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The opening fiction, entitled "The Coming Storm," is bad. Written as though it were being spoken to a Kindred, it combines a high level of pretentiousness with the feeling the text is the opening a tournament Storyteller reads to his players, so they know what stupid actions their characters have taken to get to the start of the scenario he is running. After reading the entire book I would find out just how right I was in that regard.
The introduction gives an overview of the book, as well as explaining to readers discrepancies found between this book, the V:tR demo, and the overview of New Orleans in the V:tR rulebook. While I can't comment on the V:tR demo, I must say I like the explanation for why the rulebook information differs, which is that in that volume the "public face" of the characters is given, while in CotD:NO we get the real deal about them. My only confusion in this section comes from a comment on what God would and wouldn't approve of regarding Lancea behavior in New Orleans---from what I read of the LS sourcebook and the main V:tR book the answer is he wouldn't like anything they do.
A Look Back at the Big Easy is the first chapter of the book, and details the history of the Kindred in New Orleans. From the Choctaw vampire who first preyed on the mortals of the region (and who goes from being an elder vampire preying on the Choctaw to the Elder of the Choctaw Indians with no explanation later in the book) to the modern nights when Prince Vidal rules, there's a lot of detail here. It sets the social scene for the Kindred detailed later in the book, and provides several good adventure hooks for Storytellers to build upon.
There are two problems with this chapter that need to be noted. First, in a few places lack of knowledge about the history of New Orleans will be problematic for a reader, as real-world events are mentioned without being explained; I was surprised by this, as in the . . . By Night books I'd read for the OWOD I always found White Wolf to have provided enough information on referenced real-world events for a reader not to be lost.
Second, the fourth paragraph on page 22 left me scratching my head. I think the author switched the names of two individuals (or an individual and an entity, to be precise), as otherwise it makes no sense to me.
The second chapter, Points of Entry, details modern New Orleans, covering its layout, points of interest, as well as detailing transportation and culture in the city. As in the last chapter, there are a few references to real-world things which readers will need knowledge of New Orleans from outside the book to understand. I really think this chapter is worth of praise for its (admittedly brief) description of the area around New Orleans--a lot of authors seem to forget that there are cities, towns, and other things within driving distance of New Orleans, and it was nice to see them remembered here.
Some of the Kindred culture of New Orleans is covered here as well, with how the Prince handles crime and how the Lancea Sanctum of the area do things differently from their brethren being discussed here. I was pleased at the attempt to explain how a fanatic LS prince could accept Order of the Crone and Ordo Dracul members in his city, though the explanations didn't ring quite right to me, especially in the case of the Ordo Dracul. Then again, I've had problems understanding the relationship between the three factions since I read the V:tR rulebook, so that's not the fault of the authors of this work.
There's also the introduction in this chapter of very rare areas where Kindred either find themselves gaining strength from their surroundings or are weakened by them, with rules for both. It's a cool idea which is nicely written, but then on page 42 the whole idea is weakened by a statement which seems to imply that ALL places of worship (or at least churches) have a weakening effect on Kindred, which makes me wonder how well-read the author is on V:tR. The fact that the information on the matter is provided by a vampire who is a priest and holds services in a church left me even more gobsmacked, and made me wonder how well-read the author was on the manuscript of this book.
There is also the matter of Bayou St. John, the description of which doesn't seem to fully mesh up with the rest of the book. In short, something odd and most likely supernatural happened to the city's Prince here long ago, and since then he has banned Kindred from going there, on pain of death. This ban seems to have been followed, despite the fact that the description of multiple characters regarding their beliefs or relationship with the Prince should mean they would be snooping around there every chance they get.
The third, fourth, and fifth chapters of the book are devoted to New Orleans' elders, ancillae, and neonates respectively. There's a lot of detail regarding their plots, interactions, and personalities, and aside from few minor quibbles (such as a racist American Kindred who seems to have a lot of respect and no problems following a foreign-born prince) the writing is pretty good, aside from the problems that plague the book throughout, as I'll detail below. One thing that did rub me the wrong way in chapter three was the introduction of an uber-vampire, apparently so powerful that to assign stats for him would be a pointless task. Such uber-NPCs was something from the OWOD that I was happy to see gone in the NWOD. Still, it would be very easy for a Storyteller to excise him from his or her campaign with little problem.
Chapter six of the book, entitled "Storytelling," didn't do much for me. I think that might have just been because I've been running RPGs for so long, rather than any fault of the authors. For less-experienced Storytellers there may be much helpful material on how to run a New Orleans campaign. I will say the comments on page 124 regarding a devastating storm hitting New Orleans were a bit disconcerting.
The final chapter of the book is a story to run your characters through. As it turns out, the opening fiction of the book WAS an introduction to an adventure, namely this one, and after reading it to your players/adapting it for a pre-game session this chapter continues the story. Unfortunately, it's not a very good tale. There are some head-scratching moments for the Storyteller (non-ghouled mortals apparently working for a vampire and fully aware of his undead nature, no one noticing a group of blindfolded individuals being escorted through New Orleans by people who may have weapons drawn), several points where players really can't advance through the story until some NPC comes along and leads them by the hand, and a "resolution" that isn't very self-contained or fulfilling for players, unless the Storyteller does some work on it. It also doesn't help that while written for neonates, the adventures assumes that either the player characters are already familiar with many individuals in New Orleans, or that the players don't mind the Storyteller having to info drop information their characters would already know as residents of New Orleans, bringing play to a screeching halt as players are informed of who the movers and shakers are in the Kindred society of the Big Easy.
