Weighing in at twenty total pages (including the cover), After Sunset Vampires provides fifteen pages of supplementary rules for the d20 Modern rule set that will allow you to inject the rudimentary trappings of action horror flicks of the vampiric variety into your pre-existing d20 modern campaign or to start a new campaign built upon those trappings.
The first three pages of rules content discuss using vampires as PCs, including the species traits of these creatures and how to apply them to a pre-existing character. The one shortcoming fo this chapter is that it makes very specific statements about what these creatures are and how they operate, some of which will not be to everybody?s liking. I would have preferred to see a less specific and more mutable view of vampires presented here.
The following three pages of the document cover a lot of ground, from spotting vampires amongst normal humans to presenting three stereotypical vampire ?types? based on popular characters in fiction and film. That said, the majority of these four pages is devoted to discussing vampiric weaknesses (e.g., can?t cross running water, can?t be seen by electronics, etc) that a player may choose to take in place of level adjustments to reflect their character?s age.
The next three pages of After Sunset Vampires present eight new feats for vampiric PCs and a listing of equipment that, with the sole exception of plasma bags, is used to hunt vampires (something that seemed like an odd inclusion for a supplement about playing vampires as opposed to hunting them). Of the feats, all seem fairly balanced with exception of Immortal Experience which allows the vampire to use any skill untrained, even those marked with the ?Trained Only? designator.
The Vampire Hero core racial class is described in detail on the following four pages of the document. It is here, ironically, that things get a wee bit more generic in that the Vampire Hero has much more in common with the vampire of legend than their modern motion picture counterparts that the rest of After Sunset Vampires is fixated on. A welcome addition to the material already covered, this base class overrides some of those specific assumptions about vampires that I bemoaned earlier and opens up several possibilities for character concepts.
Finally, the last two pages of rules content in the document present optional rules for killing vampires with a stake to the heart, hunting (or more correctly, feeding) off-screen, and Bloodtouched (vampires born of a human mother) . All of the options except for this last one are explained in detail, which is a tad bit disappointing, as this last option is the most intriguing of the three (it is only afforded two short paragraphs of vague description).
In the end, if you?re looking for high adrenaline horror in the vein of Blade or Underworld, then After Sunset Vampires will definitely be right up your alley. If, on the other hand, you?re looking for more traditional gothic horror in the vein of Dracula or Castle Freak, you?d be better off looking somewhere else. While the buy in price of $2.95 is a bit steep for 15 pages of rules content, with so few products on the market that cover this ground for d20, I think that it is worth paying.
<br><br><b>LIKED</b>: The attention that it pays to subject matter left largely uncovered in d20 products. The aesthetically pleasing artwork. The vampiric feats (with the exception of Immortal Experience) and the Vampiric Hero core class.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: The Immortal Experience feat seems very unbalanced. The optional "rule" for Bloodtouched really isn't a rule so much as it is a very brief and ultimately useless description of such vampires. <br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br><BR>[THIS REVIEW WAS EDITED]<BR>
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