Encyclopædia Vampirica
Capsule Review by Mark O'Mealey
First of all, I'll freely admit upfront that I'm no expert on the Vampire version of the WoD. I have Vampire: the Masquerade, the Guides to Sabbat/Camarilla, and about a dozen other non-splat supplements. I don't buy every book WW produces. I don't currently play the game. Other than the Hunter, Year of the Reckoning series, I haven't read any of the game fiction books. So this is not a review written by a Vampire fanboy, but neither is it written by someone who is totally clueless. Nevertheless, I was intrigued enough by the book to buy it and having done so, decided to share my findings.
The second thing I'll admit is that, no, I haven't read every entry in the book nor have I attempted any sort of cross-check of the information contained within to any other published work. I have read what I feel to be a good sampling of the entries, but I'm not going to address the validity of the content anyway. Right then, on with the review.
General Appearance
The cover is textured black (not glossy smooth) with silver lettering. The paper edges are gilded in silver as well, giving the book a more expensive look than the average game book. Well it is more expensive than the average game book. The pages are stitched and glued as is typical for hardback. There is a thin bookmark of red cloth sown into the book as well. The Vampire ankh and the title appear on the front. The title and the WW catalog number appear on the spine. The back cover repeats the title along with the various logos and it has typical ad copy that informs us, amongst other things that the book is suitable as an in-game prop. Unfortunately, it is this very same ad copy which helps spoil the illusion that you are looking at a recently discovered tome of knowledge. The interior pages are all printed with an identical design in the top margin. The text appears on a grey background that has been made to look like ragged parchment. The inside edges have string stitching drawn in. The page corners have a device drawn in that appears as if it is holding the book open to that page. I assume this was to continue the illusion that the book was a recently discovered tome. However, it doesn't work for me. If they had actually printed it on ragged edge parchment, the way Chaosium did for the limited edition CoC book and left the ad copy off the back, that would have been better. Although I'm sure this would have raised the price well above the $50 mark it is already set at, this half-assed puedo-tome ends up looking like a book of photo-copied pages, complete with the solid black edges since the copy paper was larger than the source pages. The text appears in two columns taking up roughly two thirds of each page and the remaining third is a rather wide margin in which notes occasionally appear (more on that later).
Content
With the exception of some introductory fiction that looks like letters, a brief Introduction subtitled "How to Use This Book," and three appendixes, Encyclopædia Vampirica is truly an encyclopedia. The A - Z listings make it a dull read just plodding through the book from front to back. As an actual reference book for Vampire: the Masquerade it is probably better since finding a particular subject will be a fairly easy thing given the alphabetical listing. I doubt many people will even bother to look at the table of contents first to find what page the M's start on and will just flip through the book until they find the entry they're looking for.
One interesting aspect is that the book is heavily cross-referenced so any use of another word that also has an entry is noted with a right arrow (—>) symbol. Entries without any sort of cross-reference are few and far between. It is a bit distracting in passages where several of them are used in close proximity as it breaks up the flow of the sentences. I wish they would have used underlining or another method to indicate that the keyword was referenced elsewhere. I guess WW thought that this would encourage people to explore other parts of the book more readily since they would be tempted to look up the other relevant entries as well. Personally, I think this would have worked better in an electronic publication where following a link to another entry was as simple as mouse click. Actually having to flip through a physical book to find subsequent entries makes it more work and I'm less inclined to keep chasing the additional cross-references that are contained there as well. Still, it makes for an alternative way to approach the book rather than simply trying to read it A to Z.
Another convention that is truly annoying is the use of just the first letter when referencing the word that the entry is about. This space saving measure results in entries that are actually harder to read since you have to keep remembering what the A. in this paragraph stands for as opposed to the A. in the last entry. This is made more confusing when you allow yourself to look at a cross-reference that happens to be on the same page. I didn't even make it halfway through the A's before this really started to annoy me. Was it really too much trouble to spell out the word each time?
I generally hate to comment on the art in game books since what appeals to me may be what another person can't stand and vice versa. In typical WW fashion, their solution is to offer enough variety that hopefully at least some of the art will appeal to you even though most of it may not. Some of the pictures are practically photo-realistic, while others are worse than most comic book art. As such, it is typical WW fare and you may decide for yourself whether that is a good or bad thing. Some of the pieces I've seen before, which leads me to believe that much of it may be recycled, although I wouldn't hazard a guess as to what percentage. Also, each "chapter" begins with the letter in a decorative, Old English style font overlaying a picture, which varies for each letter. These pictures are closer to the comic book style than the photo-realistic style of some of the other drawings and they don't work for me. Something in the old tome style that appears elsewhere in the book would have been more appropriate IMO.
