As most gamers know, the only thing spottier in terms of sheer quality than a White Wolf splatbook is a White Wolf City-by-Night book. For every Constantinople by Night (the supreme citybook of the Vampire Dark Ages line), there’s a Jerusalem by Night; for every Chicago by Night (long regarded by fans as the exemplar of virtually everything a citybook should be) there’s a Berlin by Night (arguably the worst citybook since the dawn of time, the information on Mexico City contained in Chaos Factor notwithstanding). New York by Night does not reach Berlin-level depths of infamy, nor, in my opinion, does it quite reach the heights of either Constantinople or Chicago, though it is a solid addition to the Vampire line, and entirely useful if you intend to run a metaplot-driven chronicle set in that city.
New York by Night is broken down into an Introduction and five Chapters. I will admit, this book displays considerable class on its second page, with a note of Solemn Remembrance regarding the events of September 11th and White Wolf’s decision to print the book “as was,” and not even deal with that day in a fictional context. I believe that this shows both empathy and intelligence on the part of the Wolf’s editorial and development staff. That said, I can tell you that the Introduction is pretty much standard fare, including the ubiquitous How To Use This Book notes, along with a selection of extremely useful, atmospheric resources on New York, books, music, and other media alike.
Chapter One: The City That Never Sleeps is, predictably enough, the history chapter. This chapter, like most of the more recent books, is written entirely in character and consists of the observations of a number of different vampires about the development of New York, from before there was a New York City to the current nights of Camarilla ascendancy. For those who dislike the concept of the “unreliable narrator” on general principles, there’s nothing in this chapter that will convert them to the worship; in fact, at certain points, it seems as though the unreliable narrator is going out of his way to be as deliberately internally contradictory as possible, possibly in an effort to add even more in the way of story hooks. On the plus side, this chapter is generally very well and engagingly written, as well as hook-laden; the bulk of the chapter covers the most recent and no doubt exciting time to be had by all during the Camarilla “siege” of New York, and contains several subtle updates about characters introduced in “Children of the Night.” My only real gripe with it is that, while the Sabbat era of the city’s life is naturally covered, there isn’t really enough detail to run to a chronicle set in the city during the height of Sabbat domination. Not every gaming group is fanatically devoted to following the current Vampire metaplot; a bit more information for those groups would have been nice.
Chapter Two: The Face of the City covers the physical layout of the greater New York City area, covering each of the five boroughs, who can be found where, and who is in theoretical or actual control of what. Not being a resident of the New York area, I can’t speak for the relative accuracy of either the maps contained in this chapter or of the assertions made about the city’s ethnic breakdown. It is, however, an admirably meaty chapter, even more hook-laden than the history, and gives an excellent feel for how the Kindred residents of New York interact on both a personal and a sectarian level.
Chapter Three: All the Beautiful Monsters covers a selection of New York’s resident vampires, both the freshly triumphant Camarilla, the lingering remnants of the Sabbat, a handful of independents, and several potentially dangerous mortals. Story-hooks abound in the character backgrounds here, as do several updates for characters appearing in various other straight game supplements and novels. I wouldn’t want to be a Tremere in New York, no sir, no way.
Chapter Four: Conspiracies is the meaty storylines chapter. Detailed here are several of the possible story angles that can be used to suck players into a New York-based chronicle; all of them are solid starting points, though admittedly nothing leapt out at me as something I must run, or else die for want of never seeing that story come to life before me. Much ground is covered, from the political (New York is currently without the Prince) to the mystical (just what is it dwelling down there in the sewers with the Nosferatu and the suicidally depressed giant albino ghoul alligator anyway?), with a great deal of story ground in between.
Chapter Five: Telling the Tale is the Storyteller’s chapter of NYbN, and contains useful notes for dealing with both the scale of the setting in terms of both size and power. There is a frank encouragement to keep the power level tuned down low, which I personally appreciate, and good advice on how to handle pacing, conflicts (both internal and external), and how to make your chosen themes and mood work for you.
THE GOOD: The whole book is good. Don’t mistake me – I really enjoyed NYbN, enjoyed reading it, enjoyed thinking about it, and enjoyed writing this review for it. It’s very engaging at many levels, encourages aspects of roleplaying that I personally appreciate (lowered power levels, conflict on a less than epic scale, the building of a consistent theme and mood), and actually contains some of the more appealing characters to appear in White Wolf supplements of late. (Yes, I’ll admit it. I’m a fangirl for Aisling Sturbridge. Go Scully-girl! And former Prince Pro Tempore Calebros stole my black little heart when he uttered the words, “If you ever see Jan Pieterzoon, tell him “&^% you, very much” for me….”) The Antediluvian sleeping in the sewers withstanding, it’s actually one of the few citybooks wherein there are no active Methuselahs with their strings tied to everyone’s actions, and even the Antediluvian doesn’t appear all that interested in oozing up like a Parasite Eve special effect and taking over the city in the form of whatever poor schlep ends up Prince. Even the history section manages to be rich and juicy, as opposed to the dry as gravedust narration of some other books.
THE BAD: As I noted before, sometimes the unreliable narrator shtick goes just a little bit too far. When this happened, it tended to slap me straight out of my comfortable suspension of disbelief and into the land of, “What the Hell is Justin smoking and can I have twenty pounds of it delivered to my office?” The most object example of this, two words: radioactive blood. Radioactive blood given out by Setites, accepted by the Sabbat for no good reason that I could imagine, and then used by ghouls in helicopters with Geiger counters to track the various now radioactive Sabbat back to their lairs during the Camarilla siege of the city. This caused me to actually put the book down, call my husband and my best friend (both nurses), and ask them how radioactive blood would have to be in order to be traceable from the air, with a Geiger counter. The answer was, so radioactive that it would likely damage even undead flesh, not to mention causing high-degree radiation burns/potentially outright death to most ghouls and any normal schmoe said radioactive vampire sat next to on the subway. Despite the fact that there’s a two paragraph “cover” for that bit of head-scratchingly weird plot oddity, it was nevertheless extremely jarring. Also, the various narrators of the Sabbat section seem to have rather extreme difficulties keeping Blaise Careme (a Tzimisce that I really want to see more of) and Ladislav Ciorbea (Careme’s childe) as two distinct entities, despite their radically different personalities.
THE UGLY: The incredible darkness of many of the character portraits.
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