[Chronicles of Dakrness] Storytelling Personal Horror

Out of Character (OOC):

Chronicle: Mage 2: The Dethroned Queen

Venue: Mage: The Awakening 2nd Edition

Chronicle Storyteller: Jerad Sayler

Assistant Storytellers: Hannah Nyland & Alex Van Belkum

Storytelling Personal Horror

Since its inception, World of Darkness/Chronicles of Dakrness has been presented as a storytelling game of personal horror, a powerful catch phrase and an impressive tag line in some of the oWoD books. But what does it mean? The real clues to the meaning lay within the books, but also within the words chosen in the rather short and simple catch phrase itself.

Storytelling
Game
Personal
Horror




It is a role-playing system unlike virtually any other in its intent. When you turn to systems such as GURPS, D&D, Champions, Villains & Vigilantes, Palladium, and a plethora of others, the principle mentality is very strongly an 'Us vs. Them' approach. The band of characters are the protagonists of the story, and the rest of the world takes the antagonist role. The world is there to challenge the characters, threaten them, and the party battles its way across fields of mental and physical conflict to whatever goal is involved in the particular GM or DM's plot.

This is not CoD. Trying to apply this same viewpoint to CoD is a drastic mistake in the long run, no matter how momentarily successful it may be in the short term. CoD's own tag line as a "Storytelling Adventure System" and carries the hints that this is far from the mindset they are putting forth. The biggest hint in my opinion is the description of the game as personal horror the largest being the word 'personal'. CoD is inwardly focused, whereas all the other systems I have mentioned are outwardly focused. This makes CoD utterly unique in the arena of role-playing games.

CoD uses 'storytelling' as a replacement word for 'role-playing'. Why? To de-emphasize the importance of the role and the protagonist viewpoint in favor of the plot and story. It is a collaborative storytelling effort where you make stories together. The players and moderator (referee, game-master) cease being opponents in the arena of the mind, and become partners in the creation of a story. The moderator (storyteller) provides the plot line, but through cooperation with the players, the plot line becomes a story.

For Supernatural Creatures:
The keynote portion of the entire description lays in the words 'personal horror'. This is a game about the terrors and tribulations of dealing with your own existence and what must be done to survive and prosper in that existence. Too many players and storytellers approach the game with the idea that the horror element is meant to come from 'somewhere else'. They search the books for antagonists for the plot line, leaving the characters to become the same 'stalwart band of intrepid heroes' facing whatever terrors are held in store for them by some outside agency.

This approach shows a shallow and incomplete understanding of the game. Worse yet, many players approach the game with the desire to 'play the monster' and wreak savage havoc without conscious or concern. This approach shows a complete lack of understanding.

CoDs is perhaps one of the most moral and intelligent game systems there is, and its intention is to explore morality and horror from the inside out. The principle exploration of horror lays in the character's struggle with their own morality as they are forced to face the supernatural and perform acts which they never would have considered before. The epitome of the story is the character's struggle with their fading humanity/wisdom/etc, their failing grip on the social and moral reactions that supposedly make us 'human' as well as acts and thoughts that damage one's self-image or concept of who/what they are. In CoD the players can be both protagonist and antagonist in the story. Everything else forms a support structure for the drama of these internal struggles. 

The greatest foe lies within the self...
Playing CoD true to its intention demands a level of maturity and courage never before demanded by any system before the release of oWoD starting with Vampire: The Masquerade. You must be willing to shed the 'Us vs. Them' and 'Kill 'em All' mentality and be willing to delve deeply inside yourself. You must be willing to face hard questions and explore avenues that many of us shun automatically because the path is too uncomfortable. To simply adopt the veneer of a monster and never consider these questions is to completely miss the entire point of the game.

Other game systems such as the ones I mentioned above have their basis in the 'pursuit of power' concept. The characters grow in power, able to tackle larger and more impressive opponents, thereby reaping greater and greater rewards. In simplest terms, these systems are embodied by the pursuit of the 'High Score' - the most gold, the most impressive stats, the greatest victory.  Real life doesn't not behave in this model of linear progression, neither does CoD.

There is no room for that mentality in CoD. In fact, the core of CoD is designed to defeat this mentality and approach from the very outset. The characters exist in a world primarily populated by humans - completely normal human beings. The characters usually begin the game with an array of abilities and training that even at their most fundamental level makes them vastly superior to most of the world around them. At the same time they are reborn into a massively different social structure formed by the shadow politics of their own kind, and where most avenues of 'Hack and Slash' self-improvement is punishable by death. How are you supposed to progress?

The answer is - you aren't. The answer is - that kind of improvement and struggle just isn't the point of the game. The point of the game is to turn your struggle inwards, to explore how your character reacts to the demands of her existence and the pressures placed on her by the world in which she now exists. That is why any typical measure of gaming 'success' in CoD (improving your abilities, becoming a better killing machine) is actually treated within the system as being a negative thing, represented by loss of Integrity or other morality scale. You are not meant to be on a crusade to become the biggest and baddest anything. It's about the journey and the role-play.  Power can come, but it comes with chains and consequences.

So take a look at your character sheet, and maybe move some of those creation points from powers into Merits, or into Skills that make your character more realistic. Maybe forgo the Merits that make you a better killer, and take a few Merits that help illuminate the struggle with the dark within or your own unique self.