There are little notes in the margins on some pages that are in a handwriting font. There are at least four different handwriting styles and some entries are made to appear that they were written in response to others. I've seen this trick used in other WW books and it gives the impression that you are looking at a book that has been passed back and forth between a couple of scholars. Several did not refer to the entry they appeared next to or just one column over, so I was left searching for what the heck the "author" was writing about. Since the margin notes immediately attract your eye when turning to a particular page, unless you have amazing willpower, you invariably are drawn to reading them first. This makes it frustrating when you can't quickly find the entry that the "author" was commenting on to satisfy curiosity and get back to what you were turning to that page for in the first place.
As for thoroughness of content, I get the impression that the book is fairly exhaustive. Every common term from any Vampire lexicon you've ever seen is in there as are entries on numerous signature characters. In addition, several important locations have entries and most of them have an associated timeline of important events in a sidebar. This probably makes it the definitive IC reference to the Vampire version of the WoD. It is important to note that the entire book, is written IC, which means that the "truth" contained herein is only as reliable as the IC sources that provided it or as they understand it to be. That makes it less than the definite Storyteller reference that it might otherwise be. It also gives WW the freedom to contradict anything contained herein at their discretion. That's not to imply that the information isn't useful, as long as you keep the fact that it is entirely IC voiced firmly in mind.
The introductory letters set the stage for this being a published work, indicating that multiple copies, besides the one you are holding with all the notes scribbled in it, are floating about. Furthermore, Pieterzoon notes that this English volume is actually a translation, meaning that a copy or copies in other languages exist as well. It ends with the suggestion that while you (the reader) have escaped having an entry in the book, the contents are so dangerous to the Kindred condition that "your own efforts will turn towards putting this matter to rest as well." Since full biographies of the contributors are contained in an appendix, it appears that they had no fear of reprisal for daring to create the book in the first place. These letters would have been more convincing as loose-leaf inserts rather than being bound into the book itself, but again, that probably would have increased the cost of this already costly volume.
The introduction explains the format of the book including how the entries were alphabetized and the use of symbols for dates and cross-references. Appendix I: How This Book Came to Be, continues the IC format with Bindusara thanking his contributors. Appendix II: Bibliographies contains just that; bibliographies of the various contributors. This includes Bindusara himself along with Aristotle de Laurent, Lucita y Aragon, Albertus Magnus, and Aisling Sturbridge. Appendix III: Addendum contains a letter from Beckett to Aristole explaining a last minute finding of what appears to be missing pages from the Chronicle of Caine as presented in The Book of Nod. The subsequent pages contain 3 brief entries on top of 3 two-page drawings, then Beckett's endnotes. The page style, while mimicing the style of The Book of Nod, looks out of place in this otherwise textbook-like volume. The entries themselves are, as one would expect, rather vague and I suspect foreshadow a tie-in with the upcoming Demon: The Fallen in some way that will make more sense later. Then again, that may just be me being cynical. The last page is the WW credits page and the only page in the entire book that is not IC. Interestingly enough the "Written by" credit lists the same signature characters as the title page as the authors and another box labeled "Acknowledgements" has the true list of contributors.
Conclusions
All in all, this is a fine book if you like IC writing. I give it a 4 for substance due to the rather exhaustive coverage of topics, but the fact that it is all IC keeps me from raising it to a 5. The style is 3.5 rounded down to a 3. I really wanted to give it a better than average score, if only to help justify the high price, since the general appearance is better than the average WW hardback. However, the pseudo-tome look actually detracts from the appearance IMHO. The art is the usual mixed bag and since (at least) some is clearly reprinted rather than new art, it keeps the score from being higher. This combined with the rather annoying single-letter abbreviation trick and the way they've done the cross-references kept me from rating the style any higher. Your opinions may (and probably will) vary, but that's how I see it. Hopefully, the text of this review has given you enough useful information that you can form your own opinion rather than rely on my ratings anyway.
This probably isn't a book you'll buy to just to read. I doubt I would attempt to use it as an in-game prop myself. However as an IC reference of all things Vampire, this one is a winner. It is a bit pricey however, so you may want to think twice about it's usefulness before laying down your cash.
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