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World of Darkness: Chicago is that mainstay of the old World of Darkness line, the setting book, provided for the new World of Darkness. In some respects, it's truly going back to the beginning, since Chicago by Night was one of the first books published for Vampire: The Masquerade, but in others, it's an attempt to produce something at least somewhat new: a true crossover setting book.
The introduction puts forth that Chicago is so crawling with supernaturals that crossovers are unavoidable and continuous. It's hard to say that the material within the book lives up to this, though. Separate Vampire: The Requiem, Werewolf: The Forsaken, and Mage: The Awakening sections follow, each of which puts forth generalities of how their particular type views the city, puts forth the local NPCs, and provides a sample storyline. There is also a general chapter on the overall history and setting of the city.
Now, to some extent, this separation is a very good thing: someone coming to this book is probably most likely to be running a campaign of one or another of the games, and this approach allows them to focus on their own type. It does, however, work against that idea of constant crossover. While each section has one faction or another that deals more with the other supernaturals, they're still getting shunted off, separated from the rest. Some details seem to get lost between sections; while the werewolf Whispers pack, stated to be the most hip to vampire and mage lore, gets mentioned in the other sections, the Mage club The Abbatoir is put forth as a major meeting ground in the Mage section, but is barely mentioned (if at all) in the other two.
Some things about the book make it seem very likely that different groups were put together by different people. The text may say that what links a particular cabal together is their magical philosophy, but to this reader, what stands out is (for example) that their nimbuses are described differently than everyone else's, or that their Awakenings had features in common that don't match anyone else's.
Some choices stand out as somewhat odd. While the Mage section portrays a city whose mages are repopulating, and whose natives seem to be Awakening at a higher than usual rate--providing easy rationales for new cabals of PCs--the vampire section describes a city with essentially no new Embraces and little immigration, such that getting new PCs in place is a positive obstacle to be overcome.
Still, overall, it stands as a solid product, providing a vast number of example characters, coteries, packs, cabals, political setups, story seeds, etc. The sheer volume of material makes it seem ripe for plundering for use elsewhere, and it gets a slightly positive response to the Chuq Von Rospach test: it does make me consider running a game there, at least a bit.
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