Entering the World of Darkness

Had my second RPG experience with experienced GM Helgi Már Friðgeirsson and four enthusiastic colleagues last week. He used the World of Darkness system to set up a situation where we were on a plane, which was then (predictably?) hijaacked and crashed - I actually, more or less successfully, managed to land the plane. This system differs in significant ways from Dungeons and Dragons. The setting for play is usually closer to the so - called 'real' world. The mechanics of the game, the use of dice is much simpler. The characters are more realistic; the basic traits of vampires and werewolves are human and the goal of the game is to try to maintain your humanity.... but the game we played was entirely with purely human characters and (it's not quite finished) as of yet no supernatural elements have emerged. The concept of each character having a 'virtue' and a 'vice' and the fact that indulging your vice can boost your 'willpower' is an extremely interesting one. You also have as a character a scale called 'Morality' or 'Humanity' and this increases or decreases according to actions you take.  Example of a character sheet.

I've been thinking about how to apply this sort of thinking to teaching literature to the uninitiated with maybe not too much time. My latest idea, which would not involve too much effort on my part, would be to teach the idea of the structure of characters in this system, and simply get the students in groups to create sheets for characters in the work we're dealing with, and possibly ideas for how to apply events in the work to a game setting. This could be an interesting and creative approach. I like the idea of quantifying certain character elements, and clearly this is an excellent way to boost emotional and psychological vocabulary.

I'm thinking about developing a new game session for kids in DnD, and my plan is to translate most of the stuff into Icelandic to make it a smoother experience. I also need to consider my equipment - I've got plenty of stories in mind, no problem there.....


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