Liege, Lord and Lackey

Rating:
Summary: A REALLY GREAT BOOK!!!
Review: LL&L is the Year of the Ally book for Vampire: the Dark Ages. While I'm a fan of White Wolf, this product doesn't offer much to make it stand out from the "average" WW sourcebook. Sure, you get the nice art on the cover and the interior, but you expect that from WW. What's important is the substance.

Liege, Lord, and Lackey does have substance. After the expected opening piece of fiction, you get an entire chapter on how each Clan treats its ghouls and retainers (and why sometimes you don't want to be a ghoul, or to ghoul all of your allies) and what kinds of followers they tend to attract. It can be useful for kickstarting the imaginations of GMs and players, although a lot of it could be inferred from other books (specifically Ghouls: the Fatal Addiction). The chapter is amusing to read, though. Each Clan gets its own paragraph or two of flavor text (to borrow a term from CCGs).

The second chapter is a fairly in-depth explanation of how medieval society works in the WoD, which can be useful for those of us who aren't familiar with "realistic" medieval society or who don't want to lug their copies of Pendragon or old Ars Magica supplements to our Vampire games. The information has a good home here, although it probably would have been better placed in the main rules (perhaps distilled and replacing that wierd bit of text on vampires building labyrinths). Bits in this chapter include criminals, the poor, Jews, and explain just what the heck a seneschal does. Important stuff if you want to run in Medieval England instead of the Forgotten Realms. Tips for all-Ally chronicles and adventures round out the chapter.

The third chapter is character creation, and again I'm left with the question "Why would I want to play a mortal in Vampire?" Sure, there's new Hedge Magic (how about just publishing one book with all the hedge magic in it and then dropping it?) and a couple of new merits and flaws which would be useful in the game even if it's rather unclear why a character would be soothing *only* to Frenzying vampires. And new skills, of course.

The fourth chapter explains the other Creatures of the Night (or early dusk) and what kind of servants they make (pretty poor ones, in general). It's nothing revolutionary, although it turns out that werewolves can be Blood Bound in the Dark Ages, but not in the modern world. At least one White Wolf staffer has said this is not an accident or a mistake. Hm....

If you're interested in playing or running a Ghoul-heavy Dark Ages campaign, you might want to pick this one up (along with "Ghouls", which is referenced at least once that I remember). If you're only interested in the bits on the functioning of medieval society, there was an Ars Magica supplement called, IIRC, The Medieval Handbook (or maybe Guidebook) that went into much more detail, it just may be hard to find since that was a couple of editions ago. A better route for White Wolf might have been to make a Dark Ages World of Darkness book and then puff up Ghouls a little more with a few paragraphs of Dark Ages information. As it stands, though, LL&L is a useful if not great supplement for V:tDA.