Message no. 1

From:	J Gavigan <csc086@*****.LANCS.AC.UK>
Subject:	Storyteller System & World of Darkness
Date:	Mon, 25 Apr 1994 07:53:01 +0100

Fellow shadowrunners,

I've seen a few references to 'Mage: The Ascension', so I thought
that people might appreciate a brief going over of the Storyteller
line of games, of which 'Mage' is the third. White Wolf are also
the publishers of the White Wolf role-playing magazine, which has
featured quite a few articles for Shadowrun, and, until recently,
owned the 'Ars Magica' game, which has just been sold to Wizards of
the Coast.

The White Wolf Game Studio, in Stone Mountain, just south of
Atlanta, Georgia are the publishers for the Storyteller series
of games. They brought out the first game, 'Vampire: The Masquerade'
a few years back. Vampire was inspired by Anne Rice's Chronicles
and the players play semi-immortals, who must drink the blood of
other to survive. It's a horror game, and some people may find
aspects of it disturbing and/or offensive. Vampire was the first of
five games set in the World of Darkness, using the Storyteller rules.
By the way, the main man behind Vampire was Mark Rhein*Hagen, but
our very own Tom Dowd was part of the design team.

The game system leans very heavily towards role-playing, and massive
emphasis is placed on character development. The actual system is not
unlike Shadowrun's - 10-sided dice instead of 6-sided, but the system
of rolling against target numbers to get successes or failures is
similar.

Vampire was followed by 'Werewolf: The Apocalypse', again, using the
same rules system, and based in the same gameworld. In Werewolf,
players take the chracaters of werewolves, funnily enough, protectors
of Gaia, the Earth-Goddess.

Last year, 'Mage: The Ascension' was released, and, again, it allows
players to play Magi, and has links to the Ars Magica game (ie. Ars
Magica and the World of Darkness are the One and the same, much as
Earthdawn and Shadowrun are set in the same world, just at different
times). The Magic system is very detailed, and interesting.

Common aspects of the three games so far are the fact that each type
of character hides from society. Vampires never reveal their true
nature publicly, and neither do werewolves or magi. Each character
type has further subdivisions into Clans (for Vampires), Tribes (for
Werewolves) and Traditions (for Magi). The game is often full of
politics and intrigue, as players and their characters get caught
up in the machinations of various groups.

The final two games in the series are Wraith, which is due for
publication this summer, and Changeling, due for release next year.
Also, there is a supplement allowing players to take the character
of a mummy, believe it or not.

As I said, all the games use the same rules, and are set in the same
world - the World of Darkness, a world just like the one outside our
windows, but slightly darker, with a gothic-punk slant to it, not
unlike that of Gotham City from the Batman movies. Check out Anne
Rice's Chronicles, Raymond E. Feist's 'Faerie' or films such as
'Near Dark' (which I would swear was influenced directly by Rice's
Chronicles) or 'Highlander', to get a feel for the World of Darkness.

I've written some stuff for Werewolf: The Apocalypse (check out the
Fianna Caern in the 'Caerns: Places of Power' sourcebook), and I'm
really into the Storyteller system, especially Werewolf. I've run
Storyteller/Shadowrun crossover campaigns, and was intending to post
the rules I'd written up for them, but unfortunately, I left them at
home. :(

At present, I'm playing an immortal in a mostly Vampire game (many
Storytellers run crossover campaigns) a~ la Highlander, using a
net.supplement posted to the vampire-l mailing list, and ftp'ed
from soda.berkeley.edu:/pub/storyteller/wod/highlander/.
Mail listserv@*******.com with the word "list" as the body of the
email to get a list of all the lists at that site, several of which
are for players of the Storyteller games.

The Storyteller system is probab;y my favourite game, with Shadowrun
coming in, a very close second. I personally think that White Wolf
broke new ground in roleplaying with Vampire, and I'd reccomend
any of the Storyteller games to anyone who's into roleplaying as
opposed to "roll-playing".

By the way, 'Magic', the card game is an excellent game, and good
fun. Kind of expensive, though... But a good buy all the same, as
you don't need to be a roelplayer to play it, even though it will
be roleplayers who will be most attracted to it.

Jackin' out...

/> Dodger
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\> Dodger - csc086 @ cent1.lancs.ac.uk

"Fighting to survive, in a world with the darkest powers..."
-Queen

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