The Inside Scoop on Gaming

Why does White Wolf consistently do books on unimportant, insignificant corners and/or groups of the World of Darkness that no one really cares about (Berlin by Night, Clanbook: Baali, Inanimae) and leave really important chunks of their world like the Far East and the 70% of this planet covered with water to be covered later? Blood-Dimmed Tides should have come out long ago.

My first impression of Blood-Dimmed Tides, based on the book's cover, was frankly that it looked pretty silly. The title is in a goofy, bad-slasher-movie dripping-blood font and the stylistic cover art, featuring an ordinary looking crab, psychedelic mollusks, ugly were- sharks and black-robed Chthuloid anthropomorphic squids, is pretty bad. But, keeping in mind that I shouldn't judge a book by it's cover, I read the blurb on the back and gave the book a quick flip-through. Then I bought it on the spot.

No good review would be complete without some discussion of the artwork, so let's get that out of the way as quickly as possible. On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd rate the art maybe a 4.5 or a 5. There's nothing really exceptional except for the chapter-openers by the inimitable Jeff Rebner and some beautiful half-page images by Alex Sheikman, and there are some really lousy pictures, too. The book could use less badly-drawn, blurry fishes. I'm sure most readers know what fish look like. Don't we?

Blood-Dimmed Tides follows a pretty standard WoD supplement format, albeit badly done, so just I'll break my review down by chapter.

AND THE SEA SHALL GIVE UP HER DEAD

The standard bit of fiction at the beginning is decent, I suppose. I don't have any real complaints about it except the art gives away the ending even before the story begins.

INTRODUCTION: RISING TIDES

Your standard leader, list of references and How To Use This Book section. Nothing exceptional here.

CHAPTER ONE: SEAS OF DARKNESS

Ha! The beginning of the real meat-and-potatoes stuff. This chapter begins with what is arguably the silliest concept in the WoD: The Rorqual, a mysterious race of uber-cetaceans that serve as sentient, swimming caerns, nodes, blood pools or what have you that are chock full of Chi, Glamour, Gnosis, Quintessence and so on. But mercifully the Rorqual soon disappear and we get to important stuff.

First there's a summary of all the WoD's oceans, grouped geographically. The authors give a sentence or two on who and what live in each region and a brief history and description of each place, as well. The Sargasso Sea and Bermuda Triangle are touched upon, and a sidebar is devoted to Atlantis, or lack thereof. Next comes a brief interlude about famous pirates and what happened to them after they died. Why is it located here? I don't know. But it's still good stuff. After it finishes yo-ho-hoing, Blood-Dimmed Tides goes on to give a quick oceanography/ocean ecology lesson and devotes about a quarter-page each to shipwrecks and coral cities. Once more, why did they stick this in here? Who knows? The same thing applies to the next section, which gives around half-page each on Vampires, Magi, Were-thingies, Wraiths, Changelings, Pentex and Hunters -- this is covered quite extensively in the next chapter. There's no reason to put it here.

As expected, the WoD Trinity makes an appearance in a brand new form here. The Weaver/Wyld/Wyrm takes on yet another face, this time as The Fish Bearer, the Shelled One and the Tentacled One. Maritime Umbra and Shadowlands are covered next. Interestingly enough, in the deep sea the Gauntlet is lowered to almost nothing, which means that the line in between reality and Umbra is very tenuous indeed...

Last in Chapter One comes a couple pages on Project Deepwater, which is a neat concept. Take two of the WoD's most implacable villainous groups, add in a third group of concentrated evil manipulating the other two, and stir. What comes out is a joint Technocracy/Pentex undersea colony called Project Deepwater. Oh, and meet the Chulorviah, a race of very Chthuloid evildoers that are bad enough to manipulate both Pentex and the Technocracy into doing their dirty work for them.

There is SO MUCH information in this chapter that it boggles the mind! And it's SO BADLY organized that it boggles the mind, too. Whoever edited this book must have been asleep at the desk. On the other hand, folks, if you're planning on running any sort of maritime chronicle whatsoever knowledge of this chapter is an absolute must. If you can get past lousy layout and useful bits of information slapped around haphazardly, you'll love this chapter.

CHAPTER TWO: DENIZENS

Awright! Here's the good stuff that we've all been waiting for. Or at least I have. This chapter covers the beings that live in the water of all different races and states of alive-ness.

First come the vampires. I won't spoil too much of the fun for you, but I have to say that the Aquarii, a Gangrel bloodline with ass-kicking variations on the Protean discipline that adapt them for undersea life, are my personal favorites. Also covered in this section are Lasombra antitribu pirates (it's rather inadequate coverage, I think, but I'm biased. My favorite Clan is the Lasombra anti's).

