36 thoughts on “Curious. Are there any good World of Darkness hacks out there?”

  2. In varying degrees of quality and specificity to wod. Here are some examples:

    Undying

    Urban shadows

    Monster of the week

    Monster hearts

    Murderous Ghosts

    There are probably more out there i can’t think of, but you can easily drop the wod world into most horror hacks

  4. I guess you could do WoD straight out of the box with new play books…

    I already own Monsterhearts but I’m not taken with the whole self-discovery bend. I want to play some evil bastards who know exactly what they are…and revel in it (or not, I guess. 🙂 )

  8. Yeah, with Monsterhearts, while there’s a bunch of self-discovery, it doesn’t mean it has to be mushy self-discovery. Particularly with some of the fan-made Skins. My last couple characters have been bordering on slasher-killers and psychics out of control a la Akira.

  9. Ill admit that my experience with AW is limited. I’m not sure how to make the current play books into vampires, werewolves or mages without fully replacing their moves, which essentially creates a new book, if I’m not mistaken.

  13. It can be really simple if you want it to be. The most basic is to change nothing and say ‘you are playing a vampire? Cool. Act like it’ then maybe create some threats based on their nature. This approach gives the player a lot of agency to decide what it means to be a vampire and then you just let their responses to create the fiction for the world. I think a trap of game writing is to say ‘if it’s interesting it needs a rule.’ Really it should say ‘if it’s interesting there should be interesting consequences’

  14. David Rothfeder is totally plugging into “Advanced AW” territory, but he’s 100% correct. If you lead with the fiction and really grok how fictional positioning works, then “acting like a vampire” is basically all you need (though a few custom supporting moves would also be nice). You just make moves as normal, but being a vampire means that you will likely make differnet moves at different times than you would if you were human. Can you Go Aggro on or Seduce/Manipulate someone with your crazy vampire psychic powers? Uh, sure. Do you Suffer Harm when a dude punches you? Probably not. Do you have to Act Under Fire when you need to feed and are trying to resist? Sho nuff.

  20. What do you like about WoD, do you want mechanical heavy combat, do you want a story game, something that attempts to bridge the two?

    I think you could hack Fate or FAE into a WoD setting pretty easily. FAE would be great for pick up games, and FATE if you want a little more mechanical weight.

    Did you pick up Stacy Dellorfano’s Randomocity? There is a dark fantasy setting for FAE by Christopher Helton that could serve as a nice inspiration for a creepy conversion.

    Argh! By Joshua Macy may scratch the itch nicely & it has the bonus of being free. In the interest of full disclosure I haven’t tried Argh! yet, but I have enjoyed the other SFX RPGs. They are rules light/medium with quite flexible character creation. They play quickly & the mechanics of the game reward clever players and teamwork, which brought werewolf to mind pretty readily.

    http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/96079/Argh

  21. I like the story. Always the story. Though maybe not their exact story, I like to have room to create within the setting and WoD doesn’t really give that.

    I’m very familiar hacking Fate and FAE, but I have been wanting to try the World engine and I think it fits perfect for the genre.

  22. I commented on your page and just realized I am suggesting lots of other games in a world engine community . . . D’oh

    Yes, AW can do the job very nicely I am sure & Undieing looks and reads wonderfully but I haven’t had any experience with it yet.

  23. Is Undying a commercial product? (Costs money?) if so I’ll probably have to skip. I can’t afford to purchase anything right now that I probably won’t get the opportunity to play if it’s similar to something else rules wise (like AW, jn this instance).

  26. I’m slowly slogging away a Vampire Requiem hack. I’ve only worked on some moves so far. If it ever comes together, I’ll post a link for it here. Also, if there is interest, I could create a g-doc to allow for some criticism/collaboration if anyone is interested.

  29. Yes Ryan M. Danks, there is. Why do I know? I created add-ons for Vampire the Masquerade, Werewolf the Forsaken, Mage the Awakening, Hunter the Vigil, Orpheus, plus a Slasher and Changelings in the works for Andrew Medeiros’s Urban Shadows. I have had about 20 playtest with Vampire. plus about 15 more playtest with everything else.

    Richard Robertson, I know we chatted before. Did you veer get a chance to look through my docs?

    https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vAfokBManOfs96xyvhPB2q6P1lR3PrN1OGNmjkLoqk8/edit?usp=sharing

    That is the playtest document, I have the actual designed printouts coming in the next few days. Here is what I have so far, accept the advancements, about a dozen moves and Orpheus are all going to be reworked.

    https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9Hhx1yXlz-OZW9ac2RqUGVmb1U/edit?usp=sharing

    Here are some MC tools I made:

    https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9Hhx1yXlz-OUnc4WDRnZHo1TkE/edit?usp=sharing

    And here is an online character sheet you can copy and use for all of your players.

    https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AtHhx1yXlz-OdHVhY2RYbmUtRFE4ckFNQWU2WG5Tc1E&usp=sharing

  30. Ryan M. Danks, if you are interested I am still doing some playtest on Orpheus, Demon teh Fallen, Slasher and Changeling in the next few months that I can include you on.

  31. Adam McConnaughey, I am only in the basic stages of Changeling, though it will have to work with Urban Shadows (ideally their Fae PB.) I would LOVE to chat with you as I know Nothing about Changeling, but would love to get it into my set.

    Can I see your hack? I may be able to rework it with your permission, if I am unable to rework it, maybe we could do it together in December.

  32. Thanks for those resources!

    I grew up with the core vampire, werewolf, Mage trio, and the others just feel very odd to me, so I think I’ll pass on those playtests. Thanks, though!

  33. Tommy Rayburn Yes, thanks, I’ve looked at them, but my interest is limited to Vampire the Requiem, though I may look at how you handle some moves for inspiration if I get stuck.

    Ryan M. Danks Matthew Bannock Cool! I’ll let you know when I have something put together.

  34. Ryan M. Danks I totally get that. I started out with just the core 3, then one of my players wanted to develop Hunter. Urban Shadows has like 12 playbooks (Vamp, Wizard, Wolf, Hunter, Spectre, ect…) so I decided why not continue why I could?

    This works for 3 reasons.

    1. NPC’s ….. need a hunter enemy, I can make it.

    2. Advancement diversity, I allow one move from any book as long as you meet the requirements. I only [play Vampire, but my players are extremely diverse.

    3. Game diversity. One of my character’s was recently given the final death. He gave a great fiction reason to come back as a ghost and I was able to let him. For me, if the players can make it make sense …. why not?

    I will let you know also, I knew nothing about Orpheus (a WoD ghost counterpart to Wraith) when I started and any WoD players would kill me for butchering their system, but it has become my favorite to play as I kept what works and removed what did not.

    We also know this is a touchy subject for WoD players, but there was also great internal debate on which books or settings to use feeling that as this is a project we above all must be fans of. We chose to split the books up amongst those created for Old WoD and those of New WoD. We focused on what worked and what played well. I know I could have gotten WtA and MtAscenion to work, but they would have not played well with the other books.

    Richard Robertson, I am fine with that as long as I get a the credit. Though, I would try it out, because of the mechanics the game feels entirely different than a WoD game. I think smoother.

  36. Adam McConnaughey, I am starting up a team to get Changeling worked in to the WoD hack I have ….. would you be at all interested in giving feedback, maybe direction?

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