Splatbook
A splatbook is a sourcebook for a particular role-playing game (RPG) that is not needed for play, but is devoted to a particular facet, character class, or fictional faction, providing additional background details and rules options. For example, a "swords and sorcery" fantasy game might offer splatbooks for each of the races in the setting: humans, dwarves, elves, and others.
History
[edit]Shannon Appelcline and Stu Horvath both agree that although the term "splatbook" didn't appear until the 1990s, the 1978 book Mercenary, created for the science fiction RPG Traveller) and the 1979 sourcebook Cults of Prax, created for the fantasy RPG RuneQuest,[1] were early examples of splatbooks, albeit before the definition came into being.
The term originally rose to describe the sourcebooks published in the early 1990s by White Wolf Game Studio for its World of Darkness games.[2] Many of these books were titled using similar patterns: clanbooks in Vampire: The Masquerade, tribebooks for Werewolf: The Apocalypse, traditionbooks for Mage: The Ascension, and so forth. In newsgroups, these were called *books (the asterisk on a computer keyboard being used as a wildcard character). Since the asterisk is also known as a "splat", this gave rise to the term "splatbook".[1]
This term was subsequently used retrospectively for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons books such as the "Complete" series (The Complete Book of Dwarves, Complete Arcane, etc.),[3] or the numerous codices for Warhammer Fantasy Battle and Warhammer 40,000. By extension, the term "splat" is used for the character class described in a splatbook.
References
[edit]- ^ a b Horvath, Stu (2023). Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. pp. 54–55. ISBN 9780262048224.
- ^ Appelcline, Shannon (2014). Designers & Dragons: The 90s. Silver Spring, Maryland: Evil Hat Productions. pp. 16–17. ISBN 978-1-61317-081-6.
- ^ Fannon, Sean Patrick (1999). The Fantasy Roleplaying Gamer's Bible. Jacksonville, FL: Obsidian Studios. p. 242. ISBN 0967442907.