10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Experienced roleplayers only., July 27, 2000
By A Customer
This review is from: Children of the Night: A Gallery of Characters for Vampire, the Masquerade (Paperback)
This book contains detailed backgrounds and portraits of some of the most powerful cainites around. While some of the vampires such as caine and the regent along with the inner council aren't here (for obvious reasons) it is still very uselful for playing politics and when your players start killing everything they see just have a justicar roll on in and whoop his arse. If they can take the justicar then just spruce him up a bit so he can "compete". The information in this book is not meant for players and they should probably not read it if you plan on incorporating any of these power forces into a chronicle.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very valuable resource, June 5, 2000
By A Customer
This review is from: Children of the Night: A Gallery of Characters for Vampire, the Masquerade (Paperback)
This is a wonderful gallery of important storyteller run characters, with full stats and background histories that give a good feel for the characters' personality and outlook. There are exquisite portraits of each character by artist Christopher Shy (which earned this book another whole star from me.)
The book still does maintain mystery about powerful figures like Caine (of course) or the Regent of the Sabbat (no more information about her or her predecessor either, apparently) but they have some really well detailed Sabbat cardinals as well as the current crop of Camarilla justicars and their archons. Some of these are characters who have been mentioned in past source books but never detailed. (The Gangrel Xaviar, for example, or Cardinal Strathcona.) There is also an independents section with examples of the Inconnu monitors for various cities. They assume that you can fiddle with these as needed and provide a basic formula for calculating the typical level of abilities for ancient vampires so that storytellers can make their own.
My main nit to pick with this book is the fact that the selection of the characters listed seems arbitrary. Some are favorites culled existing source books and fleshed out or updated here. Others seem to have been made up just for this book, perhaps because there are future plans for them in or because they would seem to make interesting story hooks or because they are examples of a bloodline or character type. There seems to be a disproportionate number of Assamites- even a Methusalah whose stats are supposed to be mere suggestions of what it can do. (I guess they have plans....) Omissions are curious, too. Theo Bell is here, for example, (he's an archon) but Jan Pieterzoon is not. There are Setites but not Hesha. Or how about this- three of the four figures on the cover are Anatole, Lucita and Beckett. Their stats are NOT GIVEN in the book (? ) but those for Lucita's friend Fatima are given (she's an Assamite, right?) And these are just examples.
So go figure. But don't worry. You'll find lots of uses for what's here.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful for shining some light onto the World Of Darkness!, June 19, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Children of the Night: A Gallery of Characters for Vampire, the Masquerade (Paperback)
This sourcebook is definately a useful tool for any Vampire Storyteller. While it doesn't give the stats for the Antedeluvians, it does give us the character stats for the most famous vampire in all of history. That's right, the (deservingly) dreaded Count Dracula.
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