RangerWickett said:
I never had a chance to buy any of the old Van Richten's Guides, though they all looked interesting. I might look into getting some of them if they have good roleplaying and 'cream' ideas that I could use, despite the book being written for 2nd Edition.
I'm particularly interested in if they did anything unique with vampires, and how liches were presented. I've heard that VR: Liches was a singularly-cool work.
The VR Guides were, without a doubt, some of the best products for RL...heck, for 2E! All eight were reprinted in the thee-part series,
Van Richten's Monster Hunter's Compendium I-III by the Weathermay-Foxgrove sisters after the good doctor disappeared. The final Compendium also had an unpublished guide of his.
In regards to whether Vampires had anything unique, well, that depends on if you mean at all for the vampire genre, or for D&D. For the vampire genre, it seemed inspired by Anne Rice (though for all I know this came out first), by introducing salient powers, talking about how they'd gradually turn CE over time, disguising themselves as alive, etc. For D&D though, it was a landmark, as it gave them a much wider range that made them truly challenging and memorable villains within the rules.
Liches was easily the guide I liked the most, however. It seriously expanded on the scope of their powers and abilities. The salient abilities they had just seemed much cooler (such as skull scry or the ability to re-energize spent spells used at them), for one. Likewise, the section on power rituals was cool also, showing how liches can attain even greater might. The context on lich psychology was very insightful and well-done (that liches basically regard invading do-gooders interrupting their work the same way you'd regard a cockroach who interrupted your studying rocket science).
Of course, none of this does justice to the fact that the in-character style was done extremely well, and made it for very interesting reading, especially since it was liberally sprinkled with anecdotes and recountings from Van Richten himself.
Do yourself a favor and buy a VR's Guide today! Your players will throttle you for it.
