Unlike D&D, I've got a soft spot for the classic World of Darkness lore. I am too young to have been around while it was relevant but it's always had the air of potential for me. If you think the settings are cool but don't like the execution and think its too cumbersome, take what you want and build from there.
Don't waste time learning the name of every single member of House Wyrmfoe - make shit your own. I just wanna play as an invincible, hairy eco-terrorist with poor anger management skills; thanks.
To that end, let's go ahead and paint over Zak S's Demon City with some WoDness. WoD likes to say it's a horror game. For me, death should always be on the table for a horror game. With how many details WoD characters often demand, the allure of losing a character every session and having to make a new one in the original system makes me not want to bother. Demon City assumes death and chargen is quick and easy and still has room for added flare.
Chargen's the same as Demon City. Pick or Choose your method of RATPACK. The biggest change is to Calm. Things just don't shake the creatures of the night like they do your average Demon Citizen, the biggest hit to a character's Calm is going to come from their use of their respective supernatural powers. Max Calm now effectively acts as:
Vampire's Blood Potency
Mage's Arete
Werewolf's Gnosis
Changeling's Glamour
Wraith's Pathos
Current Calm is more like current Blood/Quintessence/Gnosis/etc.
The various powers that you would purchase operate like skills but at a base rating of Calm.
A Vampire with 3 Calm and 3 Potence would throw at 6. If the system ever involves a fusing of 2 or more different power skills then only the rating of the lowest is added to Calm. A Mage throwing with Calm 2, Life 1 and Matter 3 would throw 3. The general baseline intensity/difficulty is 5 for most uses of Calm.
It will be assumed when playing this hack that PCs aren't juicing themselves like in WoD but are instead stressing themselves with every use of their powers. You only lose Calm when you fail a check to activate one of these powers (-1 per failure, but an immediate re-throw is allowed if you want to keep losing Calm, perhaps at a higher intensity) and when their archetypical anathema threatens them (fire/sun for vamps, silver for werewolves, etc); otherwise you have an infinite "resource."
As a trade-off for this ease of use, a player can push themselves into negative Calm. The ramifications are as they appear in WoD regardless of what pushes them over:
Vampires/Werewolves frenzy.
Mages incur Paradox.
Changelings fall into Banality or trigger a Dreaming explosion.
Wraiths enter Catharsis (never personally played so don't forget that grain of salt).
Either have fresh-faced characters enter the game with zero powers and have them earn them through adventuring, not dissimilar to how Demon City already recommends its occult spells be handled. Or give them however many powers out the gate based on starting scope. I would also recommend keeping the spirit of Demon City intact by having the focus of the game be on the mystery of exploring the world. The Motives are also the same. It is worth considering creating gameline-specific Motives if your game extends beyond mystery; likewise, gameline-specific downtime actions like Feeding to recover Calm are worth considering - reskinning existing downtime actions would also work. Doing drugs, for example, could easily be a vampire's equivalent to Feeding with some minor tweaks.
Play the other inherent supernatural abilities by ear - don't forget Demon City's Supernatural throw when rolling for attacks and avoiding harm as necessary.
