Clanbook: Toreador (Vampire: The Masquerade Clanbooks) [Paperback]

The book offers two perspectives on Toreador history- one from a recently awakened Medieval elder (ignorant of modern BOOK OF NOD scholarship) and another from a young, African Toreador. Other Toreador give insiders' perspectives. These various voices are differentiated but often not starkly enough (despite intriguing multicultural names) to add interest.

The text is, however, generally well written and engaging. Between post-modern aesthetic theory (yes, really) and political ruminations, there is interesting discussion of African Toreador, the Toreador strategy of encouraging others to underestimate their clan and welcome development of the Toreadors' relationship with the mortal world. Apparently, Toreador can use their absorption in beauty and involvement with mortals to prevent degeneration of their own humanity. Involvement in the mortal world even gives them a different, more human, more urgent time sense.

There is relatively little about Toreador antitribu beyond a player character template for a follower of the Path of Cathari (apparently- they misspelled "Cathari" and listed incorrect virtues). Unfortunately, this antitribu character is a rather generic Sabbat. (See MONTREAL BY NIGHT for better Cathari characters.)

There's been a recent move in the Revised Edition Vampire books to make ancient history more nebulous, which is probably a good decision. Not every Clanbook has to reveal the ultimate secrets of the Antedilluvians, but the Revised Toreador book heads too far in this direction, I believe. The history insinuates that famous figures from Greece and Rome were Toreador, seeming to fly in the face of the Revised Edition's move *away* from making every celebrity a Vampire.

The medieval elder who narrates the clan's ancient history spins a yarn that I'm sure was designed to shake up our conceptions of what Noddist history is all about... but just ends up falling a little flat. There isn't enough there to make me think we have the story wrong... only enough discrepancies to make me believe our first-person narrator is misinformed. Similarly, the focus on moving away from Eurocentric conceptions of Toreador is overdone. What was handled elegantly in Clanbook: Tzimisce Revised (with its treatment of Indian and African methusalehs), now reads like a sophomoric attempt to apologize for previous editions by overly focusing on Africa. There's little to no treatment of Toreador in the Middle East, ignoring a fascinating period of the Toreador's development that the Dark Ages books are expanding almost monthly.

In the end, Clanbook Toreador Revised failed disastrously for me. It's the first of the Revised Clanbooks that I wouldn't recommend to anyone, and would instead direct you to its predecessor.

Clanbook: Toreador is not an exception. Compared to the previous clanbook, this one almost brings no mechanics and game systems. I think this is OK, since in the main Storyteller rulebooks we already have more rules than we might be able to explore in a lifetime.

As a storyteller, what I really expect from a clanbook is to give me a deeper view on the clan, and this book does it very well.

The text is mature and intelligent, and avoids wasting much time with silly statements such as "the Toreador divide themselves into two groups, the Artists and the Poseurs", and things like that.

The reading is also interesting and fun. This Clanbook tells us a lot and still keeps many things mysterious, as it should be.

Read the original clanbook too, if you like. You will find some useful rules and system that are completely absent here.

But, if roleplaying is the most important part of the game for you, and if you like to have a good time reading, this one is the book for you.

It's an inspiring and charming view on the most passionate of clans.