Real world vs World of Darkness

[Ana Mizuki]

The purpose of this thread is pretty simple, which versions of things and events do you follow and when. Thing in the real world, or the canon in the WoD?

For me, I tend to rely on real life information on animals and general biology, because that is where my interests lie. I also tend to avoid overdoing the darkness, if the real life version is all ready fittingly dark for me.

For example, to me there is no need for Pentex, when real companies all ready do so much harm and hurt the enviroment. But also are often ignorant, rather than malicious. To me, nothing is more horrifying than the village store selling tainted products by the simple fact that the brand just happens to be tainted. No need for a willing malice to add to it.

[Fat Larry]

For example, to me there is no need for Pentex, when real companies all ready do so much harm and hurt the enviroment. But also are often ignorant, rather than malicious. To me, nothing is more horrifying than the village store selling tainted products by the simple fact that the brand just happens to be tainted. No need for a willing malice to add to it.

Meh.

To me, Pentex does far, far more harm than your typical Big Pharma, Nestles, and Walmarts of the world. While real companies do some horrifying shit, Pentex(like everything in the WoD), cranks that shit up to 11.

Other than that, I apologize as I don't really understand your question.

[Ana Mizuki]

Other than that, I apologize as I don't really understand your question.

How do you decide if you use IRL version or WoD version of something, is the question. And why?

[Muad'Dib]

The purpose of this thread is pretty simple, which versions of things and events do you follow and when. Thing in the real world, or the canon in the WoD?
(...)

I actually understood this question - and still do understand it in this way - as asking whether real world happenings or World of Darkness events are of more interest to me. ("which versions of things and events do you follow and when")
World of Darkness is my choice, of course.

[CTPhipps]

I think you make a mistake if you try and separate the "Real World" from the World of Darkness. The World of Darkness is basically a stylized version of the Real World. The Silent Hill Otherworld version of our world. It's not that corporations are greedier, police are more brutal, police are more racist, religious fundamentalists more fundamentalist, and poverty worse.

It's just that it's ALL IN YOUR FACE.

It's that much more accepted and that much more real because of the presence of the monsters.

You can play the World of Darkness like "Sin City" basically and that's a valid approach but generally for me, it's the fact we have all the evils of Real Life PLUS monsters making it worse.

In Pentex's case, it's not the fact Monsanto is more greedy, it's the fact Monsanto also regularly poisons 1 out of every 10,000 shipments to kill a few thousand people to feed their Dark God and keep their stock prices up.

[Ana Mizuki]

I think you make a mistake if you try and separate the "Real World" from the World of Darkness. The World of Darkness is basically a stylized version of the Real World. The Silent Hill Otherworld version of our world. It's not that corporations are greedier, police are more brutal, police are more racist, religious fundamentalists more fundamentalist, and poverty worse.

It's just that it's ALL IN YOUR FACE.

It's that much more accepted and that much more real because of the presence of the monsters.

You can play the World of Darkness like "Sin City" basically and that's a valid approach but generally for me, it's the fact we have all the evils of Real Life PLUS monsters making it worse.

In Pentex's case, it's not the fact Monsanto is more greedy, it's the fact Monsanto also regularly poisons 1 out of every 10,000 shipments to kill a few thousand people to feed their Dark God and keep their stock prices up.

But then there are things like incorrect information about wolf behaviour/state of some natural places. And on the other hand, things like there being more woods and bigger city/wood separation.

That stuff where IRL and WoD differ visibly.

[Papa Bear]

Real World version -- radicals fascists march in public and scream slurs to their opposition and run them down with a car.

WOD version -- radicals fascists march in public and scream slurs to their opposition WHILE OPENLY FIRING AT THEM WITH GUNS and run them down with MULTIPLE cars and create a SIGNIFICANT BODY COUNT. Oh, and they were emboldened by a soulless leader (wait....was that one real or WOD?.....nevermind).

[CTPhipps]

But then there are things like incorrect information about wolf behaviour/state of some natural places. And on the other hand, things like there being more woods and bigger city/wood separation.

That stuff where IRL and WoD differ visibly.

I admit, I do have a few places where I houserule stuff but it's not about the RL vs. Supernatural elements.

For example, Wolf Behavior in the Garou Nation makes no sense as it's based on outdated information but it makes perfect sense for HUMANS who *DO* perform those kind of petty dominance games.

I also make Pure Breed a non-spiritual reflection of Garou just being racist assholes.

That's just worldbuilding because you can't say it's closer to "real life" since Garou don't exist---as far as we know.

[CTPhipps]

Real World version -- radicals fascists march in public and scream slurs to their opposition and run them down with a car.

WOD version -- radicals fascists march in public and scream slurs to their opposition WHILE OPENLY FIRING AT THEM WITH GUNS and run them down with MULTIPLE cars and create a SIGNIFICANT BODY COUNT. Oh, and they were emboldened by a soulless leader (wait....was that one real or WOD?.....nevermind).

The biggest reason never to use RL news in the WOD.

You can't top reality and whenever you try, it just becomes tasteless or silly.

You can always tell when an event had supernatural involvement in my game, anyway.

How?

It never makes the news.

[Papa Bear]

The biggest reason never to use RL news in the WOD.

You can't top reality and whenever you try, it just becomes tasteless or silly.

Yeah, fiction never quite keeps up with reality.

You can always tell when an event had supernatural involvement in my game, anyway.

How?

It never makes the news.

