Chicago Chronicles Retrospective (Classic Vampire: The Masquerade reviews)

    I am the world's third greatest Vampire: The Masquerade fan. I say that despite the fact I don't belong to the larger RPG community, that I have supplements I don't own, and I was only tepidly involved in its come back after 20 years. However, it feels right of me to say that I am this because the setting had such an enormous effect on my life. I grew up in a fundamentalist household and I went the extra mile from my parents, becoming even more of a self-righteous jerk who missed the point of the religion I claimed to follow. However, I had one blind spot on my life and that was the World of Darkness. I loved vampires and playing them so much that I automatically shut down any contradiction between being a conservative Good Old Boy in the South and the edgy Gothic Punk sensibility of the setting.

    The World of Darkness provided a much needed challenge to a lot of the views in my life that I had never really thought to question. Vampire: The Masquerade, particularly Chicago by Night, was published out of the counter-culture district of Atlanta and depicted a view of the world I hadn't really been familiar with. It was the first game to depict large numbers of non-stereotypical black characters (especially Ameicans), LGBT characters, and have a variety of cultural representation on display. It wasn't always a hit and sometimes the misses ended up hitting someone in the face (World of Darkness: Gypsies, the Ravnos, the treatment of mental illness by the Malkavians, and a few other things). However, for the most part, it was a net positive in my life which helped me to become a better more tolerant person.

    Having discovered that there is a (at present still ongoing) Kickstarter for a 5th Edition update of Chicago by Night by Onyx Path Publishing, I'm going to do a short retrospective of the Chicago Chronicles of that game. BTW. That's a "setting within a setting" that is composed of all the adventure module and supplements around the Great Lakes area of the United States. If you're a fan of Dungeons and Dragons, think of it as all the material about Cormyr or Icewind Dale. Some of these books are fantastically good...others are not. I'm also going to talk about what I enjoyed about them and throw in my own personal little anecdotes.
I hope everyone enjoys.

FORGED IN STEEL: The Episode 0 of the Chicago Chronicles, Forged in Steel is the sample campaign setting in the back of the original two Vampire: The Masquerade editions. In simple terms, they represent the city of Gary, Indiana and how to run games there. Gary is a city with the dubious honor of being a modern day ghost town. After the collapse of the American Steel Industry, it fell into economic decay that eventually led to much of the city being reclaimed by the wilderness. Forged in Steel describes seven or so vampires that inhabit this location and their relationships to one another. It also provides a sample adventure called BAPTISM BY FIRE which has the player characters attend the New Year's Eve party of the insane Prince Modius. It's surprisingly good.

O Allicia, my Reflection.

     I say surprisingly because I don't think anyone actually expected player characters to play in a tiny run-down steel town (much like the kind I grew up in). However, the little chronicle is full of everything you might need to run many interesting adventures. In addition to information on how to capture the kind of post-industrial hellscape the city is famous for (A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET had parts of it filmed here), it also provides a complex web of character relationships. There's a ludicrous but dangerously powerful Toreador Prince, an Anarch leader who fights authority for the fun of it, two beautiful Kindred women enslaved to foul elders, a Roman soldier turned crime lord, a mentally handicapped vampire, and a trio of vampire hunters that have varying takes on the undead.

    If there's any flaws with Forged in Steel, it is the fact that it contains one of the worst cliffhanger cop-outs of all time. After you finish Baptism by Fire, your characters are invited to visit Prince Lodin (and by invited we mean ordered). Except Prince Lodin and the meeting aren't included. You have to go buy Ashes to Ashes in order to get that. Rating: 9/10

ASHES TO ASHES: Ashes to Ashes is an adventure module, which is something that always has issues of going on the rails. In this case, the short version is the player characters arrive in Chicago only to find that Prince Lodin has gone missing. They're promptly set up by Lodin's not-at-all-trustworthy lieutenants to take the fall for it. So, of course, the player characters have to rescue Lodin. It ends with fighting rats the size of dogs that can eat vampires (un)alive. This is a pretty rough adventure but it's actually one of the better ones the line would prove. I've never actually run it, though, because Lodin is not the sort of guy any player character really wants to help out. Still, I liked the fact it depicted your first encounter with organized vampire society as something ready to step on you.

     There's a lot of silly in this adventure and it's designed to introduce D&D players to the idea they're small fish in a big pond very rapidly. Mind you, I always liked the idea they rescue Lodin and he's forced into a Life Boon with them. He's in debt to them so he can't automatically kill them by Camarilla law but he also really doesn't like them either. It's the perfect set up for a complex and unique vampire relationship. Rating: 6/10

I always wondered who that guy was.

CHICAGO BY NIGHT: 1ST EDITION: I genuinely believe this to be the all time greatest gaming supplement of all time. It's a setting which would go on to influence many other supplements as well as the Vampire: The Masquerade line itself. The book isn't flawless despite my awesome claims about it as the stats are more less useless. Kindred with powerful Obfuscate can't actually it because they don't have a Stealth core. Some characters are nothing but blocks of 5's and so superhuman they could fight a tank division. Still, what the book has more than anything else is personality.

    The heart of the book is Prince Lodin, the often imitated and never surpassed archetypal Ventrue Prince. He remains one of the great RPG villains alongside Vecna, Strahd Von Zharovich, and Artemis Entreri. He's a greedy, charismatic, and vicious sociopath who is never so evil that you can't imagine occasionally siding with him to protect the Masquerade or preserve the city's stability. Most of my player characters eventually ended up killing Lodin but it was usually a slow build up that involved many confrontations beforehand.

