WHITE WOLF Game Studio
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There's a lot of good to say about Vampire: The Dark Ages, and only a little bit of bad. This makes me very happy. I haven't been overly impressed with a lot of White Wolf's recent releases, and that's why V:TDA put a smile on my face.

The first thing you notice is the cover. It's reminiscent of the old Vampire cover, but it's got a new font and it's purple. The graphics on the inside are typical White Wolf, some are excellent, far above the industry standard, while some are... well, let's just say I don't understand why the art director of the book allowed sketches (looks like it took the artist ten minutes for each one) to be used in the sections that described each of the Clans. This was so inconsistent with the other art that it was to the point of being d

Once I got past the first glipse, I started to read. The material on the middle ages is strong, reflecting that the authors knew what they were talking about. It's a good introduction for someone who has no clue on what the middle ages was all about, and for those who are familiar, it's a fun refresher course.

There's another aspect of the background that was a real big bonus for me, however, and that was the re-focusing on the original intent of the Vampire game. V:TDA really reinforces the fact that players of the game are playing monsters. There's nothing hip, cool or tragic about the vampires here, they kill to live and that's the bottom line. They don't have groupies, in fact, just about anyone who realizes that you are a vampire is going to cross themselves, run the other direction and bring back a bunch of angry peasants with torches. This is something that's been missing in White Wolf products lately, and I'm glad to see that it's back.

All the rules are basically the same. It's the Storyteller System once again, so if you know it, you can skip most of it. However, there are some differences in character generation that are intriguing. First off, the Masquerade hasn't come about just yet, so there are no Sabbat vs Camarilla plot complications running around. There's also no Giovanni, but there are the Cappadocians who (unfortunately) are just 13th century goths. Big yawn. A few of the terminologies have been refitted with names apropos to the middle ages, along with Ars Magica terms for the Thaumaturgy discipline. However... there's a big bad gripe I got about Generation. You start off at Generation Twelve and you aren't supposed to go any lower. In one section of the book it says, "There are exceedingly few vampires of [12th] generation, and even fewer beyond..."

The Generation Background reads, "it is assumed that the conditions that support the Dark Ages' vampiric population have prompted vampires to sire many childer." Make up your minds, guys. One of the reasons I wanted to play Dark Ages was to play a vampire of an older Generation, but its an easily solvable problem: just go out and pick up Elysium, White Wolf's excellent sourcebook on playing older vampires, and incorporate it into Dark Ages.

Can I recommend The Dark Ages? Yes. It is a superior product from White Wolf, and a step back in the right direction for the Vampire line. It stands very well on its own, and any of the supplementary material most VVW fans already have (like Ars Magica and Elysium) will make the game even better.

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