 Editor’s Note: What’s the gift that keeps on giving? Patreon subscriptions! It’s like buying a game system or supplement for a friend. Sure, they’re going to love it, but you’ll get some joy out of it too. Check out our Patreon and give a little, get a little.
First off, full disclosure: I have worked on two projects for Pugsteady via Onyx Path Publishing. You’ll see my work in the forthcoming Roll of Good Dogs and Cats, and Adventures For Curious Cats, and so I am a tiny bit prejudiced in favor of the recently released Monarchies of Mau. That said, the book, the game, and the world of Realms of Pugmire is already one of my favorite fantasy RPG settings of all time. Why? What about this game of cats, dogs, and other animals catches my eye? Me, a fan of horror, deep storytelling, and games that are dark for the purpose of exposing light? 1) Not A Funny Cat Story The first is that Pugmire and Mau are family friendly, but they are not games for children. They are intricate, deep, and powerful game worlds that offer a hook that people initially find funny. How? For example, you play anthropomorphic cats who wear armor and call themselves monarchs. They believe that they once were worshipped by The Old Ones, humanity. They take artifacts of Man and use them for Necromancy and other magic. These things seem like they could be silly. But then, they are also presented as people. People that laugh, that cry, that fight against the darkness to seize a chance at creating a world that is good for them and their families. Demons have destroyed at least one of the Monarchies of Mau. Darkness and corruption are attempting to infiltrate these places. Sure, you’re a cat, but you are also faced with challenges our feline friends would protect us from. 2) Intrigue and Adventure The Monarchies of Mau are inspired by a mix of Venetian, Chinese, and Feline cultures. They are city states that hold secrets close to their hearts. Such a setting offers intercultural intrigues and stories of wheeling and dealing for those that love such things in their games. On top of this, high adventure can be had vying against creatures of various types, including unseen demons, undead, and the normal high fantasy creatures that you would expect to see in a fantasy game. So, run your favorite adventure for D&D, Pathfinder, or OSR, and toss in a splash of cats, dogs, badgers, and others. Or, pull out your paths, stories, and chronicles that touch on intrigue, diplomacy, and information and run those instead. The Realms of Pugmire are your oyster. They offer an opportunity for every sort of tale. 3) Well Crafted Mechanics Monarchies of Mau is based on the OGL system for Dungeons and Dragons. It also pulls inspiration from 13th Age and other games that have done good things with the basic d20 OGL rules. In a sense, it pulls out the best of everything that has come before and distilled it perfectly for this game. Mau uses a simpler leveling system, distilling down to 10 levels what would normally take 20. And... this works. You gain an ability every level, and you start off more powerful than you would even in a 5th Edition game. The mechanics are the same, you roll a d20, with proficiency bonuses and Armor Classes, but the game feels peppier, quicker, and more powerful all at the same time. This is one of the best things that designers with years in the industry offer us, and Eddy Webb, the designer of Pugmire and Mau, has the background to help distill the best parts of the game system for his world. Josh is the intrepid Chief Operations Officer of High Level Games. With 20 years of playing rpgs, Josh started with Mind's Eye Theater LARPs and loves the World of Darkness. He runs, www.keepontheheathlands.com to support his gaming projects. Josh is the administrator of the Inclusive Gaming Network on Facebook. He’s running a Changing Breeds game. He’s a serious advocate for inclusive gaming spaces, a father, and a graduate from the International Peace and Conflict Resolution graduate program at American University in Washington, D.C. You can also find Josh’s other published adventures here and here. Image from the GM’s Screen For Monarchies of Mau  Editor’s Note: What’s the gift that keeps on giving? Patreon subscriptions! It’s like buying a game system or supplement for a friend. Sure, they’re going to love it, but you’ll get some joy out of it too. Check out our Patreon and give a little, get a little.
