Announcing Chronicles of Darkness!

Chronicles of Darkness, News, Press Releases

Onyx Path Publishing and White Wolf Publishing are proud to announce that Chronicles of Darkness is now the overall brand name for the series of game lines previously called the New World of Darkness. These game lines include Vampire: the Requiem 2nd Edition, Werewolf: the Forsaken 2nd Edition, Mage: the Awakening 2nd Edition, Promethean: the Created 2nd Edition, Changeling: the Lost 2nd Edition, Hunter: the Vigil 2nd Edition, Geist: the Sin-Eaters, Mummy: the Curse, Demon: the Descent, and Beast: the Primordial, as well as any upcoming projects and game lines.

The purpose behind Chronicles of Darkness is to enable the game lines of the first World of Darkness that started in 1991 and the New World of Darkness that started in 2004, to coexist as distinct and different settings. Onyx Path‘s ongoing publication of the 2nd Edition core books has already evolved the Chronicles of Darkness game lines into their own unique settings, and this change in the overall title will allow our creative teams to further explore these game lines’ own themes and tone.

Beyond the main title change, we are moving forward with the 2nd Editions and other projects previously announced as nWoD projects with only a slight hiccup as we change to the Chronicles of Darkness title. And, as an example, here is the book that has been the most affected by this change, the Chronicles of Darkness Core Rulebook that was previously titled nWoD Core Rulebook 2nd Edition. And by “most affected” I mean that we had to change the cover and a ton of interior references. We didn’t have to remove anything, though, and the text, including all of the core rules for mortal characters in the setting (including new gadget-building and investigation systems), as well as all of the adventures and storytelling advice originally featured in The God-Machine Chronicle.

The Chronicles of Darkness Rulebook Advance PDF is now on sale at DriveThruRPG.com.

End of the day, this is a Change, and a lot of folks fear change.

But let’s look at that, for a second. We at Onyx Path were already changing things with the 2nd Editions. We were pulling the nWoD lines away from their antecedents and giving them distinct identities that played to the strengths of these lines. We provided, and continue to provide, each line with a bit more connected story in the form of built-in chronicles, to further emphasize the qualities of the settings, but not a massive overarching meta-plot which is one of the weaknesses and/or strengths (depending on your point of view) of the classic World of Darkness.

Ultimately, this change is actually a logical progression to getting these amazing Chronicles of Darkness lines out from the burden of their connection to their cWoD counterparts.

Because, let’s face it, the cWoD/nWoD thing has always been awkward once you tried to explain why there were two of them but the second WoD wasn’t another edition but a whole ‘nother reimagining. Another WoD that enables equally awesome stories to be told but which has different rules and themes and overall tone. Nothing confusing there!

Yeah, we who have been part of the end of cWoD and the birth of nWoD and then the rebirth of cWoD and a similar but different rebirth of nWoD with the 2nd Editions might be able to keep straight the lines. Sure, we’ve seen the thing happen. But on a creative level, they deserve to be distinct and different in order to grow as they need to. On a communication level we have found folks confused by which lines go with which WoD to the point of walking away as we try and explain.

And on a licensing level, garnering interest outside our hobby has been a nightmare. One kind of Hollywood type has a 3.5 second attention span, by and large, and you have to hook them right away, while another type Googles everything as you’re talking. The first will be gone before you can explain the N in new WoD, and the second will find page after page of info that sounds similar but is different and is all coming up under World of Darkness.

We at the original White Wolf ran into this problem in trying to grow nWoD, CCP ran smack into it when they tried to deal with it, and now the new White Wolf Publishing intends to give both sets of game lines room to grow taller and stronger than ever before.

Change can be scary, but good change is exciting.

This is the good kind.