New York by Night – A Review and Critique

Upon reading this again and getting some commentary on it, I've realized that in a few parts of this essay where I intend to be humorous I am in fact personally insulting to Justin Achilli. This is not my intent. I'm leaving the essay unchanged as it would be incorrect for me to pretend I never published those things. I offer my sincere apologies to Mr. Achilli.

I'll start of by pointing out my biases. First off, I like vampire games. That is, I like games involving vampires, not necessarily games that claim to be Vampire: the Masquerade. I like games that are both low-powered and political. I'm interested in the power struggles among Camarilla neonates. I'm interested in the mortals; they should be important parts of the game. These biases color my opinions about all of White Wolf's products. I like books like The Gilded Cage; I dislike books like Sins of the Blood.

There are some more pertinent biases. I live in New York, so I'm interested in White Wolf publishing something that is accurate and reflects the feel of the city I call home. I run a game set in New York, so naturally I have ideas about how things are supposed to work in here. I have preconceived notions of how certain landmarks and historical details can best be used. I will try to keep my biases out of this essay, and when I do not I will attempt to show that I'm right.

New York by Night is about 122 pages of text, ignoring the table of contents, ads in the back and full-page pictures in the middle. Its broken up into a five page introduction, twenty seven pages on the history of the city, twenty seven pages on the physical layout of the city and important locations, fifty three pages of characters, thirteen pages of plots, and 6 pages on storytelling techniques. I'll deal with each of these sections in turn.

The introduction starts out with some blather by Justin Achilli. He's entitled, he wrote the thing, but I didn't need to know that he slept a mere 20 blocks from my apartment. (Smart money says he was staying at the Ho-Jo's on 7th Ave.) After that there is the standard how to use this book section. This is mainly useful because it lets us see with what intent the book was written, and see how successfully the book meets it intended goals. First off we're told the book is not meant to detail the whole city, doing so would be prohibitively long winded. The book, unlike other “by night” books, is meant as a guide, not the be-all and end-all of the city in the World of Darkness. I think that's a great idea! I'm glad White Wolf is forcing its storytellers to think for themselves. They also say that storytellers will find, “that most of the characters herein are on the low end of the power scale.” We will see how well that holds up later.

Justin tells us that New York has just been won back from the Sabbat and consequentially there are few elders in the city. He argues that most elders are secure in their positions and would not risk it all to come to a new city. This is true – for most elders. But, in my mind, there are at least a few elders out there who are down on there luck and have lost political position elsewhere and would love to come to a city devoid of anyone of any power. In addition, this is New York City, one of the most important cultural and financial centers in the world. Certainly some of that influence can be manipulated remotely, but someone on the scene will be much better off in the struggle for influence over what New York has to offer. But this is the premise the book is based on, so I will leave it alone from now on.

The reason the lack of elders is so important to what White Wolf is trying to do is because, “in the end, New York by Night is set up with the intent to give troupes the chance to put one of their own in a position to claim the princedom.” The book is designed to allow, “relatively low-powered characters able to play a high-stakes game of politics.” I think this is a wonderful goal. I don't think a lack of elders is at all necessary to allow neonates to play politics, but I love the idea of neonates playing the political game. This is why I bought this book, because Justin at least seems to want to play the game the way I play the game.

We will see how well it holds to that promise.

The book goes into some non-gaming resources a storyteller should check out. Not bad, though I definitely think they missed some books. Most notable omissions are Andrew Vachss, The Mole People, and The Future of Us All. All these describe the gritty day-to-day lives of down and out people in New York City, from petty criminals, to the homeless, to the blue-collar working class. It's interesting that all of Justin's suggested resources deal with white collar New York (Fodor's and Bonfire most notably), or organized crime (five of seven film suggestions). Most glaringly absent is a mortal history of the city; the next section will make it clear why that was so sorely needed.

I've just managed to spend about a page taking about five pages of material. I'll try to do better on the next section of the book, the history of the city. In my mind this was largely a wasted section. Nothing is said of the mortal history of the city, and the Kindred history focuses on the Sabbat, who are not at all the focus of the story, as they have been kicked out. Justin argues that, “the city's backstory… has bearing on what the vampires who moved into its domain expect from it in nights to come.” I'm not really sure how this is the case. As is made remarkably clear by the fact that the history is told to us by a Camarilla researcher working for Jan Pieterzoon, the Cainite history of the city is not common knowledge. The first eight pages, and two later pages, could be condensed down to one as they exclusively deal with the Sabbat.

The history of the Camarilla's islands of control during the Sabbat's long reign is quite pertinent and interesting. The pages allocated to the Setites and Giovanni are also well spent. These independent clans are still powerful factors in the city, and they have a great deal of commerce with the Camarilla. So that's fives pages that were well used.

