In my continuing quest to devour all things Cuthbert Beckett, I picked up Vampire: the Masquerade – Nights of Prophecy. And what can I say except the boys are fightinggggg

Nights of Prophecy is a tabletop sourcebook with five distinct adventures for Storytellers and players alike to enjoy. The first chapter details several shenanigans players can meddle with when the Succubus Club, under the jurisdiction of Ravnos Sennuwy, comes to town. The second chapter is racist drivel and a battle among the Kuei-jin, Camarilla, and Anarchs. The best section, in my opinion, is the following chapter on ending Baba Yaga’s reign of terror in Russia. The fourth chapter has a distinct red-haired middle child vibe—the writing is dense, the Las Vegas antics genuinely funny, and the hunters shockingly clever. Finally, we end with Beckett’s adopted sire Aristotle stirring shit in Montreal to distract from the fact he has literally zero character motivation to do so.

On a gaming level, what this sourcebook really needed was a better copyeditor. Spelling and grammar are fine, but the organization is atrocious. Likely reflective of their different authors, each chapter is organized differently. Some sections carefully explain the mood of the adventure, diagram out relationship charts, provide maps, and end with helpful Dramatis Personae character profiles. The action is neatly divided into Acts and Scenes. In contrast, other chapters are a sluggish, rote listing of events. Who appears in the Dramatis Personae is a dice toss. A better copyeditor would have standardized the chapters’ organization. Similar, background information is sometimes there; sometimes not. I know little about the Sabbat, and the Montreal chapter caught me up enough that I feel I could run a Chronicle there. At the other extreme, the Kuei-jin chapter gave zero explanation on Kuei-jin society and people, beyond the current political situation. If you haven’t memorized Kindred of the East, you’re fucked.

Speaking of Kindred of the East, let’s talk about the reading experience. At 162 pages, Nights of Prophecy should be a quick read. At times, I, riveted, flew through. The poor organization and disregard for minorities were like thick, brick walls I had to attack with a wrecking ball. The Succubus Club chapter was all fun and good until the bewildering transphobia against Celeste. Combined with the lack of background information, the Sinophobia made the Kuei-jin chapter basically unreadable. I recognize that not expecting racism/transphobia in these old tabletop books is like swimming in shark-infested waters and being surprised there’s sharks. But WOW, am I glad that Paradox Interactive took over Vampire. Modern Vampire has problems, but they’re not this egregious. 

My other note is more of a quibble. The inciting incident of the Montreal adventure is the Kaymakli Shroud’s discovery. The trapped Okulos finds and gives it to Beckett, who sends it to Aristotle for translation. The narration states Beckett wants to save Okulos and he thinks the translation might help. The narration states Aristotle wants more time to study the translation before making it public. Beckett doesn’t care about the public—he only wants the translation to save his friend. These desires should not contradict. Aristotle could translate the Shroud and tell Beckett it isn’t relevant to Kaymakli’s curse. Instead, he throws a copy of the Shroud into the Montreal Kindred chaos. Which makes it public. And doesn’t save Okulos. So neither of them are happy. I couldn’t follow this logic leap. I wanted more insight into Aristotle’s reasoning, even if it was a lazy “Malkav told him to.” The way this event was written made it seem like Aristotle got infected with Backstabby Disease. Proper character motivation and internal reasoning would have increased the horror of Aristotle’s betrayal. As is, the betrayal is very random.

Overall, Nights of Prophecy was a middling book. Next up is Gehenna: the Final Night.