Next come a couple of pages on the Changing Breeds. This section is short and sweet, as much is promised in the upcoming Rokea book.

Magi at sea are also covered very briefly. Unsurprisingly, the Void Engineers are revealed to be very active in the Water, as are the Sons of Ether. Nephandi and Marauders get only a couple paragraphs of mention each.

Wraiths, on the other hand, rate 15-20 pages full of backgrounds, merits, flaws, new skills, Arcanoi, Arts and so on. I don't play Wraith so nothing particularly stuck out at me, except for the fact that water is as solid as land to a ghost... Wraith players that I've shown this section to, however, have ranted and raved and gotten that 'give me that' look in their eyes. One told me that there was enough material in that section to spawn one or two full-fledged supplements by itself. And if you thought Wraith got a big spread, wait until you get to Changeling.

Last in the chapter comes info on two new kinds of Changelings: The incredibly beautiful, arrogant Merfolk (half-man half-vertebrate sea creature) and the bestial, Alien-inspired Murdhuacha (me-ROO-cha, half man half-invertebrate sea creature). Both are natural enemies but are forced into an uneasy alliance by Project Deepwater, which has generate enough Banality to kill incredibly large numbers of aquatic Changelings. In the Changeling section we have expository fiction, several pages on each Kith, detailed Mythology, various Houses among each Kith, three brand new arts usable by all Kithain and a handful of treasures.

For this chapter alone, the book is worth buying. Again, a whole book could have been devoted to this and there'd be room for more... If you play Wraith or Changeling, this is the most important chapter in the book for you and reason alone for you to make this purchase. If you don't, this chapter is still quite useful.

CHAPTER THREE: SPINNING YARNS

This is your standard Storyteller section. It gives advice as to mood, theme, story ideas, historical settings, chronicles, integrating your story with other setting etc. A badly misplaced sidebar talks about burial at sea. Otherwise, I've got nothing else to say about Chapter Three. Don't get me wrong -- it's well worth reading. There's just very little for me there to write about.

CHAPTER FOUR: LURKERS

This section might as well have been titled "Things to Ghoul, Bind, Or Kill Your Characters With". We got all sorts of overpowered sea animals, fun spirits and Incarna for the Theurge in all of us, several breeds of nasty Fomori both human, animal and... otherwise with a host of new Fomor powers, a puzzling section entitled Ancient Beasts with only one Ancient Beast in it (the gigantic squid, woohoo!), and lastly the latest Major Villainous Force, the Chulorviah. Basically, the Chulorviah a cross between Robert Heinlein's Puppet Masters and some of Lovecraft's more devious creations, mutant mollusk/man hybrids that worship debased, ancient gods of evil (Dagon) intent on, well, being evil.

This is another fun chapter with a slew of creatures/ideas that I will definitely use in one of my upcoming Chronicles. Still, I wish that it was a bit longer, maybe with some more depth to the things already in the chapter and some more information. There's a lot of potential that White Wolf seems to have ignored here.

APPENDIX

This chapter contains very useful rules and stats on a variety of things, including underwater movement, visibility, diving and combat. There's a large section devoted to real-life dangers of the water, including rapture of the deep (nitrogen narcosis), the Bends (decompression sickness), oxygen toxicity, hypothermia, seasickness and so on, and even a fun fictional diving-related danger for vampires called Pressure-Induced Vitae Disassociation, a.k.a. Depth Sweat. I'll leave you to imagine what that is. Also included in the appendix is a list of new weaponry and equipment, for those of you who like that stuff, and a handful of water-related merits and flaws useable by all types of characters.

Blood-Dimmed Tides is a great concept book and provides innumerable plot hooks and story concepts. Unfortunately, White Wolf needed to hire a decent editor for it. Actually, what they really should have done is used or expanded Blood Dimmed Tides to start off a Year of the Ocean series, like Year of the Lotus or Year of the Hunter. There's just too much stuff in too little space in this book. It could have used another couple of hundred pages at the least, and maybe even a hardcover binding. I'd recommend any serious Storyteller who doesn't want to ignore 70% of the earth's surface buy this book, as well as any serious Wraith/Changeling player, but only because it's all we got. I'd also recommend that you hope, beg and whine for something bigger and better. The sea deserves it.

Style: 3 (Average)
Substance: 5 (Excellent!)

