The Inside Scoop on Gaming

In previous reviews, I've covered the first six of White Wolf's "Clan Novels," Toreador, Tzimisce, Gangrel, Setite, Ventrue and Lasombra, a series which started out pretty bad but has steadily improved as Gherbod Fleming, Kathleen Ryan and Richard Dansky turned their respective portions of what White Wolf calls an "epic saga" into genuine delights (the latter four of the six mentioned above, with Fleming responsible for Gangrel and Ventrue). Now I turn to the seventh of the thirteen novels which will complete this series, Assammite, another solid work by Gherbod Fleming.

As with other reviews, I'll be dealing with:

tone, or the general feel of the novel,
characterization, or the personalities new and old which we see in it,
plot, or the events and their importance, believability and entertainment value, and
what this novel means for the series as a whole.

Tone

Toreador had the feel of a Danielle Steele novel gone horribly wrong. Eric Griffin brought us Tzimisce, which had some great characters and some beautiful ambience and specific scenes, but wound down to a disappointing finish when Griffin was (unfortunately) saddled with continuing a thoroughly uninteresting storyline thus far. But ever since, the series has taken a much more mature, witty and entertaining tone, with Setite taking us into the bowels of one vampire's manipulations of everyone around him, Gangrel showing us true tragedy and heroism, and Lasombra turning into the most cinematic novel I've ever read, with hip, witty dialogue and action to make you stay up all night (which I did) unable to resist the urge to turn the page just one more time.

Now, in all honesty, here is where I was convinced I would start to hate the series again. While I've become a definite fan of Fleming, I've always loathed Assamites, who suffered from the exact same sort of "scary foreigner" presentation which crippled Setites until Kathleen Ryan worked her magic on them. I just wasn't convinced that Fleming could make me like an Assamite, no matter how much I enjoyed his other works. Assamites have, without exception, been portrayed as the "scary rag-heads" of the World of Darkness, slipping in and out of shadows, cacking your PCs from afar, and generally being big, to be frank, lamers. To be sure, I have known of examples of particularly creative gamers who were able to breathe life into Assamite PCs, and give them three dimensions, but those tales are rare, and I'm afraid I've had my fill of noble, stoic assassins. In short, when I think "Assamites," I think "gack."

Boy, was I pleasantly surprised.

I found Clan Novel: Assamite to be gratefully free of the B-movie stereotype of scimitar-wielding Mohameddans (the archaic term used to emphasize the dated quality of such 2-D portrayals, I assure you). Instead, we have a complex philosophical struggle played out in the mind of a main character who is somewhat less than 100% sure of her kick-butt-ness. We have creaky old elders who are afraid of the future, and creaky little freaky child-elders who are actually sort of scary. We have heady themes dealing with the unnatural enforcement of a parent-child relationship among vampires and their spawn, and we even get a glimpse of how, despite the Beast's ability to subsume all physical impulses into the urge for blood, the shadowy remnant of a vampire's emotional needs managing to come up for air and a taste of satisfaction.

Oh, to be sure, there's plenty of action -- I mean, really, no matter what White Wolf says about how new and improved Assamites are for V:tM 3rd Edition, they are a clan of assassins -- but it's mixed in with some serious heavyweight emotional content that's nicely paced and blends well with the other novels. Rather than being something at home among the Conan the Barbarian novels, full of lots of not-so-scary vampires killing other 2-dimensional stereotypes, we actually get a plot. Surprise of surprises, I say. It caught my attention so early on, in fact, that despite having read commentary on a couple of V:tM-related mailing lists that the book was boring, I was immediately drawn in. You'd think Fleming was trying to go after Kathleen Ryan's title of "most emotionally complex novel so far," and that's a competition I didn't mind at all finding in this novel.

Characterization

I'm pleased to say that, whereas Ventrue went against the grain of Gangrel and had a cast of seeming thousands, none of whom got explored as fully as I would have appreciated, Fleming returns to a previous pattern by taking one character and building the entire story around her, letting the "extras" fall into place around Fatima.