There are then eight very long pages about the Camarilla attack on the city. This material is more relevant then the information on the Sabbat, there are several vampires in the city who were part of the war. But there is little need for a discussion of the Camarilla's larger tactics. Does it matter that Queen Anne caused fluctuations in the lira? Not for a game with no elders that focuses on neonates. Unfortunately many of these pages relate to the larger political maneuverings surrounding the war. It's information that is not vital to the game. It certainly needed to happen: cities don't fall on their own. But the storyteller can invent it as they go along, and much of this material is already touched on in the clan novels. Finally, if this material is intended to give a neonate's view of the war, as this is a book for low-power characters, a neonate should have narrated the war. Calebros's high-level overview is exactly what is not needed. War is intensely chaotic. The people on the front lines, the neonates, the focus of this book, are not going to know or care about the Camarilla's grand strategy.

We wind up with two pages about Calebros's rule. It's very necessary, since this is what has just happened in the game world. What was most notably absent was any look at the mortal history of the city. While the Sabbat has left, the kine still make up the vast majority of the inhabitants of New York City. Something about the conflicts between the outer boroughs and downtown under Koch and Gulianni would have been nice. Also needed is a history of the major immigrant groups in the city. Just about anything would have been nice. I think about fifteen pages of the twenty seven page history were wasted, so some of them could easily have been devoted to the kine.

Why did Justin allocate so much space to the history of the city? One could argue that it's a feature of the “by night” books, part of the formula that should be applied even though it didn't fit well in this book. But Justin has already told us that this book, “breaks… from the previous model,” so that can't be it. I think that Justin did this for two reasons. First he has to satisfy the hungry masses who need to know the “secrets” of New York City. Who cares if it's relevant, we just want what sounds “kewl!” Second, maybe this book is ultimately about Justin showing us how much “kewler” a city he could design than mere mortals who don't get paid for this ever could.

The next section, the physical geography and landmarks of the city, is perhaps the most important part of the book. Unfortunately it is also the least successful. Earlier Justin remarks that accuracy has been allowed to suffer in places to better suit the mood and theme. That's all well and good, but in places the character of whole neighborhoods has been changed for no apparent reason. Again, a pattern for this book, the mortal world is completely ignored. There are no descriptions anywhere of what its like to walk down the streets of, say, Elmhurst, Williamsburg, or Harlem. A final niggle is the maps, a point I will get to first as it has the least relation to the corruption of the purposes of this book.

First and least importantly, in my eyes, the maps are full of inconsistencies and errors. “Lowe New York Bay” and the “Varrazono-Narrows Bridge” (or the “Varrazano-Narrows Bridge” on another map) are just two examples of silly errors. The fact that borough to borough boundaries are not consistently shown is another annoying feature. The map of the Bronx, for instance, shows the Bronx's boundaries with New York State, New Jersey, Manhattan, but not Brooklyn. Rockaway alternately appears as a part of Long Island or Brooklyn. It's never associated with Queens, the borough its actually in. The Brooklyn Bridge is omitted from the map of Brooklyn. The thing labeled Brooklyn Bridge is actually the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel. No map shows any of the expressways in New York City; Kindred are apparently confined to the streets and avenues. The Staten Island Ferry does not stop running at 7:30; it runs 24 hours a day. There are many more examples, but I will stop obsessing now.

The most annoying inconsistency is the complete lack of correspondence between the maps and the text. The text gives the name of a location followed by its address. Quite frequently the location in question isn't marked on the map, nor is sufficient information to place it with any accuracy. Summed up, seventeen out of the twenty five locations can't be found on the maps they provide. It shouldn't have been so hard to place labels on the map for locations Justin was going to write about.

Now dealing with just the text, the locations described often violate the character of the real-life locations they are set in. The Cloisters is a monastery built around the turn of the century from portions of several European monasteries brought over to New York. The building is a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and is filled with medieval tapestries, golden chalices and reliquaries. As such it seems appropriate to associate it with the Tremere or the Toreador. It hardly seems to be a haven for the Nosferatu, which is what White Wolf describes it as.

Another example of a violation of the spirit of a place is Greenwich Village. It is a neighborhood with a very bohemian feel. New York University is here, and there are many students around, and many small bars and clubs to serve them. The buildings are densely packed but fairly low, five or six stories is the norm. Most were constructed in the 20's and 30's. Hence, “a pair of glass towers,” 15 stories tall are horrifically out of place. I don't care what the Kindred in question's score in architecture is. Putting buildings like that in the Village is tacky.

I should say that Justin does get it right in places, even in most places. The Jewish Museum makes a great chantry, for the same reason the Cloisters does ironically. Prospect Park makes a great Gangrel hang out. PS1 is a great, and easily overlooked, place for Toreador to hang out. But there are enough errors to be jarring, and this chapter suffers for it.

