Welcome to this month's Storyteller's Vault Roundup! The Vault has been anything but quiet, and there's a lot to catch up on, so let's dive in, shall we?
Content creators now have access to a bunch of art, old and new alike, to add to their publications. At the time of writing, there are nine Art Packs available (all for free). Each pack collects art from a different "era" of Vampire: the Masquerade's past; the latest art pack, for example, is pulled from the Third Edition era—specifically the Guide to the Anarchs and New York by Night books.
Another great new art resource for creators has arrived in the form of Mark Kelly's "Cover Art" series. Each piece is an original bit of art, large enough to be featured on the cover of a publication or used as interior art. The first five images are also available as a discounted pack.
Lastly, for those of you who play VtM online or could otherwise use some tokens, Michael Sollien has you covered with two packs featuring classic character portraits in handy token format.
The release of Beckett's Jyhad Diary constituted the most comprehensive overview of Vampire setting and metaplot information ever put to paper. The team at High Level Games have taken it upon themselves to go through Beckett's chapter by chapter, taking the qualitative information presented in that book and adding quantitative game mechanical notes on the various NPCs referenced therein (as well as, where possible, a reference to where the NPC first appeared in the canon).
Taking the first volume, Carna's Rebellion, as an example of the series—called Beckett's Vampire Folio—we have a 16-page manuscript (including the cover, credits page, and introduction) that presents background and stat blocks for Carna, Parovich, Lucina, Akawa (all originally found in Milwaukee by Night), Hrothulf (Milwaukee by Night and Dark Alliance Vancouver), Mark Decker (Clanbook: Gangrel Revised), Cesare Contaldo, Okulos, and Jacob/Esau. These are full write-ups, each character receiving a section on their History, Image, Roleplaying Hints, and V20-compatible stat blocks.
If High Level Games sticks with the series and completes all 30 chapters, this series should prove an invaluable resource for Storytellers.
Speaking of series, the Hunter's Armory series is now up to four installments, all of which have been bundled together into a free preview. Consisting of 20 pages of content, each volume is represented with 2-3 pages of extracted content covering modern and vintage firearms as well as hand-to-hand weapons from around the world. The graphic design and layout of these PDFs is superb, integrating graphics and text seamlessly. The overall presentation is marred only somewhat by some simple typographical errors (stuff like "Strenght" or "Sgotguns") that will hopefully be cleaned up in the next update.
The final product in this month's roundup is something a little different from the usual: recalling Beckett's Jyhad Diary, Analects of the Third Garden is 276 pages of in-universe fiction, presenting "a collection of texts from a now-defunct Bahari cult". In addition to five of the titular analects, we also get two appendices with Bahari songs, prayers, oaths, and pictograms! Much like Beckett's, the book is written from the perspective of a single Cainite, one Isotta Nogarola (a real-life Renaissance humanist), presenting everything you might ever want to know about Lilith and her cult in the world of Vampire. The book's graphic design and layout deserves special mention, as it replicates the appearance of an Early Modern tome right down to engraved illustrations and archaic typesetting.
Note: all product links in this article include the article author's Affiliate Program code.
contributed by David Larkins
Content creators now have access to a bunch of art, old and new alike, to add to their publications. At the time of writing, there are nine Art Packs available (all for free). Each pack collects art from a different "era" of Vampire: the Masquerade's past; the latest art pack, for example, is pulled from the Third Edition era—specifically the Guide to the Anarchs and New York by Night books.
Another great new art resource for creators has arrived in the form of Mark Kelly's "Cover Art" series. Each piece is an original bit of art, large enough to be featured on the cover of a publication or used as interior art. The first five images are also available as a discounted pack.
Lastly, for those of you who play VtM online or could otherwise use some tokens, Michael Sollien has you covered with two packs featuring classic character portraits in handy token format.
The release of Beckett's Jyhad Diary constituted the most comprehensive overview of Vampire setting and metaplot information ever put to paper. The team at High Level Games have taken it upon themselves to go through Beckett's chapter by chapter, taking the qualitative information presented in that book and adding quantitative game mechanical notes on the various NPCs referenced therein (as well as, where possible, a reference to where the NPC first appeared in the canon).
Taking the first volume, Carna's Rebellion, as an example of the series—called Beckett's Vampire Folio—we have a 16-page manuscript (including the cover, credits page, and introduction) that presents background and stat blocks for Carna, Parovich, Lucina, Akawa (all originally found in Milwaukee by Night), Hrothulf (Milwaukee by Night and Dark Alliance Vancouver), Mark Decker (Clanbook: Gangrel Revised), Cesare Contaldo, Okulos, and Jacob/Esau. These are full write-ups, each character receiving a section on their History, Image, Roleplaying Hints, and V20-compatible stat blocks.
If High Level Games sticks with the series and completes all 30 chapters, this series should prove an invaluable resource for Storytellers.
Speaking of series, the Hunter's Armory series is now up to four installments, all of which have been bundled together into a free preview. Consisting of 20 pages of content, each volume is represented with 2-3 pages of extracted content covering modern and vintage firearms as well as hand-to-hand weapons from around the world. The graphic design and layout of these PDFs is superb, integrating graphics and text seamlessly. The overall presentation is marred only somewhat by some simple typographical errors (stuff like "Strenght" or "Sgotguns") that will hopefully be cleaned up in the next update.
The final product in this month's roundup is something a little different from the usual: recalling Beckett's Jyhad Diary, Analects of the Third Garden is 276 pages of in-universe fiction, presenting "a collection of texts from a now-defunct Bahari cult". In addition to five of the titular analects, we also get two appendices with Bahari songs, prayers, oaths, and pictograms! Much like Beckett's, the book is written from the perspective of a single Cainite, one Isotta Nogarola (a real-life Renaissance humanist), presenting everything you might ever want to know about Lilith and her cult in the world of Vampire. The book's graphic design and layout deserves special mention, as it replicates the appearance of an Early Modern tome right down to engraved illustrations and archaic typesetting.
Note: all product links in this article include the article author's Affiliate Program code.
contributed by David Larkins