Starting out in roleplaying games is more than buying the stuff and jumping in. Getting a group together is hard enough for some people, and then the extra monetary cost of buying minis, rulebooks, supplements and any extra bits and pieces for a game. Not everyone has enough surplus cash to throw at the hobby, so for those who don't want to break the bank to test the waters, here are eight free roleplaying games for you to check out. I mean why not, they’re free. 1) A+ Fantasy A+ Fantasy has an attribute system very similar to classic RPGs but different enough to make it its own. Instead of rolling up numbers for your usual six attributes, A+ Fantasy has four to which you assign a grade, which range from A+ to D- and affect dice rolls. Modifiers are different than the norm, as to succeed you must roll two d6 and get at least one six, and the modifier adds to this. The ruleset is very easy to understand and is laid out in a great way, at least in my opinion, I read through the full rules in just over 30 minutes while sitting in a waiting room. This is definitely worth checking out if you are thinking of diving into D&D. 2) Magic and Steel This game has more reading to it than A+ Fantasy but has a fairly well developed system, based off of old style D&D with a few modern twists to keep it interesting. The character creation seems solid and is simple enough for a new player to get to grips with and complex enough for a seasoned vet to get in there and create more interesting characters. The rule book screams fan made and admits as much in the introduction, but if you like old school fantasy this is a game for you. 3) D100 Dungeon D100 Dungeon intrigued me to no ends, I read the description and thought, how can I be both GM and player? The answer is I can’t, but D100 Dungeon can be the GM so I can be the player. Tailored so that you are not pitted against your friends this game provides everything you need to run solo. You print out your map sheets and character sheet and read through the rules, which really are quite easy to understand. It took me a couple of days to get through them but when I did I was eager to get going, to play all you need is the roll tables in the back, the print outs and if you didn’t already guess the dice type, some D100. I haven’t got round to playing this yet but it’s definitely on my todo list. 4) GURPS Lite A great system used in various games and inspiration to even more, it has been used in tabletop games and video games such as the first Fallout games and even adapted for the later ones. The lite version of the system is free, however, and gives a good taste of how the full system works with all the key points laid out. Choose some buffs for your character and combine them with some flaws... it contains everything you need to create a GURPS game. The only downside is that I found it rather wordy so be prepared to read. 5) The Very Important Task I loved this game as soon as I read the rule sheet. Yes a single sheet. In The Very Important Task everyone plays and GM’s another player’s game, taking it in turns, which simulate one month at your job. Each player tries to complete a task given to them by their manager (another player) as well as completing the very important task for their overall career, to win you simply must complete the very important task, gain executive level in your job or be the last employee standing (or sitting if its an office job). It’s not a long game but can fill an evening and helps introduce some key elements of roleplay as the managers are encouraged to go to the extremes when forging the personalities. 6) The Great Long Dark Anyone looking to get into horror RPGs should consider this their first step. A quick game aimed at small groups, the rulebook has beautifully haunting artwork which helps set the scene. You take the role of both a child travelling to a place of mystery and despair, also as a parent escaping to a better place. Play takes shape in the form of five acts, the first two acts have you play two cards and roleplay the results, after which you answer a question of your choosing from a list from your character's point of view. No dice rolling but plenty of atmosphere and personal connections to help you come back for another helping. 7) Ghosts of NPCs Passed Aimed at groups who are currently running a campaign, this game is a nice distraction for change of pace or can even just be implemented into a session to aid the players. It allows a GM to call forth the spirit of any NPC the players may have decapitated too early or a poor passerby who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Upon summoning a spirit the players go round one by one adding to a backstory for that NPC, ending on the second wave round the group with his last day and finally his demise at the hands of player X who plays the murderous warlock in the group. This game could also be used to emphasise how one player seems all too happy to help NPCs shuffle of the mortal coil. 8) To The Temple Of Doom!!! A really nice little game, this easy to understand rule set has a revolving GM and a shared goal. Each player creates an archaeologist to play, assigning five stat points over three skills and then creates an artifact, ventures into the temple and takes it in turns to create a chamber within the temple. You then throw in some puzzles, bad guys and traps for the team to overcome. At the end is a big showdown against a vast evil trying to destroy the world. Death isn’t the end in this game either as anyone who falls prey to the traps of the chambers can either be possessed and show up to aid the evil or die and become the GM for the final encounter. No matter which, if any of these you try out i’m sure you will have lots of fun and hopefully will inspire you to play other great roleplaying games out there. To compile this list I read through around 15 titles including some fan made RPGs from the likes of Inception and even the Metal Gear universe, but for the sake of the editors I chose the non fandom games, though they were really good systems and well worth checking out. Although the rules are free you will need dice and a way to print some items out in most of these but compared to a full price system the cost is much more affordable and accessible. Ross Reid is a lover of all things tabletop, he recently hosted a gaming marathon for charity lasting 24 hours over three days, he is currently working on getting the rest of his family into roleplaying games so he no longer needs to leave the house to get his gaming fix.  The Wild West is a unique genre of fiction. It has it’s larger-than-life characters and legends, including encounters with the other world, lawless lands where might makes right, and even tales of lost treasures! This genre has all the trappings that make for fantastic tales of adventure, so with that in mind, let’s take a look at Westbound, the tabletop RPG that blends The American Wild West with Fantasy!
