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My name is Matthew McFarland, and I freelance for White Wolf Publishing's World of Darkness game line. I did not, however work on World of Darkness: Urban Legends, nor did I have any contact with the authors or producers regarding the book's content before it was published. My first exposure to it (other than a small section that one of the writers sent me as reference for another book) was when I picked up a copy at Origins.
I read Urban Legends as a Storyteller first and last. Since it's a book of scenarios, and since I'm running Mage: The Awakening and Promethean: The Created at present, I was looking for stories that I could incorporate into my own chronicles. As such, as I review this book, that's the focus that I'm using.
Right, let's start at the beginning, shall we?
I always try and make it a point to read these fiction bits, since I write so darned many of them and it bugs me when people ignore them. This one is entitled "Eggs", and recalls an urban legend about insect eggs being used as an ingredient (I can remember my friends telling me, as a kid, that one brand of bubble gum or another was made with spider's eggs to keep it soft). In this case, it's black tea that's supposedly made with insect eggs, and the story follows a man who's recently been hired by Black Butterfly Gourmet Tea to handle marketing (which means confronting the urban legend).
It's a nice piece - the Black Butterfly as a symbol and name of a company alone is nicely evocative, and there are some good exchanges between Joseph (our POV character) and the head of the company. I think the story might have benefited from a little more word count; a lot of these prologue pieces leave off just as things are starting to get really intriguing, which is mostly a function of only have 3000 words to work with. That said, one could, if one were so inclined, read this story and fashion a game out of it.
The piece is by Rick Chillot, who also gave us the opening fiction for Ghouls, by the way. I don't think it's as flesh-crawl-inducing as that story, but it's pretty close.
A quick discussion of how the book is arranged, what urban legends are, and some thoughts on how to adapt them for chronicles. Also a delineation of who wrote which chapter, which is uncommon for World of Darkness books. Point of interest: The Intro points out that children characters are ideal for these kinds of stories. I'd agree, in general - kids are great at spreading these stories, and it'd be fun to play a kid investigation Bloody Mary or the Jersey Devil (the kidney thieves, not so much).
Our first story, written by Will Hindmarch, opens with the legend itself, and then a discussion on adapting it for a World of Darkness story, as well as how to run "playable flashbacks." The scenario itself takes very little for granted, and focuses more on helping the Storyteller set the player(s) up to have organs removed, how to progress the story and discover who took them and why, than with showing us step-by-step whodunit. We get Flaws to represent lost kidneys, which was a nice touch.
The story discusses a bunch of potential antagonists. The Adrenal Junkies want kidneys for the chemicals therein. The Gourmand wants to eat it. The Demon-Handlers use the kidneys as filters for keeping demons out of the world (which I personally think is a highly cool idea). None of these people are necessarily the ones who took the characters' kidney(s), and it's up to the Storyteller to decide how many of them the characters meet on their descent through the organ-stealing underworld.
The chapter ends with write-ups for some of these antagonists (they're name, but not given traits), and then two stat blocks, one for "Brutal Organ Thief," and one for "Insidious Organ Thief." Personally, I think that those last could have been cropped and some of the named characters given stats. Other than that, though, it's a very solid and extremely well-written chapter.
Characters: If I were running this story, I'd use mortals, changelings or possibly mages. Mages have the problem of finding information far too easily, which means that unless the folks they're tracking have a way to hide, the game is over too quickly. Changelings, though, already having been stolen for someone's sick amusement once, might have a grand old time with this kind of darkly surreal story.
Style: 5 Substance: 4
Amber E. Scott gives us this tale about a deformed creature living in the pine forests of New Jersey. This story is just about the polar opposite of the previous one: It's structured, the characters are named and statted, and there's a very clear beginning, middle and end. As such, it's probably a much better choice for inexperienced Storytellers than Chapter One. The story is by no means badly written - actually, upon reading it, it's the one that immediately yelled "Insert me into your chronicle!" (Which I did; more on that anon.)
The Jersey Devil isn't a supernatural creature per se. It's really more of a deformed person, but the deformities are severe - wings, superhuman strength and longevity. The Devil, or Jehrameel, has tried to be a good "person," but over the years has come to realize that people fear and hate him for his appearance. He's killed once or twice, but has never been a real monster, and has come to protect the children of the area. Plus, he's befriended an older man who lost his son.
A great deal of attention is paid in this chapter to setting up the Devil's history and motivations, which to my mind is a great way to write a scenario. We also get some suggestions on how to get characters involved in the story.