    The book is also filled with many other fascinating and memorable characters. There's Critias, the first gay RPG character I ever encountered who was also a philosopher in Ancient Greece. He's determined to prove he's smarter than anyone else alive and at 2500 years--he probably is. There's the seductive Annabelle who is old enough to do whatever she wants but has no real ambitions other than being the person everyone likes (or else). There's Khalid the Nosferatu who seeks redemption but in contrast to the usual vampire tropes--really really is bad at it (and should probably be killed for the safety of everyone). I fell in love with characters like Maldavis, Erichtho, Anita Wainwright, and Kathy Glen. Not every character is a hit and some NPCs are a bit generic but even those have their place. Rating: 10/10

BLOOD BOND: I really hate this module. It's got all the problems of being incredibly railroad-y to your player characters but it's even worse than most because you're not being forced along a specific plot for your actions but your character's development. Specifically, your characters are forced to fall in love. Yes, I said that correctly. A shallow underdeveloped prop of a female character is someone your character falls for. She's also the ball in the football match between two other vampires in the city. The module really feels like someone wanted to write a dark and steamy vampire romance/revenge story but forgot the player characters needed to be involved.

    The Sabbat are also depicted as the lesser evil in this, which makes no damned sense. The girl will always leave you for her psychopath lover too. Which, honestly, is the most interesting thing about her. Rating: 3/10

THE SUCCUBUS CLUB: A chronicle rather than an adventure module. Basically, it's a collection of adventures that I've gotten considerable use out of over the years. There's a blood plague, a human game of chess between elders, a quest to find Harry Houdini the renegade Tremere, and a Toreador party gone horribly wrong. The adventures are silly and not very good but they're all salvageable even though I think Annabelle's Party is incredibly low stakes (*rimshot*).

    It also gives a complete description of the Succubus Club, the greatest "inn your player characters meet at in order to get an adventure" of all time. The best part of the book is it's also filled with a hundred or so little tiny encounters that can spruce up a adventure. Rating: 8/10

UNDER A BLOOD RED MOON: A infamous but entertaining a hell adventure that introduced werewolf vampires ("Abominations!"), killed half the NPCs in Chicago by Night (but only the lame ones), and was supposedly able to be played by Werewolves, Camarilla, and Sabbat but breaks down if you're not playing something furry. Honestly, I can't hate this module because I've run it like six times so clearly I get something out of it.

    The premise is simple: the Sabbat and Black Spiral Dancers (boo! hiss!) frame the Camarilla for screwing up a werewolf holy site as well as potentially bringing the Apocalypse several steps closer. As such, the werewolves decide to kill every vampire in Chicago. The werewolves can murder the vampires more or less with impunity if they can find them and get them to stand still for a fair fight but, well, they're vampires. The werewolves start with them on the back foot but by the end, the Garou just want to go home due to all the silver bullet sneak attacks as well as the National Guard coming to investigate. Rating: 7/10

CHICAGO BY NIGHT: SECOND EDITION: I'm skipping over Milwaukee by Night because it's really not related to Chicago save in the absolute loosest sense. Chicago by Night 2nd Edition was the post Under a Blood Red Moon depiction of the city. The book confirmed as killed off a lot of characters who were actually some of CbN's more fun characters. Theodore Dooley, Hank Cave, and Garwood Marshall dying always felt like they left the setting a little less colorful. The new additions to the city were alright but I only think the Malkavians well and truly benefited from the revamp. The "hook" of Chicago by Night was that the Prince was dead so you could become Prince yourself if you wanted to. I don't think there was really room for that, though, given the power of all the candidates.

    This was the end of Chicago in vampire until the revamp of the setting in V20. Rating: 9/10

The most useless of all Anarchs.

DUST TO DUST: An "homage" adventure written for Vampire: The Masquerade's 20th anniversary and returns the setting to that of Gary, Indiana. I both love and loathe this adventure, sometimes switching from one feeling to the next within pages. It returns the player characters to a classic location and brings back three of my all-time favorite characters in Modius, Juggler, and Sullivan Dane. Unfortunately, the central conceit of the adventure is nothing any of the people do in the adventure matters. I mean that literally as Modius and Juggler are portrayed as fools fighting over real estate no one wants. Indeed, the expected way to end the story is the player characters abandoning them to their meaningless feud.

    I regretted the fact that it didn't include updated version of Gary's other characters and no hint to their fate. On the other hand, I really liked Old Sullivan Dane who doesn't kill every vampire he encounters but works on going after the worst of their kind. Rating: 7/10

RUSTED VEINS: The 5th Edition Gencon adventure which is very similar to Dust to Dust. Prince Modius is dealing drugs and doing so badly, which results in a friend of yours getting scooped up. Juggler and Sullivan Dane are involved, making this feel like a much much darker version of DUST TO DUST. It lacks that book's humor, though, and still suffers from many of its flaws. I will say it has the moment where I believe Modius' "canon" death should be (and Sullivan Dane's for that matter) where Sullivan gives himself up to spare another random mortal's life--and his holy blood burns Modius inside and out. Bad-ass. It was a great peak into the changes for Chicago by Night 5E, though. Rating: 6/10

    In any case, I'm looking forward to adding not only CHICAGO BY NIGHT 5E to my collection but also THE CHICAGO FOLIO and LET THE STREETS RUN RED.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...ed/description