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The Golden Rule of Game Design is this: "Give it stats, and someone will kill it." The reason is to prevent tales of "Yeah, my 500th lvl. F/M/P/T armwrestled Odin into giving me another Con point, and then I took his spear." Some of the folks at White Wolf forgot about this, and in their new NPC book for Vampire they did put stats to plenty of key NPCs.

This is a shame, because the book is competant outside of that great flaw. (The other big one is that all four characters on the cover are not in the book.) All sorts of characters sit within the covers. The Sabbat has its power-players, and so does the Camarilla and all of the Independants. (The new 800lbs. gorilla of the Assamites is one bad bloodsucker.) Black Hand leaders, Sabbat Paladins, Archons, all six Justicars (and the Gangrel as well), Karsh the (Camarilla) Warlord, Vlad Dracul, and a few old pals from the early days (Pariah the Abomination and Rebekah the Monitor) to boot. That's a lot of character to go around.

Will you make use of them all? If you do, you're more ambitious than the vast majority of Vampire players. Most won't use more than a handful (a dozen on the outside), so this is a book with plenty of "gee-whiz" appeal but limited practical use. Keep that in mind when you go to the game shop.

Is it worth getting? Only if you make heavy use of any of these NPCs. Otherwise, it's a waste of money. You can do without this book just fine, and none will be the wiser.

Style: 3 (Average)
Substance: 4 (Meaty)