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.
The term "splatbook" arose in the 1990s. It originally described the sourcebooks published in the early 1990s by White Wolf Game Studio for its World of Darkness games. [1] 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". [2]
The term "splatbook" is now used to describe a range of sourcebooks, including those which predated the term. Shannon Appelcline and Stu Horvath have cited the 1978 book Mercenary, created for the science fiction RPG Traveller , and the 1979 sourcebook Cults of Prax , created for the fantasy RPG RuneQuest , as examples of the splatbook format which preceded its definition. [2] [1] [3] Other examples include Advanced Dungeons & Dragons books such as the "Complete" series ( The Complete Book of Dwarves , Complete Arcane , etc.), [4] 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. [2] [1] [3]