Latest news with #WorldOfDarkness
New York Times
12-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Spend an Hour in the Dark With Bats, Cats and Naked Mole Rats
On a recent morning in the Bronx, three vampire bats circled around a bowl to drink their breakfast: warm beef blood. Nearby, a red-rumped agouti — a South American rodent that looks like a large, long-legged guinea pig — scuttled behind a tree trunk. A few feet away, an Arabian sand cat put its paw inside a log to grab a mouse. The fluttering noise in the distance was coming from several Egyptian fruit bats that were zooming around. It was a bright and humid day, but inside the World of Darkness at the Bronx Zoo it was a cool dusk. The exhibit, which was originally installed in 1969, closed in 2009 because of budget trouble. It will reopen on Saturday, with a fully updated and reimagined nocturnal experience. The exterior of the building housing the exhibit, a 13,000-square-foot Brutalist structure near the zoo's Asia Gate, looks almost the same as it did back in 2009, but with a new charcoal paint job. The original World of Darkness sign from 1969, which provided a creepy thrill for kids for decades, with its spare sans-serif letters (a font called alternate gothic), still stands. And the concept is the same: to use a reverse light cycle, giving visitors a peek into the lives of nocturnal animals that are generally active while humans sleep. When it's daytime outside, it's nighttime inside the World of Darkness. The interior is all new. A soothing soundtrack plays cricket chirps and other nighttime forest sounds. There are acoustic panels shaped like forest canopy and a highly customizable LED lighting system that is tailored to each species and able to replicate the natural transitions of dusk and dawn. The twilight darkness is disorienting at first. It takes time for human eyes to adjust and, during a sneak preview this week, some onlookers bumped into walls, railings and signage as they slowly felt their way in the dim interior. Humans may fumble around, but the 25 other species in the building have unique adaptations that help them navigate and survive in the dark. The animals include blind cave fish, two-toed sloths and slow lorises — a type of venomous primate. 'Visitors to the Bronx Zoo's World of Darkness are entering another world with many strange creatures that many have never had the opportunity to see before,' said Jim Breheny, the director of the zoo. 'The key is to be patient. You need to give your eyes time to adjust and to explore this underworld of shadows,' he added. 'Even though the animals in the World of Darkness are active at night, they are shy and secretive by nature. You need to take the time to stop, look and observe.' A visitor tried. She stared through glass into a deep, black space where there was no perceptible movement. Suddenly, the ghostly shape of an animal, at least 25 inches long, not including the tail, appeared out of the murk. It was a northern Luzon giant cloud rat, a large species of rodent found only in the Philippines. It sniffed the air and, seemingly unimpressed, retreated back into the shadows. In another enclosure, a douroucouli — also called a night monkey — hopped from branch to branch, its bulbous eyes shining in the dark. Moments later, an aye-aye, with its long middle digit, crawled along a vine, probing a piece of bamboo. Since this is the Bronx Zoo's first permanent installation that is bilingual, the signage pointed out the animal's 'visión nocturna' ('night vision') and 'dedo que golpetea' ('tapping finger'). Visitors watched a colony of naked mole rats behind glass as they scurried from chamber to chamber in a kind of giant ant farm. Between waiting for your eyes to adjust and waiting for the animals to manifest out of the gloom, the experience, for humans, is an exercise in slowing down. You can feel your heart decelerate as you become nearly hypnotized by the rhythmic cricket chirps. A serene calm descends upon you in this world, where time has stopped and there is only darkness. Earlier this week, after the tour ended, the real world quickly intruded. Out on Boston Road at the elevated West Farms Square-East Tremont Avenue subway station, the 5 train screeched along the tracks and a huge green commercial dump truck clanged and clattered over a pothole. It was a noisy contrast to the chill vibes of the pink-toed tarantulas and the blood python hidden in the dark, just yards away.
