Vampire The Time of Thin Blood

...though I'm not the biggest Vampire fan I do play it enough to be interested in some of the contents.

Time Of Thin Blood is White Wolf's "Year Zero" for Vampire and is something of a teasing tart of a book, threatening to detail Gehenna and playing End Time campaigns but drawing away at the last moment and claiming merely to detail life at the edge of the Apocalypse. As such the book is split into three major sections, one ...
...worse - if I bought Vampire today, never having seen it before, I could buy the current set of core books and not know that Ravnos is meant to be kaput. But every new (post Time of Thin Blood) supplement would assume that he was dead - and that the GM already knew that...

The campaign guidance is actually (and unusually) quite good. The author seems to realise that they have a tough "sell" to make to players more accustomed ... more

It would be very easy to tear this rather flimsy product apart. After all as I was reading through it on the first night after I bought it, my girlfriend turned to me and said, with more scorn than I have ever heard her use before or since, "You read a load of crap, don't you?"

Well, I do, Time Of Thin Blood is not one of White Wolf's higher brow products and to make even the slightest of cases for it you have to be something of a White Wolf aficionado. So - the dilemma, wade in with boots flying or try and point out why a White Wolf fan might want to buy the book? Well the former is too easy and even though I'm not the biggest Vampire fan I do play it enough to be interested in some of the contents.

Time Of Thin Blood is White Wolf's "Year Zero" for Vampire and is something of a teasing tart of a book, threatening to detail Gehenna and playing End Time campaigns but drawing away at the last moment and claiming merely to detail life at the edge of the Apocalypse. As such the book is split into three major sections, one on the Thin Blooded themselves including all the rules for playing them and their associated allies, enemies and associations; another on running Thin Blooded and Gehenna based campaigns; the last is the actual Year of Reckoning material.

As a spoiler I will summarise this last part for you (it was the reason I bought the book and therefore I did find it a little lacking, do not make the same mistake). Ravnos, the Antediluvian Rises, the Technocracy drop three airburst nuclear missiles on Bangladesh to kill him, Ravnos dies but in doing so sends the rest of his Clan mad and they kill one another and are wiped out (but enough survive to use them as "specials" in the future). If you think that dropping nuclear weapons on Third World countries and then a global conspiracy hides all the evidence that this has happened is clever rather than trashy - do not hesitate! Get the book! Personally I think it is a bit tasteless and offensive. Besides that, I think that White Wolf have entangled themselves too deeply in their own plotlines - they're trying to tell the 'official' story rather than let each Story Teller tell their own version. They forget that a Role Playing Game needs a more or less static setting - every major change (and all of the ones mentioned here are pretty major!) mess up a lot of ongoing campaigns. While they should provide story hooks, its up to their customers, not them, to resolve what happens next. Purely from a business point of view, that's got to be a bad thing - they're annoying their exisitng customers. From a setting/continuity point of view, it's worse - if I bought Vampire today, never having seen it before, I could buy the current set of core books and not know that Ravnos is meant to be kaput. But every new (post Time of Thin Blood) supplement would assume that he was dead - and that the GM already knew that...

The campaign guidance is actually (and unusually) quite good. The author seems to realise that they have a tough "sell" to make to players more accustomed to player gods rather than weaklings. The result is that they do managed to neatly encapsulate the potential of playing a Thin Blooded character who is physically weak but also carries the burden of expectation. Experienced referees might find this preaching to the converted but others might find it a perfect bridge from the more grandiose standard Vampire campaigns to the lower key and more human opportunities offered by Thin Blooded PC's.

The inevitable rules for playing the Thin Blooded are far superior to then standard fare of adding a list of special rules and abilities that allow this month's protege to kick the arses of all the other supernatural beings combined. Even with these special rules the Thin Blooded are extremely weak and the only concession to the power gamer are the rules that allow the Thin Blooded to create their own Disciplines. These latter are very unnecessary and will be a nightmare for any GM who has rule lawyers, min-max'ers or out and out power gamers in their groups. The trouble is the rules focus on abilities rather than what these powers add to the game and that focus is wrong.

Apart from this though I must say that the "special" rules are extremely good, certainly the section on Merits and Flaws is peerless throughout the whole game line. The Flaws are genuinely debilitating to the character and offer plenty of roleplaying opportunities, the Merits are not about trumping other supernaturals but are about adding a unique character to the type of PC being created. Both of which I thoroughly approve. There has also been an effort to keep them simple and to keep them within the ideas of the standard game. One thing I hate is having additional rules that require constant visitation because they are so different to the core mechanisms. With a few handy (and photocopyable) charts I felt that the only time I would need to refer to the book is at character generation. Bravo!

In a nutshell then; a book whose good ideas manage to carry a number of crass one along with it. It is most definitely for the committed and long-term vampire fan but you have to be strong enough to take the shame of being seen in public with it.

RPG definition for the uninitiated

When I review RPGs I assume that most readers know what an RPG is. In any case, I have included in my reviews a short definition of RPGs for the uninitiated.

Generally a typical Role Play Game would be an activity satisfying most of the following:
1. It involves persons consciously playing fiction roles (either medieval, contemporary or sci-fi roles)
2. It involves the collective creation of a story
3. Usually one of the participants is responsible for guiding the activity
4. There is no audience besides the participants themselves (unless there is a demonstration of course).
5. The main purpose of the activity is to entertain the participants.

There are published books, often referred to as Rulebooks, containing unique rules regarding how to create a character (role) or how to resolve specific actions. Generally the success of an action is determined with by rolling one or more dice (dice can be funny in RPGs since they tend to have more than 6 surfaces).

Besides the rulebooks, there are books describing settings in which characters can role play. Settings are very diverse and include high or low fantasy worlds, dystopian worlds, contemporary worlds, or alternate reality worlds.
 

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