The Mission Statement
The majority of people who are fans of Buffy and Angel simply watch the shows; they have little interest in the expanded universe created by other writers and artists, or, in a few cases, even Joss himself. But, there are those who do read the novels and comics, or play the video games. And within that group, there are those that also play Eden Studio's RPGs based within the Slayerverse. This site is, primarily, for them. However, those who like reading the comics and books might also find the information housed here helpful, or interesting, in some way. Feel free to peruse.
Eden Studios has made it clear that they do not have the rights to any of the expanded universe characters or settings. This means there will be no official Fray sourcebook, nor any conversions of the various other comics printed by Dark Horse. You also won't be able to find character stats for Celina, the Slayer-turned-Vampire from Tempted Champions by Yvonne Navarro, or the Order of Sages, a society much like the Watcher's Council (except interested in learning to make peace treaties with monsters, rather than killing them) from The Wisdom of War by Christopher Golden. That's where this site comes in. I hope to amass a large amount of character, society and setting information from the various comics, novels and games that Eden Studios can't use. After all, some of it is pretty damn cool.
Eden Stuios? RPG? What?
Well, first, RPG stands for "Roleplaying Game." A roleplaying game is a game where people pretend to be other people - sometimes original characters, sometimes standard characters from a given fandom (Spike, for example) - who are having an adventure that's being controlled by a Storyteller (or Game Master, Dungeon Master, Director, etc). The Storyteller cointrolls the adversaries and allies of the characters being played by the Players. Usually, RPGs have statistics for characters which represent the character's limitations in various areas (sword fighting, strength, intelligence, etc). These statistics are used to determine if various actions can be performed successfully in the game - to do this, usually, you roll dice.
Overall, an RPG is a study in improv acting. People take on the personality of someone else, and act their way through an impromptu scene. Some people are good at this, others not so good, but the goal of any RPG is to have fun.
Now, Eden Studios is an RPG publisher. They've printed various settings, including All Flesh Must Be Eaten, a zombie RPG (where you play, get this, zombies), and Witchcraft, a modern-horror game (the setting's similar to Buffy, but a little more gritty). They recently obtained the rights to publish both Buffy and Angel RPGs. These games use Eden Studio's own RPG rules system - the Unisystem. It's a very simple, streamlined system designed for balanced, fast-paced action.
You Called the Setting the "Slayerverse." I've Never Heard That Before.
That would be because I made it up. *grin* I'm sure someone else has used the term before, but I've never heard it, so... Anyway, I hear "Buffyverse," "Angelverse," and "Jossverse" a lot, but I don't like any of them. "Buffyverse" and "Angelverse" are too show-specific for my tastes, and now that Joss has added Firefly to his list of worlds, "Jossverse" is a little inaccurate. "Slayerverse," to me, indicates the universe of the Slayer; that encompasses both Buffy and Angel, so I'm going to use it throughout the site.
Okay, So Why Would I Want to Use Any of This in My Games?
Because it's cool.
Okay, so it isn't considered "cannon" material for the universe, but so what? Joss personally looks over every idea for a comic or novel or game before giving it the go head. In my book, that makes it almost-cannon. But, if you want an example, I'll give you one. I love Faith. She is, by far, my favorite character in the Slayerverse. But, her time on the show has been limited by the availability of her actress, Eliza Dushku. So, if you were running a game set in Season Five of Buffy, Faith would rightfully be in jail. How could you use her? In the novels and comics, she's had a number of adventures with Angel and Buffy during the seasons following her incarceration. If I wanted to use her in a campaign, I could take a scenario from one of the books, and use that. It sure beats coming up with a half-assed reason for her to be out of jail on your own, right?
And, there are, of course, a number of really interesting Big Bads in the books. The Erl King from Child of the Hunt, the Aegir from The Wisdom of War, for example, are both enemies the players are likely never to have heard of, and they're both flexible enough to be put into any campaign. If you've ever found yourself without a villain for an episode, just rip one from the comics (one of my personal favorites is the Demon Rat Hive from the Angel graphic novel Autumnal).
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