World of Darkness

The World of Darkness is a suite of tabletop role-playing games released by White Wolf publishing. The titles tend to be recognizable by their format: “[Noun]: The [Other Noun].” The most famous of these is “Vampire: The Masquerade.” They are set in a fantastic version of the modern world that is inhabited by vampires, werewolves, mages, and so on, all of whom prey on or interact with fairly oblivious muggles.

New World of Darkness was a revamp of the original, incorporating a new rules system and tone: specifically avoiding the previous gothic feel for a more traditional form of horror. More specifically, the new version has the supernatural as less omnipotent and the setting as more unified, both for game balance and flavor reasons.

In Fandom
The World of Darkness has developed something of a reputation among roleplayers due to extremely strong player characters and questionable balance choices, leading to powergaming. White Wolf emplyees are known to play God Mode Sues at events, behaviour generally disliked by the playerbase. In the old version of World of Darkness, this was compounded by a tone actively drawn from Anne Rice and more maudlin works of vampire fiction. The upshot is that fanfiction set in this universe tends to center on wangsty God Mode Sues.

Continua
Agents should note that the new and old World of Darkness, while drawing on largely the same premise and source material, are independent continua. Likewise, the two computer games associated with the World of Darkness (Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines and Vampire: The Masquerade: Redemption) should be considered as further sub-continua.