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Vampire: The Masquerade Clanbooks
Clanbook: Giovanni Revised
Blood and Betrayal
Embraced by a fallen clan during nights long past, the Giovanni have always had ambition. Now they bring that ambition to bear on a world they would claim for themselves. With vast wealth, the ability to command the spirits of the dead, and a strict familial hierarchy, the greatest enemy to stand against Clan Giovanni is itself.
The Curse of Caine Stolen
As the next entry in the revised lineup of clanbooks, Giovanni takes one of the classic Vampire sourcebooks and brings it into a modern context. All-new information accompanies revised material, inviting you to add as much depth to your character as you like. The sheer volume of information contained in the new clanbooks (each with 32 more pages than the first-edition books) permits Storytellers to round out their chronicles.
Embraced by a fallen clan during nights long past, the Giovanni have always had ambition. Now they bring that ambition to bear on a world they would claim for themselves. With vast wealth, the ability to command the spirits of the dead, and a strict familial hierarchy, the greatest enemy to stand against Clan Giovanni is itself.
The Curse of Caine Stolen
As the next entry in the revised lineup of clanbooks, Giovanni takes one of the classic Vampire sourcebooks and brings it into a modern context. All-new information accompanies revised material, inviting you to add as much depth to your character as you like. The sheer volume of information contained in the new clanbooks (each with 32 more pages than the first-edition books) permits Storytellers to round out their chronicles.
104 pages, Paperback
First published April 30, 2001
1 person is currently reading
42 people want to read
About the author
Greg Stolze
146 books58 followersGreg Stolze (born 1970) is an American novelist and writer, whose work has mainly focused on properties derived from role-playing games.
Stolze has contributed to numerous role-playing game books for White Wolf Game Studio and Atlas Games, including Demon: the Fallen. Some of Stolze's recent work has been self-published using the "ransom method", whereby the game is only released when enough potential buyers have contributed enough money to reach a threshold set by the author.
Together with John Tynes he created and wrote the role-playing game Unknown Armies, published by Atlas Games. He has also co-written the free game NEMESIS, which uses the One-Roll Engine presented in Godlike and the so called Madness Meter derived from Unknown Armies.
Stolze has contributed to numerous role-playing game books for White Wolf Game Studio and Atlas Games, including Demon: the Fallen. Some of Stolze's recent work has been self-published using the "ransom method", whereby the game is only released when enough potential buyers have contributed enough money to reach a threshold set by the author.
Together with John Tynes he created and wrote the role-playing game Unknown Armies, published by Atlas Games. He has also co-written the free game NEMESIS, which uses the One-Roll Engine presented in Godlike and the so called Madness Meter derived from Unknown Armies.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 6, 2017
The Giovanni seem more like they should have been a Vampire: The Requiem bloodline than a Clan. Even in the more limited thematic space of the independent, a group of vampires that started as literally a single family in Venice as one of the thirteen great Clans is hard to swallow. Clanbook: Giovanni Revised does its best to give them some kind of basis for being a world-reaching power, but I don't think it quite succeeds.
The biggest problem is numbers. The Cappadocians had thousands of vampires, even after the Feast of Folly, and the idea that a single family would have enough to destroy them is ludicrous. And, well...it's still ludicrous. The Tremere destroyed the Salubri through propaganda and because the other Clans already thought the Salubri were too sanctimonious and self-righteous, and even then the Al-Amin, the Nkulu Zao, and the Wu Zao all survived relatively unscathed. The Giovanni supposedly hunted down all the Cappadocians themselves and the numbers just do not add up. Even with wraithly assistance, it's not believable.
But that's all ancient history. The book provides an expanded role for the Clan by increasing the number of families under its umbrella. One family, even one dating back to Roman times, could only be a Clan if it Embraced literally every member, so the Giovanni looked outside. This book adds the Pisanob, a Mexican branch descended from priests of the Aztec god Mictlāntēcutli; the Dunsirn, a group of Scottish legbreakers more interested in making money than learning about the dead; the Milliners, New England old money who managed to get Boston recognized by the Camarilla as a Giovanni city; and the Ghiberti, a group of Italians based in Africa (why not a group of Africans based in Africa?), plus a few minor families here and there like the della Passaglia, the Rothsteins, or the Putanesca. This provides a handy explanation for how the Giovanni have the power to act on a large scale as well as allowing characters who aren't all Venetian to be part of the Clan, which is all to the good. Members of the Giovanni family still take primacy within the Clan, but that's fine. One of the basic themes of vampire is raging against the elders who just don't understand you, man. It's just that among the Giovanni, they're all related.
I do take issue with the Giovanni secret plan for the world. Since they're a family with a unified organization, the Giovanni obviously have some plan they're working toward set by agenda from Venice. And their secret plan that the whole Clan is devoted toward is...to destroy the Shroud and bring about the "Endless Night" where the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead is obliterated. This will allow the Giovanni to attain godlike powers through entirely unspecified means. Anyone who points out to Augustus Giovanni that that Giovanni have no actual reason to think that this plan will work is diablerized. One of the Giovanni who came back from the Shadowlands with the news that the ritual would actually make the Giovanni the slaves of the dead rather than their masters is currently on the run from their family.
