I like using The World of Darkness games as reference sourcebooks. They aren’t entirely accurate in terms of folklore, but they are often better resources than quite a few books selling themselves as being serious compendiums of classic cryptids and things that go bump in the night. Some of those other resources get a little hung up on one thing or another, while the WoD books tried to cram as much as they could in the space of 300-500 pages.
I picked up most of the scans as free promotional books or on the cheap (during sales) from an authorized vendor. I’m flipping through them today, as I have discovered that they are good for prompting new ways of thinking about dark critters.
I am still kind of bummed that I never got to play Werewolf or Vampire, The Masquerade back in the day. The others look fun too (Wraith, Changling, Mage, Hunter), but I have always been most enamored with Vampires as an RPG game.
I also only got to play Shadowrun a few times, which kind of bums me out as well. Maybe one of these days I’ll convince the kiddos to play a game or three with me, although it might have been more fun doing all-nighters with a beer in one hand.