OK, if you've come to this part of my page it's probably because you've just stumbled onto my page, and you don't have a clue what all this 'World of Darkness' stuff is, or maybe you're a little hazy on what exactly 'Roleplaying' is, so I'm going to try and explain it.
A roleplaying game usually involves designing a character, and then going and doing stuff with that character and other characters designed by other people, a 'Storyteller' or 'Dugeon Master' tells you what is happening to you, and you react to it.
A good comparason is with live improvisational theatre; You create you character and know what his/her motivations are, you interact with other characters, the Storyteller is like a director, telling you what situation you are in, and you all have to react to thqat situation according to what your character would do. While there are many rules, these are just to aribitrate situations, eg if two charaters fight you'd use the rules to say who'd win, but part of combat is luck and randomness, so you roll dice.
The World of Darkness is the setting for a roleplaying game, much as traditional medieval swords and sorcery is for advanced dungeons and dragons.
The system used for roleplaying in the World of Darkness is called the Storyteller System, because the person who directs the players is generally known as the Storyteller, which emphasises the freeform style of playing as opposed to the Games/Dungeonmasters of most of the other roleplaying games. Both the World of Darkness and the Storyteller system have been designed by White Wolf, they have a website you can visit. The system is mostly made up of five games; Vampire:the Masquerade, Werewolf:the Apocalypse Mage:the Ascension, Changling:the Dreaming, Wraith the Oblivion. There are other less important sets of rules (e.g. 'Hunter' is for if you want to play a normal human who is fighting the monsters). There is also a huge amount of player created material; e.g I have read rules for Highlander style immortals, and six different sets of rules for dragons. My favorite palce on the internet for stuff like that is B.J. Zanzibars World of Darkness .
Of the main games I have read the rulebooks for Vampire and Werewolf, so I know them reasonably well, and I like the setting of Mage (though I haven't got the rulebook yet), so I know quite a bit about about Mage. However, when it comes to Changling and Wraith, my information is much more sketchy.
What is different is that many things are worse there; there is more pollution, those in power are more often corrupt, the rich are twisted by their greed, the poor are poorer and people frequently starve even in the developed world. It is our world through the looking glass darkly.
Much of the difference between the World of Darkness and our world is caused by it's supernatural inhabitants, for in the World of Darkness Vampires, Werewolves, Faeries, Ghosts, and more do exist. While they are not all evil, between them they have caused many of the problems in the world.
Though the power of the vampires diminished for each generation they were from Caine, these 13 third generation vampires were still godlike in their power.
Vampires spread throughout the world over the millennia, often showing their power overtly until the time of the Inquisition, this powerful banding together of humans forced them to hide behind a Masquerade of normality.
In the present day the Vampires are still here, now the generations have reached the 13th generation with a few thin blooded 14th and 15th geberation vampires. It seems that now is the time of the Jyhad when the third Generation will awaken and devour their childer.
Vampires have to control their bestial urges to frenzy and just feed; they have to maintain their humanity while drinking human blood.
One of the shames of the Garou (as the werewolves call themselves) is that they are the ones who have cause many of the problems with this world: the Black Spiral dancers, who are among the Wyrms greatest minions were once a tribe of Garou, in the War of Rage the Garou killed many of the Bete, who are the other shapeshifters such as wereravens, werecats, werebears, wererats and more, and they did it out of pride. Even in the present day they often disagree and fight among themselves.
As well as their shapeshifting ability the Werewolves can talk to spirits, animal, plant, and others such as healing, war, pain. They can 'step sideways' into the Umbra (spirit world). Indeed they are as much creatures of the Umbra as of the real world.
Long ago people believed in magic, and the Mages could cast fireballs, fly and many other things. However a group of Mages (who in current times call themselves the 'Technocracy') believed things would be better if things were more ordered and logical. So over many centuries they manipulated people belief until nobody believed in magic anymore.
While this does not make magic impossible it does make it harder, and the consequences for the caster are worse. Because people don't believe in magic when a Mage does magic it creates a stress in reality, this means that reality backlashes onto the Mage in the form of paradox, which can cause all sorts of problems.
How overt the magic is affects how bad the backlash is. For this reason Mages try to use 'Coincidental' effects (e.g. a dusbin just happens to fall over in the way of their pursuers) rather than 'Vulgar' effects (e.g. toasting said pursuers with a fireball).
Until fairly recently the Technocracy and the Traditions (the mages who want to go back to when people believed in magic) fought the 'Ascension War'; to see if, when all humanity awakens, they will live in a world of magic, or one of machines.
The Ascension war is over, both sides lost. The traditions were unable to recreate the old days of magic, the Technocracy's vision of technologically advanced world has been stumped because they people don't care about progress any more; they just want things to carry on as they are now, they don't care if things could be better with more advanced tecnology.
Some of them were unable to reach Arcadia before the gates closed, and others were exiled. The ordinary world is increadibly banal and painful for them, so they were forced to inhabit human bodies to protect themselves.
They live in they world, often being artist's muses, attempting to inspire them in an effort to reduce the banality of the world.
Ghost who come back for some reason; they inhabit the dark Umbra, the dead's verson of the spirit world (sorry; I really know very little about Wraith).