As the book notes, Sabbat vampires are entirely removed from humanity – and, therefore, they are entirely removed from one of the (if not the) central themes of Vampire: The Masquerade. But it must, of necessity, also consider how it can or cannot be used in other ways – how much things have changed in setting and in theme and in mechanics (or lack thereof) for the Sabbat. And I’m going to tackle it head-on, instead of what otherwise might be the more normal thing of introducing the Sabbat for those who aren’t old-school players.įirm, explicit emphasis is placed on how the Sabbat are presented as antagonists, not as possible player characters. As such, this review will discuss how this book can be used in a typical V5 campaign. But it was quite clear about the basics for how things had changed for the Sabbat – and they had changed a lot.
The V5 core book was, to my mind, not terribly clear on how things had changed day-to-day between the Anarchs and the Camarilla. There is too much strurm und drang amongst long-time Vampire fans about the Revised (and therefore V20)-era notion of the Sabbat as a playable option to the V5 era where they are emphatically not. It’s almost impossible to do that, however, with Sabbat: The Black Hand.
In general, I keep my V5 reviews to reviews of the book as something for V5. Players who are looking for “how does the Sabbat work in V5” are probably going to have a much different opinion from players who are looking for “how do I play as V20 Sabbat using V5 mechanics?” And, as will be discussed further below, it is firmly aimed at using the Sabbat as antagonists only, which really splits this book’s audience in two. For one, it is substantially shorter than those two books (it’s around 125 pages).
Sabbat: The Black Hand is not, however, the same sort of presentation as Camarilla and Anarch. And they have no compunction embracing scores of vampires at a time or shredding the Masquerade to do it. They are religious fanatics bent on nothing less than the obliteration of the founders of the vampiric Clans. They venerate diablerie and seek the destruction of elders. They care nothing for humanity (or Humanity). The Sabbat are the vampires’ boogeymen – the monsters that the monsters are scared of. Sabbat: The Black Hand brings a full book of information Vampire: The Masquerade’s third sect, the Sabbat (sorry, Ashirra, you’re #4 at best).
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