Great V5 supplement adds in some returning characters and all new ones. New Merits and Lorsheets to expand on Cultsof the Blood Gods are all very well done. Owned it for two days and my players already have things they want to incorporate into our session

A very good companion for Cults of the Blood Gods. New inspiring SPC characters and Bloodlines. More V5 Lore is always welcome! Money well spent :)

A very strong entry to the 5th Edition VtM gameline, providing a wealth of vivid characters that can fit into any Chronicle, long-awaited expansions to the game's list of Merits and Flaws, new Loresheets to capture the imagination and represent groups introduced in the larger Cults of the Blood Gods, and both the Milliner and Rosselini Giovanni families as Hecata Bloodlines. With this book, Onyx Path fills out the world of VtM in the little places, almost every single character writeup containing a loving reference to the past or a celebration of the little things that make Vampire: the Masquerade so compelling. Not to mention at least half a dozen interesting plot hooks that will make you want to incorporate them into your games.

The loresheets are a mechanical highlight, perhaps the best yet released in the game line, showcasing the familiarity that Onyx Path's writers and developers have earned with the V5 ruleset. Beautiful art, droves of ideas and inspiration, very solid. Some of the Merits and Flaws feel slightly awkward, lacking the wide range or specific categories Merits from the corebook posess, but mechanically they work well, and indeed Onyx Path has simply met overwhelming fan demand for more Merits and Flaws to choose from. As somebody who helped fund this book through Kickstarter, I find my money and support well spent and freely given. I dearly hope to see more V5 products from Onyx Path Publishing in future!

Interesting book, for those who want to create plots for your players about mistery cults and dark faiths. I got curious about the Osebo mention and I wanto to read more about them and the other Legacies. I'm neutral about the art (but I think it's better tham much of first edition). My favorite thing about this book is that I can change any group's integrante to better fit my chronicles. Nothing here is dull or locked.

I was a backer on Kickstarter for Cults of the Blood Gods, which came with the Children of the Blood supplement. I've absolutely not been disappointed. The characters and Coteries in this book are very well written and fit into almost any city with little effort. They show a big range in how believers of these cults operate and the variety within them. The Loresheets at the end are sublime (by the high standard that OPP has set). We receive some more Hecata Bloodlines (the Milliners and Rosselini that I as an older fan was certainly missing) and some new cult sheets.

The art in this book is top quality as usual. I am always happy to use OPP's character art for my games and they make the books so visually appealing. The only reason I've given this a 4 instead of a 5 is because of the Merits and Flaws. I realise why they had to do it as people have kept clamouring for them, but I feel most of them are either reskins of existing ones, ones that set a dangeorus precedent (get +2 dice to things your concept is already good at) and ones that are so good you'd wonder why not every character is in a cult.

All in all I'm very happy with this supplement and would certainly recommend it to people looking to dive more into Kindred religion or who want more flavour for the Hecata.

Children of the Blood is a great resource, and exactly the sort of content that I enjoy. The range of characters on offer can be easily dropped into any story, and they're loaded with hooks, and plot elements that you can draw on and bounce off your players. It not only advances the setting and adds in great hints at what else lurks out there, but importanly shows how religion, faith and the cult structure works in universe. Not every adherent is fully dedicated, and each of them come at it from thier own angles - everyone has their own questions to answer and reason to do it. Overall, i love this book, and it works very well for me. On top of the top quality writing, the book looks amazing as well, and the art style is really evocative of the setup. Whether your an ST that wants to have some pre made story hooks, a player that wants to see some great examples of how cultists can be displayed, or just a person who loves the lore of VtM, this book is well worth picking up.

As one of the KickStarter backers, I was able to see the book in its first, pre-errata version. And I must say, that said version could get confusing at times, making me think that OPP is not telling us some vital information. But thankfully, said errors got fixed in the errata, and since the errata'ed version is the one you can buy, that's the thing I'll give a splendid reveiw.

