Originally posted by Eddy at the V20 Blog
As Justin has mentioned, V20 is going to have an appendix containing nearly all of the bloodlines in Masquerade. Right now, this “appendix” is looking to be close to a hundred pages, so I’m essentially developing a small book inside of a larger book. And IT’S ALL MINE! MINE, I TELL YOU! MUAHAHAHAHAHA…
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… ahem. Sorry about that. Too much caffeine.
As I started researching this, I ended up having to cross-reference nineteen different books as “core references” for this appendix. And I could have easily doubled that, depending on how I defined “bloodline.” I found myselt digging into the depths of bloodline variations and regional distinctions and ad-hoc references before deciding that I had to draw the line somewhere.
So, for this section (and to save about a trillion keystrokes), I’m lumping variant clans and dead clans and used-to-be-clans-until-some-asshole-diablorized-some-other-asshole clans into “bloodlines.” It’s not strictly accurate, and I respect that, but the only thing these guys have in common is that they’re not part of the core 13 clans, and just picking a single word makes things a lot easier.
With the help of the ever-talented Matt McFarland, my goal is to take the most recent material for each of the bloodlines and polish it up. The focus is on the background material: sprucing up the text, standardizing all the formatting, and generally kicking the dirt off the old girl as we take her out for one more spin. When possible, I went with the Revised-era take on the bloodline (so, for example, the Nagaraja don’t have Nihilistics, because they didn’t in the Revised spread on them). Like Justin’s doing, I’m going to work with Matt to see if we can spruce up mechanics a bit here and there, but we’ll see what time permits. In a few cases (like Bardo for the Children of Osiris), there aren’t Revised-era mechanics, so we’ll update them to Revised.
Bloodlines and variations we aren’t addressing are the Laibon and the Kuei-Jin (including the Bushi and the Gaki). They were expanded in separate books with lots of new mechanics (Kindred of the Ebony Kingdom and Kindred of the East, respectively), and there isn’t really room to do them justice. I’m also not worrying too much about bloodlines that don’t have mechanical changes, like any of the Caitiff regional bloodlines. (The exception are the antitribu – they’re all getting a treatment of some sort, even if they don’t have a mechanical change.)
There are two kinds of write-up for the bloodlines. A spread is one of the two-page spreads we’ve been doing with Vampire for years: an iconic picture and some meaty, flavorful text about the bloodline so you can look it over and go “fuck yeah, I want to play that.” New disciplines will get their own spreads near the bloodline in question (since in just about every case, the disciplines in question are exclusive to the bloodline). These spreads will be in two sections: “Those in Modern Nights” (i.e., bloodlines that are around) and “Those Who Are Gone” (i.e., bloodlines that are considered to be dead by Revised).
A variant is a small quarter-page box, perhaps with a small picture, and details a variation on the bloodline in question. These may be integrated into the main V20 text or scattered through the appendix – we’ll sort that out as we compile everything. If the variant has a new discipline, that’ll get a spread treatment.
So, all that being said, here are the books I’ve referenced so far:
- Clanbook: Assamite Revised
- Clanbook: Followers of Set Revised
- Clanbook: Gangrel Revised
- Clanbook: Ravnos Revised
- Clanbook: Tzimisce Revised
- Dark Ages: Player’s Guide to the High Clans
- Dark Ages: Player’s Guide to the Low Clans
- Guide to the Camarilla
- Guide to the Sabbat
- The Hunter’s Hunted
- Libellus Sanguinis II
- Player’s Guide to the Sabbat
- Storyteller’s Handbook to the Sabbat
- Vampire: The Dark Ages Companion
- Vampire: The Masquerade Revised
- Vampire Storyteller’s Companion
- Vampire Storyteller’s Handbook Revised
- Wind from the East
- World of Darkness: Blood-Dimmed Tides
(Note that I’ve actually looked into many, many, many more than these, but these are the ones that have material we’re using to make this appendix so far.)
Next post, I’ll list the bloodlines I’ve collected thus far, so you guys can help me find the niches of the canon I might have missed.