It has also been commercially successful, with millions of game books sold by 2001, Vampire: The Masquerade was the second highest selling tabletop role-playing game after TSR, Inc.'s Dungeons & Dragons.

The series has been well received critically for its setting, writing, and art direction, and has won or been nominated for awards including the Origins Award. The original series' setting has a large focus on lore and overarching narrative, whereas Chronicles of Darkness 's setting has no such narrative and presents the details of its setting as optional. The games in the series have a shared setting, also named the World of Darkness, which is a dark, gothic- punk interpretation of the real world, where supernatural beings such as vampires and werewolves exist in secrecy. In 2011, the original series was brought back, and the two have since been published concurrently. The series ended in 2004, and the reboot Chronicles of Darkness was launched the same year with a new line of games. It began as an annual line of five games in 1991–1995, with Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Mage: The Ascension, Wraith: The Oblivion, and Changeling: The Dreaming, along with off-shoots based on these. World of Darkness is a series of tabletop role-playing games, originally created by Mark Rein-Hagen for White Wolf Publishing.