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I'd never had much interest in the original World of Darkness at all. Some of the ideas in Hunter appealed to me, but the execution didn't.
My only real exposure to the Storyteller system was the Aeonverse. I own Adventure! and have read it several times, but I've never gotten to play or run a single session.
Then White Wolf released the new World of Darkness. I read the core book. The streamlined system impressed me, but did I want to buy it? Finding the Mary's Child booklet at my FLGS answered that.
Physically, it's a small booklet, about 5.25" x 7.25". It's printed in small type on fairly nice paper. The only color is on the back cover for the World of Darkness and White Wolf logos, a line of red text each on the front and back covers, and orange for the moon. The cover illustration is a woman sitting on a pile of skulls, done by Alex Maleev. It's quite nice, and it communicates the mood of the adventure immediately.
Inside, each page has a small border which ghosts into the upper left and lower right corners, apparently of dripping blood and fallen leaves. The first and last pages have the only interior artwork, both pieces small but well done.
I don't like the font used to set sections off. It looks handwritten, very neatly scripted but not always easy to read. The small size forced by the format doesn't help.
As for the actual content, the first six pages give a brief overview of the setting and the rules. Everything you need to know to run or play the scenario is there. It's all well-explained, with specific notes here and there on how some rules affect the included pre-generated characters. All in all, a very good summary of the important points.
The four pre-gens comprise the middle eight pages of the book. That's out of sequence for the rules, but perfect for removing the pages by loosening the staples. Each PC comes from a different clan and has different Disciplines. One side of the sheet has the character's stats. The other side has both roleplaying notes — quotes, background notes, roleplaying hints, etc. — and explanations of the character's Disciplines and Merits. This allows the players to see and use a variety of rules for the powers.
The only significant editing problem I found is here, on Jack's character sheet. His Attribute dots aren't properly laid out. This is fixed in the PDF version, which you'll find a link to later on.
The scenario itself starts with the PCs (two men, two women) waking up in Louis Armstrong Park, New Orleans, just after midnight on Ash Wednesday. They've all been partying during Mardi Gras, but the last few hours of their lives are a blank. Some more revelers enter the park, drunk and looking for lost car keys. A new hunger awakens in the PCs …
The scenario is divided into three acts. In Act One the PCs awaken and discover they are vampires now. They meet a few other vampires who help them understand what that means, and that they call themselves Kindred.
In Act Two they meet the Prince of New Orleans, who suggests they look into their own past and gives pointers on how. There's investigation, a chance for a fight, more investigation and some free time.
In Act Three the PCs track down the vampire who Embraced one of their number. What happens next is open-ended.
As you might imagine, this is a tightly railroaded plot. The active scenes play out in a certain order with only minor variations possible. Or the PCs can run away and deal with their new condition entirely on their own, but that's not terribly satisfying.
And actually, for each scene where the PCs meet someone important to the plot, there are several ways included to handle the event. There's no way to anticipate every possible PC reaction, of course, but there are contingencies for fight, flight, suspicion, relief, and more. Depending on the scene and people involved, of course. And almost all the NPCs have their important stats set off both with nice clean lines and a font change. If the PCs are spoiling for a fight, the stats are there.
And there is a lot of room here for some very deep roleplaying. Questions of faith dominate the events, but each player also has ample opportunity to decide how to handle the PC's new condition and environment.
At the end of the session, there will be a lot of unanswered questions. This is by design. Mary's Child is the first part of an introductory chronicle called Danse de la Mort, available for download directly from White Wolf. Only Mary's Child is available as a printed product as well.
The entire chronicle is 176 pages long! That's nearly as long as the World of Darkness core book. It answers most of the questions raised and embroils the PCs more thoroughly in New Orleans Kindred politics. But I haven't run the rest, so I'll stop there.
To sum up, Mary's Child offers an excellent introduction to Vampire: the Requiem. It's a nigh-perfect summary of both the rules and the atmosphere. It does the job so well, in fact, that I've decided Vampire still isn't for me. But after this, there's no way I can say that I didn't get all the information I needed to make that decision.
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