Forbes
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
An Interview With Jason Carl About The Rebirth Of White Wolf
In 1991, White Wolf Game Studio released Vampire: The Masquerade which took the tabletop gaming world by storm. This game, about vampires hidden in a dark reflection of our modern world, eventually grew to be part of the World of Darkness. Now, World of Darkness has announced a return home by rebranding itself White Wolf once again. This interview has been edited for clarity and combines quotes from multiple interview sessions. "Around eight months ago, I think,' said Jason Carl, Brand Marketing Manager at White Wolf, 'when Marco [Behrmann] World of Darkness is a setting much like our own, except supernatural monsters are real. Vampires engage in bloody political battles in the shadows of the cities while werewolves stalk the countryside fighting a losing battle against the end of world. What launched the game into the imaginations of millions was the chance to play those creatures as they fight to control their monstrous side with their human feelings. 'You are the monster,' said Carl. 'That has been at the core of the World of Darkness ever since its inception. It remains a core today. You are playing in a game of very personal struggle and you're the monster. You're not necessarily the antagonist or the bad guy but you are the monster. That was a revolutionary idea when it came out and it stood the role playing games hobby on its ear. Now, it's not as revolutionary of an idea but the way the World of Darkness presents it and the way in which it invites you to engage with that idea is still unique.' As a mirror to the real world, fans want to know what's going on in their neck of the woods and how to experience it. The original games had a sprawling interconnected metaplot that the current edition moved back into shadow not unlike what happened with IP like Star Wars or Marvel. Moving forward, they want to rebuild World of Darkness in a similar manner by taking stuff from the past that works while also not being afraid to explore new ideas that resonate more with modern day players. 'We've reached a point now where the demand for the IP is so strong and so high and where our players, our fans, our partners are expecting consolidation and centralization of that IP development,' said Carl. 'They want to go to one place to learn who is the Prince of Milan tonight, right? What really happened in Minneapolis/St. Paul when that stuff went down in the Winter's Teeth comic book series? Are the events of Night Road canon? Are those characters available to us to put in a video game? How should we stat them for our tabletop games? All that is perfectly valid. I think our fans and partners should expect that from us. But the best way for us to do it, at least with the maximum efficiency, is to bring it all inhouse and have that IP development run centrally.' The tabletop roleplaying games side of the World of Darkness has been handled recently by Renegade Game Studios. They took over publication of Vampire The Masquerade while also bringing two other classic game lines to life: Hunter: The Reckoning and Werewolf: The Apocalypse. For the time being, the company will still be producing those games with White Wolf as a partner. 'No immediate change,' said Carl. 'There's no reflection on Renegade at all. They've been a fantastic partner with World of Darkness. As a publishing business we need to work more directly with developing tabletop RPGs. The demand for the IP is growing. It's really significant already and it's only growing. We need to do more with it. That means we've got to bring more people on board. We've got to build out our creative team. We have to build out our publishing. We have to build out our distribution. We need to be able to manage that business centrally now top to bottom. What is it the British say? Soup to nuts.' Vampire: The Masquerade: Fifth Edition was released in 2018. Seven years into a gameline is often when publishers consider an undated corebook if not an entirely new edition. As White Wolf settles into its new role as steward of the World of Darkness, there are lots of ways the company could go. 'We're going to bring on more people into the core team inside the White Wolf organization,' said Carl. 'we're going to take a really thorough look at the environment. We're going to pay a lot of attention to what our TTRPG players and storytellers are telling us that they want. I do see the interest in a combined set of V5 or condensed set of V5 books that combine all the recent changes, all the updates that are in the Players Guide, all the new information across a number of source books. It makes sense that we should at least look at consolidating some of that material in a different format. Maybe they're different. Maybe they're prestige versions. Maybe they're softcover versions. Maybe they're PDF and soft cover together with a hardcover omnibus that follows later. I don't think that we've made any decision about that yet. We owe it to our players and our storytellers to listen to what they're telling us about that. And if it's possible and it makes sense for the business, that's exactly what we should give them.' The first game published under the revived banner of White Wolf will be the long awaited Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2 video game currently slated for an October 2025 release.
