Vampire - The Masquerade CD-ROM
CD Reference guide and Character Generator.
As the name implies, this is an electronic supplement for WW’s Vampire - The Masquerade RPG, which they call a Storytelling Game. It’s also a stinking, fetid pile of suckitude that isn’t worth the storage medium on which it’s made. I’m serious. It’s that bad.
(Platform note: I’ve used the product on a Macintosh. It may work better on a PC, but I wouldn’t count on it. In case you should find this relevant, my machine is an iMac 500MHz G3 with 128 MB RAM running Mac OS 9.1)
What does it contain, specifically?
On the CD are a character generator utility and the following core books: V-tM, Storyteller’s Companion, Storyteller’s Handbook, Guide to the Sabbat and Guide to the Camarilla. There’s also some amazingly annoying music. Thankfully, this can be turned off. A screen-saver is supposed to be there but isn’t. It can be downloaded from WW, though, if you really want it. After having seen how everything that is there works, I sure don’t.
So, how do I use this thing?
So I took this baby home from my FLGS, opened the box and popped the CD into my computer. Upon opening the disc, I was faced with a plethora of folders and an icon called Mac Installer. Expecting this to install something onto my computer, I clicked on it. To my considerable surprise it crashed my computer without actually installing anything.
Upon restarting my machine and examining things further, I learned two things:
1: With a minimal amount of Mac savvy, it’s possible to install the whole thing manually by selectively dragging and dropping the right folders to your harddisk.
2: Although it’s possible to install the product, there’s no reason to actually do so. Because it’ll still refuse to run without the CD in the drive. And it’s possible to run the program straight from the disk with no installation. One simply has to click on the icon called “Mac Start” hidden somewhat inconspicuously in the folder entitled “Vampire”.
I use Mac OS because I consider it the most user-friendly operating system around. The program on this disc, however, is very far from user-friendly. In fact, it would be more accurate to describe it as downright user-hostile. When you’ve started the damn thing, you should think everything’s fine, shouldn’t you? It isn’t. Everything is not fine. If you want to actually use any of the features, you will be presented with a dialogue box asking you where on the disc the relevant files are located. The program won’t remember this information, so you have to tell it this every time you use the software.
I’ve heard tell, that the experience function is faulty as well.
And if you print out a character, It will print out a five-page character sheet. There’s no way to set it to only print out just the first page which is the one with the character’s game stats on it. This makes it essentially useless as a GM aid for generating NPCs. I mean, I don’t even find it necessary to have a five-page character sheet for a PC much less for every damn NPC vampire in my game.
If this is the finished program, I’d hate to see what the beta version looked like.
So, okay the character generator sucks, but the books are still there, yeah?
Well yes. They’re there. They’re put on the CD in a format requiring the program on the CD to read them. When reading them, you’ll get to see the text presented in a small box on the middle of your screen making it near impossible to get a decent overview of the text. The search function’s not very wonderful either. When you search for a word or phrase, the results will be presented in a separate window with a few words of context for each occurrence, exactly enough to give you absolutely no idea whether or not you’ve found what you’re looking for. All in all, this is a lot less useful than it would have been to have the books as a bunch of pdf files. Or html. Or rtf or even txt.
I suppose it’s possible that this is a way of avoiding piracy, by making the product unattractive.
So, is there anything good about this product?
Well, it’ll run on a Mac. It won’t run well or anything, but it’ll run.
Is it worth the 49.95$ that WW charges for it?
Absolutely not. If I’d gotten this stinker as a free download, I’d still feel cheated. What you get for your money is essentially a half-assed beta-version. Or a horrendously expensive drinks coaster.
A list of the problems that WW is working to fix can be found here. There is a statement to the effect that they hope to have a patch ready by january 25th.
