White Wolf Online

Introduction to World of Darkness Second Sight
Excerpt from the Newest World of Darkness Release
Posted: 2006-05-04

This week Second Sight, the newest title for the World of Darkness, released to stores around the world. If you haven't gotten your copy yet, then check out this excerpt, presenting the Introduction to Second Sight. You can find Second Sight in local retail stores (find one near you in our Retail Store Finder) or order it from the White Wolf Online Store.

Introduction

There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. - Deuteronomy 18:10-11

Chris is a poker player whose instincts are so sharp he can feel what his opponents think. It all comes through the table to him like a telegram. When he touches his wife, he knows that he's losing her and that she thinks he's crazy. He feels it in her skin, like the beat of her heart.

Sally found the book in the wet leaves under the overpass near school, and followed the recipe inside — names written on walnut shells, a dollar bill burned in a fire and put out with her own blood. She did it just to make her mother angry. Her mother had a seizure that night and bit out her own tongue.

Elliot's co-workers surrounded him in the parking lot. He thought it was an intervention, a trip to AA, but they took him to a half-burned motel well off the highway and put him in a stinking room with an unconscious woman. "Make us a child," they said. "It needs to have green eyes, like yours."

World of Darkness: Second Sight explores the possibility of ordinary people exposed to the unknown. These folks aren't just aware of the supernatural and perhaps driven to confront it. In a small, glimmering way, they are a part of the supernatural. For the most part, their lives were ordinary — they had families, they held down jobs, they went to the grocery store, they instinctively shied away from the shadows. But now they are capable of more than other people. They can move things by will alone, make horrible fates befall those who cross them or draw their own blood and whisper the right words to make the world change to their favor. These people are no longer common, blind and ignorant. They know some spark of truth to the World of Darkness, because they've seen it, they've become part of it.

This books helps you introduce psychics, mystics, mediums, seers and other "gifted" characters to your Storytelling game. These people join the vampires, werewolves and mages already at your disposal, but don't stand on par with those beings, being still everyday mortals lifted just above the masses, perhaps as a gift but more likely as a curse.

The paranormal abilities presented here aren't a part of the World of Darkness per se, but are a part of the characters who inhabit it. These powers have a hundred possible sources and uses within the fictional world of your stories. The real purpose of these powers is to exemplify normally intangible qualities such as fate and faith, and to beg dramatic questions. What if you could see the future? What if you could enchant others? What if the world were just a dream? Second Sight gives you new ways to confront such questions through new types of roles.

Audience

This book is for players and Storytellers alike. The phenomena within add wonder and fear, suspense and mystery to your stories and characters. Information here may be true secrets, legendary myths or common misconceptions in a world where the paranormal is real but rarely what it seems. The boundaries between the three categories of powers offered may be strict and inviolate metaphysical facts, or may be illusory constructs erected by overwhelmed imaginations and frightened minds.

That is, this is a book of raw materials as well as finished products. Every supernatural phenomenon and power can be used as is or reverse-engineered to create new powers for specialized chronicles. Each psychic capability is a potential story, villain or ally. Each mystic spell is a dramatic conflict or dangerous solution. Each extraordinary force is a moral dilemma or a disaster to avert.

What's in this book is a wealth of mystery, terror and drama. Use the information at face value to add surprises and special effects to your stories. But use it for only such simple tricks, and you waste your full potential, like a spoon-bender at a state fair, hawking his incredible abilities at $10 a head.

Each power in this book is a tool you can use to create real drama, suspense and fear. Each talent is a lens for looking at the World of Darkness in a new way. Each Trait is a chance to change someone's mind or to conjure up a story with meaning for your troupe.

Chapter 1: Not Normal looks at ways to use paranormal powers and supernatural phenomena to their fullest, creating compelling stories and satisfying characters. Players, read this chapter for ways to bring your creations to life and for advice on making them distinct from others in the World of Darkness. Storytellers, look for advice on making these paranormal powers meaningful parts of your chronicle.

Chapter 2: Psychic Phenomena explores the exceptional powers of extraordinary mortal minds. Inside is information on the past, perceptions and the effects of psychic powers in the World of Darkness.

Chapter 3: Low Magic examines earthly witchery and mystic powers workable by mortal will. Learn what makes these thaumaturgical powers unique — and what mortals give up to acquire them.

Chapter 4: Reality-Bending Horrors looks into the face of otherworldly powers and surreal dangers that become even more perilous in meddling mortal hands. Many of these phenomena are too alien to be truly understood by those who command them, but all are accessible enough to be abused.

Appendix: What Thou Wilt is a story suitable for any World of Darkness chronicle, designed to introduce players and their characters to the perils of paranormal powers and their consequences.

Supernatural Advantage
For the most part, all you need to read and use the contents of this book is the World of Darkness Rulebook. Systems from other games such as Vampire, Werewolf and Mage occur here and there, but you really don't need those books to create psychic or mystic characters. One concept new to strict core rulebook readers, however, is a Trait called a Supernatural Advantage. That's a generic term used here to represent vampires' Blood Potency, werewolves' Primal Urge and mages' Gnosis — Traits that represent those beings' raw magical capability. These Traits are invoked from time to time among this book's powers and Merits as contributors to dice pools, usually in contested rolls. So, when you as Storyteller see " + Supernatural Advantage" in a dice pool, add any Blood Potency, Primal Urge or Gnosis dots that your cast member has to resist a character's mental or spiritual power.