In 1999, White Wolf embarked on their most ambitious fiction project to tie in to their Vampire: the Masquerade game line. This may be the most ambitious fiction tie-in for any role-playing product, ever. They repeated this one more time with a Clan Saga to tie in to their Vampire: The Dark Ages set. There was also another for Werewolf that bundled tribes into a two-per-book format, so the ambition is already dwindling. While there are some D&D products that have massive catalogs for a setting, I’m not sure that any reach this scope and scale. Maybe Drizzt books, although those were not envisioned as a set of thirteen (or fourteen) linked books. (Continue Reading…)

Anthology covers events that start nearly a century before the primary events of the Clan Novel Saga, up through New Year’s Eve after the events. Also, oddly, part of the Assamite story also has events happening in 2001, a year after the anthology was published in November 2000. I can’t help but make squinty eyes at the title of this thing. “Clan Novel: Anthology” is crafted from elemental contradiction, and naming an anthology “Anthology” squanders so much opportunity for an evocative title. (Continue Reading…)

Clan Novel: Nosferatu covers events that happen between June 1 and November 30, 1999. It is Book 13 in the original clan novel saga, and was published in September 2000. It was written by Gherbod Fleming, who provided five of the thirteen novels in the set. Our primary POV character is Calebros, who is the center of the web of information – SchreckNet – located in the tunnels beneath New York City.

While released last, this novel begins chronologically before the rest, because the Nossies show us the signs leading up to all the mess. It was cool to see some of the memos reappear here that were first presented as hints in earlier novels. Unfortunately, there’s also number of revelations that were hidden from the reader, not from the characters. (Continue Reading…)