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A crossover chronicle for Vampire: The Dark Ages and Vampire: The Masquerade.

Okay, so I'm just as impressed with this book as I was with the first one...

If you read my last review you can tell that it wasn't easy to make a second book just as good. This book takes the lives of your characters to the next level and truly immerses them into undead society. White Wolf uses old NPC's and new to make a truly unique adventure.

This book deals with (among other things) Dracula and his rise to power/embrace in the World of Darkness. White Wolf very blatantly comes out and says they have certain liberties with the history of this book and do a good job of explaining what they did. Again, if you read my last review you'll see that I am a big fan of historicaly pretty-close-to-accurate roleplaying. The chaos that occurs in this book provides for a good elemental story where anything goes and all the characters can fit in.

This book follows the lead of the last in devling out the proper amount of brutality and politics to form a pretty decent balance for my players. Imagine being face to face with a ageless vampire that hsa the power to crush you in a heartbeat. Even though your characters have been alive for quite a bit longer than most normal characters, they are still relatively weak compared to the more powerful/lower generation vampires they come into contact with. Proving that no matter how big and bad you are...there's always someone out there who's biger...and better.

One more good thing about this book is its ability to handle all types of characters. They offer suggestions to characters who don't play with the written storyline and how to get them back into the frey. Better than that even...is the books' ability to help the storyteller allow these characters to make their own adventure...branching off from the written story in the book. There is enough detail to help the storyteller build a scenerio that is realistic and functional...that is, until the character finds the right motivation to join the storyline again.

The only negative aspect that I have about the book is the complexity with which it presents the storyline. For one of my troupes, who game infrequently, the story was far too i nvolved...and they had a hard time keeping all the details straight between sessions. I think this could be a story for a more involved group, but for a less commited group it was difficult to keep the flow of the story constant

Style: 3 (Average)
Substance: 4 (Meaty)

Transylvania Chronicles 2: son of the Dragon
Author: Brian Campbell and Nicky Rea Category: game Company/Publisher: White Wolf Cost: 15 Page count: 120 ISBN: 1-56504-291-3 Playtest Review by todd on 01/29/99. Genre tags: Fantasy Historical Horror Espionage Conspiracy Vampire Gothic	A crossover chronicle for Vampire: The Dark Ages and Vampire: The Masquerade. Okay, so I'm just as impressed with this book as I was with the first one... If you read my last review you can tell that it wasn't easy to make a second book just as good. This book takes the lives of your characters to the next level and truly immerses them into undead society. White Wolf uses old NPC's and new to make a truly unique adventure. This book deals with (among other things) Dracula and his rise to power/embrace in the World of Darkness. White Wolf very blatantly comes out and says they have certain liberties with the history of this book and do a good job of explaining what they did. Again, if you read my last review you'll see that I am a big fan of historicaly pretty-close-to-accurate roleplaying. The chaos that occurs in this book provides for a good elemental story where anything goes and all the characters can fit in. This book follows the lead of the last in devling out the proper amount of brutality and politics to form a pretty decent balance for my players. Imagine being face to face with a ageless vampire that hsa the power to crush you in a heartbeat. Even though your characters have been alive for quite a bit longer than most normal characters, they are still relatively weak compared to the more powerful/lower generation vampires they come into contact with. Proving that no matter how big and bad you are...there's always someone out there who's biger...and better. One more good thing about this book is its ability to handle all types of characters. They offer suggestions to characters who don't play with the written storyline and how to get them back into the frey. Better than that even...is the books' ability to help the storyteller allow these characters to make their own adventure...branching off from the written story in the book. There is enough detail to help the storyteller build a scenerio that is realistic and functional...that is, until the character finds the right motivation to join the storyline again. The only negative aspect that I have about the book is the complexity with which it presents the storyline. For one of my troupes, who game infrequently, the story was far too i nvolved...and they had a hard time keeping all the details straight between sessions. I think this could be a story for a more involved group, but for a less commited group it was difficult to keep the flow of the story constant Style: 3 (Average) Substance: 4 (Meaty)

Transylvania Chronicles 2: son of the Dragon