Exactly. Anything with supernatural influence should show up in just one media outlet - the trashy tabloids where no one believes it.

[Saur Ops Specialist]

Yeah, fiction never quite keeps up with reality.

Exactly. Anything with supernatural influence should show up in just one media outlet - the trashy tabloids where no one believes it.

BATBOY TO FIGHT LOCH NESS MONSTER IN STEEL CAGE GRUDGE MATCH!

[CTPhipps]

BATBOY TO FIGHT LOCH NESS MONSTER IN STEEL CAGE GRUDGE MATCH!

Yeah, from my table.

[Black Fox]

My World of Darkness uses the real world as a template. I want things to be close enough to the real world to be familiar to the players, but be just different enough that they know it is not our world.

Most things that are purely background and not interacted with by the PCs or supernatural forces remain the same. However, I include substitute institutions or organizations for some of them. Some of these are actual WoD organizations, some of them are taken from other fictional works, and some are unique to my own imagination. There is no need for McDonald's when there is O'Tolley's. And an NPC ordering a popular beer will get a King Brewery's Blue Stripe instead of Budweiser. Horatio Ballard was an obvious analogue for Philip Danforth Armour and his companies, so I simply renamed everything associated with Armour to Ballard. I also use Morley cigarettes, Glencallan scotch, Big Kahuna Burger, and Struan & Company which I grabbed from other media. Even though the old A&P supermarkets declined from the 1970s and went defunct a few years ago, it is the largest US supermarket chain in my chronicles. Usually my own companies I use were originally created as part of my own PCs' backgrounds or those of PCs I played along or ST'd for.

If there is anything the PCs interact with, then I generally avoid real world people and organizations and replace them with fictional analogues. I call it the "Johnny Fontaine Rule" after the character in the Godfather novel and movies who is a roman-a-clef of Frank Sinatra. I just feel more comfortable that way when PC involvement causes things to diverge from the real world. If there is a good existing WoD group that fits, I use that simply to retain the feeling that this is the WoD, but I have other fictional things to pick from when needed.

In terms of the supernatural, I pare down what is in canon quite a bit as there are simply too many supernatural creatures and different types for it to make sense. I include what I like and leave the rest behind.

[CTPhipps]

Some rules from my World of Darkness:

1. The cops in the WOD are incredibly corrupt and do their best to do the bare minimum of work to keep the city functioning. Crime is a huge issue in the cities of the WoD so that the cops don't bother to investigate most crimes involving other criminals while barely bothering with filing paperwork on regular citizens. The rich and famous are about the only people who can expect any kind of consistent police protection.

2. Violent crime is much-much higher with deaths being like the worst of the gang wars of the Nineties, except that is the normal.

3. The media is sensationalist, tawdry, and corrupt with a Verhoven-esque cheesiness to it. Television is even more stupid than people expected.

4. There's a terrible homelessness problem in the country. They disappear regularly on the streets and no one cares, if not silently approves.

5. Goth never went out of style and has stuck to be the permanent youth subculture.

6. Technology is basically stuck in the late 90s with maybe some minor improvements in the internet and the progress of science is getting worse than better

7. Pseudo-science is very common in hospitals with addictive drugs, placebos, cut medication, and cures that don't work in many places.

8. Urban decay like the kind New York City suffered in the 1970s is the norm rather than an exception with the gentrified Giuliani-style Manhattan existing for the super rich but the ugly part of the city just moved off the island.

9. Active serial killers are incredibly common and generally help keep the Masquerade. There's about 52 in America in RL speculated to be active. There's about 500 to 5000 in the WoD.

10. Police brutality is full on Dirty Harry for a lot of people and is applied like the most sensationalist of accusations to police in RL (which isn't an exaggeration in many cities, sadly). Random executions, planting evidence, beatings, and assaults on tools of the trade from Mayberry to New York.

11. Casual corruption is a way most people learn to deal with bureaucracy and police.

12. The "Rack" exists in most major cities which amounts to modern Red Light Districts of strip clubs, brothels, and surprisingly upscale nightclubs. Sex, drugs, and vice is how even many average citizens get through the day.

13. There's actually quite a bit of untamed wilderness in the United States, which makes the cities all the more compact, overpopulated, and filthy.

14. Religious apathy afflicts many people which doesn't mean they are not believing but that they derive little pleasure from the act or desire for charity but simply go to it as a rote observance.

15. Most of the progress in the world's civil rights have occurred but a general sense of papering over the real issues occur.

16. There really are a staggering number of cults, secret societies, criminal organizations, and occult weirdness even beyond just what we see in the world of darkness.

17. The environment will probably collapse in the next 50 years.

18. Very huge amounts of cancer exist because of all the terrible pollution Pentex is pouring out. Some of this goes on to create Formori.

19. Pentex does what normal companies do in RL but also does the monthly "random act of horrific evil" which is just the icing on the cake.

20. Endron is a stand-in for Enron but it got bailed out for its horribly criminal practices in the WOD whereas it collapsed in RL.

I also have a simpler way of describing it:

"Life in the World of Darkness is basically Gotham City. Except every city is Gotham City unless it's Hub City or Bludhaven [i.e. even worse]. There's also no Batman and the Joker is the Sabbat with hundreds of people like him while Lex Luthor is the Technocracy, Camarilla, and Pentex which means there's thousands of people like him."
-A line from tonight's game.

[lordmagnusen]

Brownie points for mentioning Hub City.