Continuing our Chinese based review of the World of Darkness book line!
Dark Ages: Vampire
Dark Ages: Vampire details the setting and rules for playing Vampire: The Masquerade in the Medieval Age. The book is set in 1230 prior to the institution of the Masquerade by the Camarilla clans. Because vampires aren’t limited by secrecy they are a lot more evil. Thus there are lots of options for playing as a vampire that’s surrendered to your monstrous side and abandoned humanity. The other main difference besides evil vampire rules is a different Ability list to reflect the technology differences between 1230 and the present. Also mounted combat rules.
There’s lots of repeated content in Dark Ages: Vampire and Vampire: The Masquerade. In both the lore and the mechanics. Dark Ages was released as a stand alone product instead of as an expansion. You could just buy Dark Ages and make a party and adventures without any need for the “core” book. And it honestly feels like an odd choice. Way too much of the book is used for repeated rules which increases the printing cost and/or cuts into space for original content.
I feel that Dark Ages was a missed opportunity. All the broad background info about Europe and vampires during the Medieval Age is nice, but what’s really needed is deep information on one city. Knowing that the advisor of some king is a vampire is a story seed for a motivated Storyteller to develop their own campaign. Giving a detailed look into the vampire politics of Paris would be more helpful for actually diving into the setting. I saw that White Wolf did release a few deeper books like that later on for the Dark Ages setting. As it stands though, I’m not sure this book is even worth buying for folks that wanted to run a European setting. You can mostly infer the rules and setting from what’s given in the main Vampire: The Masquerade book.
If you’re interested in the Dark Ages: Vampire book you can check it out at DriveThruRPG: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/2676/dark-ages-vampire
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