The new WoD rules are much more streamlined than the previous system.

The World of Darkness core book was well received, and won the Origins Gamers' Choice Award for 2004. The old setting also made humans a minor threat to the supernatural races, but the new rules make it possible for humans to be powerful opponents to the things in the night. This is another contrast to the old games, where so many different types of supernatural creature had been defined that normal humans often seemed unimportant. A core rule book, simply titled The World of Darkness, has full rules for human characters and ghosts though it has no specific setting material, it establishes a tone and mood for games featuring human protagonists. Instead of reprinting a full rule-set with each major title, tweaked and modified for each game, the new setting uses one core system for all games, a streamlined and redesigned version of the old rule system renamed the 'Storytelling System'. Many details of the setting, especially in regards to its history, are left vague or otherwise have multiple explanations. The apocalyptic theme present in cWoD has been removed from nWoD, as have the ' Gothic-Punk' aspects of the world setting.

While the rebooted setting is superficially very similar, the overall theme is one of 'dark mystery', with an emphasis on the unknown and the personal. In order to avoid confusing the two product lines, many players refer to the most recent version of the World of Darkness line, released on August 21, 2004, as 'New World of Darkness' or 'nWoD', and the previous version as 'Classic World of Darkness' or 'cWoD'.

2.7 Vampire: The Eternal Struggle (card game).

World of darkness timeline