From Wikipedia regarding "splatbook" and its origin: The term originally rose to describe the sourcebooks published by White Wolf Game Studio for its World of Darkness games. 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". This term was subsequently used retrospectively for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons books such as The Complete Book of Dwarves and Complete Arcane, 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.
From Wikipedia regarding "splatbook" and its origin:
The term originally rose to describe the sourcebooks published by White Wolf Game Studio for its World of Darkness games. 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".
This term was subsequently used retrospectively for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons books such as The Complete Book of Dwarves and Complete Arcane, 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.
Interesting. So they're proto-splatbooks! Thanks fur the info!