Tabletop Roleplaying Games
Chronicles of Darkness
English
Horror
Rules-medium
Chronicles of Darkness is an urban horror tabletop roleplaying game and shared rules framework, published by Onyx Path Publishing under the copyright of Paradox Interactive, that powers a family of supernatural games including Vampire: The Requiem, Werewolf: The Forsaken, Mage: The Awakening and Hunter: The Vigil. It began in 2004 as a reboot of White Wolf's World of Darkness, launched with the rulebook The World of Darkness and new Storytelling System rules, and fans called it the "New World of Darkness" until 2015, when Paradox Interactive renamed it Chronicles of Darkness to avoid confusion with the original series. The current core rulebook is the revised edition on the Revised Storytelling System, which folds in the rules updates and some of the setting material from The God-Machine Chronicle. Critics generally saw the updated rules as a big improvement, describing them as fluid and open-ended.
The system is a reboot of the original World of Darkness, and it is a separate line from the games Renegade Game Studios now publishes, such as Werewolf: The Apocalypse 5th Edition.
Description
Players take on ordinary people drawn into the supernatural, or the supernatural creatures themselves, in a modern urban setting with no metaplot. The Storyteller, the game's name for its Game Master (GM), runs a chronicle, and the setting details are optional for a campaign. Vampire clans and werewolf tribes were cut down to five each, so the lore is lighter than in the original series. There are eleven game lines in all, including Promethean: The Created, Changeling: The Lost, Geist: The Sin-Eaters, Mummy: The Curse, Demon: The Descent, Beast: The Primordial and Deviant: The Renegades.
The game asks a table to take the grounded tone seriously. Opinions on the setting are divided, since some prefer the original series' grander, more fantastical scale and others the reboot's smaller one. It suits groups who like personal horror and mystery and are happy to build a chronicle from the characters' goals.