The main selling point of Children of the Blood, are its NPCs [or SPCs as OPP likes to call them], and most people would probably took their money and walk away, since they are "just" NPCs, but I'd urge these people to reconsider, because CotB NPCs are one of the best written characters I've encountered through every V5 book. They greatly expand on various cults, various locations, and in general, they are just an amazing source for chronicle inspiration.

The other part of the book, describes various coteries, which aims to show, how different groups of vampires can band together under one banner to achieve different goals, which expands on the whole cult thing, introduced in Cults of the Blood Gods. That chapter also includes new coterie types, which give various useful merits, as well as gives Character Sheets, ready to be played, which can be really useful for quick Con-Game, or just as an introduction into the cults mysteries.

The next chapter, offers to the reader a variety of different Cult-dependant merits and flaws, which are all really fun, giving player who've chosen certain cult at character creation, an opportunity to express their role in the cult. There are also few Domain and Haven specific merits, which are really useful as a "little cult leader" tools.

This relativly short book ends on a very high note, giving us some really good Loresheets [something OPP really excels at], offering probably the most fun Hecata Bloodlines I've seen, some really good cults Loresheet, and a really great Malkavian-only one, which could be turned into one chilling chronicle, I'd be eager to play.

All in all, a fantastic book, with some really funny in-jokes about the lore, fantastic characters to introduce into your chronicles, and once again, a big-ass proof that OPP just knows what VTM is about, and for that, I can only thank them with this review.

The book is bland and uninspiring. Even the revisiting stuff feels like a mandate.

Not a bad book, but it didn't have the "wow" of the old WW books. It is just that desing decisions are so.. visible, and there is not a desire to create a world, but simply to create a game supplement.

This PDF is a terrible starting point for VTM V5. Rules are mixed in with the module itself, so I had to spend the better part of an hour deleting pages and redacting pages that mixed rules with story.

The pre-gen characters included are fine. Just be sure to read over their abilities as a storyteller, I was caught off guard by the Malkavian's ability to get visions about things he investigates.

The module itself is a freaking mess. It tries to keep secrets from the storyteller, I had to read it several times to understand what the hell was going on. One standout flaw is a situation where an NPC might have killed someone but the module doesn't even tell the storyteller whether they or someone else did it. You just have to guess. There is also a really confusing flashback sequence taking place in a hotel with a bizarre, nonsensical layout that seems to consist of nothing but doorless hallways and rooms.

Several investigation scenes are given precious little detail. I had to improv a lot of things that nearly derailed the investigation because the module barely describes how the victims died.

Spoilers Ahead

So for curious storytellers, here's a breakdown of the plot and more specific reasons why I hate it.

Dramatis Personae:

Sheriff Sam: Not actually a camarilla or police sheriff, she's just called sheriff for no reason.

Red herring: I forgot his name, he's a stalker fan and drunkenly broke into his idol's house to profess his love. She declined obviously and he hit her and left. She was found dead the next day. This is litterally all you know as a ST about what the hell happened.

Detective: Sam's ghoul in the police force. He's there to be grumpy and pass supernatural cases on to the coterie.

The killer: She gets a vague description in this section of the PDF, it is not really useful. Basically, the coterie killed her daughter, so now she wants to become a serial killer to lure out the coterie.

The Mess of a Plot I am ommitting some details, as the plot was fairly long. The coterie gets told about vampire like killing they need to investigate. This part of the module is fine and dandy, though we took so much time on it that we had to break the module into two sessions. Then a few more bodies drop and the Red Herring gets released from prison. An angry mob tries to kill him and the coterie has the choice to try to help him escape, or get him killed. My group saved him. The third victim is at an abandoned apartment and there's an encounter with amateur "hunters". This encounter was pretty fun honestly.

The module says that when questioned he genuinly believes he did not kill his idol. It is never clarified in the text what really happened. Anyway, the fourth and final body drops at a hotel, but this time the coterie can get there to investigate before the cops. This is where the module falls apart. The coterie gets in and finds the mutilated body of the fourth victim along with a message in blood on the wall reading Four for Four. Thus begins the awful flashback section.

