The Monster Mash

Or the Population of Supernaturals in Chronicles of Darkness

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Thi is probally common knowledge amoung people who play the RPGs in question. But this blog is for me to get my thoughts down, not for sudden brillance.

Chronicles of Darkness is the revamp/second edition of the New World of Darkness (NWoD), itself a revamp of the classic 90s RPGs, World of Darkness. First and best-selling being Vampire the Masquerade.

I personally found NWoD and Chronicles to be more, sort of playable than the old systems like Vampire the Masquerade or Werewolf the Apocalypse. Even if those had a lot stronger through-lines and concepts. Not helped by the degradation of artwork across the NWoD, with Onyx Path going for photo bashed and manipulated images rather than the glorious black and white line art that set the mood for the 90s games.

 

But that’s not what I’m here to discuss. I’m also skipping accusations that the NWoD 2E/Chronicles lines were over/under complicated compared to their 1E counterparts. What I have here to write about is exceedingly niche. How many monsters can you fit in a city.

NWoD gave ratios, which naturally went out of control as the global population has grown since the early 2000s and would assign most of these somewhat arbitrary. Vampire the Requiem, the most played (as always) have 1 per 50,000 while tribe-warring Werewolves and reality-shaping Mages were 1 in 15,000. 2E for all three just said as many or as fewer as needed.

The most interesting note comes from the Beast the Primordial. An otherwise excretable game, where the worst traits of Onyx Path’s design process simmered under the eye of a sexual predator, imparting a final sinister cast to the incoherence message. I’d like to have a crack at fixing it someday but have been told by every person on the internet it is both impossible and useless.

In the core book, when discussing the sample city of New Orleans, the text notes that the supernatural population of the city is 0.5%. Seemingly small, but one for a highly scalable worldbuilding process. The writer for that section later clarified that he was following the pattern established by Werewolf the Forsaken, where the lesser templates (Ghouls, Kin-folk etc) made up ¾ of the listed supernatural population.

0.5% is 0.005, divided by four is a multiplier of 0.00125 for determining supernaturals, with an automatic assumption of some lesser monsters hanging about.

 

A generic little town of 1,000 people would theoretically have 1.25 supernaturals and 3.75 assistants, rounding down to 1/3. This is very much a sort of folk-horror vibe, where every local area has at least one spooky story/person/locale. Of course that might be a little much, with more room needed to accommodate the regular creeping non-playable monsters that make Chronicles of Darkness not “Have you seen a monster?” but “When was the last time you ignored a monster?” Having both might just tip it too far over.

Somewhere like Santa Fe (Capital of the US State of New Mexico) would have 111/333 supernaturals, which is pretty good for a playable area accounting for the NPCs. But once you get to a major metropolis, the multiply gets wildly out of control. Port Moresby (383,000), capital of Papua New Guinea and obscure enough for any game would have 478/1,436 supernaturals/minions. Moscow would have 16,250/48,750. Shanghai would have 31,087/93,262 as the second most populated city in the world. And collecting the gamelines from the wider region into the urban areas just accelerates the problem, while solving the first issue of 1 supernatural per 1,000/6 per 5,000/25 per 10,000 people.

Tokyo is a special case as a few writers have stuck with the idea there are 100 supernaturals there, despite the number working out to over 17,000.

The numbers suggested by the ratio seem to top out for an area of about 100,000 people, which provide enough NPCs for the players to be one among many. But not so that there might be supernaturals who the players could never meet despite permanently residing in the same area. In a game equally about social situations.

It also does not mention if it includes Hunters, who can be supernatural sometimes or minor mortal templates, like Psychics. I would assume so, as the core number covers all those involved in the supernatural community.

 

Therefore, the problem can be addressed in a few ways. You could divide all the numbers by 10, so the supernatural population occurs at a much lower size, at the risk of making historical games harder from spreading the catchment area substantially. You could tally all the minor mortal supernatural talents as the “minion/lesser template” type for Hunters. Or you could add all those who have directly experienced the supernatural (not just ignored it). Which combines well with dividing the supernatural number by 10.

I think Chronicles of Darkness is robust enough to support such large numbers, but it must be reasoned through. There are eleven gamelines and not all of them need the same level of coverage. One gameline should be dominate, usually the one being played and the one which defines the themes of the city and the NPC monsters that contend against the players.

By convention this probably should be one of the big three: Vampires, Werewolves or Mages. But any of them will do. This makes up about half of all supernaturals in the area. The next two gamelines you want to pick NPCs for should be about a quarter and an eighth, which any remainder coming out of the undefined last eighth. Or just fill that with Hunters.

Assign about half or 2/3rds of the main supernaturals type to opposing factions, some sort of plot grit to make the characters engaged and active each Story. This is to ensure that the PCs are never lost in a crowd. In fact, the more factions can be split off, the more likely the PCs will be able to influence the group they end up in.

Special attention must be paid to gamelines outside the big three, as those are implied to be more restrictive Chronicles where isolation helps drive the theme. These still can have many supernaturals, drawn by the anonymity of the crowd, but that means they must be split more finely into factions, to ensure there is social isolation. The rest of the supernatural cast can be filled by filler forces from the big three or Hunters. Prometheans and Mummies especially, as it is implied there are 100 or less of both world-wide.

Huge cities of 100s of thousands of people have been relatively rare in history, so I would say supernaturals generally lack the organizational skills to deal with more than a hundred or so of their kind without splitting off an allied subgroup. Oganised crime and feudal lords delegate, so I would expect the same from how supernaturals are portrayed as very personal-relationship people.

 

A worked example:

Smalltown USA, Count Seat of Yellowclay County OH, has 100,000 people. Therefore, it has 125 supernaturals, 60 are let’s say vampires, 30 are Deviants and 15 are Werewolves. 20 more are any other gamelines that are needed for the plot, maybe a couple of cells of Hunters, a Demonic agency and group of Mages.

25 Vampires pay tribute to one self-declared Mayor of the Night (player faction), 20 pay tribute to the Prince, 10 to the Batlord and 5 independent freaks skulk about on their own. Only if playing a mixed gameline Chronicle would the Storyteller need to set up details for multiple other supernatural factions beyond a general relationship or reaction.

There are 180 ghouls, some as Renfield, working for one master, some as whole families and organisations, working for the powerful. A 3 to 1 ratio naturally favours there are large groups of them under the spell of a power few Vampires. I'm not aware of what Deviant's lesser template is, but it's probally Chimera, 90 crawling about for the few Deviants which stayed on with their conspiracy. And there are 45 Kin-Folk, families supporting their hairier relatives. The remaining 60 or so don't need to be tied to anything, they are introduced as needed.