(The) Gilded Cage, billed as “A sourcebook of politics and influence for Vampire: The Masquerade”, is a toolkit for players and storytellers in creating characters and storylines concerned with gaining and wielding power secretly.
It follows Midnight Siege a toolkit for warfare between the vampire sects, and like that book it is a collection of ideas for creating games and playing characters involved in a specific arena.
In my experience, "case studies" like the ones in Gilded Cage, are much better for players to stimulate their imaginations with than generalities. It's actually why I did the book -- older books always made much of "controlling" this or "manipulating" that, but it never really said _what_ was done to facilitate this. Gilded Cage was my answer to _how_ vampires get all that stuff done. Vampire developer Justin Achilli, white-wolf.com forum, 30th July 2001
The short introduction, Power Corrupts, sets out the book’s stall. “For years – since the game’s introduction, really – Vampire has made much of the Kindred’s presence as a hidden force among the modern world… Influence and manipulation are the methods of Jyhad, certainly as much as outright violence. The key question is how… This book answers these questions… The purpose of The Gilded Cage is to encourage players and Storytellers to think about the specifics of their characters’ influence.” Note the title, ‘The’ appearing throughout except in the book’s logo, also on the spine and in the back cover blurb.
The introduction also establishes the in-character unreliable narrator for five of the six chapters, a young vampire dedicated “to ****ing the Elders at Their Own Games”, an interesting alternative to the violently anti-establishment anarchs that many young Kindred become.
Chapter One: The Business at Hand is the longest at twenty-seven pages. It concerns companies, corporations, banks, lawyers, unions, and other facts of business life. It also covers such oddities as Giovanni and Assamite clan interests, noting that the clan information is up to date with the recent Revised Clanbooks.
Obviously the information isn’t overly detailed except where illegal and vampire tactics different from legal and mortal ones. This is a Vampire sourcebook, not The Motley Fool. However, it will suffice unless your players read the Financial Times.
The next three chapters are all thirteen pages long, and deal with other specific areas of influence. However, these areas vary greatly in size, so the depth of coverage varies as a result.
Chapter Two: Social Climbing examines high society, drawing parallels between this wealthy elite that spend too much time at social functions and the vampires that move among them. Interestingly, it also covers ‘Low Society’, a section that seems to have strayed from Chapter Four.
Chapter Three: On Matters of Governance is more concerned with influence in the mortal political field than politicking itself. It covers its subject fairly well, if unsurprisingly cynically. It may not be quite as cynical as the section on lawyers from Chapter One, but it comes close.
Chapter Four: The Streets takes as much space as Social Climbing and On Matters of Governance to cover a far larger subject. It inevitably suffers by comparison with entire books on the subject, even counting the Low Society in Chapter Two, so much so that it feels like the Cliff’s Notes for the old Mage book of the streets, Destiny’s Price.
Chapter Five: Outside the Box sketches various less common forms of influence. Academia, Media, the Church, Psychiatry and Subcultures are all covered. While the Subcultures are given short shrift and the Media section is enough for a non-player character but not for a player, Academia is covered well, the Organized Religion piece is excellent and the Psychology, Psychiatry and Social Work section has enough detail to cover the disturbing implications of vampires influencing the mentally ill.
Finally, Pulling the Strings concerns the creation of political and influence based games, and rules questions such as the value of Background traits. The advice is good, especially in concert with the political game guidelines from Guide to the Camarilla, the examples are helpful, and a guest appearance by Bruce Campbell (here in a demonstration of the Fame background) is always an added bonus.
In terms of presentation, it matches the White Wolf standard. The variance between the logo and other uses of the title is the most obvious editing glitch, and is a minor eccentricity rather than an actual problem.
As for art, Michael Gaydos’s stark black and white frontispieces work well, but his cover seems garish after the recent run of Vampire supplements. Its best effect is that it reminds me of Nick Cave’s “Red Right Hand”, a song about a sinister and influential figure… Drew Tucker’s sinister caricatures and dark interiors hold far more interest, for me, than Matt Mitchell’s sketchy characters.
The writing is generally good, stressing examples and practical cases rather than general theory. It’s possible to kickstart a chronicle set in Houston, Texas, from the development of assorted characters in examples and flavour text. Even The Streets includes good ideas, and the other chapters fire a few creations. I’ll definitely be featuring vampires sliding into the social scene through connections with charities in a future game, to use an example from Social Climbing. Messrs Marmell and Mearls have generally stocked this toolkit well, and it definitely warrants a look for those interested in political, social and influential games and characters.
Finally, for those interested in Gilded Cage’s development, the original project outline has been published on White Wolf’s website. It makes interesting reading, both for comparison to the finished product and as an insight into the current direction of Vampire development.
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