Blood-Dimmed Tides
Author: Sean Jaffe, Clayton Oliver, Ethan Skemp and Adam Tinworth Category: game Company/Publisher: White Wolf Publishing Cost: $17.95 USD Page count: 126 ISBN: 1-56504-354-5 Capsule Review by Yagathai on 03/18/99. Genre tags: Science_fiction Modern_day Horror	Why does White Wolf consistently do books on unimportant, insignificant corners and/or groups of the World of Darkness that no one really cares about (Berlin by Night, Clanbook: Baali, Inanimae) and leave really important chunks of their world like the Far East and the 70% of this planet covered with water to be covered later? Blood-Dimmed Tides should have come out long ago. My first impression of Blood-Dimmed Tides, based on the book's cover, was frankly that it looked pretty silly. The title is in a goofy, bad-slasher-movie dripping-blood font and the stylistic cover art, featuring an ordinary looking crab, psychedelic mollusks, ugly were- sharks and black-robed Chthuloid anthropomorphic squids, is pretty bad. But, keeping in mind that I shouldn't judge a book by it's cover, I read the blurb on the back and gave the book a quick flip-through. Then I bought it on the spot. No good review would be complete without some discussion of the artwork, so let's get that out of the way as quickly as possible. On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd rate the art maybe a 4.5 or a 5. There's nothing really exceptional except for the chapter-openers by the inimitable Jeff Rebner and some beautiful half-page images by Alex Sheikman, and there are some really lousy pictures, too. The book could use less badly-drawn, blurry fishes. I'm sure most readers know what fish look like. Don't we? Blood-Dimmed Tides follows a pretty standard WoD supplement format, albeit badly done, so just I'll break my review down by chapter. AND THE SEA SHALL GIVE UP HER DEAD The standard bit of fiction at the beginning is decent, I suppose. I don't have any real complaints about it except the art gives away the ending even before the story begins. INTRODUCTION: RISING TIDES Your standard leader, list of references and How To Use This Book section. Nothing exceptional here. CHAPTER ONE: SEAS OF DARKNESS Ha! The beginning of the real meat-and-potatoes stuff. This chapter begins with what is arguably the silliest concept in the WoD: The Rorqual, a mysterious race of uber-cetaceans that serve as sentient, swimming caerns, nodes, blood pools or what have you that are chock full of Chi, Glamour, Gnosis, Quintessence and so on. But mercifully the Rorqual soon disappear and we get to important stuff. First there's a summary of all the WoD's oceans, grouped geographically. The authors give a sentence or two on who and what live in each region and a brief history and description of each place, as well. The Sargasso Sea and Bermuda Triangle are touched upon, and a sidebar is devoted to Atlantis, or lack thereof. Next comes a brief interlude about famous pirates and what happened to them after they died. Why is it located here? I don't know. But it's still good stuff. After it finishes yo-ho-hoing, Blood-Dimmed Tides goes on to give a quick oceanography/ocean ecology lesson and devotes about a quarter-page each to shipwrecks and coral cities. Once more, why did they stick this in here? Who knows? The same thing applies to the next section, which gives around half-page each on Vampires, Magi, Were-thingies, Wraiths, Changelings, Pentex and Hunters -- this is covered quite extensively in the next chapter. There's no reason to put it here. As expected, the WoD Trinity makes an appearance in a brand new form here. The Weaver/Wyld/Wyrm takes on yet another face, this time as The Fish Bearer, the Shelled One and the Tentacled One. Maritime Umbra and Shadowlands are covered next. Interestingly enough, in the deep sea the Gauntlet is lowered to almost nothing, which means that the line in between reality and Umbra is very tenuous indeed... Last in Chapter One comes a couple pages on Project Deepwater, which is a neat concept. Take two of the WoD's most implacable villainous groups, add in a third group of concentrated evil manipulating the other two, and stir. What comes out is a joint Technocracy/Pentex undersea colony called Project Deepwater. Oh, and meet the Chulorviah, a race of very Chthuloid evildoers that are bad enough to manipulate both Pentex and the Technocracy into doing their dirty work for them. There is SO MUCH information in this chapter that it boggles the mind! And it's SO BADLY organized that it boggles the mind, too. Whoever edited this book must have been asleep at the desk. On the other hand, folks, if you're planning on running any sort of maritime chronicle whatsoever knowledge of this chapter is an absolute must. If you can get past lousy layout and useful bits of information slapped around haphazardly, you'll love this chapter. CHAPTER TWO: DENIZENS Awright! Here's the good stuff that we've all been waiting for. Or at least I have. This chapter covers the beings that live in the water of all different races and states of alive-ness. First come the vampires. I won't spoil too much of the fun for you, but I have to say that