Fatima, in turn, gets a lot of examination as a main character, and she turns out to be really and truly fleshed out. I think the only topic Fleming could have covered a little better, when it comes to his star, is her mortal life. All we really know is that her entire family was killed by the infidel Europeans during the Crusades, and she swore to become a killer herself to avenge her people. I was vaguely disappointed by this -- it danced dangerously close to the Assamite cardboard-cutout stereotype, and even reminded me of the horrible AD&D adventurer stereotype (I have yet to see a single AD&D PC, including my own, whose parents weren't tragically murdered by wolves/bugbears/dragons/Cyricists/rabid plantlife, causing the PC to devote their life to Righting Wrongs; c'mon, people, it's been done). We also know that she was a faithful Muslim, but again, that's par-for-course for Assamites. But, c'est la vie. She's an elder of the clan, foremost among its assassins, and after a few hundred years of killing for pay, those roots might not be so important after all.

What Fleming most definitely gets right here is the nature of Fatima's conflicts, both internal and external. She's utterly loyal to her clan, and utterly loyal to her religious heritage. She's the first female to be the #1 ranked assassin in the clan, which causes no small measure of quiet discomfort for her clanmates, raised in a part of the world where female circumcision is still considered to be somehow healthy and normal, and women are considered property by many men (if you think now I'm playing to stereotypes, I invite you to do some homework and to realize that I am perfectly aware that gender inequality exists world-wide). She fears and loves her sire, and when unexpected events turn up, she's genuinely surprised and even sometimes confused. She's fallible -- and she knows it, and acts accordingly. She's conflicted by her emotional connection to Lucita, star of Clan Novel: Lasombra, and her own desire to uphold her honor in the eyes of her superiors. She's both teacher to those new to the clan and obedient underling to her elders, few though they be. In short, Fatima is delightfully well-rounded. Her emotional struggles feel realistic, her confusion feels genuine, her solutions make sense given her personality and circumstances. Much like Fleming managed a major, major characterization triumph in his depiction of Ramona in Gangrel, and Kathleen Ryan produced in her writing of Hesha in Setite, Fleming manages to make Fatima the first Assamite I genuinely liked.

I'm not really going to deal with his portrayal of the bit players in this novel, even the "major" bit players such as Ur-Shulgi. Fleming puts them infront of us only very briefly, and almost entirely they're portrayed in the context of Fatima's interactions with, and attitutudes towards, these Uberfigures of the World of Darkness. Wisely, I think he intends to leave their natures and personalities more a mystery than anything else; who would want to try to capture the mind of someone with Intelligence 9 (on a scale of 1 to 5, generally), anyway? Rather than disappoint, Fleming lets our imaginations take over, and I think this is worth a few kudos.

The other two characters in the novel are Lucita and her sire, Archbishop Moncada of the Sabbat. Moncada is the ultimate architect of the Sabbat's still-ridiculous victories over the Camarilla in America, and one of those Uberfigures it's dangerous to portray. However, in this series, he's started to morph from the mumbling and oh-so-scary-no-really elder with an obsession with God and some masochistic tendencies into a genuinely messed-up-in-the-head old elder who's worthy of being afraid of. I think this novel, more than any other (more than Lasombra itself, perhaps?) accomplishes that beautifully. Moncada is gross in this book. It's more than the fact that he flagellates himself for hours in an attempt to scourge himself of sin in the eyes of God, and then kills indiscriminately like the agent of the Devil, and thus part of God's plan, that he sees himself to be. It's...I can't really find words to describe how well Fleming manages to encapsulate Moncado's monstrousness in this book. Suffice to say, it's very much worth reading.

