Good introductory book on the World of Darkness

All seem to be available as PDFs from DriveThru.

The Clanbooks are mostly pretty good (with some exceptions, avoid 1st edition Malkavian . The base Vampire: the Masquerade corebook is a good basic read, of course. As for the game sourcebooks, most of them are pretty good (again, with some notable exceptions .

...and then there's the fiction. Unfortunately, most of it is horribad. The Clan Novel series is awful (well, Settite and Tremere were ok-ish). There is a Tremere-oriented trilogy which was decent (don't remember the name, though). I think the best Vampire fiction I've read to date was the Victorian Vampire trilogy, it was actually pretty good. Well, comparatively, at least.

PetriWessman wrote:

...and then there's the fiction. Unfortunately, most of it is horribad.

I am inclined to agree. The Beast Within hits a few duff notes but is generally ok but it's downhill from there. I'd rate Setite as the best of the Clan Novels, but that's not necessarily saying a lot. In fact I think the best Vampire stories for oWOd were in the Mummy and Hunter series.

(And if you can stomach the nWOD the three novels for Requiem were actually very good, better than any of the oWOD stuff.)