The name of the over-arching…um, brand name for games like Werewolf: the Apocalypse, Hunter: the Reckoning and Vampire: the Masquerade.^A) It was originally created by White Wolf, which is currently owned by Paradox. White Wolf underwent a mass execution under Paradox but was recently re-formed.
All three of the main books are on their 5th Edition and it looks like Paradox doesn’t acknowledge the existence of the 20th Anniversary Editions.
At one point in time the WoD was rebooted, which resulted in the Chronicles of Darkness.

There won’t be a lot written here for now because I’ve only played Bloodlines^B) and I haven’t actually looked at much such outside of reading the 1d6chan articles.

Something you may read about on the 1d6chan article on Demon is that a notable criticism is the heavy focus on the Abrahamic faiths. For reference, Demon: The Fallen assumes that the Abrahamic faith is the ‘correct’ interpretation of the world’s cosmology. The Judeo-Christian God is the creator-God and the mythology of the Abrahamic religions is just history in this world.
The critique usually goes that this goes against the pre-established ‘pagan’ cosmology of the World of Darkness – as clearly established in Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Mage: The Ascension and several others.^C)

I thought this criticism was fair enough at first…until I thought about it. And then I realized something.

The World of Darkness wasn’t ‘pagan’ in the first place. It was Abrahamic from the start. It’s just that other gamelines introduced pagan elements later. Demon can thus actually be interpreted as a course-correction.

If you don’t believe me, let’s look at the one game that started it all: Vampire: The Masquerade. Now, with a straight face, tell me that that game’s cosmology isn’t Abrahamic in the slightest. Tell me that it doesn’t assume the Abrahamic faiths to be ‘correct’.
You can’t (unless you’re exceptionally good at lying or are very ignorant), because everyone knows the origin of vampires: all vampires can trace their lineage back to Caine from the book of Genesis. Caine’s curse for killing his brother was vampirism. And it is from Caine that all other vampires come from.
Thus the Abrahamic God must necessarily exist. So the cosmology is Abrahamic in the first place.

For some reason – probably that I saw it mentioned a few times online – I started thinking about why the stereotype of the silly Malkavian player exists. Obviously, I’m not super experienced (and I prefer Requiem), but I think it’s pretty obvious so I’ll lay it out.

To start with, the Malkavian lore actually makes it very very difficult to roleplay. They’re insane, but they aren’t insane because that’s how they are (necessarily) but because they’re connected to the Madness Network and they can also see the future. They’re insane because it’s hard to tell whether the voices are lying to you or not. But for a player, that’s actually quite a lot.
How is a player supposed to – without a script – roleplay a character who can see the future sometimes and is often hearing voices in their heads seriously? The Malkavian lore is well-suited to pre-written characters (see Bloodlines) but not very well-suited for roleplay in real-time.
So most players will probably just default to that insanity thing, right?

The other part to consider is that the World of Darkness takes itself way too seriously. This is despite how silly and insane a lot of the lore actually is. I don’t think this is a problem though, because contrast helps horror. Constant horror will just make players numb. But horror interrupting comedy? That works.
Malkavians are the most explicit way for players to just act silly without being told “you’re roleplaying wrong”. Malkavians are supposed to be weird and silly, so the Storyteller can’t get mad at you. This is why I also think that the emphasis on ‘violent insanity’ is probably an error. The game should become less serious, not more.

So I think that these factors contribute to the existence of the Fishmalk.

• Official Website
• World of Darkness
• Gothic Horror RPGs set in your Hometown – An Intro To World Of Darkness by Bruva Alfabusa. This is a decent introduction to the World of Darkness.
  • I think that the explanation of the Chronicles of Darkness was pretty poor and there are other things I find puzzling about the video. But it is decent.