I'm not going to go through the story step-by-step, because that's not really necessary. I will say, though, that the structure is firm enough that you could run this game after one read, but allows enough variability that if you wanted the Devil to be an actual devil, say, or some kind of supernatural creature, you could with minimal hassle. It's also important to note that some aspects of the story are modular; when I ran it, the characters never visited one of the major supporting characters, but got through the story just fine.
One minor niggle: Dice pools on the character stat blocks are often wrong; damage modifiers from weapons aren't figured in. In the scheme of things, that's minor.
Characters: I ran this story with Prometheans, and you can see the results here, if you'd like. I think this story would be OK for vampires, given the right kind of characters, and great for changelings (it involves a stolen child, which should get changelings interested right off the bat). Prometheans, though, can deal with seeing someone else who is a monster and has no hope of transcending it, which is great milestone fodder, in my opinion. (Mortals would work too, obviously.)
Style: 4 Substance: 4
"It shall never be said that I have left my children for my foes to trample on." This quote from Medea opens Malcolm Sheppard's chapter, and it just gets creepier from there.
Bloody Mary is basically a ghost story, and this treatment sticks to many of the same assumptions: That Mary was once a living person, that she has a reason for hanging around after death, and that she is potentially harmful to the living for reasons that even she isn't entirely clear on. The story is set in Saint James Town (which the author notes is inspired by the real St. James Town in Toronto), and follows the activities of gang children as they try to impress one another...by summoning up Bloody Mary to rip each others' faces off.
The story is brutal and disturbing, and incorporates a large number of supporting characters (index cards would be really helpful for running this story, I think). It's a murder mystery in which the murder weapon was a ghost, and one that can very easily fly out of control (and yes, the chapter includes systems for summoning Mary and putting her back down again). We have information on Mary's history in the area, so that characters can hunt her down that way, and since the drug trade is the backdrop, there's more than enough combat fodder for characters who shine in martial arenas. The story, like the Jersey Devil one, has enough structure to be understandable but isn't so rigid as to require rewriting it to use it.
Minor Niggle: This is the chapter where Urban Legends starts mentioning other World of Darkness books. Second Sight gets name-checked, as do Mage: The Awakening and Werewolf: The Forsaken. In fairness, the former book is only mentioned in context of "if you want mortal cultists with minor supernatural powers, here's the go-to source"), so it's not crucial, and the latter two are mentioned in the context of "For more information about spirits, see...". The systems necessary for Mary are either printed in this chapter or available in the World of Darkness Rulebook, so it's not a big problem (but see Chapter Four).
The chapter ends with character write-ups, complete with stats for the folks who really need them.
Characters: Vampires, changelings, Prometheans, mortals, even werewolves (if you made Mary slightly tougher) would be great. Mages, again, are hard to use in mysteries because of how easy information-getting spells are, but it wouldn't be impossible, it would just make the game faster-paced.
Style: 4 Substance: 4
This scenario is written by Luke Johnson, who also developed Urban Legends. It's also, in my opinion, the weakest point of the book. That's not to say that there's nothing of value here, but I do think that this chapter in particular kind of flies in the face of the World of Darkness design philosophy, and doesn't really adhere to the themes of the this book as presented in the other stories.
The story opens with a brief rendition of the famous story about alligators in the sewers. Right off the bat, too, we're told that we need World of Darkness: Second Sight to make best use of this chapter.
Now, let me pause for a moment and explain why this bugs me. One of the features of the World of Darkness over its predecessor is that you don't need a mountain of books. If a character or a set of rules is introduced in a sourcebook, that's where it stays. Yes, the Hunger curse from Antagonists is mentioned in Boston Unveiled, for instance, but you're also given enough information to use everything in that section as printed without dropping another $25 on a book. Not the case here - we're told that if we don't have the book (which is well worth picking up, anyway, but that's not the point), we can "easily alter the pertinent sections as appropriate." I think that the author/developer should have, instead, summarized appropriate rules, perhaps using Second Sight as a guideline, or put in a sidebar saying "If you have Second Sight, add these traits."
Digression over, back to the story. The story here is that a nameless horror from beyond, something that is a personification of the desire to survive, to persist, has awakened in our city. As urban expansion destroys wetlands, it pushes the 'gators into the city sewers, where they thrive on refuse and rats. The aforementioned personification (the "Lizard Brain") takes over the sewers, and finds a resonance with the 'gators and with the old Egyptian god Sobek. The entity here, though, it's Sobek, it's the Lizard Brain, so it's called...Sabek.
I fully admit that I might be missing something, here, but the chapter is a little unclear in places. Plus, when you've got two distinct but similar entities and they're names are one letter apart, you're placing a whole lot of faith in White Wolf's editorial service (you know, the one that inserts typos into books occasionally) to make sure that you're using the right one in the right context.