1) Who Made This? Westbound is produced and published by the Canadian game company Island of Bees, and is currently their only released game. Nevertheless, they’ve put a great amount of effort into designing the game, and it shows: marvelous artwork, handy diagrams and charts, and even layout flourishes that compliment the Wild West theme. 2) What’s The Premise And Setting? If you’ve somehow managed to avoid watching any of the classic Clint Eastwood movies, or other flicks from the spaghetti-western genre, Westbound harkens to a romanticized era in North American history called “The Western Frontier.” This was an era when settlers from Europe expanding westward from the east coast of North America, into what would become the modern day nations of the United States of America, Canada, and Mexico. However, Island of Bees punches up the fantastical element. While the Western Frontier is already a very storied body of history full of tall tales and unbelievable legends, Westbound also includes contemporary fantasy tropes. Among them are parallel worlds, magical wands and musical instruments, and the classic fare of races including elves, dwarves, orcs, and goblins. One thing I find particularly interesting about Westbound is some of the more unusual inclusions. Ogres are included as a playable race, complete with their own variety of magic that revolves around eating themselves stupid. There’s also the inclusion of musical instruments as weapons; they may not physically harm enemies, but they can still cause a great enough amount of distress to rob enemies of the will to fight. (Meaning you can annoy somebody into submission with an accordian.) 3) What Are The Mechanics Like? Staying true to the western theme, Westbound forgoes using dice in favor of a standard deck of playing cards. (So if your GM or another player really ticks you off, you can switch to everybody’s favorite rage game of 52 Pick Up.) Outside of combat, drawing cards and comparing them to a target number is the method used for resolving checks. In combat though is where things get interesting. The game changes from simple draw and compare to a meta-game of managing a hand of cards for your offence and defence. The long and short of it is that you can either play cards from your hand to raise your ability to resist damage, play them against opponents to take them out of a fight, or burn through your cards to get to something more useful. To add an additional layer of strategy, though, each of the above combat actions functions a different way. Cards played to defend must be done in descending order, while cards played to attack must match the traditional sets from poker. (2 of a kind, full house, etc.) Character creation is composed of picking a Sort, Breed, and Archetype, which are similar to Class, Race, and Background in Dungeons and Dragons. Each one grants a different kinds of abilities, with Sort mostly pertaining to combat, Archetype focusing on social interactions, and Breed granting miscellaneous abilities. Additionally, whenever a character levels up, they pick which of the three aspects they wish to improve, giving some control to the player over what their character shapes into. 4) What Is It Similar To? As far as game mechanics go, Westbound’s use of a deck of cards is more than just a novelty. It grants some degree of certainty that a character will get an awesome moment, since used cards get discarded. It cuts both ways, though, since even those good draws will be discarded. The only other game I can think of that grants this much certainty over how much a character can truly accomplish is Golden Sky Stories, which completely eschews dice and randomness altogether! In regards to setting, I’d be inclined to say that Westbound is a graceful advancing of the Dungeons and Dragons time period. Even if you’re unfamiliar with the Western Frontier, there’s still plenty of contemporary fantasy elements to take hold of. This union of Wild West and Fantasy works really well together, because there was still lots of superstition that circulated in the 19th century to weave in magic. 5) Is It Worth Getting Into? Definitely. If you want to try something new, but don’t want to abandon fantasy, Westbound is a great choice. It offers a unique set of mechanics, and a setting that’s refreshing and familiar all at once. Plus, the artwork is fantastic, and featured in a few sets of special playing card. Useful for if you want to add more flair to your games of Westbound, or if you like the art, but maybe not the game. While Aaron der Schaedel is definitely enamored with Westbound, his favorite mix of wild west and fantasy remains the video game series Wild ARMs. You can inform Island of Bees of this treachery via Twitter @WestboundGame or tell Aaron his taste in video games is trash @Zamubei Picture Reference: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/82773185/westbound-revolvers-and-rituals  Character creation can be a truly enjoyable experience if done correctly, or a real chore otherwise. Sometimes this line is a fine one. Hero Builder, a new production by The Table Candle, endeavors to bring full customization to the d20 system experience. Much like Mutants and Masterminds or other similar point-buy systems, this game gives the power to the players in creating every aspect of their characters. Here are three reasons to give it a look.
