Minireview: Clash of Wills (Vampire: the Dark Ages)

Clash of Wills is a short standalone adventure for Vampire: the Dark Ages, and it’s firmly in the “some good, some bad” category. An English Earl lies dying and there is suspicion of Cainite manipulation in the whole affair, especially since there are multiple parties interested in claiming ownership of the Earl’s lands. The Prince of London sends a semi-covert team (the PCs) to find out what is going on. It’s probably no surprise to anyone that things turn out to be more complicated than initially thought.

First the good. The NPCs are mostly well fleshed-out, and the basic plot is interesting with multiple conflicting factions. The situation is guaranteed to explode, but the PCs have a say in how in explodes. It’s quite suitable for beginning characters as a world intro, and it should also be easy to integrate into ongoing campaigns (just change the names of places and people, as needed).

Then the bad. The main problem here is one common to all too many White Wolf adventure modules: it’s quite linear and specifies a lot of things that “just happen” no matter what the PCs do. If run strictly as written, it would probably feel extremely railroaded, with the PCs as mere spectators to events. That’s not fun.

Since the main core and the NPCs here are quite decent, in the end I think this isn’t a bad adventure; it just needs some GM work to run it more as a sandbox, keeping the PC actions as the main drivers of what happens, not some “at time X event Y happens, no matter what” side note. It’s a nice mix of intrigue, investigation and combat, and should serve as a good intro to the game (given some tweaking).

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