Oh, and for those keeping score, like in the scenario in Nomads a cell phone plays a key point in the plot. Just felt like mentioning that. All in all this adventure was a disappointment.
Reading the previous paragraphs, you might think that I had no major problems with CotD: New Orleans. Unfortunately, that is not the case. There are several problems that, rather than being confined to one chapter, run throughout the book and drastically drop the quality of the book in my eyes. Rather than referencing each problem as I broke down each chapter, I thought I would summarize these problems on their own.
The biggest problem that ran through this book was the poor editing. Despite having it listed in the credits that an editorial service was used for this book, I think it has the most mistakes I have ever seen in a White Wolf product, and I've been a fan of the company since the first edition of Vampire came out. Some of these are minor grammar errors, which are no big deal, but for the most part these errors are the kinds of things that I can't believe no one caught. For example in chapters four and five of the book there are stat blocks for a total of 15 vampires. Of those 15, 9 are missing their Attribute, Ability, Defense, Initiative, Health, and Speed scores! Granted, V:tR isn't a game where character creation takes hours, but it's still incredible to me that somehow these missing stats were overlooked by the editors.
Similarly, there are places in the book where it feels like things were cut out to save space, and on two occasions I found myself saying "Wait, if something this big is going down with this character according to this page, why isn't there mention of it in [name of another character]'s description if they're involved/should be going insane over this fact if it's common knowledge like the text says?" And in chapter three on page 62 the reader is referred to a section on Independent Kindred later in that chapter, but no such section exists. To say I found this annoying was an understatement.
Then there's the matter of the internal continuity of the book. Multiple authors worked on this production, and I imagine they weren't in constant contact as they wrote their respective sections, and the editors didn't do a good job covering up discrepancies that I imagine came about because of this fact.
For example, in the first chapter we read of how the Prince had a traitoris childe, and it is because of that fact he has never sired again. Pretty cool, until the last few pages of the chapter, where we learn the true reason for his not siring. It's also a pretty cool idea, but the lack of warning about the truth of the matter in previous pages left me confused and feeling like this material was originally written for a book with a player's section and a Storyteller-only section. Then, on page 50, we're informed that many Kindred in the city know the Prince can't sire. Not that he "won't" sire, as would make sense with the first explanation for his lack of childer, but "can't," as though they all know his deep dark secret the final pages of chapter one told us, and which if anyone (save the one other Kindred involved in the secret) knew would result in him getting killed. There's several other places in the book where this topic is addressed in conflicting ways.
It's all very confusing, and it's not the only topic of the book which receives contradictory descriptions as you read through the book. The Prince's need and/or desire for torpor, and whether or not others know of said need and/or desire, is another such area that left me wondering what the "official" version of things was supposed to be; the mental health of a Kindred and the actions she takes based on it is another thing which seemed to change from page to page. And these are just the problems that came to mind when I sat down to write this review; if I were to read through my notes again I could easily provide many more examples in this ilk. For the book to be unable to have one definitive answer on things integral to the goings-on in New Orleans seemed insane to me.
Also, expect to have to either jump around while reading the book or reread it to fully understand who is who. On multiple occasions characters will be named or depicted in character flowcharts with no description of who they are, leaving the reader to scratch their head until they read the later chapters where the major vampires are described in detail. Even more annoying, some characters are named and described as being allies to someone important or having been involved in something influential, but the reader never gets any information on who they are. There's a throwaway paragraph at one point in the book on why certain characters are named but never detailed, saying such characters were intentionally left vague to allow Storytellers to flesh out as they see fit, but that statement does nothing to help with the confusion of the reader as they go through the book.
And then there's there matter of the mysteries woven into the book. There are several places where things are left open-ended for Storytellers to come up with an explanation for in their own chronicle, or where the reader has to read through the entire book to put two and two together to get the truth behind certain matters. I like that a lot, and in many cases New Orleans does these things very well. However, in some cases things are built up throughout the book (such as the true identity of one character) but never resolved, nor is the reader given enough information to figure out what the authors were trying to build up to. There's a difference between leaving the reader to decide for themselves how something will play out in a campaign, and a book which leaves the reader feeling the authors had no idea what they wanted to do with a cool idea, and several times this book falls into the latter category.
In the end, there's a lot of nice material in this book that a Storyteller can use in his or her chronicle, but for them to do so they're going to have to do a lot of work on their own. For a professionally-published book at the price that it is I can't recommend CotD:NO as a "fix-me-up" campaign supplement. If you can find it on discount, or if you can get your gaming group to all chip in on it I recommend it, but be ready to spend a lot of free time to be able to use it as a proper sourcebook for your campaign.
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