Anyway, the story takes a great deal of setup, explaining how the urban expansion has facilitated Sabek/Sobek's influence, how the sewers are turning into Egyptian-style tunnels, how people near the river are turning into crocodiles (Riverside Syndrome, one of the most usable bits of this story), and about Daniel Montgomery, the young man who starts up the cult for the Lizard Brain.
The story actually isn't as much a story as a setting, and that's OK. The problem is that it's got this not-quite-Lovecraftian vibe to it, which is very much at odds with the rest of the book's street-level, mystery feel. If the Riverside Syndrome had been a supernatural disease, or if Sobek aspect of the Lizard Brain had been excised, this story might have benefited. As it is, there's so much setup that there's no room for the story, and it just feels jumbled.
We get supporting characters at the end, and a new rite using the rules from Second Sight. You can guess how I feel about that. The characters don't get traits (other than the gators, the Lizard Brain and the cult-leader), but since the "story" is really just a collection of story suggestions, that's not a crucial point.
The good news: This chapter includes good rules and descriptions for going into the sewers, and I don't know about you, but my players' characters always seem to wind up doing that once during a chronicle. The Riverside Syndrome is well-explained and could be ported into another story easily. Sewer 'gators get stats, and that's helpful in general.
Characters: Anybody, really. There's a lot of combat potential, so werewolves would be good. If you stick with the Lizard Brain, mages would work well, and the story (such as it is) is so enmeshed in city politics (urban expansion, remember) that vampires might take a hand.
Style: 3 Substance: 3
When I think of urban legends, doppelgangers don't immediately spring to mind, but Alan Alexander's tale of strange creatures that come to life when a person chooses one extreme side of his personality over the other is a great addition to this book. A doppleganger, as we all know, is a person's double, and if you see your double, you're going to die (that's one version of the legend, anyway). In the World of Darkness, that's because your double might just kill you.
The opening of this chapter gives us all we need to know, system-wise and story-wise, to use dopplegangers. We learn how they're created, what they do and how you destroy them. That by itself makes this chapter worth the price of admission - if you don't want to use the story here, you have enough information to craft your own doppelganger story. Point of interest: They're contagious. If you get near a doppelganger, you're likely to spawn your own. I'm not going to explain the rest of the logistics of dopplegangers, but suffice it to say that they're good "general World of Darkness" critters, not tied to any of the other games' cosmologies.
The story itself is about a lawyer who, after getting a guilty man off, spawns a vigilante doppleganger. The characters are tasked with learning what's going on and finding the double.
The story is brief, but it has everything that you'd need to run it. The interplay between the lawyer and her double is detailed enough that a skilled Storyteller should be able to portray both sides of the character and leave players wondering if there are two, or if this woman is just crazy. And, since dopplegangers are contagious, this could spin into a much longer story, if the players dig it.
We get stats for the lawyer and her double, and write-ups for other important supporting cast. The story ends with a bunch of doppleganger archetypes - the Crazy Girlfriend, the Bad Cop, the Doctor of Death, etc. These don't have stats, but they're all stories waiting to happen.
Characters: Anybody, really. Using dopplegangers with supernatural characters would require nailing down how detection-type powers (Auspex, Scent of Taint, any Mage Sight, etc.) reads them, but other than that, this would be a fun, combat-light story for any kind of supernatural creature. My preference would be Changeling, because of the similarity between doppleganger and fetch.
Style: 4 Substance: 4
Finally, we get Russell Bailey's chapter, including a bunch of urban legends-in-brief, how to use them in the World of Darkness, and what variations might be fun. I'm not linking all of the Snopes pages, because there are nine legends here, but the chapter includes such favorites as the poisoned dress, the man with the hook for a hand, and even the Mexican "dog" that the lady brings back from vacation.
This chapter is well-written and fun to read. Most of the sections, though, are descriptions of one particular interpretation of the legend. The "Mexican Pet" section, for instance, talks about Mrs. Jenkins and her 'dog', Fetch, and how it killed her husband. What is Fetch? The section answers that, and we get a "drop-in" point for characters for all of these stories. No traits or game systems, but after reading the rest of the book, they aren't necessary. A Storyteller should have a pretty good idea how to structure his own urban legend-style story.
Style: 4 Substance: 4
Urban Legends is of most use for Storytellers, obviously. That said, if you're running a World of Darkness game, particularly for mortal characters, this book can keep a chronicle going to for quite a while. The stories here presented a good mix of tones and danger, all while (mostly) keep true to the feel of an urban legend - what seems to be happening isn't really what is happening.
