The Lords of the Night: Vampires is a 128 page, softcover d20 sourcebook from Bottled Imp Games, a UK company. It's somewhat hard to find in the US, there hasn't been much PR for it here (or I missed it). In fact, I hadn't even heard of it until a couple weeks ago, in a EN World thread, in which the company was soliciting authors for an upcoming product.

As I love vampires (who doesn't?), I immediately ordered it from FRPGames (for $15, too, the retail price is $20), and like always, it was sent to me speedily (end of plug :-p)

I had fairly high hopes for this (I rarely buy something as soon as I hear about it), and I was not disappointed. Very impressed, actually. It's not just Vampire the Masquerade with the serial numbers filed off. There's an influence, mostly in style, but it's probably closest to Blade (the movies, anyway), with a bit of Brian Lumley and Nightlife, thrown in. But that description doesn't really do it justice. Not by a long shot.

The basic premise of the vampires in the book is relatively original. It seems that in the days past, in a standard D&D fantasy world, a group of overzealous do-gooders were after an evil something or other (god?) and kind of got carried away and destroyed an entire city of people, including many innocents.

This really really pissed off this newly born god, Vangual. So, somehow he curses the people who razed the city. They become vampires, or the Children of Vangual, and then they in turn created more. There's a lot more to the backstory, it's pretty complicated. But pretty cool. Maybe not super-original, but not overly angst-ridden, either.

So, this book is largely about the Children of Vangual as characters. Presumably Player Characters, but they also make great villains.

There are several different types of vampire in this book. Most really aren't the traditional sort of vampire that you find in Earth legend. Nor are they just ripoffs of Vampire: The Masqerade. They're ickier.

There's the Ash Vampire. They're kinda like the Defilers of Dark Sun - they corrupt and destroy nature and the earth. There's the Black Brood, which is more or less the standard vampire. There's the Fire Vampire. They were burned to death, yet rose again. They still burn in undeath. There's the "Lost". These are actually not true vampires, but angels or celestials that have fallen to earth as punishment for some transgression. Then there's Mock Vampires, who are decayed more than the average vampire, and so look a lot like Zombies. There's the Ravenous Vampire, which are disease ridden and hungrier than other vampires. There's a sort of vampire for the Drow - the Shadow Vampire. There's a giant vampire, who are used as bodyguards - the Vangaard. There's also the Vampire Scion, which is a vampire who is a slave to another vampire. (The cover of the book seems to show each type of vampire)

Lastly, there is the Dhampyre, or half-vampire. These are actually from folklore, but were popularized by the comic and movie character Blade. They have many of the vampire's strengths and only few of their weaknesses. They can sense vampires (I believe this was the folklore version's only real power), so they make excellent vampire hunters (and conversely, they tend to be hunted by vampires). Unlike ones from folklore (but like Blade, if I remember correctly), they also have to drink blood occasionally.

There are also the vampire touched. These are humans that have had their blood sucked by vampires. The descriptions of these seem to follow Dracula (the novel) very closely. Ones that have been sucked only once are more or less normal, just weak. But thrice sucked (or touched, it's called) are almost vampires themselves, and very pliable to the drinking vampire's will.

How the vampires work, mechanically, is a bit tricky, but it works well. Most of the vampire types are actually templates, and they all have ECLs or effective character levels based on the vampire's age bracket (The age bracket affects a variety of things, actually.) There are 6 age brackets, from 0 to 5. PC vampires are likely to only reach 0 to 1 during most campaigns, with 2 barely being possible. While this might seem a bit artificial mechanically, and some might think a monster class would be more suitable, the way it actually works is quite elegant.

While each template has a set number of abilities and such, there is a lot of customization possible. The various vampires can gain special abilities, called "Dark Gifts". These largely depend on the vampire's age - they get 3 per age bracket, and 1 for every 3 class levels they gain. These abilities in many ways are just like feats, with requirements and chains and such, only more powerful (and they often require the spending of blood points), though many have age requirements, being available only to the older and more powerful vampires. Most of the traditional vampire powers are represented, from flying to changing form to more obscure ones, like climbing like the spider or controlling the weather somewhat.

While vampires are very very tough, they also have a large number of weaknesses. Sunlight is probably the biggest, but also many lesser ones. Allergies to silver, wood, garlic. Not being able to cross running water, or enter a house without being invited, and most other traditional problems (though most are from movies). Buying off or eliminating these various lesser weaknesses is possible by using a feat.

