(I'm a little behind, but I got them all!)
Today’s theme is “Evolve.”
Everything is an evolution of what has come before.
Sometimes, it’s an addition. In other’s it’s a refinement. It’s not always an
improvement.
One of the most interesting evolutions would have to be the
World of Darkness. I’ve only had a very little bit of experience with the
games, so this assessment is mostly as a game reader than game player.
The original World of Darkness system was fairly classic
90’s RPG design. The use of “dots,” filling in bubbles on the character sheet
rather than writing in numbers was fairly novel and looked simple, but the
mechanics were just as fiddly as any other system on the market at the time.
The idea of many games in the 90’s was that if you could present the most
accurate and robust simulation of the environment possible, you have freed the
GM to run the story that they want to run. This led to a detailed combat engine
for a game that was supposed to be about brooding and drama and politics.
The New World of Darkness system was clearly a response to
that criticism. It was so simple that it was unengaging. Rather than provide a
robust simulation of anything, it offered quick resolution of anything that
called for dice, so you could get back into the story immediately.
Then it advanced into the Chronicles of Darkness. While it
leaned on the same basic mechanics, it added a few that put it into a
story-game mode. The added mechanics showed awareness of the story that they
were trying to tell with the game, of personal horror and terrible decisions
and their consequences.
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