Splatbook

Splatbooks are sourcebooks devoted to a particular facet or fictional faction in a role-playing game. Splatbooks most commonly provide additional background details and rules options for archetypes, races, or classes within the game. For example, a "swords and sorcery" fantasy game might offer splatbooks for each of the races in the setting: humans, dwarves, elves, and others. The books might provide previously undescribed histories for the races, details on the race's traditional allies and enemies, and provide optional rules for members of the race. For example, a book on dwarves might detail the creation myth of the dwarves, note a hatred of orcs, and provide special rules giving dwarf characters a bonus when fighting orcs. The same setting might also provide splatbooks for major archetypes like wizards, warriors, and thieves. Splatbooks within a particular series typically have similarly structured names. Splatbooks are typically targeted to players (as opposed to gamemasters). Many players appreciate in the increase in options and sometimes perceived power for their character.

While the concept is much older, the term "Splatbook" originally rose to describe the sourcebooks published by White Wolf Game Studio for its World of Darkness games. These sourcebooks provided additional details for the various groups available to players in the game. The books were all titled using similar patterns. For Vampire: The Masquerade there was a sourcebook for each clan of vampires. These were the clanbooks. Examples include Clanbook: Tremere and Clanbook: Brujah. The similarity in titles led to the derivation of the term splatbook. The asterisk on a computer keyboard, when used as a wild card character, is often called a "splat". Using a wildcard to replace the part of the title that varies, the Clanbook series as a whole could be described as Clanbook: * or Clanbook: Splat. The term splatbook eventually came to describe any book in a related series for any role-playing game, although it is most strongly associated with the World of Darkness line.

Vampire: The Masquerade has Clanbooks for the various vampire bloodlines, including Clanbook: Brujah and Clanbook: Tremere. Werewolf: The Apocalypse features Tribebooks for the various werewolf tribes, including Tribebook: Red Talons and Tribebook: Fianna. Mage: The Ascension has Tradition Books for the various magical traditions, including Tradition Book: Verbena and Tradition Book: Virtual Adepts. Changeling: The Dreaming has Kithbooks for the various races of changelings, including Kithbook: Pooka and Kithbook: Satyrs. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons second edition has Complete Books for races and classes. The race books include The Complete Book of Dwarves and The Complete Book of Elves. The class books include The Complete Ranger's Handbook and The Complete Necromancer's Handbook. Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 edition has splatbooks for more broad collections of races and classes. The races books include Races of Destiny and Races of Stone while the class books include Complete Arcane and Complete Adventurer. Mongoose Publishing presented alternate splatbooks for Dungeons & Dragons races and classes, including The Quintessential Fighter and The Quintessential Gnome.

Other games produce similar products, such as the race- and character class-specific sourcebooks for Dungeons & Dragons or the numerous Codices for Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000, although the term "splatbook" is most directly associated with White Wolf's World of Darkness product line.

Splatbooks are alternately desired and reviled by gamers, who see them alternately as valuable resources for creating their characters and a craven attempt to milk players for extra money for things that should have been included in the main system resource books. Some complain that some splatbooks are unbalancing to the game as additional powers are given to the group focused on in the book to provide players with incentive to purchase the book.