Rules

Rules for our games can be found here.

World of Darkness
Consult the World of Darkness core rule book for the basic rules of the game. This section aims to expand on those

Character creation
For further rules and guidelines  about character creation, consult the Character creation wiki page. When creating a character and you eventually have to stat the character, use an exp spread instead of the normally provided dots (you still get the first dot in every attribute for free). The exp spread is as follows: 140 exp to be spent on attributes, 110 on skills, 40 on merits and 40 to spend as you see fit. Any exp that cannot be spent (for instance, because you're left with 5 exp in attributes, with no attributes you can raise at that cost) bleeds over to the exp you can spend as you see fit.

The attributes
The attributes are described below.

Power Attributes
Power Attributes are often very obvious on a character and help define how others remember the character. They are described in the book, but I felt the need to add a few details:

Intelligence
Intelligence can be incredibly hard to separate from Wits (further below). Where wits represents how quickly and effectively your character makes use of what he knows, intelligence represents your characters actual brain capacity and natural ability to understand the world around him. Characters with low intelligence are easy to tell apart from the norm, as are characters with high intelligence. In the lower end, characters have a narrowed perception on the world, and also tend to be naive enough to believe in a lot of untruths. Characters with a high intelligence tend to have large vocabularies and be critical towards new information and apply what ever education they have to everything they see.

Strength
Strength does not represent a characters muscle-mass, but rather his muscle strength. A character with 5 dots in strength will of course look stronger than your average person, but doesn't necessarily look like a body-builder, as that effect comes from the merit "strong back". Of course, you can decide that your character does look exactly as strong as he is. Strength is something people remember in others, and your character is unlikely to be able to hide that he is either strong or weak.

Presence

Your character's ability to instate himself into a social situation. A character with a low presence score will typically fail to act appropriately in situations and a character with a high presence score will often become the center of attention, even unwillingly. Others tend to lean under the umbrella of a character with a high presence score, where as characters with a low presence score tend to irritate others with their lack of social understanding. Characters with a high presence score are also typically aware of how what they are doing reflects back upon them, where as low presence characters can often remain completely oblivious as to how they actually appear in the eyes of others.

Finesse attributes
Finesse stats are stats are often used in times when a character is put under some pressure, but also generally applicable, but they rarely define another characters perception of yours, unless they are partnered with some other qualities.

Wits
Wits representes your characters ability to think on his feet. How quickly he can make the knowledge available to him turn into actions. Characters with a high score of wits often take the initiative, they often get good ideas and rarely fail to apply their knowledge. Characters with low wits are typically very passive and incapable of making their own informed choices.

Dexterity
Dexterity is a characters agility, hand-to-eye cordination and flexibility. A character with a low dexterity is likely known to be clumsy, and characters with a very high dexterity might be considered graceful, but it's not a trait that's immediately possible to spot in a person.

Manipulation
A character with a high manipulation attribute isn't likely known to be manipulative. People who are known to be manipulative are likely largely unsuccessful in their attempts to manipulate others.

Resistance attributes
Resistance attributes highly display a characters personality. They are the shield with which the character first meets the world.

Resolve
Your character's steadfastness. Characters with high resolve tend to be stubborn and persistant. Characters with low resolve are typically easily demoralized. Characters with high resolve tend to be more independant than others, and often make decisions on their own accord, rather than relying on others to support them.

Stamina
Stamina not only describes your character's level of endurance, but aslo your character's overall toughness. Characters with low stamina cannot tolerate as much physical trauma as characters with high stamina. Stamina also bleeds over into the physical. A character with high stamina will most likely look healthy.

Composure
Composure is your character's ability to cope with the world around him. Characters with low composure tend to be emotionally devastated when met with a lot of negativity, where as characters with high composure tend to shrug off even major happenings easily.

Other traits
Other traits include a species factor for calculating speed (see advantages) and size. For humans, those are one and the same thing, grown up humans typically range from size 4 to size 6 but most commonly they are size 5. Size 4 ranges from 4'6" to 5'5", size 5 is from 5'6 to 6'5" and size 6 is from 6'6" to 7'5", but a character who is, for instance, 5'3" could still be size 5 if he was sufficiently large of frame.

The advantages
Advantages is a silly word that white-wolf decided to use for several numbers calculated from attibutes, size and species factor. They play a role in several contexts however and are important.

