222 pages, 2004, $24.99
Content	4.5
Organization	4
Consistency	4
Intelligibility	4
Overall 4 Great
Review Scoring

   For anyone who has ever wondered just what goes bump in the night, The World of Darkness provides more than enough inspiration to fuel paranoia. The book provides an overview of the World of Darkness setting for use with the Storytelling game system, with a complete set of rules to get players and game masters up and running quickly.

All the nitty, gritty rules are presented, although by making exclusive use of just one die size, the 10-sided die, the Storytelling system removes a lot of the gritty parts. This reliance on just one die size makes picking up the game mechanics a ten second process. Long time players of other, more complex gaming systems can be forgiven for thinking that the use of just one die size restricts the flexibility of the rules. Such a sentiment could not be farther from the truth in reality, as the Storytelling rules provide a surprising amount of options.

The World of Darkess is set in modern times and this type of setting fits the ruleset best. The number of examples provided in the book make it clear how the rules are used, but more importantly help set the appropriate atmosphere for horror and supernatural gaming. This is not to say that everything is perfect, as there are occasions where the rules seem more arbitrary than based on reality. This would not be such a problem for fantasy settings, but it is more glaring in a modern or contemporary setting.

The World of Darkness sets out with one goal, and that is to provide the best possible setting and rules for a modern, horror gaming system and it succeeds in filling this niche in the gaming universe to a T. Any gamer looking for a modern gaming experience, filled with werewolves, vampires, and other things that go bump in the night, will find their needs more than statisfied by this setting.