If it was marks out of 10 (instead of 5 stars), I'd still have given it 9/10. If you're genuinely up for some solo roleplaying, this guide is genuinely well worth it (but make sure you also have or buy Toolbox 1). Here's why: I knew the author's solo adventure game e-books were quite good fun, so I risked buying Toolbox 1 and 2 even though I was a bit dubious that it would help much. I'm an experienced DM for a group and a solo gamer already, but these Toolkits provided a wealth of fresh ideas through randomly generated inspirations. The 3 things I loved most are (1) you get to do some RP as a player when nobody else is available; (2) you end up with adventure incidents that you would never have come up with or if you've run out of your own ideas (see below); and (3) if you solo adventure in an established D&D world (I use Forgotten Realms or Dark Sun), it prompts you to learn about some of the established lore (see below) and weave in some of those adventures alongside random gen. Sample highlights from a few days' gaming with this Toolkit: (1) using it to randomly generate extra rooms, traps and monsters in a playthrough inspired by the classic Fighting Fantasy "Deathtrap Dungeon" gamebook. Setting off to agree a trade deal with Sembia and capturing a pirate vessel after a randomly generated pirate crew attacked. Walking into a randomly generated sleepy farming village and ending up with a "From Dusk Til Dawn"-inspired fight with a randomly generated encounter with a pack of hungry Vampire Thralls. Random generation leading me to a place on the map and reading the wiki about it, rediscovering the existence of Aurumvorax (aka Golden Gorgers - look them up!) and promptly making them the centrepiece of a quest that was part random gen and part D&D lore. Lastly, as a DM, those experiences are also things I can put into future games with my group of players.

If it was marks out of 10 (instead of 5 stars), I'd still have given it 9/10. If you're genuinely up for some solo roleplaying, this guide is genuinely well worth it (as is Toolbox 2). Here's why: I knew the author's solo adventure game e-books were quite good fun, so I risked buying Toolbox 1 and 2 even though I was a bit dubious that it would help much. I'm an experienced DM for a group and a solo gamer already, but these Toolkits provided a wealth of fresh ideas through randomly generated inspirations. The 3 things I loved most are (1) you get to do some RP as a player when nobody else is available; (2) you end up with adventure incidents that you would never have come up with or if you've run out of your own ideas (see below); and (3) if you solo adventure in an established D&D world (I use Forgotten Realms or Dark Sun), it prompts you to learn about some of the established lore (see below) and weave in some of those adventures alongside random gen. Sample highlights from a few days' gaming with this Toolkit: (1) using it to randomly generate extra rooms, traps and monsters in a playthrough inspired by the classic Fighting Fantasy "Deathtrap Dungeon" gamebook. Setting off to agree a trade deal with Sembia and capturing a pirate vessel after a randomly generated pirate crew attacked. Walking into a randomly generated sleepy farming village and ending up with a "From Dusk Til Dawn"-inspired fight with a randomly generated encounter with a pack of hungry Vampire Thralls. Random generation leading me to a place on the map and reading the wiki about it, rediscovering the existence of Aurumvorax (aka Golden Gorgers - look them up!) and promptly making them the centrepiece of a quest that was part random gen and part D&D lore. Lastly, as a DM, those experiences are also things I can put into future games with my group of players.

This is very good as quickstart guides go, both in terms of layout and the amount of flavour and rules content. Essentially, it allows a GM to get this, show players the QuickStart and suggest "hey, let's play this". If enough folks like it, you can then known it's worth buying everything available to keep it spinning for a few games with your gaming group. At a "pay what you want" price (auto-suggestion is $0.50!), it's totally worth getting to see whether you'd like to play this game, and go on to purchase the full rules and the (currently one available) supplement, plus the mission PDFs. It was a good enough QuickStart that it made me go "all in" to hoover up everything else (even though I bought the main rules from a supplier not named DriveThruRPG due to quicker delivery option). Nicely done.

This is good and well worthwhile. It's well written and clearly written (although those averse to profane language probably shouldn't buy this... or be playing this game!). It has some good flavour on Scrapbridge - it makes it easy to find characters, places and inspiration without having to wade through the type of excessive, padded minutiae that is common to supplements in many gaming systems. Lastly, and importantly for the nuts and bolts of gaming, it includes about a dozen interesting monsters/critters for GMs to throw at players. Many of these creatures provide built-in ways to make the combat a more considered, tactical affair than just running forward and hitting them. Nicely done. A lot of gaming systems could learn from this.

This is what the original Vampire: The Masquerade should have been all those years ago. This is a beautifully presented, clearly organised, professionally edited, detailed and helpful piece of work. The artwork is also high quality and evocative. Something you can use for imagery if gaming online. Very well worth the money.

Taking time out to give this product credit where it is due. If every roleplaying game supplement was like this, the roleplaying hobby would be in such a better place. I would rate this as one of the top two Vampire: The Masquerade supplements (V5 or any other edition) ever produced. This is a really well thought through, beautifully presented, detailed and super helpful product. There's everything a GM/Storyteller could want - notes and stats on a wealth of interesting NPCs/SPCs, good flavour and notes on key locations, maps of the key parts of the city, and an expansive ready-to-roll adventure that is a rollercoaster ride your players might take in more than one direction and have great fun doing it.

Taking time out to give this product credit where it is due. If every roleplaying game supplement was like this, the roleplaying hobby would be in such a better place. I would rate this as one of the top two Vampire: The Masquerade supplements (V5 or any other edition) ever produced. This is a really well thought through, beautifully presented, detailed and super helpful product. There's everything a GM/Storyteller could want - notes and stats on a wealth of interesting NPCs/SPCs, good flavour and notes on key locations, map of the key parts of the city, a ready-to-roll adventure, plus several pages worth of other story ideas that a GM could usefully spin into another 15-20 sessions worth of gaming.

Do not buy this. This product is terrible. It wouldn't even be worthwhile if it was free. At $4.99, it feels like a ripoff. Feels like, because it is. You'd be contemplating buying this to help you set a campaign or adventure in Cleveland, which would mean you'd want characters, city locations and a campaign plot or at least scenes / mini-scenarios. Does it have any characters to populate Cleveland? No. Does it have any detail of Cleveland as a location? No. Does it have a campaign plot? No. It has a bad map and a couple of paragraphs on "this is what Cleveland's like". If you wanted to get a real flavour of Cleveland, you would do better surfing Google Maps and Wikipedia for 15 minutes. The blurb dangles an 18-session campaign - that's borderline fraudulent. What it does give you is 4 broad brushstrokes on scenes you might want to use, then a note which amounts to "you'll then want to fill the other 12-14 sessions with stuff you come up with yourself".

Most of the products in this line and from this publisher are excellent. This item, however, is chock full of bad fluff and has little in the way of rules-based content. On that basis, it's way overpriced. As an inspiration for ideas, it's weaker than some of the free PDFs for the game.