Clanbook: Followers of Set is part of the Revised Clanbooks series, differentiated from its predecessor Clanbook Setite in giving the subject clan their correct title. This choice must have been made after production began, because the book unfortunately contains a typographical error repeated almost a hundred times, as at the foot of almost every page it is called Clanbook: Setite.
The Followers of Set rank alongside the Lasombra among my least favourite of the thirteen vampire clans in White Wolf’s Vampire setting. In ten years, I have seen a Follower of Set portrayed cleverly and subtly once. I am not alone in my concerns, as they appear very infrequently in games I’ve seen and taken part in. When they do feature, they are almost invariably NPC antagonists.
The Followers of Set, Setites or Serpents are a religious cult as well as a clan, dedicated to the adversary or devil figure in Egyptian mythology. The main body of the clan actively seeks the corruption of humans and other Kindred (vampires) to Set’s service. Corruption is a somewhat nebulous concept which involves making victims give in to suppressed desires and using vampire Disciplines (powers) to create new urges if the subjects do not have suitable ones.
Because of this agenda, they are often portrayed as NPC villains, and pulp villains at that, with priests in robes overseeing underground temples full of snakes and statues, or crazed drug barons with private armies of homicidal addicts. They also do not fit the Western or even Middle Eastern idea of vampires, so horror fans tend to ransack Mummy movies for imagery when using them.
Dean Shomshak’s new book addresses most of these issues, but does little to solve them. The image problem is lessened with advice on playing Setites seriously, but their focus is largely unchanged. One of the revisions fanfared for Clanbook: Followers of Set was to give the Serpents a new purpose, as keepers of forbidden secrets. While there is a small amount of this, it is not a major factor in the text, and corruption and worship are still high on these characters’ agendas.
In their devotion to an evil deity, the Setites most closely resemble the minor Baali bloodline of demon-worshippers, who Storytellers are repeatedly advised to restrict to use as NPCs, while the Serpents are available to players. Are they so different? Not as written here.
Each is a cult within the Vampire world, dedicated to corrupting humans and other Kindred to the service of the devil figure in a particular religious system. Most tellingly, Setites as portrayed here follow ideas common to contemporary Satanists – that people should not feel shame for indulging in their natural emotions, and that their god is a rebel against an unfair creator. Unlike real-world Satanists, however, theirs is an evangelical religion, seeking to actively convert unbelievers, whether they want to convert or not. In this, active Serpents are undeniably evil in the World of Darkness setting, where divine judgement is fact rather than faith. Therefore, why are they considered playable where the Baali are not?
The main difference between these two groups of characters appears to be sheer population density and lack of central control. The Baali are a tiny bloodline which most other vampires seek to kill who apparently include nothing but devout demonists, while the Setites are a full clan, a ‘nation’ of vampires which only some vampires seek to destroy, and the new Clanbook takes care to emphasise that it includes fringe members, heretical cults, and many less than religious vampires. This broadening of the clan does not, however, make the religious Followers any less evil.
Aside from this common reason for the clan’s unpopularity both in and out of character, I have a significant concern with the Set cultists’ modus operandi of corruption, particularly as it relates to one of the unique features of roleplaying games.
To me, a major factor in the appeal of RPGs is the ability to control your character’s actions and reactions. While Vampire and a handful of other systems, from White Wolf and other publishers such as Chaosium, include systems for characters reacting by instinct, the Followers of Set have multiple powers dedicated to temporarily or even permanently altering the emotional makeup of other characters against their will, and the new book gives them even more.
While other powers in the hands of other clans can have this effect, this is the only intended purpose of several Setite abilities. Their power level keeps them out of the hands of starting characters, but they remain something I would not want to see in a game.
The book follows the general Revised Clanbook pattern. Chapter One is “A History of Lies”, where the in-character narrator goes out of his way to confuse and muddy several issues, while being very clear on others. A theory is offered as to why the Camarilla (the largest power group in Vampire) have not wiped the Serpents out, but it lacks weight. Many points of Egyptian history are carefully underlined as having had no Follower involvement. Christian readers are unlikely to be offended by the suggestion that Set found the Crucifixion discomforting, or even that the Setites view Christ as a new guise of their enemy, Osiris. On the other hand, Muslims might find the depiction of Baybars, a major hero of the Crusades, as a ghost being tortured for a thousand years, offensive.
The game information chapter includes new types of Serpent, intended to expand the clan beyond their Egyptian stereotype, and also information on using Followers in a game without making them two-dimensional villains. That said, its section on a typical Setite’s views of the other clans is primarily concerned with corrupting them to Set’s cause. I can imagine an immature player whose character corrupted another PC with a lucky dice roll on one of the new powers using this as justification for his abuse of the other player’s game. The clan-by-clan breakdowns of how to corrupt vampires are also quite repetitive. By the way, there is no information on any of the other supernatural beings in the setting in this section. This includes the new arrivals from Mummy: The Resurrection, who are actively inimical to the Followers. As a result, the new book is already out of date in the World of Darkness metaplot.
The character templates would make interesting NPCs, but I honestly cannot see several of them being used as PCs, particularly in a multi-clan group. Two of the ten, the Psychiatrist and the Schoolmaster of Sin, are examples of the “evil Set cultist gathering followers behind a respectable front” stereotype, and neither seems playable to me. The Native Rights Activist character comes from a bloodline that is cut off from the main Setites, at war with one of the setting’s main vampire sects, and actively avoiding the other. The Entrepreneur (who has no understanding of the Followers of Set beyond trying to sell the equivalent of plastic Jesus hood ornaments) is quite funny, but not very playable except as comic relief. The other six could fit into a mixed group of PCs.
The sample brood is more clearly usable, although I suspect the average group of player characters would try to kill these Followers as soon as they found out they existed. The noted NPC appendix includes a new view of a character from The Kindred Most Wanted, who is interesting, a mad travelling preacher, who is amusing, the signature Setite from the Clan Novels, who is not given enough coverage to form a clear view as I have not read them, and the leading light of an Indian Follower bloodline, who is intended to be “an epic adversary” for PCs but, if not played very subtly, could easily end up as a supervillain.
In terms of style, Mr. Shomshak’s writing is accessible, and apart from the regularly-repeated error of “Clanbook: Setite” the text does not have an excessive number of typos. Christopher Shy provides dreamy frontispieces, photographs sketched on apparently by hand as well as mouse, as well as his character portraits, and Leif Jones’s template illustrations work with the characters. Michael Gaydos’s stark black and white work adds visuals to a few sections of game advice while Drew Tucker’s murky watercolours reflect debased Egyptian religious art well.
In all, I was disappointed with Clanbook: Followers of Set. While it does everything a Revised Clanbook should do for those who want new ways to use the Followers of Set, the promised new portrayal of the clan as keepers of secrets has not changed them sufficiently to improve my opinions on them. I still dislike them as a clan of vampires and, more importantly, as a game concept.
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