1) Familiar Mechanics Most players and GMs today are at least somewhat knowledgeable about the d20 system, be it through D&D, Pathfinder, or the countless products released after the system went OGL. While it has a few tweaks here and there, the Hero Builder system is largely the same as other d20 products. The GM (here called the Hero Master) sets a DC for each action and the players roll d20 plus skills and bonuses. It is more akin to Pathfinder or D&D 3.5 than 5th ed. While many may see this as a step backwards, those older editions did allow for more customization and less simplification, something Hero Builder benefits from immensely. The game works best on a grid system; in our test game, players took advantage of the tactical options available to get the best use of their powers and abilities. 2) Unique Abilities Hero Builder contains a long list of abilities that modify or enhance actions characters can take, much like the proficiencies and feats of the aforementioned d20 games. These come from characters’ Bloodlines (custom races or backgrounds) or are added separately as special abilities of the character. When you create a Bloodline, other characters can be of the same bloodline and attain the same abilities, or generate their own bloodline. This not only helps create important distinctions or commonalities between characters, but also aids in world building. The Hero Master can co-opt the player-created bloodlines into their narrative to customize the game setting and provide touchstones for in-game cultures. 3) Sheer Breadth Of Power After generating the statistics and special abilities of characters, players then build their powers from the ground up. Powers are categorized by type, and each section describes how to build the power using points assigned at character creation. Powers cost a resource to purchase and a resource to use in game. So a player might make a bruiser who has a bunch of low cost survivability and damage enhancing powers, or another may create a single utility power and one massive damage dealing power, becoming the archetypal glass cannon. Players can create anything in between, adding healing, summoning, warding, or buffing powers to their repertoire. The balance seemed to be without major issue during out playtest, with each character able to perform as intended and to satisfying effect. Hero Builder does also have a few issues to work through in its current state. The complexity of the character creation process absolutely necessitates a “session 0.” During my second attempt at a playtest, my group sat down to make characters and play, but I had to give up in the middle of character generation because my players were getting too restless. The GM needs to sit down with each player individually to create their characters well in advance of the first session, and as such, the game does not lend itself well to one-shots. With so much time invested in creating unique and intriguing characters, players will be loath to abandon them after a single session, or more likely, loath to put the time in necessary to create them in the first place. There are other minor issues with the book, including typos and the like, but largely, Hero Builder brings fun customizable high-fantasy flair to the d20 system. The game includes three modes of play: commoner, heroic, and godly, though I highly recommend the latter two. If you’re going to loosen the reigns and let players create their dream hero, give them the points to go wild with it. Hero Builder is available here! David Horwitz is a gamer and freelance writer/editor with an obsession for exploring new forms of leisure. If you’re looking for an inquisitive mind and a deft hand, or just want to chat about gaming, contact him at www.davidhorwitzwrites.com/contact. Picture Reference: https://funnyjunk.com/Hero+builder/bmTzLoz/  HLG Review: Beckett’s Jyhad Diary
System: Vampire the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition Publisher: Onyx Path Publishing Editor’s Note: Enjoy reading articles about your favorite hobby and engaging with fellow gamers? We do too, but hosting and producing our site isn’t free. Please consider visiting our Patreon page and supporting us at any amount. We put every dollar back into the site and its production, and your help has allowed us to have certain paid article months for our contributors. Thank you for your continued readership and your support! -David Horwitz, Blog Manager The summary on the back boasts “Beckett’s Jyhad Diary is as fascinating to read as to use in your game Chronicles.” This is absolutely not an exaggeration. BJD reads like a novel. In fact, being a collection of notes, audio recordings and journal entries, it’s remarkably similar to Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which I can only assume was deliberate. I started reading the same night I got my hands on it. Before I knew it, it was four in the morning and I was 200 pages in. It routinely stole at least 100 pages of my time per night as I was working on this review, and I don’t regret a single moment. I can’t honestly say if I was so captivated because it was a world I was already deeply invested in, or if it was a compelling story in its own right, but either way I’ve never had that experience with a sourcebook before, and my library is not small. First and foremost, this is a book for Storytellers, the name for the Game Master in World of Darkness games. Beckett’s Jyhad Diary offers little for players in terms of character options: A Merit that allows your character to tap into flashes