Chronicles of Darkness: Revised Storytelling System Rulebook

Chronicles of Darkness

by Rose Bailey, David Brookshaw, Meghan Fitzgerald

Keep walking.

Eyes straight ahead.

Don’t look back.

In the shadows and between the cracks of our everyday lives hide the Chronicles of Darkness. Here lurk creatures of ancient myth and urban legend. Here lie the graves of angels and the bunkers of secret government programs. Here every malformed horror you’ve ever seen out of the corner of your eye has a home. And they’ve seen you.

Don’t look back!

Chronicles of Darkness RPG rulebook contains:

A guide to creating characters to explore a world of modern horror, from hopes and fears to psychic powers.
Dramatic rules for investigation, social manipulation, and bone-crunching violence.
Over a dozen monsters straight out of weird fiction and urban legend… plus complete rules for creating your own.
The God-Machine Chronicle, a massive collection of sample characters and techgnostic adventures.
Formerly titled nWoD Core Rulebook 2nd Edition.

Genres: Role Playing Games, World Of Darkness, Games, Horror, Gaming, Fiction

301 pages, Hardcover

First published December 11, 2015

Reviews

[Garrett Henke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent horror RPG. I tore through this book despite it being a complex read. Only thing that prevented 5 stars is that the art isn’t great. The writing is extraordinary though like the majority of Onyx Path’s books. The in-game fiction about the Prophet of Pain is quite scare-inducing. I had to put the book in a different room under the bed. I’m also a huge horror wimp admittedly.

[TammyJo Eckhart · Rating 3 out of 5]

Why is it that White Wolf (and their descendent books) have a problem with organizing information? Surely they test the material out, don't they? We spent two entire gaming sessions coming to agreements about what rules and words meant, flipping back and forth between the pages, frustrated when words were not defined, and annoyed by the choice to create new terms and phrases that literally do not require it.

Still the idea of making a storytelling RPG more cooperative is intriguing enough to us as a group that we invested that time. I just really wish that the book's authors and the system's designers would think more about clearly communicating and not about making everything unique.

[Arthur B · Rating 3 out of 5]

Significant improvement over the previous version (entitled "World of Darkness"), though with most of the revised games in NWoD/CoD line being complete in one book less necessary. Full review: https://refereeingandreflection.wordp...

[David Wurtsmith · Rating 5 out of 5]

This universe is basically my all-time favorite TTRPG setting AND system. Yes, I think I might love it more than D&D (and that's saying something).

[Adrian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Where to start here? So this particular book is half second edition core book and half repackaging of the New World of Darkness supplement The God-Machine Chronicle. The first half of the books presents the rules system and adds some perspective for new storytellers. It also presents some new play ideas that may help distinguish Chronicles of Darkness from Classic World of Darkness and hopefully keep it unique from the upcoming One World of Darkness. It's straight forward and isn't bogged down with terminology and strict mechanics. The second half of the book is an edit of the original product. Some of the fiction is lost from the original supplement, however new fiction is added in this book. Other missing parts consist of the "rating system" discussed in the GMC and the rules sections are also edited out, having been covered and rewritten in the first part of the book. Finally the last batch of pages consist of equipment and condition charts alongside their descriptions, this is a nice touch. As for the art most of it is recycled from the God-Machine chronicle and some classic pieces from the World of Darkness 1st Edition rule book alongside some from Armory. All and all those pieces seem iconic to the cores and work very well in this new edition. Chronicles of Darkness isn't a revolutionary new book, but it sure does it's job explaining the system and surpasses the previous core book by not only including the rules for spirits and ghosts it adds the rules of Horrors (monster of the week style badies) and reprints the rules for Angels.