“Ordinary” people often get short shrift in the World of Darkness; the games in general are unapologetically about supernatural creatures, with the people outside those groups relegated to background roles. Even Hunter: the Reckoning, a game ostensibly about “taking back the night” from the terrors of the unnatural, takes supernaturally-imbued humans as its protagonists, rather than the ordinary mundane kind of humans. 

At the same time, the WoD games also lose much of their meaning without the presence of mortals “on-screen”, as it were. Splitting your character’s life between the different worlds they belong to is a vital part of the idea behind the games, and it’s lost if the only people characters ever interact with are members of their own sphere. When that happens to NPCs in the source material, it’s almost unambiguously portrayed as a bad thing and usually ends up with the NPC in question going off the deep end, losing touch with their humanity, and doing — or getting ready to do — something truly horrible even by World of Darkness standards.

So, while we expect that the great majority of players will want to play primarily supernatural character types, we also welcome those who would like to play people who aren’t supernatural in any significant way — although they can still be ordinary or extraordinary in their own ways. We don’t generally recommend it for a first character, rather than a second or third, but we don’t forbid it, if you’re certain that you want to go that way.

What Should I Expect From The Mortal Sphere?

To be a mortal in the World of Darkness is to be a small fish swimming in a sea of leviathans of whose existence you are only dimly aware. The world around you is controlled by impersonal and uncaring forces that have little regard for your happiness, or, indeed, for your survival. No matter how wealthy or famous you might be, you’re ultimately just a pawn in the worldwide contest between the true masters of the world, whether those masters are ancient and powerful vampires, the faceless directors of a worldwide conspiracy, or just people no different from you except in the scope and grandeur of their ambitions and their power. Even if you’re fortunate — or, perhaps more accurately, unfortunate — enough to see a glimpse of the truth, you’ll probably never have the opportunity to change it.

But then again, that’s pretty much the standard for any World of Darkness character. The difference is that mortals, by and large, go about their lives unaware of the forces that truly rule their lives, and hence, paradoxically, are often happier. Even the most out-there conspiracy theorists in the mortal world don’t really have any grasp of how bad things actually are. Characters can remain safely ignorant of the invisible world all around them, or they can step into it and never feel entirely comfortable or secure ever again, but they can’t have both.