Health
Health representes the amount of punishment a character can take before falling unconcious or dying. It's calculated as by the book and there are no changes made to health.

Willpower
Again, no changes.

Passive Defense
Passive Defense, better known simply as defence is no longer calculated the same way as by the book. Instead,  add your character's wits and dexterity ratings together, divide the result by two and rounded down. In many cases, this makes no difference from the regular system, but in cases of characters where a character has one of those attributes at very high, and another at low or regular level, they still gain some benefits. A character may go into full-defense", by spending his turn doing so (he may still move his speed in meters/yards and take reflexive actions), this effectively doubles the characters defense. If the character further more spends willpower doing this, he gains an additional plus 2 to his defense, but he can do this without going into full defense. A character's defense rating is temporarily reduced by 1 every time he is attacked in the same round, but his defense is restored once the initiative order restets. As long as a character still has defense left in a round, he may at any point declare to go into full defense.

Dodge rating
A character's defense rating and his athletics rating. You character may actively dodge by rolling this pool. When doing a dodge move, your character get's his defence rating against firearms. It functions in the way that you declare doing this at any point in that round, sacrificing your passive defense rating and your action that round (as if you had gone into full defense), but you gain a new defense rating that also applies to firearms. When taking a dodge action, you can move twice your speed and take cover meanwhile, as well as go prone for an additional +2 defence against firearms, and possibly gaining an armor rating against firearms attacks too.

Block rating
You can only block brawl attacks unless you have a specific merit that states otherwise. Block rating functions like dodge rating, but instead of adding athletics, you add brawl, and you may only move your speed in meters/yards, no taking cover or otherwise. If an opponent fails an attack against you after you decided to block, you may roll the amount of successes you got on your block roll again as a to hit roll and treat is an ordinary brawl attack.

Parry rating
Exactly the same as block rating, but using weapons and weaponry.

Speed
Add the characters species factor (for humans, this means their speed, as those two are equal to eachother) to the characters dexterity and their strength, almost as per the normal rules. A character can move a number of meters/yards (seeing as yards and meters are ALMOST the same, in most cases there wont be any difference) equal to their speed without this taking up an action. If crouched or otherwise moving at impeded speed, a character is reduced to one third of that movement radius. If prone, the character is reduced to half that radius.

Perception
Add your wits to your composure. This dicepool is used in many cases, among others as contested against stealth, or to spot something significant that isn't obvious. Some species have a bonus to perception which is added to this, how ever humans do not. Perception checks are generally based on your character using all his senses, but sometimes, a perception check is based primarily on one sense, in which case there might be penalties. Such penalties could be from a sight-based perception check made in darkness. Normally, penalties to perception checks in darkness are -4 for humans. Other species might have considerably lower penalties or none at all.

Passive perception
Add together your wits and compsure, half the result and round it up. A passive perception rating is used as a sort of "defense rating" for characters who don't have danger sense. It's a number that's subtracted from other people's dicepool when trying to surprise attack them in conditions where the character normally wouldn't be inclined to get a perception check. The ST might also roll the perception check using this reduced dicepool to allow the character to spot something the player didn't think to roll for.

Passive Stealth
The character adds his wits and his stealth together and halves it, rounding up. This rating is his passive stealth rating. Even when your character isn't actively trying to hide, this can be used by the story teller much like a passive perception.

Skills
Some skills have changed, and the changes will be noted here, specifically some skills have been turned into specification skills. This means they require a specification to be selected after the second dot is acquired. Upon raising a skill to dot 2, a specification is granted for free, but several may be purchased for 1 exp each at the first dot or any other dot. Specifications do not grant any bonuses, rather, they remove penalties. Having the first dot in a specification skill means your character has that one dot when doing basic things. In acadmics, that could apply to simple matters, such as your own character's national history or the basic theory of your character's native tongue perhaps, but not to any foreign matters. In science, it might be the basics of chemestry and physics, but attempting to understand advanced matters of physics or chemestry for instance would require specifications. Without a specification, the unskilled penalty applies, but any dots the character has in the skill will still count.

Following skills require specifications: Academics, science, crafts, occult, technology (replaces computer), athletics and drive.

Athletics does not require a specification to perform checks to jump, run, throw, climb or dodge. Things like archery, acrobatics, horse back riding, specific sports ect. requires a specification.