This...is dumb. I mean, it's traditional from the Clan of Death, since as the book points out Cappadocius somehow got it into his head that he could diablerize G-d, become G-d, and rule the universe, but the book spends a while mocking the Cappadocians' plan and then presenting the Giovanni's plan without explaining how it's supposed to work. What will destroying the Shroud do? How is it supposed to make them super-powerful? Necromancy controls the dead, not the substance of the Underworld itself. The Giovanni know spectres exist, but they don't seem to know about the Labyrinth or Oblivion. The vampires with the most connection to death barely seem to know what's going on and what the results of their actions would be, which doesn't incline me to think well of them.
I suppose they could ask the Nagaraja, but they're mentioned in a single passage that calls them "renegades," so add that to the list of information the Giovanni are misinformed on.
The Aztec-themed rituals and the Cenotaph Path related to affecting a wraith's Fetters are cool, but I just can't get over how the Giovanni's entire mission as an organization is so ill-thought-out. It's like Augustus has a whiteboard in his haven that reads:
The biggest problem is numbers. The Cappadocians had thousands of vampires, even after the Feast of Folly, and the idea that a single family would have enough to destroy them is ludicrous. And, well...it's still ludicrous. The Tremere destroyed the Salubri through propaganda and because the other Clans already thought the Salubri were too sanctimonious and self-righteous, and even then the Al-Amin, the Nkulu Zao, and the Wu Zao all survived relatively unscathed. The Giovanni supposedly hunted down all the Cappadocians themselves and the numbers just do not add up. Even with wraithly assistance, it's not believable.
But that's all ancient history. The book provides an expanded role for the Clan by increasing the number of families under its umbrella. One family, even one dating back to Roman times, could only be a Clan if it Embraced literally every member, so the Giovanni looked outside. This book adds the Pisanob, a Mexican branch descended from priests of the Aztec god Mictlāntēcutli; the Dunsirn, a group of Scottish legbreakers more interested in making money than learning about the dead; the Milliners, New England old money who managed to get Boston recognized by the Camarilla as a Giovanni city; and the Ghiberti, a group of Italians based in Africa (why not a group of Africans based in Africa?), plus a few minor families here and there like the della Passaglia, the Rothsteins, or the Putanesca. This provides a handy explanation for how the Giovanni have the power to act on a large scale as well as allowing characters who aren't all Venetian to be part of the Clan, which is all to the good. Members of the Giovanni family still take primacy within the Clan, but that's fine. One of the basic themes of vampire is raging against the elders who just don't understand you, man. It's just that among the Giovanni, they're all related.
I do take issue with the Giovanni secret plan for the world. Since they're a family with a unified organization, the Giovanni obviously have some plan they're working toward set by agenda from Venice. And their secret plan that the whole Clan is devoted toward is...to destroy the Shroud and bring about the "Endless Night" where the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead is obliterated. This will allow the Giovanni to attain godlike powers through entirely unspecified means. Anyone who points out to Augustus Giovanni that that Giovanni have no actual reason to think that this plan will work is diablerized. One of the Giovanni who came back from the Shadowlands with the news that the ritual would actually make the Giovanni the slaves of the dead rather than their masters is currently on the run from their family.
This...is dumb. I mean, it's traditional from the Clan of Death, since as the book points out Cappadocius somehow got it into his head that he could diablerize G-d, become G-d, and rule the universe, but the book spends a while mocking the Cappadocians' plan and then presenting the Giovanni's plan without explaining how it's supposed to work. What will destroying the Shroud do? How is it supposed to make them super-powerful? Necromancy controls the dead, not the substance of the Underworld itself. The Giovanni know spectres exist, but they don't seem to know about the Labyrinth or Oblivion. The vampires with the most connection to death barely seem to know what's going on and what the results of their actions would be, which doesn't incline me to think well of them.
I suppose they could ask the Nagaraja, but they're mentioned in a single passage that calls them "renegades," so add that to the list of information the Giovanni are misinformed on.
The Aztec-themed rituals and the Cenotaph Path related to affecting a wraith's Fetters are cool, but I just can't get over how the Giovanni's entire mission as an organization is so ill-thought-out. It's like Augustus has a whiteboard in his haven that reads:
1) Break down the walls between the lands of the living and the dead, rendering them as one.So I appreciate the expansion that Clanbook: Giovanni Revised does to move the Giovanni past the stereotype of incestuous Italian necromancers, but their master plan means I still can't take them seriously.
2) ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
3) Ye Shall Be As Gods
June 29, 2020
This is the second clan book I've read so far. Also, my second favorite clan. And maybe the best book so far! Oh, I laughed so hard while reading this!!! Accorri is maybe the best character ever created and I want to learn more about him ASAP!!! Giovanni are...well...bastards. But I absolutely love them! Lorewise, they are not THAT impressive though...
November 8, 2020
The book goes into detail of the Shadowlands without being a wikipedia to Wraith the Oblivion. It gives enough detail to understand some of the mechanisms of this world.
The offshoot families are interesting but not as much as the Giovanni family. In my opinion more useful as NPCs rather than playable characters.
Since the clan is so family tied, I expected a lot more detail on Venice and their connections.
The offshoot families are interesting but not as much as the Giovanni family. In my opinion more useful as NPCs rather than playable characters.
Since the clan is so family tied, I expected a lot more detail on Venice and their connections.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews