Tabletop Roleplaying Games
World of Darkness
World of Darkness is a shared-universe brand of gothic horror tabletop RPGs created by Mark Rein-Hagen and launched by White Wolf Publishing in 1991 with Vampire: The Masquerade, whose rulebook coined the term "Gothic-Punk" to describe the whole project's look and feel. Over the following four years the line expanded into a family of games sharing the same Storyteller System and the same continuity - Werewolf: The Apocalypse (1992), Mage: The Ascension (1993), Wraith: The Oblivion (1994), and Changeling: The Dreaming (1995) - plus historical spin-offs exploring the same monsters in earlier centuries.
That original 13-year continuity closed out in 2004 with a scripted apocalyptic finale, the same year White Wolf launched a rebooted, standalone line on a new streamlined engine, later renamed Chronicles of Darkness in 2015 to keep it distinct from the original. Ownership of the brand has passed from White Wolf (1991-2006) to CCP Games (2006-2015) to Paradox Interactive (2015-present); today Onyx Path Publishing, staffed largely by former White Wolf developers, continues both the classic 20th Anniversary lines and Chronicles of Darkness, while Paradox's modern flagship 5th-edition titles - Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Hunter: The Reckoning - are published mainly through Renegade Game Studios.