Product Description

Thralls of the Damned

Slaves to the addictive taste of vampiric Vitae, ghouls trade servitude for that heady substance. Servitude, however, damns them far more than they know, as their unnatural craving drives them to ever greater desperation and depravity. Among those known as blood slaves, there's no such thing as "just one fix."

Bound to the Night

Ghouls examines the life and lot of those who serve vampiric masters. From in-depth rules on being a ghoul, to ghoul families and systems for creating them, to Vitae-fed plants known as mandragora, this book fully explores the effects of the Blood on mortal lives. Hardcover.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #658587 in Books
• Published on: 2005-05-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 144 pages

Customer Reviews

Great supplement for playing the Servants of the Immortals
Renfield, slave, mindless blood-crazed psudo-vampires...

Ghouls is a supplement for playing the daylight servitors, bodyguards, street informers, thugs and muscle of immortal vampires. Usually a vampire needs servants that can operate during the day, providing eyes and ears to the goings on of the mortal daylight world. However, being that vampire blood is highly addictive and carries with it mystical properties, playing these characters poses great role playing challenges to any troupe or chronicle. Overall, I'm glad to say that Ghouls is an excellent sourcebook on including ghouls in a chronicle that addresses most of the aspects of ghouls that Storytellers might be concerned with, and a few they might not have thought of before.

The first chapter of the book discusses how it is a person becomes a ghoul, how disciplines work for ghouls, the way the various clans and covenants look at ghouls, and gives a look at animal ghouls, plant ghouls, and ghoul families.

Ghoul creation also covers what it is like to become a ghoul, how disciplines work for them, and how the clans see ghouls, do have a few nice bits. Details on how ghouls feel real emotions, unlike the hollow echos that vampires add dimension to these servants. Also the threat of diseases being transferred to a ghoul from a master are handled well, and other elements (such as how the temperature of a vampire's blood is cooler than a human's) can easily add to a chronicle's atmosphere.

The second chapter concerns the creation of a ghoul character. New merits and derangements are included here, as well as rules on exactly how Disciplines use by ghouls differs from that of their vampire masters. One thing different from the Vampire rulebook is that here ghouls start with two points in Disciplines, to reflect characters created with the rules here are to be more experienced beings.
A good amount of information is devoted to explain the ghoul life, combining role-playing advice with the rules system that ghouls work from, and it's entertaining and helpful read.

Ghoul bloodlines are also covered. A portion of this chapter is devoted to the game system for both conception and maintaining a ghoul.

Further detail is given on the five ghoul families mentioned earlier, and each family has its own unique weakness and strength, such as reduced experience costs for certain merits or a mandatory derangement.
The chapter rounds out with a little more on animal ghouls, mandragora (plant ghouls) aka lacrima, with rules given on how each clan's plant ghouls produce a different type of lacrima. Somewhat strange, but could be useful for anyone interested in vampiric vegetation.

The third chapter of the book is devoted to storytelling ghouls. Details such topics as the things ghouls can do during the day for their masters and how to properly roleplay the blood bond between slave and master, as well as ways Storytellers can work ghouls into their campaign in ways other than having their players' vampires using them, this section is great for chronicles involving ghouls only.

The fourth chapter of the book has sample NPC ghouls a Storyteller can drop into their campaign. The last chapter covers creating ghoul families, formulating a background to them, their unique flaws, how they might be structured.

Overall the art is good to excellent, typical for White Wolf production values. The artwork of the book is of a consistently high standard, keeping in tune with the subject material and being consistently well-done throughout.

Finally, I think Ghouls is an *excellent* addition to the World of Darkness. It gives a lot of useful information, both rules-wise and setting-wise, it adds dimension, substance and quality to the Vampire the Requiem table-top rpg game line.

TRULY FOR MATURE AUDIENCES ONLY
I have often thought that the VAMPIRE lines can lapse into treating the stars (the vampires) as humans with super abilities and a few tough super vulnerabilities. Ghouls, that is the human blood slaves of vampires (think Renfield serving his master), serve as excellent foils for the inhumanity of vampires. The mistreated ghoul, the mentally abused ghoul, the tortured and mutilated ghoul bring into sharp relief the fact that vampires are no longer part of humanity. Just as people have few qualms about the suffering of lower life, so too vampires use people as servants, blood donors, and as one-sided relationships to staisfy whatever lingering human needs a vampire still experiences.

Make no mistake, there's some really debased content in this book. It describes how vampires interact with and treat their blood-servants, which includes torture, mutilation, emotional sexual and physical abuse, and any other kind of messed up abuse you can imagine. I think the authors successfully portray the ghouls as victims so that the readers identify with the ghoul's suffering rather than the vampire's power trip.

The core-book explains the mechanics of a vampire making a ghoul, but GHOULS also describes how to make ghoul characters. The idea of playing a ghouls game is an interesting one. There's also plenty of information on how the different covenants and clans view and treat ghouls, how to make bloodlines of ghouls, and how to play games using ghoul characters. There is also information on creating ghouls of animals or plants (!)

So, I found this to be a very interesting supplement. Beyond the role-playing aspect of creating ghouls in-game, there is also playing a game where some or all are ghouls. I had never given it much thought before, but playing ghoul characters seemed like an interesting twist on the game (and this part is very well documented). All the parts on mistreatment of ghouls seems very useful to me in portraying the vile depths to which vampires regularly sink. Vampires seem much more monstrous to me now than before I read GHOULS.

Ghouls...
For me, Ghouls reads as a supplement that you knew White Wolf would publish and did so by rote. There's nothing inspiring about this book.

It gets the technicals right, talking about the relationships between vampires and ghouls, talking about ghouled animals and a slightly interesting note, Mandragora (ghouled plants).

There's a chapter with expanded rules for making a ghoul character then what's found in the book.

The book just isn't compelling or that great.