of insight, the 16th Generation Flaw (gain extra points at character creation at the cost of starting considerably weaker), and the Dhampir, a new character type that severely weakens the character’s Disciplines (vampire powers) in favor of immunity to many of the vampire’s traditional weaknesses. While these additions are awesome and have the potential to make for some truly memorable player characters, these tiny islands of crunch buried nearly 150 pages into the tome only serve to highlight the glaring omission of certain other mechanics, such as those for The Drowned Legacies, a new range of vampire Bloodlines with unique powers and weaknesses. BJD spends an entire chapter chronicling their exploits in South America, but it doesn’t include any of the crunch required to actually make one. Certainly, the brief descriptions given for each one provide enough information for an enterprising Storyteller to infer their various abilities, if they don’t mind building a few of their own Disciplines, but in twenty pages we’re given nothing concrete. At first I thought that might be to keep them out of the hands of players. A vocal minority of the Vampire community objects to players having access to Bloodlines, (rare mutations in the various vampire genomes) as they feel it neuters something meant to add mystery and uncertainty to the world, quantifying their abilities for all to see. That thought went straight out the window when I saw the plot hook at the end of the chapter intended for players of Drowned Legacies characters. I considered it might be a way to allow the Drowned Legacies to retain their mystery, their powers differing entirely from game to game and Storyteller to Storyteller, an approach I would actually applaud. I gladly would have, if they didn’t use the same approach with the Laibon, the vampires of Africa. This is what shoved me straight over the edge from “mysterious with many valid interpretations” to “annoyingly vague and frustratingly incomplete.” The Laibon have already been quantified for nearly 20 years at this point, since the release of the Revised Edition sourcebook Kindred of the Ebony Kingdom. All they would have needed would be an update to the 20th Anniversary Edition, and Vampire is not a game of great gulfs of difference in its various rule sets. Instead, BJD points to the Laibon’s precursor clans in Vampire 20th Anniversary Edition: The Dark Ages. Well, that’s great except their powers don’t match, their weaknesses don’t match, and we’re given little to nothing to infer what they actually do. When the legacy referred to as “The Shadows” don’t have access to the shadow Discipline, while a Shadows legacy NPC presented in the book is supposed to, I’m of a mind to believe that something has gone amiss. Also, counting the Followers of Set from the core book, that’s only six of the thirteen legacies BJD itself says are rumored to exist, and the nine showcased in Ebony Kingdom. Mind you, the Laibon are mentioned in two separate chapters. That’s two settings they expect us to use them in. Curiously, BJD never once refers the reader to KotEK as another source. Maybe there was an internal mandate saying the book wasn’t allowed to refer to sources outside the 20th Anniversary edition, or maybe they thought the handful of differences between Revised and V20 would cause too much confusion. As much as I truly love Onyx Path, however, I’d be lying through my teeth if I didn’t admit to the sneaking suspicion it might be because Onyx Path doesn’t see a cut of Revised Edition sales. These issues could have been easily remedied with a few extra pages of Appendix. Assuming constraints prevented the book from being larger than it already is, weighing in at a hefty 559 pages, it’s not as if Onyx Path couldn’t have made room for it. I would have greatly preferred, by several orders of magnitude, a few extra pages of resources for my game than a two page spread of a pointless Freudian extrapolation, or an extremely awkward scene where an ancient vampire bites Beckett’s fingernails off. “A Brief History of Beckett” didn’t need to be its own chapter, as not only does it not provide any appreciable history of the character, (by “brief” they mean Post It Note) the salient bits of information would be better served in other areas. The information about the character Marie would have fit neatly in the chapter where she actually appears, and the plot hooks about hunting for rare books could have gone almost anywhere else, as Beckett spends the vast majority of the narrative searching for a rare book. As loathe as I am to admit it, since it’s my favorite setting in Vampire, the Chicago chapter is almost entirely superfluous. With the exception of a few minor nudges, most of which have already been covered in other V20 books, (namely V20 Companion and Lore of the Clans) Vampire’s Chicago is virtually unchanged from what it was in Chicago by Night 2nd Edition. The book is organized into 31 chapters, most of which chronicle Beckett’s journeys through various vampire domains across the world. The narrative bits set up NPCs and settings for Storytellers to use in their Vampire games, each one culminating in a list of plot hooks and chronicle ideas. This is where the true value of the book lies. Most groups will require years to exhaust the material provided herein, and it’s exceptionally likely it will be used for years since the king’s ransom of story ideas will prove just as useful long after Vampire 5th Edition launches. Several of the plot hooks deliberately contradict each other, or offer the