Page 33 - World of Darkness

Storytelling Rules Summary
Storytelling Rules Summary
Storytelling Rules Summary

This book provides rules for Storytelling in the World In general, bonuses to your dice pools are always added
of Darkness. Before you get into the thick of it, here’s a before penalties are applied (before dice are taken away).
short summary of the basic rules to get you started as you There are a few other complications, but you’ll read
create a character. about those in detail in the chapters to come.
Dice Rolling the Dice
Like most roleplaying games played around a table, Now that you know what to roll, let’s see how to read
Storytelling uses dice to determine the whims of chance. the results. Each die that rolls a result of 8, 9 or 10 is con-
Anytime a character performs an action under adverse sidered a success. You might have more than one of these,
conditions or when the outcome is unclear, his player rolls in which case you have multiple successes. Storytelling
dice to see whether the task succeeds or fails. doesn’t just tell you whether your character succeeds or
Storytelling uses 10-sided dice, usually a handful for fails — it shows you how well he does.
each player. We recommend that each player have about If none of your dice roll any of these numbers, your
10 dice on hand. The better your character is at perform- roll fails. This is rarely fatal. It’s most often simply a set-
ing a task, the more dice you will need. We call the hand- back, and your character can usually try the action again
ful of dice rolled to represent a character’s abilities a dice (or again and again in the case of combat).
pool. Obviously, the more dice you have in your dice pool,
Traits the better your character’s chances of success, and the
Characters possess a variety of traits, describing their greater your odds of gaining multiple successes.
innate capabilities, trained skills, and even how many In addition, there is a special rule called “10 Again.”
wounds they can suffer before dying. These traits are fully Whenever you roll a 10 on any die, you may roll that die
described in the following chapters. Two types of trait are again. If that die rolls 8, 9 or 10, you’ve got another suc-
especially important: Attributes and Skills. cess. In fact, if it rolls 10 once again, you can keep rolling
Each of these traits is rated in dots (•), ranging from as long as you keep getting 10’s, accumulating more and
1 to 5, much like the “five-star” system many critics use to more successes along the way. So, if you rolled three dice
rate movies. For example, a character might have a Dex- for a result of 2, 8 and 10, you’d have two successes. That
terity Attribute of ••• (3 dots) and a Firearms Skill of 10 is re-rolled, however. If it turns up an 8 or 9, that’s a
•• (2 dots). third success and the re-rolls stop. In the case of another
Whenever your character performs an action that calls 10, that’s a third success and the die is rolled again until
for a dice roll, you most often build your dice pool by add- no more 10’s result.
ing the most appropriate Attribute dots to the most ap- Types of Actions
propriate Skill dots. When your character shoots a gun, Different tasks demand different times to accomplish
you add his Dexterity ••• to his Firearms •• for a total them. It takes longer to rebuild a car engine than it does
of five dice — one die per dot. to stab someone with a knife. Storytelling has two types
Modifiers of actions: instant and extended.
Various conditions and circumstances can greatly An instant action is resolved with a single dice roll.
improve or hinder your character’s tasks, represented by Only one success is required to complete an instant ac-
bonuses and/or penalties to your dice pool. On one hand, tion, although extra successes might improve the results.
quality tools might give him a bonus to repair a car, or a Instant actions include anything that can be accomplished
Stradivarius violin might give him a bonus to play a sym- in the span of three seconds: throwing a punch, jumping
phony. On the other hand, a thunderstorm might cause a fence, sneaking past a security guard.
hazardous driving conditions, levying a penalty on any An extended action is resolved with a series of dice
driving rolls, and a distant target is hard to hit with a gun, rolls, and your successes in each roll are tallied, working
represented by range penalties. For example, when shoot- to collect the total needed to complete the task. The Sto-
ing a target 30 yards away with his Glock 17 pistol (me- ryteller usually determines the total number of successes
dium range for that gun), your character suffers a -2 pen- needed (guidelines are provided in the following chap-
alty. That gives you a modified dice pool of three dice. ters). Each roll takes a certain amount of time within the
The Storyteller determines whether or not any cir- story, from five minutes to a whole day, depending on the
cumstance imposes dice-roll modifiers and how great those task. The Storyteller declares how long it takes to com-
modifiers are. plete one die roll, during which time your character acts
Dice Pool to accomplish the task. For example, fixing a car takes
So, we can say that a dice pool is determined like so: about 30 minutes per roll. A simple tune-up might re-
Attribute + Skill + equipment modifier +/- Story- quire only four successes, while a transmission rebuild
teller-determined modifiers (if any) might require 10 or more.

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STORYTELLING RULES SUMMARY