C.T. Phipps's Blog, page 13

Vampire: The Masquerade: Dark Prince by Keith Herber review

 
    DARK PRINCE by Keith Herber is the first full-length novel for the World of Darkness and, more specifically, VAMPIRE: THE MASQUERADE setting. It was published in 1994 and introduced the character of Vannevar Thomas. It also imagined a complicated interlocking web of undead politics taking place behind closed doors in San Fransisco. 

    Dark Prince would have a single sequel in PRINCE OF THE CITY before having a lot of its lore retconned or ignored in SAN FRANSISCO BY NIGHT. Later, it would ...

Review - Clan Novel: Assamite by Gherbod Fleming

     CLAN NOVEL: ASSAMITE by Gherbod Fleming is book seven of the Clan Novel series. Set in the World of Darkness, more specifically the Vampire: The Masquerade setting, it follows the thirteen clans as they deal with a Sabbat Crusade across the United States' East Coast while Gehenna (the vampire apocalypse) looms in the background. I very much enjoyed Gherbod Fleming's previous entries in the series with Clan Novel: Gangrel and Clan Novel: Ventrue. In a very real way, I feel like he was the au...

Vampire: The Masquerade: Justice review

 
    VAMPIRE: THE MASQUERADE: JUSTICE is a virtual realityvideo game that is available on the Playstation 5, Meta Quest 2, and Meta Quest3. It is set in the World of Darkness published by Paradox Interactive and,more specifically, the Vampire: The Masquerade setting if the namewasn't a big enough tip off. The setting is an urban fantasy horror settingwhere supernatural creatures live among us and wage covert wars for power.

    The premise is you are a member of the Banu Haqim clan, form...

Vampire's Kiss (1988) review

    What does it take to make a movieclassic? That is an interesting question and something that varies from personto person. For fans of vampire cinema, VAMPIRE'S KISS is something that I thinkexists roughly in the middle between a genuine classic of the genre versus acult classic that is more guilty pleasure than cinematic masterpiece. It's justsuch a WEIRD movie that you have to accept the ups and downs as both buildingto something part of the greater whole. It is, however, something ...

Castlevania: Nocturne review

 
   CASTLEVANIA: NOCTURNE is the latest installment of Netflix's Castlevania series,originally written and produced by Warren Ellis. The original series, starringTrevor Belmont (voiced by Richard Armitage) and Sypha Belnades (AlejandraReynos), was a loose adaptation of CASTLEVANIA III with Dracula as the mainantagonist for the first two seasons. It last four seasons and was generallyvery well received by both fans of the game as well as newcomers. Making a newseries with a new cast seemed...

Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Hunt review

    VAMPIRE: THE MASQUERADE is near and dear to my heart due to the fact I started playing it when I was fourteen and have not really stopped since. It's a heavily social game that is probably best experienced with Bloodlines by Troika games but was still fun with the visual novels Coteries of New York and Shadows of New York.

    BLOOD HUNT is not one of those games and barely has any plot whatsoever (sort of-see below). It is a battle royale game where you pick a vampire archetype, go out into ...

101 adventure hooks for Werewolf: The Apocalypse Fifth Edition

W5 Chronicle Tips

Ten Tips to running the Cult of Fenris in W5Why metaplot matters in the World of Darkness 101 Adventure Hooks for Werewolf: The Apocalypse 5th Edition

Hey folks,

    Werewolf: The Apocalypse Fifth Edition has recently released and has a bunch of controversial changes ranging from the removal kinfolk and Garou born of other Garou to the fall of the Get of Fenris. As a huge fan of W:TA, I think the best way to address this is provide plenty of plot hooks for Storytellers that are u...

Why metaplot matters in the World of Darkness

    Recently, I had a conversation with a friend who was talking about how he thought the World of Darkness should have had a complete reboot for Fifth Edition versus reviving the Old World of Darkness. He argued that too much continuity was something that caused people to move away from the setting and was a barrier to new players. This got under my skin for some reason and made me less than pleased for reasons I couldn't quite put into words. 

    I am a huge and long time World of Darkness fan...

Ten Tips to running the Cult of Fenris in W5

W5 Chronicle Tips

1. Ten Tips to running the Cult of Fenris in W5

    One of the most controversial decisions of Werewolf: The Apocalypse Fifth Edition was the fall of the Get of Fenris to hauglosk and becoming the Cult of Fenris. In simple terms, this means they went from being playable PC faction to being a non-player antagonist faction. This was upsetting to many people due to the fact that they were a very popular tribe and "Viking werewolves" was never going to not be a common choice of PC.

  ...

Announcement - White Wolf fiction returning to print

Hey folks,

    As a longtime World of Darkness fan and writer for Crossroad Press, I am pleased to make an exciting announcement! Basically, in 2019, Crossroad Press and White Wolf/Paradox Interactive made a deal to re-release the Clan Novels, Dark Age Clan Novels, and Grail Covenant Trilogy as an experiment to see if there was a viable market for the tie-in fiction today. There certainly was and the books were re-released in paperback and ebook form across various platforms like Amazon as well a...