Welcome to White Wolf's World of Darkness, a world not too different from our own. Second only to TSR's Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, the World of Darkness gaming system is growing in popularity and now includes the games Werewolf, Vampire, Mage, and Changeling, among others.

Originating with Mage: The Ascension, the World of Darkness has expanded to allow a large number of player choices, each with its own 300+ page compendium, describing the history, society, rules, creation, and abilities of a wide variety of player classes. These include (but are not limited to) Humans, Mages (also human), Were-creatures, Vampires, Fae (and the like), Ghouls, Wraiths, and otherworldly creatures. In addition to its own book, each creature class also includes references in its own respective class to further help players customize their characters.

The World of Darkness system hinges more upon specific ability/skill scores than do many other game systems. For example, whenever a "roll" is required, a physical attribute (similar to the AD&D attribute scores) is added to the specific ability score, to total the roll. This, while requiting the player to give greater forethought into specializatoin with specific abilities, allows a player to "fine tune" the character for his/her role in the game and tends to allows players more opportunity to define and diversify to their characters than if they simply had to choose a character class that included a more rigid package of abilities.

Player's books for the World of Darkness go into great detail, giving players plenty of information to base their character around, but enough leeway to allow them to chose their characters' paths, storylines, lineages, tribal allegiances, concepts, and occupations.

Gaming sessions can be run multiple ways, either table-top (with miniatures, if preferred) or in a group setting. Rules even allow for "live-action roleplaying," a new breakthrough in the world of RPGs that allows a player to truly get into character and play that character in a real-time setting (other games in this genre include the highly-acclaimed Cthulhu Live).

In choosing a World of Darkness game, players do lose a bit of the hack-and-slash combat characteristic of other games, as combat is much less frequent. However, it more than makes up for that in the enchanting social setting that the game takes on. Much moreso than AD&D and other traditional roleplaying games, World of Darkness is focused more on the social aspect of roleplaying, requiring a great deal of forethought on the behalf of the player. While social interaction is an important part of any roleplaying game, those interactions are much more regulated, explained, and accounted for in the World of Darkness, and, for many, this has proven to be one of its more attractive points.