Storyteller another possibility of “what really happened.” The World of Darkness is a place of nuance, mystery, and unreliable narrators. Allowing disparate groups to establish their own canons, all of them being equally valid, is an approach I applaud and would love to see other games attempt. I can’t help but wonder though, how this sweeping array of individualized canonicity will hold up in the future. Presumably White Wolf will have to at least figure out Saulot/Tremere at some point, let alone the innumerable other intrigues the book highlights. Then again, maybe they won’t. Martin Elricsson of White Wolf has stated before that he wishes to turn control of the metaplot over to the players. Perhaps the dangling plot threads truly won’t be resolved until we pick up our dice to do it ourselves. At this point, only time will tell. The changing delivery methods help greatly to keep reading from becoming monotonous. The book attempts to differentiate between several in-universe contributors by having each one use different fonts, paper, ink colors, etc. Unfortunately, it’s not always perfect, as some of the fonts can look extremely similar and all rules go out the window when the characters start switching paper. Onyx Path used the opportunity to showcase a cast of Vampire’s iconic characters. Considering the Clan Novel series was published nearly 20 years ago, this was a great opportunity to introduce these characters to a new generation of fans. Unfortunately, I’m not entirely certain they did… The book will liberally introduce side characters who crop up in each domain, but after a mountain of margin notes, Lucita de Aragon (a character important enough to literally have her own action figure) doesn’t receive anything approaching an introduction before appearing as a major character for several chapters. Also, really, we’re not going to mention who Sascha Vykos is outside of a sideways mention of genital throwing? Fortunately, the narrative is far from impenetrable without prior knowledge of these characters. Indeed, perhaps the goal was to make readers want to find out more, in which case, well played. I just fear for readers with less patience being turned off at the prospect of yet another major character being mentioned without context. Purists may dislike the way Onyx Path shook up certain sacred cows of the metaplot, such as an extant branch of the previously extinct Cappadocian line, however I appreciate the fact that they have. Beckett’s Jyhad Diary paints the picture of a World of Darkness that is changing, evolving, and one that challenges previous assumptions. Stagnation is a death sentence, and this newfound forward momentum can only lead to good things for the game. The Appendix is a collection of advice for Storytellers on how to use the metaplot in their chronicles. Most experienced Storytellers will have already decided whether or not to use the game’s canon in their chronicles, and how they’re going to do so. This was the camp that I fell into, and as such I personally didn’t find anything particularly illuminating in this section, though I’m sure someone will. I did, however, greatly enjoy the overview of themes present in Vampire’s previous iterations. V20 attempts to merge the themes of the previous three versions, though it can be easy for them to become muddled when none are brought to the fore. This section allowed me to reflect on the themes I wish to bring forth in my own games, and while not strictly necessary, it was appreciated. The art in this book is some of the best Onyx Path has ever produced. The half page illustrations are absolutely jaw-dropping, though unfortunately the portraits of the sample NPCs tend to run the gamut a bit more. Some of them, like Victoria Ash, Khurshid, and Christof Romuald (every time you mention it, someone will say “they made two VtM games?”) look great, with a certain Vampire: The Eternal Struggle vibe that sets my nerd heart alight with glee. Conversely, Smiling Jack is as cockeyed as a chameleon and looks like they colored him with crayons. There’s more amazing artwork than not, but when something is bad, it really sticks out. I used to advise new Vampire Storytellers that after the core rules, their first purchase should be one of the city setting books, as it would keep them from having to spontaneously generate an entire community and provide an example of how vampire society interacts. Now, my recommendation lies firmly with Beckett’s Jyhad Diary. It offers a multitude of settings, years worth of plot hooks, a litany of sample vampires and a look at the societies of several different factions on multiple continents. BJD is not what I’d call perfect by any stretch, but it offers so much value that its few faults are easy enough to overlook. Unless you’re a collector or you frequently get your books signed at conventions, I’m not certain I’d recommend springing for the full hardcover treatment, as this is not the kind of book you’ll be carting to every session, let alone passing around the table. However, the PDF is a welcome addition to any Storyteller’s arsenal, and worth every penny. Chaz Lebel is a fiction author and member of Caffeinated Conquests, a YouTube channel dedicated to nerd comedy and tabletop gaming. He and his team once produced some promotional videos for High Level Games that they probably wish they could forget. Chaz can be found on Twitter @CafConIsOn Picture Reference: http://whitewolf.wikia.com/wiki/File:Beckett_for_V20_Beckett%E2%80%99s_Jyhad_Diary.jpg |
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