Lucita isn't a topic I'll spend much time on. Richard Dansky turned Lucita into one of the hippest vampires in the world, in Lasombra, and I'll simply say that Fleming does her justice. It's sort of disconcerting to watch the very subtle shifts in characters' speech patterns, when one star is handed off from one author to another between novels, but overall, Fleming did a fine job of capturing the spirit of Lucita and inserting her into this story. More than anything, Fleming does a fantastic job of showing us more of the ultimately horrifying relationship, such as it is, between Lucita and Moncada. This is a topic that I think probably hits home with a lot of Vampire players and fans: the conflict between parent and child. I know that for me, personally, my parents think I'm a bit of a weirdo for still liking scary little stories about vampires, despite being in my mid-twenties and a successful professional. There are a number of things, in fact, about the lifestyle of your average goth/gamer/geek/writer/(whatever else fits in the Vampire player & fan stereotype, to use a stereotype myself) which probably cause or are symptoms of subtle frictions between real-life parents and children. In the relationship between Moncada and Lucita, Fleming elevates these personal conflicts to the level of ancient vampires with shameful decadencies and truly evil urges. It's fantastic. And best of all, it hits home, connecting the reader to the emotions of the storyline.

Plot

Okay, so I can't say much here without giving away a major, major spoiler, because the entire book revolves around the build-up to a truly earth-shaking event in the world of vampires. However, I can say a thing or two without, hopefully, giving much away.

For so much of this book, despite how much I enjoyed watching the emotions and conflicts play out across its pages, I kept wondering, What the heck is going on, anyway? What does this have to do with anything? This book doesn't touch even once on the Eye of Hazimel, and about five nanoseconds of it even take place in North America, where 99% of the rest of the series has happened. If you're reading this series to see whether the Sabbat or the Camarilla will win, or who's going to get the Eye of Hazimel and end up killing everyone else, well, you're going to be disappointed...

...for most of it. Oh, damn, got close to a spoiler there.

The fact is that, well, this novel sort of (and I say sort of because it's not an entirely bad thing) suffers from the same thing which very, very vaguely hobbled Gangrel: the in-depth examinations of motivations and feelings sort of obscures the action. Stuff happens...and then everyone talks or thinks about it for twenty pages...and then finally stuff happens again, to put it in its most simplistic form. Is this inherently dull, though? No -- not to me, anyway. If you're looking for more kick-butt cinematic shots of one vampire killing another, a la Lasombra, though, well, you might do well to skip to right about page 200 and hope you figure out exactly what was going on beforehand. Sure, there are action scenes, but they're not as good as Dansky's. On the other hand, this plot actually revolves around the character, and actually revolves around the clan, unlike some of the series' starters (note the big, flashing, neon sign that reads 'Tzimisce!' over my head). It's got a lot going for it -- but mainly in that it (a) has such an earth-shaking finish, and (b) does such a good job of explaining and exploring the emotional content of the book. Like I said, this won't end up where I expected it, in a trash heap bookshelf beside a Conan novel. This is a grown-up story, where emotions are as important as actions, and for that reason I think it will fail to appeal to the sort of people who said to themselves, "Oh gods yes, a novel about Assamites! It'll be 250 pages of Quietus and Celerity! Sweet!"

What it Means

So what does it mean for the rest of the series? I can't say without getting dangerously close to that spoiler, except to say that things will change big-time for more than a handful of characters in the series and the World of Darkness in general. Yowzers.

It also means that the series has definitely matured. I am now, officially, looking forward to the rest of this series. I chomp at the bit, my friends, for more.

That's why I'm so glad I get to walk back to the office (I'm typing this in on lunch break) and write my review of Clan Novel: Ravnos. Now let's just hope for more of the same thing with Malkavian, shall we?

To sum up, at the end of this novel, I thought:

Wow. That was good.
Wow. I liked an Assamite.
Wow. I must read more.

Just go get the dang thing, okay?

Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 4 (Meaty)

Clan Novel: Assamite
Author: Gherbod Fleming Category: Novel Company/Publisher: White Wolf Games Studio Line: Vampire: the Masquerade Cost: $5.99 Page count: 265 ISBN: 1-56504-809-1 SKU: WW11107 Playtest Review by Michael G. Williams on 03/30/00. Genre tags: Fantasy Modern_day Horror Espionage Conspiracy Vampire Gothic Diceless	In previous reviews, I've covered the first six of White Wolf's "Clan Novels," Toreador, Tzimisce, Gangrel, Setite, Ventrue and Lasombra, a series which started out pretty bad but has steadily improved as Gherbod Fleming, Kathleen Ryan and Richard Dansky turned their respective portions of what White Wolf calls an "epic saga" into genuine delights (the latter four of the six mentioned above, with Fleming responsible for Gangrel and Ventrue). Now I turn to the seventh of the thirteen novels which will complete this series, Assammite, another solid work by Gherbod Fleming. As with other reviews, I'll be dealing with: tone, or the general feel of the novel, characterization, or the personalities new and old which we see in it, plot, or the events and their importance, believability and entertainment value, and what this novel means for the series as a whole. Tone Toreador had the feel of a Danielle Steele novel gone horribly wrong. Eric Griffin brought us Tzimisce, which had some great characters and some beautiful ambience and specific scenes, but wound down to a disappointing finish when Griffin was (unfortunately) saddled with continuing a thoroughly uninteresting storyline thus far. But ever since, the series has taken a much more mature, witty and entertaining tone, with Setite taking us into the bowels of one vampire's manipulations of everyone around him, Gangrel showing us true tragedy and heroism, and Lasombra turning into the most cinematic novel I've ever read, with hip, witty dialogue and action to make you stay up all night (which I did) unable to resist the urge to turn the page just one more time. Now, in all honesty, here is where I was convinced I would start to hate the series again. While I've become a definite fan of Fleming, I've always loathed Assamites, who suffered from the exact same sort of "scary foreigner" presentation which crippled Setites until Kathleen Ryan worked her magic on them. I just wasn't convinced that Fleming could make me like an Assamite, no matter how much I enjoyed his other works. Assamites have, without exception, been portrayed as the "scary rag-heads" of the World of Darkness, slipping in and out of shadows, cacking your PCs from afar, and generally being big, to be frank, lamers. To be sure, I have known of examples of particularly creative gamers who were able to breathe life into Assamite PCs, and give them three dimensions, but those tales are rare, and I'm afraid I've had my fill of noble, stoic assassins. In short, when I think "Assamites," I think "gack." Boy, was I pleasantly surprised. I found Clan Novel: Assamite to be gratefully free of the B-movie stereotype of scimitar-wielding Mohameddans (the archaic term used to emphasize the dated quality of such 2-D portrayals, I assure you). Instead, we have a complex philosophical struggle played out in the mind of a main character who is somewhat less than 100% sure of her kick-butt-ness. We have creaky old elders who are afraid of the future, and creaky little freaky child-elders who are actually sort of scary. We have heady themes dealing with the unnatural enforcement of a parent-child relationship among vampires and their spawn, and we even get a glimpse of how, despite the Beast's ability to subsume all physical impulses into the urge for blood, the shadowy remnant of a vampire's emotional needs managing to come up for air and a taste of satisfaction. Oh, to be sure, there's plenty of action -- I mean, really, no matter what White Wolf says about how new and improved Assamites are for V:tM 3rd Edition, they are a clan of assassins -- but it's mixed in with some serious heavyweight emotional content that's nicely paced and blends well with the other novels. Rather than being something at home among the Conan the Barbarian novels, full of lots of not-so-scary vampires killing other 2-dimensional stereotypes, we actually get a plot. Surprise of surprises, I say. It caught my attention so early on, in fact, that despite having read commentary on a couple of V:tM-related mailing lists that the book was boring, I was immediately drawn in. You'd think Fleming was trying to go after Kathleen Ryan's title of "most emotionally complex novel so far," and that's a competition I didn't mind at all finding in this