Yeah, bureaucracy is a skill in White Wolf because a game session might be about a vampire manipulating the local bank manager to hide the loan for their new nightclub so their rival can’t undercut it and get the bank to take the property back.Īnd then the next session might be the club’s grand opening, with lots of rolls to choose the right decorations (Intelligence + Style), recruit a popular band to play (Charisma + Subterfuge), and then walk around in your trendiest clothes, making the other vampires feel out of fashion (Appearance + Carousing).

In White Wolf, Knowledges is a whole category that covers everything from computers and investigation to politics and bureaucracy. Most RPGs have some kind of knowledge skill. White Wolf is one of the best-suited systems for non-combat rolls that I’ve ever encountered. The White Wolf skill list - the primary one, not the volumes of secondary skills - often influences the skill list we use in other games, too, because no matter what system we’re playing, we can create scenes in which research or social interaction are every bit as important as survival rolls or making a bloody hash of monsters. And I’m all about encouraging everyone to get creative. There’s an intimidation skill, too, of course, but the point is that I can give my players the chance to use their skills in surprising ways, as long as we’re creative. Or even Manipulation + Firearms to wave my gun around and intimidate or impress someone. While I roll Dexterity + Firearms to shoot my gun, maybe my Storyteller will also let me roll Perception + Firearms to be able to tell what kind of gun the other guy is holding. And the skills aren’t tied to any stats - like I see in most games - so you end up mixing and matching for your rolls in surprising ways. No matter what character concept you want to play, you can find the skills for it in White Wolf. But if you want your character to be incredibly good at something incredibly obscure, White Wolf is the system for you. Needless to say, a lot of the secondary skills don’t get much play. I don’t think White Wolf actually has basket-weaving as a skill… But I bet there’s a weaving secondary skill, and nothing to stop you from specializing in baskets. In the Storytelling Guides, I joke about basket-weaving skills. A character can get secondary skills in White Wolf, which are cheaper but more focused than general skills - and some of them can be kind of ridiculous. I’m not saying that all other game systems are limited to hack-and-slash dungeon crawling - only that White Wolf was my first taste of something that wasn’t.Īnd they really went crazy with the skills. It uses an Attribute and Ability setup that allows for a lot of different non-combat skill checks. White Wolf has traits called Nature and Demeanor that are much more flexible and open than D&D alignments. So hey, that’s a win.Īnd there is still so much I love about the World of Darkness. Some of the content didn’t age well, but it requires staggeringly less cherry-picking than Rifts. So, here I am, still playing second edition - a game that’s 30 years old. The alterations were fine for a lot of people, but it wasn’t what I wanted to Storytell or to play.īesides, why spend hundreds of bucks on books all over again?

It made some rules updates that I was neutral on… But the largest changes were to the world and setting. I did read the White Wolf revised second edition and used some of the changes, but didn’t really like third edition. We’ve made a couple of changes and house rules, but keep playing the system and world more or less out of the books. Now we use BESM for our Rifts games, because it’s flexible and we house-ruled the shit out of it.īut I still play White Wolf second edition.

Eventually, we just kept the setting and chucked the system. Palladium is one of the clunkiest, messiest systems I’ve ever used, but I was reluctant to discard it because Rifts is a fun and fascinating setting. Maybe next time our group does Dungeons and Dragons, we’ll try out fifth edition. I upgraded AD&D to third edition because it was less clunky, and I went on to 3.5 and even fourth edition D&D. I transitioned from formless and diceless improvisational roleplaying almost directly into second edition Dungeons and Dragons (AD&D), Palladium Books’ endless Rifts system, and White Wolf. Well, it was one of the first real game systems I played, and you tend to stick with what you know. So why do I keep playing a decades-old game? I still play White Wolf’s second edition World of Darkness (WoD) games, which celebrated their twentieth anniversary some time ago.

White wolf forms