My final, and most important, objection to the way the chapter was written regards the mortal character of the areas described. There is no discussion of it. There is never a discussion of what the neighborhood PS1 is in is like, nor Madison Square Garden, nor any other location described in the book. Most storytellers using this book will have never lived in New York. Even if they have been to the city, they will never have gone to Long Island City, Belmont, or anywhere else in the outer boroughs. Justin's suggested resource, Fodor's guide to New York, doesn't help in this regard. Like all guidebooks to New York City, it focuses on the tourist sights, which are almost exclusively on Manhattan. Tourists don't want to go to the boroughs because they are seems as unsafe. Which is why it's so vital to portray them in a vampire game.

Even on Manhattan different neighborhoods have very different feels. Harlem and the East Village are both “poor” but one is a down and out poor, while the other is a bohemian poor. Times Square and Washington Square Park both have a large criminal element, but the crime is focused in very different ways and with very different results on the attitudes of those who live there. Fifth Ave and Wall Street are both havens of big business, but one feels open and commercial while the other is claustrophobic and hurried.

Obviously, New York City is a huge place, with hundreds of neighborhoods. Describing the feel of all of them would have been impossible. But the neighborhoods around major Kindred locations could have, and should have been detailed. Otherwise a storyteller does not have the tools to allow his or her group to interact with the city; the characters merely teleport from this vampire's haven to that vampire's haven.

Now we move to the longest stretch of the book, the character section. This starts with a brief (too brief as we'll see) one page section about how to add more vampires to the city and continues on into thirty six pages of Camarilla characters, eight pages of Sabbat characters, three pages of independents and a final two pages of mortals. My main problems with section are power level issues, matters of demographics, and some problems with specific characters.

The brevity of the opening section is one of my largest problems with this chapter. Justin points out that a book like this can't detail all the Kindred in a city as large as New York. I completely agree with him, not only for the reason of sheer length, but also to give storytellers a license to be creative. But Justin does not provide much guidance for storytellers to create characters. He throws out some vampiric occupations as places to start for character concepts. Certainly that is one place to start. But, as with most of this book, mortal considerations are ignored. Why not describe some of the mortal niches a vampire could find influence in? A page each on crime, big business, high society, and the proletariat and how they specifically work in New York is sorely needed. A city of supposedly young and low-power kindred should largely define its characters in mortal terms.

Speaking of characters, why is White Wolf so obsessed with its signature ones? Ecaterina the Wise, Polonia, and Theo Bell all could have been reduced to much shorter profiles, since the vast majority of storytellers will be familiar with these characters. Additionally, for a low-powered game, why even bother to list stats for these characters? With eighty three dots of Disciplines between them, any one of these characters will simply win against any “low-powered” group of player characters. Beyond that, the characters Justin presents are not unreasonable. Unfortunately, none of them are particularly inspiring either, and when looked at as a group they begin to look very bleak.

The first bit of demographic information to look at is the male/female ratio. Most white wolf products tend to have about one third female characters and two third male. The revised clanbooks, for instance, have an average of three women out of the ten archetypes presented in each book. This book is sadly no exception. There are thirty nine characters presented, and thirteen of them are female. The mortal situation is particularly bad. The poor helpless woman with a two Willpower and a 1.8 average in her attributes is protected by the strong manly men with six and five in their Willpower scores and an average attribute score of 2.8. The vampire situation is not this bad, at least stat wise, but characters like “Yvette, the Hopeless” are not a big help. Considering the “important” vampires in the city, elders, harpies, regents, law enforcers and the like, there are eight men and three women. White Wolf does not attempt to make up for the large gender disparity by giving women any greater degree of power in the city.

Another demographic factor to consider is the average power-level of the vampires in the city. Remember that this is a game for low-power characters and that Justin promised us back on page X (sorry, page 8), “that most of the characters herein are on the low end of the power scale.” Lets see what that means. Using number of discipline dots as a measure of power is not a bad method, they are easy to count and definitely correspond to power level. Also note that I'm only counting discipline dots, not rating in a path. Looking at this metric we see that the mean number of discipline dots in this chapter is 9.7. That's more than three times as powerful as a starting character. Not my definition of “the low end of the power scale.” One could argue that the eighty three dots of disciplines held by the elders are pulling the mean up, but the median is very close to the mean, at 10.0. In other words, half of the vampires in the city have more than ten dots of disciplines, and half have fewer.

Looking at a specific example to drive home how powerful these vampires are. Take the Tremere. There are four of them described by Justin. Two are regents, two (a different two) were embraced before 1900 and one has created her own path of thaumaturgy. They all have five levels of thaumaturgy. All but one (ironically the one who created a path) have five levels of Occult. This doesn't scream low-power to me. A classic example of asking us to do as they say, not as they do.

