as part of any rationale. I don’t feel that my past experiences are invalidated, and certainly not by alterations to a product after the fact.

Even if you don’t like a version, tweak it, borrow from it, and let your passion guide you to new inspiration; add to your #RPGMentalToolKit. After all creativity is a key aspect of role-playing, welcome the freedom.