The Chronicles of Darkness – Background/Intro to Character Creation

Welcome one and all! This post will be the first of a multi-part series (I don’t know exactly how many yet,) where we’ll explore the themes, moods, and eventually character creation for one of my favorite worlds, the Chronicles of Darkness (formerly known as the New World of Darkness.)

To begin, the World of Darkness is just like our world, in the present day. It has our cities, our races, our technology, even our people. There are two primary differences, however. The first is that it is inherently darker. Crime rates are higher, police response times are lower, murder and disappearances are commonplace. The second? The supernatural is real. Vampires, Werewolves, the Fae, almost every story you’ve heard.

And you’re just a normal guy (or girl) living in this dark world.

And this guy is your neighbor

Now, you may be wondering how people sleep through the night, knowing that the monsters of the night could be right next door. The thing is… they don’t know. Most of them at least. Each creature has a reason to keep humanity in the dark.

Now! On to character creation!

For this, we’ll be using the base New World of Darkness, not the Second Edition (known as the God Machine Chronicle.)

This game is unlike a lot of tabletop RPGs out there, like Dungeons and Dragons, and Pathfinder. It is a game of storytelling, not dungeon crawling (most of the time.) While none is inherently better than the other, each has its own merit.

The Storytelling System uses 10-sided dice, and uses a stat system that goes from 0-5 in each stat (there are always exceptions.) A zero means you are completely unskilled in that particular stat, while a 5 means you are world-renowned for that particular stat, with the rest being the in-betweens.

This weakling here only has a Strength of 10

Step 1! Concept: This part is very basic, as it’s just a short phrase describing who your character is. This could be anything from ‘girl next door’ to ‘small town mechanic.’ This is also where you come up with some semblance of a background for your character. You could also look to your storyteller to help run a prologue for your character, to help flesh him/her out.

Step 2! Attributes: These are divided into three categories; Physical, Mental, and Social. These are then divided up into three more categories; Power, Finesse, and Resistance. Each of these starts at 1.

The Physical Attributes are, in order of Power, Finesse, and Resistance, are Strength, Dexterity, and Stamina.

The Mental Attributes are Intelligence, Wits, and Resolve.

The Social Attributes are Presence, Manipulation, and Composure.

For your character, you want to determine which of the three categories, between Physical, Mental, and Social, you want to make the Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary.

For the Primary category, you will have 5 extra points to divide between the three. For instance, if you choose Physical, you could put 2 into Strength, 2 into Dexterity, and 1 into Stamina, a fair stat spread for an athlete.

The Secondary category would get 4 points, while the Tertiary category would get 3.

Our next article will go into Skills and derived traits!