*OP Dark Tyrants (pb) (Vampire: The Dark Ages) [Paperback]

Kevin A. Murphy (Author), Justin Achilli (Editor), Robert Hatch (Editor)

Book Description

Series: Vampire: The Dark Ages | Publication Date: March 11, 1999

PAPAERBACK

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: White Wolf Publishing (March 11, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565048881
• ISBN-13: 978-1565048881
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,867,508 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good Vampire Dark Ages Anthology, September 13, 2000

By 

Odilon "odilon" (Oak Park, IL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: *OP Dark Tyrants (pb) (Vampire: The Dark Ages) (Paperback)

This is a fine anthology of stories using the VAMPIRE: DARK AGES game setting. It captures in very readable tales the full range of true saints (Lawrence Barker's "Not Damned"), redeemed souls (Richard Lee Byers' "The Winged Child") and tormented monsters (Patrick Hadley's "Eating Medusa") which characterize this rich game setting. There are stories set in cities ("The Winged Child"), remote villages and settlements ("Not Damned", Edward Carmian's "The Burden") and castles (Jackie Cassada's "Toujours", Don Bassingthwaite's "Three Days or Six").

Among these is "My Brother's Keeper" which many will recognize as the masterfully chilling opening of Gherbod Fleming's DEVIL'S ADVOCATE. (Interesting thing: the author's name is given here as John Steele.) That, of course, is volume one of the BLOOD CURSE trilogy so if the story's conclusion seems a little open-ended, keep in mind that it took three whole books to resolve the issues presented here. There's also a story ("Bearer of Bad News") involving Lasombra vampires by Richard Dansky (author of CLAN NOVEL LASOMBRA and most of the game supplements for that clan.)

The only problem is that, with too few exceptions, there was a certain sameness to the stories. Despite the great variety of situations and settings, too many seemed like they could easily have been written by the same person. Perhaps it's because the stories here were so faithful to the game setting but the best RPG fiction anthologies always have a few selections that break out and do something different.

Fortunately, the stories were also uniformly good. My favorites (aside from the Steele/Fleming BLOOD CURSE teaser) were the idealistic "Not Damned", the tenderly romantic "Toujours", the darkly seedy "Eating Medusa" and Tim Waggoner's "The Seeker" (one of the few really different stories in the bunch and featuring a highly original portrayal of wilderness Gangrel.)

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not all the Clans are Represented, August 4, 2007

By 

TammyJo Eckhart "TammyJo Eckhart" (Bloomington, Indiana United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: *OP Dark Tyrants (pb) (Vampire: The Dark Ages) (Paperback)

11 stories set in the Vampire: the Dark Ages universe. Of them 6 impressed me a lot and the other 5 were solid. The primary Clans here are Ventrue, Gangrel, and Nosferatu. There are others as well such as a Settite, a Lasombra, a Tremere, a Cappadocian, and others. So both High and Low Clans are here though not all of them. That is my only real complaint for the collection: it would be nice to see how all of the clans around between the 10th and the 14th centuries were surviving if not thriving in a religious and superstitious Europe.