Finally, more demographics here, I have some problems with the clan/sect breakdown. Remember, this book, “is set up with the intent to give troupes the chance to put one of their own in a position to claim the princedom.” It's supposed to be book about politics, and Camarilla politics at that. Almost 30% of the Kindred described are not members of the Camarilla. The same number of Sabbat coteries are described as Camarilla coteries! The number of Sabbat could have been cut in half and the book would not have suffered for it. Its worth noting that there are more Lasombra in the city than there are in each of four Camarilla clans: Malkavian, Nosferatu, Tremere and Ventrue.

This chapter, and the next as we will see, is really where Justin has to back up his claims in the beginning of the book. But the group of characters presented is not well suited for the low-powered, political game he claims to want storytellers to run. The fact that this chapter ignores the mortal world, and the chapter's take on women, only make it that much worse.

The next chapter deals with plots that the storyteller is encouraged to use for his game. Five story lines are presented, only one of which deals with the actual focus of the book. I will deal with them in turn.

The first is definitely the best, dealing with the political situation in the city as it does. Justin does a very good job here; I just wish it could have gone on longer. There is a good discussion of the various candidates and the strengths of their positions, including their behind-the-scenes supporters. There is also a good section about how the players can affect the outcome of this struggle, even becoming the Prince. What I would have expanded on would be the other positions of the city. There are no primogen in the city and there could be another scourge or two. There is always room for another harpy if there is a savvy candidate. I would have added another few pages (cut from the next section) to describe how trying to gain one of these other positions is different from becoming Prince, and describing the struggle for them. I also would have added something, likely a whole new section, about the struggle for mortal influence. The positions of vampiric power are open, but so are the positions of mortal power. What good is the princedom if someone else controls the media and the police? Describing the New York specific aspects of mortal influence is vital.

“For some Storytellers, simply knowing that the Antediluvian is here is enough to arouse their distaste.” Justin is skilled at the art of understatement. With some effort I will ignore my feelings about this sub plot, and the fact that WW has now explicitly said, out of character, that there is an Ancient beneath New York City. What's important here is that these four pages have nothing to do with the book as a whole. The book is about politics, remember? The Ancient is a political factor in so far as it has influenced the Nosferatu in general and Calebros in specific. That is dealt with in previous three sections. There is no need to detail the situation more. It does not serve the stated goals of this book.

The section about hunters is moderately interesting. It discusses making the hunters moral antagonists rather than combat ones. Sure the players can beat the tar out of some mortal, but won't they feel bad after words? Interesting, but there is little place for it here, as usual, because it doesn't serve the interests of the book. On the other hand, I am remarkably pleased that this is White Wolf's only inkling of cross over material in this book. One of the hunters has a minor mystical power. But that is far better than discussing the Werewolves, Mages, Changelings and whatever that I'm sure exist in the city.

The two story concepts described in the final section are a mixed bag. Dealing with the anarchs' response to the political situation is certainly interesting. Fighting the Sabbat is standard and boring. I won't grudge Justin the four short paragraphs he allocates to it though – hey, the Sabbat are out there. The two other “story concepts” are really storytelling techniques, focusing the story around a landmark or doing a character study. Now, there are very interesting techniques, the former is used well by Paul Auster in Leviathan, for instance. But they don't belong in this chapter; they belong in the next one.

I don't have much to say about the final chapter, which deals with storytelling techniques. I am amused that the first section discusses how to deal with characters who are too powerful in comparison to the non-player characters though. Overall Justin does a very good job here. This is the chapter that deals most tangentially with the city, so there is less for me to disagree with in his treatment of it. The techniques of violence and greed are especially pertinent for a story set in New York, city of businessmen and street gangs.

It took me a while to get there, but I've made it to the end. And so have you, thanks for reading all this. I'm sure by now you understand my argument has two main focuses. First there is the discussion of how vampire stories should be told, and how cities should be described. Justin ignores the mortal half of the city. I shouldn't say mortal half, because really there are tens of thousands of mortals for each vampire in New York. The city is crawling with them. But this book lacks any discussion of how they live, what its like to walk through their neighborhoods, or what a character from New York would have known during his or her life. Second there is the discussion about the mis-match between the book's stated goals and what it actually accomplishes. I've used these quotes before, but I will repeat them: “In the end, New York by Night is set up with the intent to give troupes the chance to put one of their own in a position to claim the princedom.” Justin claims this book is designed to allow, “relatively low-powered characters able to play a high-stakes game of politics.” Storytellers will find, “that most of the characters herein are on the low end of the power scale.” I've shown that these goals are not met in this book. The book presents plots that have nothing to do with politics and characters that are much stronger than an average neonate. I greatly respect the goals this book set for itself, which only makes me more disappointed that it did not reach them.