By Rafael Nedal (rnedal@uninet.com.br)
Chain letters in the World of Darkness are exactly the same. Except for the fact that some actually work.
Don't take this as if every chain in the WoD had magickal properties. This is not the case. But some of them do.
System: These rare magickal chain letters are Mythic Threads, pieces of magickal knowledge incorporated into the sea of mundane folklore. This fact makes them not only talismans useable by the common man, but also talismans which can be recreated at whim, with a Xerox machine or similar. Each of the copies will have (# of copies) less Quintessence than the one received. If the resulting Quintessence is 0, these copies will be regular chain letters.
Whenever a character (PC or not) receives one of this kind of chain mail, the ST rolls its Arete (difficulty 6 - coincidental Level 3 magick) to turn on the talisman's magickal properties. From that point, the character has 24 hours to make copies of the letter and post them to as many people as indicated in the text of the letter. After that time, if he hasn't posted them yet, he will begin to have terrible, random bad luck (ST's call), until he posts it. If he does post it, he will have great luck (once again, as described by the ST), for as many weeks as successes rolled on the Arete test.
Mundanes using this talisman don't attract Paradox, though the Syndicate and NWO might perceive the flow of entropic energy and take action. Mages may gain Paradox as usual.
There have been rumors lately that a VAdept-turned-Marauder has created virtual versions of these letters, which have been circulating throughout the newsgroups of the mundane Internet for some time. Whether it's true or not, few know.