What Is This?

In a World… of Darkness… (INAWOD for short, pronounced “eyenawhad” because it’s funny) is a mailing list of discussion and advice for Tabletop Role-Playing Games, with a focus on World of Darkness games like Vampire: the Masquerade and Hunter: the Reckoning, as well as Chronicles of Darkness games like Changeling: the Lost and Deviant: the Renegades, as well as non *oD RPGs, such as Call of Cthulhu, Cyberpunk RED, Savage Worlds, Monster of the Week, and even that obscure game Dungeons & Dragons.

Who Am I?

My name’s Shawn Andrew Gaston, a lot of friends just call me Gaston. (Unlike the Gaston in Beauty and the Beast, I am not a sexist idiot.)

I’ve been playing TTRPGs since I was a child in the 1980s, and Vampire: the Masquerade and other WoD games since I was a teenager in the 90s.

Despite my middle aged semi-grognard status, I’m a pinko lefty, most of my group is some flavor of LGBTQ+, and I’m a big proponent of stuff like ttrpg safety tools.

If you’ve immediately scoffed that I’m “woke” or something more derogatory, please kindly fuck off, you will not enjoy it here.

The Chicago Chronicles

In 2016, after a decade away, I returned to my first real RPG love - Vampire: the Masquerade, for an irreverent post modern take on the game. Not quite full on What We Do In The Shadows?, but closer to iZombie than The Hunger.

This game grew into The Chicago Chronicles, an ongoing interconnected series of games that all share the same continuity and are typically set in Chicago in some point in history. We’ve done 1990s Vampire, 1800s Vampire, Werewolves, Mages, Wraiths, Demons, Orpheus, and more!

We’ve also mashed in several games from the Chronicles of Darkness line, such as Changeling: the Lost and Promethean: the Created, into our overall continuity.

What To Expect

I’ll be posting all kinds of shit here, from chronicle recaps to rules hacks to chronicle frameworks that you can take and build into a game for your own group. This will be mostly centered around material from and for our Chicago Chronicles, but I also have plans for Call of Cthulhu content and all sorts of things.

If that sounds interesting to you, hit that Subscribe button.

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