Religious and philosophical themes and elements have long been one of my favorite elements of role playing games. Tossing in a cool religion or twisted philosophy into a game is often a sure-fire way of getting me interested. Hell, often times even poorly executed ideas get me excited as I desperately try to puzzle out how they could possibly make sense and work, fleshing them out to the point where they make sense.
Sins of the Blood, with its subtitle of “A Sourcebook of Kindred Heresies” understandably got my motor running, as I was expecting a book packed with awesome cults and Paths of Enlightenment. The book I got had several surprises for me, however; some good, some bad.
The book starts with a simple introduction that establishes the rarity of the heresies contained within not by simply repeating “They’re rare! Not many of them!” but by actually explaining that if you toss all of these things into a game all the time, they lose the very mystery that makes them so cool and appealing. Then it jumps right into what I was waiting for the most, Humanity and Paths of Enlightenment. Not only is there a nice section discussing the social realities of Paths among both sects and all the clans (Just how do you learn a Path in the Camarilla? Do the Independent clans teach their Paths to outsiders?), but some old and infamously bad Paths are revisited and revised with the same talent that has marked all of the moral codes in Vampire revised. The Path of the Scorched Heart, which holds emotion and subjective judgment as the highest sins, the Path of Self-Focus, drawn from Taoist lore, and the Path of Harmony, which sees the vampire not as an unnatural aberration but simply as a natural predator, are all given space and thought. Instead of the laughably poor excuses for moral codes they were in their initial printing, they have become relatively solid foundations that you can use to build understandable characters with. This is particularly gratifying to me, as salvaging those Paths (among others) has long been a personal project of mine.
Something I wasn’t expecting in this chapter was another look both at Golconda and its opposite – vampires who have lost their Humanity altogether and live as mindless beasts. Called wights, complete rules for running them are provided. The image of monstrous vampires who have lost almost all conscious thought is definitely moving, especially for a game focused on morality or Humanity. Unfortunately, the information on Golconda was not as interesting, as nothing new was really said. The familiar mantra about Golconda and the Suspire was repeated, but not much else. Personally, I doubt that I would ever include attainment of Golconda in my game (the search for it, however, is another matter entirely) but I would have liked at least a sidebar with concrete tips on how to stage and narrate the route to transcendent enlightenment. Sure, it’s supposed to be different for each person, but a bunch of examples or at least a checklist would have been nice.
The second chapter was a more unpleasant surprise, sadly. Covering the autarkis (those vampires who join no sect), Anarchs, diablerists and defectors, it seems remarkably thin, and lacking in the blunt frankness of other Vampire revised material on the same groups. The Anarchs as described here were not as interesting as those in the Guide to the Camarilla and the section on sect defectors talks a great deal about how horrible their lot is and the trouble they have to go through without provide enough detail or ideas to really make it interesting. Both take much too long to say things that are largely already obvious. The section on diablerie was better, with at least some nice ideas, mostly in the form of various faction’s rationale for denouncing the practice, but it really should have included update rules for diablerie. It seems like something of an afterthought as it is now. It was the autarkis, however, that I found the worst handled. A topic that would have been stretched to cover a few pages gets almost seven. Suffering from the same lack of insight as the parts on the Anarchs, it also attempts to connect the autarkis to various cardinal sins for some reason or another, which only results in creating a rather artificial atmosphere for the entire too long section.
Chapter three was the biggest surprise of the book. Not only was I not expecting it, but I was amazed at how good it was. All about cults, it’s a straightforward guide to what they are, how they operate, how to build one and even why you would want to bother with them. More role playing supplements need simply, clear writing like this. There are frank lists of the methods that cults use to keep members in line and why they work. Categories of different kinds of cults talk about their strengths and their weaknesses and standard modes of operations. An overview of just what you can get from controlling a cult makes them very, very tempting indeed. On top of all that, there are eight examples to illustrate those points, not counting the whole “Doesn’t all of this sound exactly like the sects and clans?” tone of the entire chapter. What more could you ask for when thinking about introducing cults into your game?
Then comes the nifty powers, as Dark Thaumaturgy is revisited and revised. The five classic infernal paths are provided, with a handful of rituals (including some for Koldunic and Assamite sorcery, just because). Like many things from the old Sabbat books, Dark Thaumaturgy was somewhat infamous for being abusively powerful, but most Storytellers should find these new versions much more palatable. With the optional rules for the prices for learning each path, I’d actually like to give some of these powers to my players, just to watch them twist and suffer under the demonic torment. Sometimes that’s just what being a GM is all about. Either way, the paths are much improved, both in power level and in style. Most notable among the rituals are the infamous Ritual of the Bitter Rose and the Quenching the Lambent Flame ritual. The first allows multiple vampires to gain the benefits of diablerizing a single vampire, but is not quite as abusive as it sounds, as it takes exceptionally powerful blood to be successful. The latter ritual is something I’ve been waiting for since Children of the Night, since one of the NPCs described there was the target of it, as it increases a vampire’s generation to 13, no matter their descent from Caine.
The appendix was the another surprise, as some of the factions described within it are simply genius. There are nine groups of varying size and influence, all of them associated with the “heresies” described in the book to one extent or another. Some, like the Thrill Kill Club bent on performing outrageous stunts or the members of the Red List who have banded together for safety and formed the Redline, are only and I probably wouldn’t ever use them. Others, like the Associates who work as lawyers with Hell or the vampires scattered throughout the world with the knowledge of Alexandria encoded into their fingerprints, are so cool that I have to resist the urge to highjack every Vampire to come up with some excuse to use them. Oh, the horror. Either way, it’s a great way to end a book.
Sins of the Blood isn’t pure gold all the way through and there is a lot more I would have liked to get from it, but it is a very solid, very useful book for people looking to dabble in the more bizarre and rare aspects of the World of Darkness. It’s also well-written for the most part and nicely illustrated, Troy Nixey’s pictures in the cult chapter in particular, though the venerably Christopher Shy provides a damn nice demonic boxing match on page 94. What’s more, at only $17.95, it has a nice, comfortable price-per-page ratio.
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