novel. Characterization I'm pleased to say that, whereas Ventrue went against the grain of Gangrel and had a cast of seeming thousands, none of whom got explored as fully as I would have appreciated, Fleming returns to a previous pattern by taking one character and building the entire story around her, letting the "extras" fall into place around Fatima. Fatima, in turn, gets a lot of examination as a main character, and she turns out to be really and truly fleshed out. I think the only topic Fleming could have covered a little better, when it comes to his star, is her mortal life. All we really know is that her entire family was killed by the infidel Europeans during the Crusades, and she swore to become a killer herself to avenge her people. I was vaguely disappointed by this -- it danced dangerously close to the Assamite cardboard-cutout stereotype, and even reminded me of the horrible AD&D adventurer stereotype (I have yet to see a single AD&D PC, including my own, whose parents weren't tragically murdered by wolves/bugbears/dragons/Cyricists/rabid plantlife, causing the PC to devote their life to Righting Wrongs; c'mon, people, it's been done). We also know that she was a faithful Muslim, but again, that's par-for-course for Assamites. But, c'est la vie. She's an elder of the clan, foremost among its assassins, and after a few hundred years of killing for pay, those roots might not be so important after all. What Fleming most definitely gets right here is the nature of Fatima's conflicts, both internal and external. She's utterly loyal to her clan, and utterly loyal to her religious heritage. She's the first female to be the #1 ranked assassin in the clan, which causes no small measure of quiet discomfort for her clanmates, raised in a part of the world where female circumcision is still considered to be somehow healthy and normal, and women are considered property by many men (if you think now I'm playing to stereotypes, I invite you to do some homework and to realize that I am perfectly aware that gender inequality exists world-wide). She fears and loves her sire, and when unexpected events turn up, she's genuinely surprised and even sometimes confused. She's fallible -- and she knows it, and acts accordingly. She's conflicted by her emotional connection to Lucita, star of Clan Novel: Lasombra, and her own desire to uphold her honor in the eyes of her superiors. She's both teacher to those new to the clan and obedient underling to her elders, few though they be. In short, Fatima is delightfully well-rounded. Her emotional struggles feel realistic, her confusion feels genuine, her solutions make sense given her personality and circumstances. Much like Fleming managed a major, major characterization triumph in his depiction of Ramona in Gangrel, and Kathleen Ryan produced in her writing of Hesha in Setite, Fleming manages to make Fatima the first Assamite I genuinely liked. I'm not really going to deal with his portrayal of the bit players in this novel, even the "major" bit players such as Ur-Shulgi. Fleming puts them infront of us only very briefly, and almost entirely they're portrayed in the context of Fatima's interactions with, and attitutudes towards, these Uberfigures of the World of Darkness. Wisely, I think he intends to leave their natures and personalities more a mystery than anything else; who would want to try to capture the mind of someone with Intelligence 9 (on a scale of 1 to 5, generally), anyway? Rather than disappoint, Fleming lets our imaginations take over, and I think this is worth a few kudos. The other two characters in the novel are Lucita and her sire, Archbishop Moncada of the Sabbat. Moncada is the ultimate architect of the Sabbat's still-ridiculous victories over the Camarilla in America, and one of those Uberfigures it's dangerous to portray. However, in this series, he's started to morph from the mumbling and oh-so-scary-no-really elder with an obsession with God and some masochistic tendencies into a genuinely messed-up-in-the-head old elder who's worthy of being afraid of. I think this novel, more than any other (more than Lasombra itself, perhaps?) accomplishes that beautifully. Moncada is gross in this book. It's more than the fact that he flagellates himself for hours in an attempt to scourge himself of sin in the eyes of God, and then kills indiscriminately like the agent of the Devil, and thus part of God's plan, that he sees himself to be. It's...I can't really find words to describe how well Fleming manages to encapsulate Moncado's monstrousness in this book. Suffice to say, it's very much worth reading. Lucita isn't a topic I'll spend much time on. Richard Dansky