These weaknesses making running a game of all vampires a bit tricky. Because they are limited at first (probably) to having to sleep at night in their burial place, they're likely stuck in a small area. So at first, city adventures are most suitable. But once they buy off that weakness, they are freer to travel, and can have huge advantages in the standard D&D dungeon crawl. There's a section of the book that discusses this - how to GM vampiric characters (there's also a section for players on how to role-play them).

Vampires also have to worry about "Void". This is basically a very complex system in which they get points for various actions, from committing evil acts to just using their vampiric powers. If they reach a certain number of Void points, they become a step closer to evil. This system is fairly comprehensive, but perhaps more than a bit cumbersome. At least in my brief time GMing several vampire characters, I've found it to be. But it's easy to handle on a more vague level, just by using common sense.

Vampires, like most people in the d20 system, have a class, but they have a large number of special classes they can use. Black Classes, they are called. They are essentially a darker, evil version of the various core classes, which the vampire can take if they choose, instead of the normal core class (and if they already have levels in the normal core class, they can convert). They are generally identical to the core class, only the special abilities are different (in a way, they're like a template applied to a class). The Black Classes are perhaps a little more powerful than regular classes, but only slightly so.

There are only Black versions of the standard core classes - no Black Arcane Archer or Black Blackguard, etc, but there are 4 new prestige classes introduced. These are also pretty evil. The Black Cabal, Blood Mage, Blood Knight, Devoted Incarnate, all are classes for organizations of evil vampires. These things have very high requirements, and almost certainly are not for PCs. The Blood Knight is sort of a Blackguard on steroids (or rather, steroid soaked blood).

There's a decent number of vampire related spells and spells for vampires (around 60, by a quick estimate). Many are pretty bloody, not surprisingly. Especially the blood attack spells (for vampires), such as Blood Geyser. Also a small selection of vampiric magic items. Again, some are a bit gorey and more than a bit evil. For instance, there's Shadow Armor, which hooks into the vampire's flesh with little hooks.

While this product is largely setting independant, it does describe the city of vampires, Avystervan. This is a very dark place, both literally and figuratively. This is where the book reminds me a bit of some of Brian Lumley's Necroscope novels - the one set in the world of vampires. Let's just say it's not for the faint of heart. But it can probably be dropped into most worlds without a problem - it's located on the fringes of the known world, in the remote mountains somewhere, underground.

Vampires have gotten to be so commonplace (thanks to Buffy, V:TM, Anne Rice, Sesame Street, IRS), they really aren't scary anymore. Or creepy. Or disturbing. (I mean, who is really afraid of Tom Cruise as a vampire? His acting maybe...but even his ex-wife makes fun of him). Yet for 100s of years, they terrified people. This product goes a long way towards making vampires scary again. Or at least gruesome. And evil. Definitely evil. But not completely evil.

Beyond what I've mentioned, there's a lot of other stuff. This book is absolutely crammed with text. The margins are very small. As it's from the UK, it's generally written in UK English, but sometimes they try to use American spellings, like "armor". But sometimes they still spell it "armour". Probably would have been best to just stick with UK spelling. There's not a lot of art, and it's all smaller pieces, but it's is generally well done. The font used for headings is a bit weird, but very readable.

The only thing about the book I didn't like were the tiny boxes of famous quotes, slightly altered to fit vampires (and the person who said was labeled as a different type of the Children of Vangual). For instance, "'Rumors of my uneath have been greatly exaggerated!' - Mark Twain, Black Bard". This was pretty dorky, I thought, on several different levels. But that's just about the only thing in the book I didn't like. This is probably the best d20 book I own next to Call of Cthulhu d20. It's that good.

If you like vampires, and d20, this is a product you should run out and buy immediately. While it's fairly "crunchy", I can't imagine it would be too difficult to use in a similar system (I'm tempted to try to use it in Shadowrun), so it should also appeal to anyone who likes vampires (though it's definitely not the angst-ridden sort of Vampire game). And conversely, the crunchy parts of the game seem incredibly useful for the various d20 horror games set on Earth, from Call of Cthluhu d20 to Deadlands d20 to any of the upcoming horror games (Chill d20, Bureau 13 d20, etc). And it makes me wonder how vampires would work in space, or if a vampiric robot would be possible. Something that makes you imagine lots of possible scenarios and what ifs is a heck of a book. A++

It's supposed to be the first in a line of products. The next is on Liches, which honestly, don't do much for me (which is probably why I'm not a Brom fan), but after seeing how they handled vampires in this book, I eagerly await it. There also seems to be something of a metaplot in the works.

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