This page is a sorta of manifesto of the theory and aims behind the project.
I am but a small member of the long tradition known as the House Games. I will freely admit I am but an 8th generation player from an isolated chantry. I will freely admit I am working with a limited piece of the tapestry of this great tradition. I know not even who the Caine of our tradition even is. All I know is that some years ago the sires of my chantry fled to establish their own coven from the main society of Highrollers in the modern age. This is a drama I am not privy to and want no part in.
I have decided to undertake the creation of this site to have a more efficient and effective means of viewing the information of our macabre tradition. For with the approval of the sires of my chantry I have gone forth into my own city to establish my own Princedom. I aim to sire a brood of 9th generation of Highrollers, and further the goals of the Harbingers and the House through my Princehood.
(In other words, my old play group kinda died and I wanna convince a bunch of my irl friends to play with me. )
But first, allow me to muse on the state of our tradition.
I thoroughly believe House Games is one of the greatest methods of Table Top Roleplaying out there right now. We live in a Golden Age of Table top gaming. For better or worse, our hobby is now mainstream. (This is a good thing, in my opinion.) House Games are so radically different from anything else being offered. For better or worse, most people view our hobby through the lens of Dungeons and Dragons. DND is great, and is the mainstream favorite for a reason. If you want to play in a high fantasy system with a myriad of structured classes; and a combat heavy, dungeon crawling focus to gameplay; DND is amazing. It is highly modular and highly customizable.
But as many many people have observed, it is a severely flawed masterpiece. I’ve seen so , SO MANY posts, videos, discourse and even published about people museing how to “fix” Dungeons and Dragons. How to implement Modern setting rules for Dungeons and Dragons. How to make it more story telling focused. How to make the game less of a combat slog. There are several successful brands whose entire initial sell was “its DND but better”.
I internally scream in frustration every time I see this sort of discourse. To the consensus of the masses, D20 systems like DnD and TTRPGs are efficiently one and the same. DnD isn’t necessarily flawed, but it has a focus on high fantasy combat and dungeon crawling. It is very, very good at the specific genre it is geared for. But this is not a universal goal for role playing. Not every story lends itself to this genre. Not every roleplay group wishes to engage with such hard, crunchy combat. And because of that, so much effort is put towards trying to solve the problems of this mainstream system; rather than simply trying different systems.
The people yearn for White Wolf.
To me, House Games is the most entertaining way of engaging with World of Darkness. It solves many of the issues I see people have with DND style TTRPGS. Its round robin, semi serialized and communal aspects of the game are so unique. Its Creative Common licensing is also desirable. There has been some drama in recent years about the monetization and copyright of our hobby. House Games is a community game. It breeds and encourages community interaction and creativity and collective story telling.
The problem is this game is not exactly an easy sell. Its name is generic, and the information is hard to grasp. The World of Darkness IP itself hasn’t been culturally relevant in two decades. All of the documents I personally have access to is in a repository of information in a Discord channel. I can speak from first hand experience that Discord is a very poor choice for file distribution. Furthermore with how generic the name is it is exceedingly difficult to find information about this game on search engines.
You will be hard pressed to find any information about this game online unless you are taught and informed by someone else. (In this way it almost beautifully mirrors the real plight of the Canaanites in the real games we love to play. ) Even if you do have the current information, it is difficult and frustrating to use. It is spread across these long, sprawling PDFs, many of which are formatted strangely or even incomplete. Character creation can be obtuse and confusing to a first time player.
This is why I aim to create this website. I wish to aggregate all of the information for House Games I have access to into a single easily digestible source. I want it to be easier for new players to begin playing, and I want it to be easier for veteran high rollers to check information. I hope you enjoy this archive I have set forth to create.
8th generation Highroller, childe of the Balefire Chantry, Prince of Phoenix.