turned Lucita into one of the hippest vampires in the world, in Lasombra, and I'll simply say that Fleming does her justice. It's sort of disconcerting to watch the very subtle shifts in characters' speech patterns, when one star is handed off from one author to another between novels, but overall, Fleming did a fine job of capturing the spirit of Lucita and inserting her into this story. More than anything, Fleming does a fantastic job of showing us more of the ultimately horrifying relationship, such as it is, between Lucita and Moncada. This is a topic that I think probably hits home with a lot of Vampire players and fans: the conflict between parent and child. I know that for me, personally, my parents think I'm a bit of a weirdo for still liking scary little stories about vampires, despite being in my mid-twenties and a successful professional. There are a number of things, in fact, about the lifestyle of your average goth/gamer/geek/writer/(whatever else fits in the Vampire player & fan stereotype, to use a stereotype myself) which probably cause or are symptoms of subtle frictions between real-life parents and children. In the relationship between Moncada and Lucita, Fleming elevates these personal conflicts to the level of ancient vampires with shameful decadencies and truly evil urges. It's fantastic. And best of all, it hits home, connecting the reader to the emotions of the storyline. Plot Okay, so I can't say much here without giving away a major, major spoiler, because the entire book revolves around the build-up to a truly earth-shaking event in the world of vampires. However, I can say a thing or two without, hopefully, giving much away. For so much of this book, despite how much I enjoyed watching the emotions and conflicts play out across its pages, I kept wondering, What the heck is going on, anyway? What does this have to do with anything? This book doesn't touch even once on the Eye of Hazimel, and about five nanoseconds of it even take place in North America, where 99% of the rest of the series has happened. If you're reading this series to see whether the Sabbat or the Camarilla will win, or who's going to get the Eye of Hazimel and end up killing everyone else, well, you're going to be disappointed... ...for most of it. Oh, damn, got close to a spoiler there. The fact is that, well, this novel sort of (and I say sort of because it's not an entirely bad thing) suffers from the same thing which very, very vaguely hobbled Gangrel: the in-depth examinations of motivations and feelings sort of obscures the action. Stuff happens...and then everyone talks or thinks about it for twenty pages...and then finally stuff happens again, to put it in its most simplistic form. Is this inherently dull, though? No -- not to me, anyway. If you're looking for more kick-butt cinematic shots of one vampire killing another, a la Lasombra, though, well, you might do well to skip to right about page 200 and hope you figure out exactly what was going on beforehand. Sure, there are action scenes, but they're not as good as Dansky's. On the other hand, this plot actually revolves around the character, and actually revolves around the clan, unlike some of the series' starters (note the big, flashing, neon sign that reads 'Tzimisce!' over my head). It's got a lot going for it -- but mainly in that it (a) has such an earth-shaking finish, and (b) does such a good job of explaining and exploring the emotional content of the book. Like I said, this won't end up where I expected it, in a trash heap bookshelf beside a Conan novel. This is a grown-up story, where emotions are as important as actions, and for that reason I think it will fail to appeal to the sort of people who said to themselves, "Oh gods yes, a novel about Assamites! It'll be 250 pages of Quietus and Celerity! Sweet!" What it Means So what does it mean for the rest of the series? I can't say without getting dangerously close to that spoiler, except to say that things will change big-time for more than a handful of characters in the series and the World of Darkness in general. Yowzers. It also means that the series has definitely matured. I am now, officially, looking forward to the rest of this series. I chomp at the bit, my friends, for more. That's why I'm so glad I get to walk back to the office (I'm typing this in on lunch break) and write my review of Clan Novel: Ravnos. Now let's just hope for more of the same thing with Malkavian, shall we? To sum up, at the end of this novel, I thought: Wow. That was good. Wow. I liked an Assamite. Wow. I must read more. Just go get the dang thing, okay? Style: 4 (Classy and well done) Substance: 4 (Meaty)