the Aquarii, a Gangrel bloodline with ass-kicking variations on the Protean discipline that adapt them for undersea life, are my personal favorites. Also covered in this section are Lasombra antitribu pirates (it's rather inadequate coverage, I think, but I'm biased. My favorite Clan is the Lasombra anti's). Next come a couple of pages on the Changing Breeds. This section is short and sweet, as much is promised in the upcoming Rokea book. Magi at sea are also covered very briefly. Unsurprisingly, the Void Engineers are revealed to be very active in the Water, as are the Sons of Ether. Nephandi and Marauders get only a couple paragraphs of mention each. Wraiths, on the other hand, rate 15-20 pages full of backgrounds, merits, flaws, new skills, Arcanoi, Arts and so on. I don't play Wraith so nothing particularly stuck out at me, except for the fact that water is as solid as land to a ghost... Wraith players that I've shown this section to, however, have ranted and raved and gotten that 'give me that' look in their eyes. One told me that there was enough material in that section to spawn one or two full-fledged supplements by itself. And if you thought Wraith got a big spread, wait until you get to Changeling. Last in the chapter comes info on two new kinds of Changelings: The incredibly beautiful, arrogant Merfolk (half-man half-vertebrate sea creature) and the bestial, Alien-inspired Murdhuacha (me-ROO-cha, half man half-invertebrate sea creature). Both are natural enemies but are forced into an uneasy alliance by Project Deepwater, which has generate enough Banality to kill incredibly large numbers of aquatic Changelings. In the Changeling section we have expository fiction, several pages on each Kith, detailed Mythology, various Houses among each Kith, three brand new arts usable by all Kithain and a handful of treasures. For this chapter alone, the book is worth buying. Again, a whole book could have been devoted to this and there'd be room for more... If you play Wraith or Changeling, this is the most important chapter in the book for you and reason alone for you to make this purchase. If you don't, this chapter is still quite useful. CHAPTER THREE: SPINNING YARNS This is your standard Storyteller section. It gives advice as to mood, theme, story ideas, historical settings, chronicles, integrating your story with other setting etc. A badly misplaced sidebar talks about burial at sea. Otherwise, I've got nothing else to say about Chapter Three. Don't get me wrong -- it's well worth reading. There's just very little for me there to write about. CHAPTER FOUR: LURKERS This section might as well have been titled "Things to Ghoul, Bind, Or Kill Your Characters With". We got all sorts of overpowered sea animals, fun spirits and Incarna for the Theurge in all of us, several breeds of nasty Fomori both human, animal and... otherwise with a host of new Fomor powers, a puzzling section entitled Ancient Beasts with only one Ancient Beast in it (the gigantic squid, woohoo!), and lastly the latest Major Villainous Force, the Chulorviah. Basically, the Chulorviah a cross between Robert Heinlein's Puppet Masters and some of Lovecraft's more devious creations, mutant mollusk/man hybrids that worship debased, ancient gods of evil (Dagon) intent on, well, being evil. This is another fun chapter with a slew of creatures/ideas that I will definitely use in one of my upcoming Chronicles. Still, I wish that it was a bit longer, maybe with some more depth to the things already in the chapter and some more information. There's a lot of potential that White Wolf seems to have ignored here. APPENDIX This chapter contains very useful rules and stats on a variety of things, including underwater movement, visibility, diving and combat. There's a large section devoted to real-life dangers of the water, including rapture of the deep (nitrogen narcosis), the Bends (decompression sickness), oxygen toxicity, hypothermia, seasickness and so on, and even a fun fictional diving-related danger for vampires called Pressure-Induced Vitae Disassociation, a.k.a. Depth Sweat. I'll leave you to imagine what that is. Also included in the appendix is a list of new weaponry and equipment, for those of you who like that stuff, and a handful of water-related merits and flaws useable by all types of characters. Blood-Dimmed Tides is a great concept book and provides innumerable plot hooks and story concepts. Unfortunately, White Wolf needed to hire a decent editor for it. Actually, what they really should have done is used or expanded Blood Dimmed Tides to start off a Year of the Ocean series, like Year of the Lotus or Year of the Hunter. There's just too much stuff in too little space in this book. It could have used another couple of hundred pages at the least, and maybe even a hardcover binding. I'd recommend any serious Storyteller who doesn't want to ignore 70% of the earth's surface buy this book, as well as any serious Wraith/Changeling player, but only because it's all we got. I'd also recommend that you hope, beg and whine for something bigger and better. The sea deserves it. Style: 3 (Average) Substance: 5 (Excellent!)