Through a three or four stage set of flashbacks (which are out of order to deliberatly make it more confusing) the coterie learns that they killed two people during a frenzy when they were embraced in the 80s. Somehow immortal, undead, superhuman creatures forgot this traumatic event. Then Sheriff Sam waltzes in and offers to help them if the coterie starts working for her. Then the module says "One of your players will suggest that they should kill more people to pad the numbers and make the killings look like the work of a nonexistent serial killer". This is a huge assumption, and I had to have Sam present the idea because my players are not all knowing. Also Sam set this series of events up to get the coterie under her control, but there's no way for the players to learn this.

Now we get back to modern day after the revalatory flashback sequence. Oh no, we killed some people 30-40 years ago in a frenzy. Amusingly for a module about how bad a vampire's frenzy is, this one does not include the rules for frenzying. The coterie is then supposed to do research about the victims of the 80s to find a surviving relative with a grudge. It does not specify which victim this killer is related to. The coterie then drives to this lady's house and she tries to kill them in a gas explosion (or in other ways, it provides multiple options at least). My group opted for saving themselves and her from the explosion to turn her over to an optional NPC who collects blood clots from serial killers.

In summation, this module is pretty good until the flashback sequence. The meeting with the serial killer at the end is non-satisfactory and just dumb. The coterie's connection to her is only established minutes before they meet her, and they're expected to feel guilt for something they didn't know they did until 6 hours into this mess. A further issue with this woman being the killer is the fact that she is 60-70 years old at minimum. My players spent 45 minutes trying to figure out "who the real killer was" because it made no sense to them that someone this old was able to kill a bunch of young people and drag their corpses around. The mystery cannot actually be solved by the players, they just have to wait for meaningless killings to happen until an arbitrary flashback happens to retroactively give meaning to the killings.

I liked the idea behind this, but sadly, Modiphius, in my own personal opinion, failed bestially at their execution of publishing V5 as a whole, with the core books and PDFs, the custom dice... this Quickstart, while interesting, is no exception.

A good storyteller with some experience could find ways to work with it, but for a beginner, this is a disservice.

At least the PDF is free.

I have ran this scenario three times and all three times I've encountered the same issues. The scenario is interesting enough, presenting itself as a murder mystery that reveals itself to be a personal drama about the pain and consequences of being an inhuman monster. Unfortunately, it falls flat on its face in its attempt. It comes off as disjointed and messy, with unesessary padding and railroad. I do enjoy that the mechanics and rules explainations are built into each section to make them easier to understand without being overwhelmed and the fact that it's free doesn't hurt. Still, if you're aiming for something more substantial and don't mind shelling out a few dollars, I'd look elsewhere.

A phenomenal book which has a surprisingly broad range of topics, all covered in surprising depth. Each of the individual cults are evocatively written up, but also presented with clear guidance of how to involve them in a game as a Storyteller, or how to play as a cult member as a player. These aren't just one-note religious cults which one would think is a neat concept, but with no way to use them, either - each of them are interesting, different from one another and nicely explores a Kindred theme. On top of these, which would be enough on its own, the chapter on the Hecata is glorious, prompting me to write up a character there and then without any relevant game in sight, and despite my lack of pre-existing feeling towards the Giovanni or any other other necromantic Clans. I can't recommend this book highly enough, and whilst I'd say that Chicago By Night is a more critical "must-have" for V5, especially for anyone new to VTM in general, this may actually be a better book overall, making it the best of V5 so far.

This is a brilliantly written and constructed book focusing on the subject of vampires and faith. It contains Kindred and mortal cults to use as allies or antagonists, as well as the chilling return of the Clans of Death, now united as the Hecata. Full review below!

http://thetabletopalmanac.wordpress.com/2021/03/12/cults-of-the-blood-gods-vampire-the-masquerade-5th-edition

The content is great, but the I paid for the $60.00 premium book, which arrived with the top corners of each page smashed in. The damage was not the result of shipping. The color is muted and the paper is not high quality. This "premium" version of the book is not worth the asking price. I'm very displeased. Poor quality printing and binding through and through. If you need this book for your campaign, go with the PDF only.