28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Solid Product, September 16, 2007
This review is from: Monte Cooks World of Darkness (World of Darkness (White Wolf Hardcover)) (Hardcover)
This is a solid book. The background story is usable and works, though it is not the most innovative thing ever. What it is is a viable way to have a lot of different monsters running around together. Basically what you are looking at is the intrusion of supernatural creatures into our reality. This is an exceptional book for a GM that likes a lot of world building, designing their own societies, and just generally making a setting 'theirs'. This isn't for you if you want a complete campaign setting. It gives two suggestions for locations and gives some example stuff to them, but it is going to require effort.It isn't a 'complete' setting in the way some expect.It asks a lot of its GMs. But I think it rewards the effort with a unique setting that is yours and your players alone.
But I'm not trying to take away from it. It's good. But you will need one of two other things: Other books for inspiration, or some serious creativity. But this book gives a great foundation to work with, it translates the World of Darkness varmints to d20 gracefully (and has some nice twists on them. Vampires and Werewolves in particular are pretty darn cool) and the magic system is GREAT. Seriously, if you like d20 it's near worth grabbing just to use the magic system. It's that good.
Some of the art is good, some mediocre, and there is a flat out bad picture or two floating around too. No kidding like 'wince worthy'. Most of it is OK.
Now, there are a few things that irritate me. Mostly small. There's no proper character generation chapter, rather a good bit of it is handled at one time, with a good bit of scouring the pages to finish it off. Once you've done it one time it isn't so bad, but the first time is a bit rough.
There's a few edit issues that are worth a snicker, such as 'cross-class' skills... even though there are no classes. trifling but there none the less.
But... if you want a horror d20 setting you really can't go wrong with this book. It's filled some need for action heavy horror I didn't really know I had until I picked it up.
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Horrified, then pleased, November 6, 2007
This review is from: Monte Cooks World of Darkness (World of Darkness (White Wolf Hardcover)) (Hardcover)
Started out hating this book. I mean HATING it. For anyone who is looking for NWoD or OWoD. You won't find it here. Except for mild connections to NWoD, this is a completely new story, in every way. Where as the others were constantly building worlds where new supernaturals were born everyday. MCWoD is set limit world. There X amount of this, Y amount of that, and whoever dies first, loses.
But, then I actually took the time to pay attention to the book. The setting, the story, and the mechanics. Still not all the pleased with the vampires. But everything else, grand. The story is cliched but unique, just like a good horror story should be.
Most importantly though is the new INSANELY-customizable magic system. That alone is worth the $40. My opinion, buy it if you can let go of the old settings. Leave it alone if change confuses and infuriates you.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not what I was looking for..., January 7, 2010
This review is from: Monte Cooks World of Darkness (World of Darkness (White Wolf Hardcover)) (Hardcover)
My opinions are quite different from many of the other reviews. I was initially very excited, because d20 is a lot more GM-friendly than regular nWoD, and the sandbox book design is less aggressive about telling me how I should run my games. However, after trying to run a few games, the appeal wore off and I started noticing the large flaws.
First impressions:
The print quality is very good. My copy has held up to a lot of abuse without complaint. The index is reasonably comprehensive. The art, however, is terrible. I was often left thinking "I could do better than this". Given the generally high quality of White Wolf book art, I was disappointed. The editing is overall fairly good--not too many typos, and the text is easy on the eyes. I can't say the same of all of White Wolf's products.
Fluff:
The flavor text and art quality are terrible. The concept is very interesting and creative, but the execution is juvenile. The authors peppered the book with absurdly corny quotes from this world's inhabitants. Here's a great example:
" 'Back to the fires of Hades, you Jesus-hating, communist son of hellfire! God himself has granted me the power to kick your Satanic ass all the way back to perdition!' -Arthur Cooper, The Wardens of the Skyfire".
Who says that? Really? I hope this was a joke, but unfortunately, probably not. On a positive note, again, the concept is great. The story structure does a good job of merging together post-apocalyptic and more traditional scenarios.
Crunch:
1) I dislike strict level-based experience systems. I understand it's useful for matching critter difficulties to player levels, but Savage Worlds and even regular nWoD (with "blood potency", "primal urge", etc.) allow for broad character customization with less constraint, while still giving the Storyteller an idea of how nasty to make the baddies. That said, Monte Cook did a great job of trying to break that mold a bit with the steps system. This allows you to expend chunks of experience on a kind of stat block (HD/BAB, Def/Saves, Skills, Feats/Powers) instead of the typical bursts onto a new level plateau. I house-ruled the concept further, but I give him kudos for the initial inspiration.
2) The skill point system is terrible. True20 and Pathfinder did a great job of streamlining and improving the skills system. Also, making skills purely int-based is asinine. Why should a 10-str Albert Einstein character be able to put more points into physical skills than a 10-int Olympic athlete? Again, massive house-ruling here. Given how well thought out the magic system is, I'd expect a similar effort from Monte Cook et al.
3) Magic. Great idea, but a real pain in execution. Yes, prepped spells are available, but of course the player is going to want to adjust the spell to fit the situation. And of course there are going to be wonderful bursts of situational creativity that the prepped spells can't handle, and take way too long to calculate. Maybe with a *lot* of playing time, this awesome magic toolset can flow more smoothly.
DM experiences:
These were also somewhat negative, but in retrospect that may have had more to do with my GM style than the book itself. So I'll skip that. In short, I had a hard time implementing a 'grim and gritty' feel into the standard rules.
Conclusion: if you love 3.5, aren't irked by its inadequacies, are willing to overlook poor writing and art, and are looking for a sandbox implementation of White Wolf's bread and butter tropes (vampires, werewolves, hunters, mages)...then by all means give this a shot. You probably won't be disappointed.
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