Мир Тьмы: Серия ролевых игр

Series of tabletop role playing games

World of Darkness is a series of tabletop role playing games, originally created by Mark Rein Hagen for White Wolf Publishing. It began as an annual line of five games in 1991–1995, with Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Mage: The Ascension, Wraith: The Oblivion, and Changeling: The Dreaming, along with off shoots based on these. The series ended in 2004, and the reboot Chronicles of Darkness was launched the same year with a new line of games. In 2011, the original series was brought back, and the two have since been published concurrently. The games in the series have a shared setting, also named the World of Darkness, which is a dark, gothic punk interpretation of the real world, where supernatural beings such as vampires and werewolves exist in secrecy. The original series' setting has a large focus on lore and overarching narrative, whereas Chronicles of Darkness setting has no such narrative and presents the details of its setting as optional. The series has been well received critically for its setting, writing, and art direction, and has won or been nominated for awards including the Origins Award. It has also been commercially successful, with millions of game books sold; by 2001, Vampire: The Masquerade was the second highest selling tabletop role playing game after TSR, Inc.'s Dungeons & Dragons. The series has been adapted into other media, including the television series Kindred: The Embraced, actual play web series, novels and anthologies, comic books, card games, and a line of video games.

In 2006, the Icelandic video game developer CCP Games acquired White Wolf Publishing and their intellectual properties, with the intention of developing an online video game based on World of Darkness. Business continued as usual until 2009, when CCP Games started transferring White Wolf Publishing staff to video game development and slowed down tabletop game production.

White Wolf Publishing and its intellectual properties were sold again in 2015, to the Swedish video game publisher Paradox Interactive. Following this, the rebooted World of Darkness series was renamed Chronicles of Darkness, while the original series remained as World of Darkness. This was done to prevent confusion among players over there being two series and settings with the same name: Prior to the renaming, the two had been distinguished from each other by being referred to as the Old or Classic World of Darkness and the New World of Darkness. Onyx Path Publishing's in development Vampire: The Masquerade 4th Edition, which they had announced only a few months earlier, with Rue Morgue describing the series' "fabulous artwork" as one of its major strengths, and Realms of Fantasy appreciating the broad scope and the familiarity to players due to being based on the real world. Shadis described the setting as "truly unique", bringing something never before seen to games. Some publications found the setting too crowded or defined, however; and Tor. com thought it left little room to tell new stories, often choosing to ignore the metaplot when running games. while Tor. com described them as having a recurring problem with statistical anomalies. and seen by critics as fluid, elegant and open ended, to the point where Tor. com and Backstab recommended using them even when running non Chronicles of Darkness games. Fenix appreciated the speed of creating characters and of playing, comparing the system of dice pools and dots favorably to number based role playing game systems.