Night's Dark Masters: A Guide to Vampires

by Steven Darlington, Jody MacGregor

Provides information on vampires, including bloodlines, adversaries, and vampire hunters, to create adventures for the fantasy roleplaying game Warhammer.

Genres: Fantasy, Role Playing Games, Games

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Hawke Embers · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent read in terms of fiction and a great edition to the game for those seeking to expand it. Night's Dark Masters delightfully gives newer fans and older ones a fun glimpse into the world of Vampires in the old world setting.
I was particularly fond of the sections that contained the "Common view" and the "Scholars Eye," the former; depicting the average folks interpretation of things and the other from a more methodical and logical standpoint that is more in line with the actual lore. These little touches really makes the creatures of the night feel real and is fantastic for game masters hoping to feel inspired or avid readers looking for some great vampire fiction.

Rules-wise, everything you need is here for those setting their stories in Sylvania or elsewhere, there is little else to say other than its a great edition in this regard honestly, if you need Vampire Count rules for your games then this is great!

[Juho Pohjalainen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poor Strigoi.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great book, and would normally get five stars from me, so I'll go into my rant about why it doesn't in the beginning. In three words: Hammer Horror gypsies.

They're called the Strigany, and here they're apparently the descendants of a kingdom from the past that was ruled by one of the vampire progenitors, driven forth after their kingdom was destroyed and now forced to travel from place to place and being shunned by their surrounding communities. It's a common horror stereotype, but considering the problems the Roma still face even today, it's in really bad taste.

I mean, look at this:

Isolated and shunned from Human communities, the predations of the Strigoi Vampires upon these traveling folk remain unnoticed, and, of course, there are many amongst those people who rush to welcome their once and future kings.

So, they're cast as distinct from "Human communities," as well as being a fifth column within society that is just waiting to deliver their neighbors to the dominion of inhuman monsters? I hope I don't need to explain how incredibly racist this is. World of Darkness: Gypsies is reviled for a reason.

Fortunately, the rest of the book is excellent. Unlike a lot of the recent depictions of vampires, Night's Dark Masters completely ditches the idea of tortured souls who have been unwillingly taken into darkness, unable to ever see the sun again, driven by unholy thirsts they can't control, etc.--you know the drill--in favor of monsters who revel in their power. It's kind of refreshing, actually, to see vampires who love being vampires, who are willing to treat humans well the same way a shepherd treats their sheep, but doesn't care about individual humans lives. I tend to prefer vampires as arrogant monsters instead of as romantic metaphors--one of my favorite vampire books is Vampire$--and this book definitely falls on that side of the line. As the book puts it when talking about the vampiric mindset:

Men needs kings, they say, but kings need Vampires.

Now that's a villain that you can hate.

The vampires, as is pretty common ever since Vampire : The Masquerade, are divided into groupings with separate powers and appearance, though here there are fewer of them and they tend to be broad archetypes: vampire as bestial monster (Strigoi), vampire as lord of beasts and men (Von Carstein), vampire as manipulator from the shadows (Lahmian), vampire as master of forbidden knowledge (Necrarch), and vampire as consumate hunter (Blood Dragon). There's also an independent option, though if you use the random charts to build one it'll end up even more monstrous than the Strigoi (traits like wings and worms burrowing in their flesh and rotten blood spraying out typically show up in independent vampires). It provides enough character without adding too many additional options, even if I would have prefered an independent option that wasn't a mutated monstrosity, the actual families are archetypal enough that they're easy to adapt.

The biggest problem is in the mechanics. Like many percentile systems, WFRP doesn't scale very well to creatures significantly better or worse than its area of focus. When humans start between 20-40 in their attributes and can rise to 60-80 in areas they turn all of their focus on, there really isn't anywhere for vampires to go before they blow the top off the allowable range of attributes. The random vampires can start with stats in the 50-80 range, and when their careers are added on top of that, they end up better than dragons. This does explain how Abhorash was able to beat a dragon in single combat, and does make the vampires appropriately threatening against a single human, but is otherwise a bit weird. Fortunately, the number of cage matches between dragons and vampires in the average WFRP game is probably pretty low, so I'm not sure how much of a problem this is in actual play, but it bothers me on an aesthetic level.

With the lamentable exception of the racist stereotypes in the beginning, Night's Dark Masters is amazing. Well worth it even for inspiration for vampires in other game settings.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

The vampire sourcebook for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: A Grim World of Perilous Adventure (Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay). Lots on the history and clans of vampires. Great stuff.