Berlin by Night

Vampire: the Masquerade

by James A. Moore

DIVIDED WE FALL....

What do the Kindred fear more than the prince of a city? When a city has two princes...and they're at war. Then, every battle takes on new meaning. Every argument has a sinister purpose. Every decision risks offending one of the mighty rulers. Every decision may be the last, fatal one.

UNITED WE DIE!

Such is Berlin. Ages-old capital of the German Empire. Center of the Third Reich. Battleground between East and West, torn by their globe-spanning war. Now the Soviet Brujah who once ruled East Berlin have disappeared, and the magical barriers between the two sides have fallen. The time of reunification is here. The time of destruction is at hand.

Berlin by Night Includes:

A detailed description of Berlin, including its history as a center of culture and a spawning pool of hate.
Some of the most powerful Kindred in Europe, including a Justicar, two powerful princes and more!
The Ascension of Caine, a complete Vampire story that threatens to rend the Camarilla asunder.

Genres: Role Playing Games, World Of Darkness

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.

James A. Moore was the award winning author of over forty novels, thrillers, dark fantasy and horror alike, including the critically acclaimed Fireworks, Under The Overtree, Blood Red, the Serenity Falls trilogy (featuring his recurring anti-hero, Jonathan Crowley) and his most recent novels, seven Forges, The Blasted Lands, City of Wonders , The Silent Army and the forthcoming The Gates of The Dead (Book Three in the Tides of War Series) and A Hell Within, co-authored with Charles R. Rutledge.

Reviews

[Andre · Rating 1 out of 5]

After reading this book on a Berlin in a vampire horror setting, I have to ask myself: Was any effort spent on this?
I had a bad feeling already when I saw the reference material: The books are two guides, Hitler's “Mein Kampf”, Time Life books on World War II, Shoah and some others I have never heard off. Plenty of the movies are unknown to me and the ones were titles tell about their contents, they are all about the Cold War and World War II. And one MTV “rockumentary” about racism to show how nasty the situation really is in Berlin. Because MTV has such a good record in showing facts. Plus documentaries on Himmler and Goehring. It was pretty clear where this book would be going.

The only good things I can say about this is that they got the info about travel in Berlin right and that some strange looking Gangrel vampires have been spotted around the zoo (because they gain animal features over time), but that is about it.
The history of the place is screwed over, the names and words are constantly and atrociously misspelled, the characters bland, cliché and uninteresting, the geography of Berlin (here it suddenly has 20 districts instead of the 23 it had back then, and several places are stated under the wrong district [like Pfaueninsel] or misnamed [like the Zoological Garden is called Tierpark, albeit that one being the other big zoo of Berlin]) and partially Germany is screwed and sometimes I had to google for some time to even know what buildings the author was referring to.
And I think the made-up names they have chosen for the vampires were chosen because they sound "cool and German."
The artwork is mostly cliché (featuring Nazis, communism and drugs), disconnected from the text and of bad quality. If there is any purpose behind it except showing off corruption and Nazis I cannot see it.
And if this weren’t enough, the whole ordeal isn’t even consistent within itself or the wider game line of the World of Darkness. For instance they say that lupine pelts adorn the havens of the Berlin's Ventrue elders. Well I hope these were lupus or metis werewolves because otherwise it would be human skins and not fur. Or why would they want “Grunewald forest” (another example of the author’s incompetence/ignorance since “wald” already means forest and Grunewald does not consist entirely of forest) to begin with if they seek mostly untouched areas and safe havens? Or why would Nosferatu vampires, the clan practically having the monopoly on information, avoid several districts of Berlin? Which technically would make them pretty useless… Well stuff like this happens often and we are never given any reason or even suggestions in that direction.
And these cliché claims about riots against "racial impurities" in Berlin at the time, I doubt anything like that ever happened, trust me considered what happened in Rostock in 1992 it would have been mentioned. Either way, saying on Kurfuerstendamm riots regularly break out is idiotic even within this darker universe. It is, as they say, West Berlin's best know shopping strip and a tourist location. Letting riots happen so regularly would be bad for business!!! And the "Final Reich" trying to drive the foreigners away... again: bad for the economy. Not only shortly after Reunification but especially earlier (where the "Reich" tried it as well), due to Germany's need of contract workers for its economy, both German states needed it.
And reading this here I must say, this whole "Vampires pull the strings behind the curtains of the politics of the world" just sounds stupid. I am not sure what it is, but maybe it is that it makes no sense for them to hide then to begin with. Other vampires ruled open and humans didn't rise against them, heck White Wolf made several of the gods into vampires in their game lines (e.g. Odin or Hanuman [although technically that one was Kuei-Jin]). If you don’t believe me: The events leading to World War I are basically summed up with "the vampires wanted it so", no details whatsoever, and why that Berlin vampire wanted it is basically stated with "nobody but him knows". This is plain lazy writing. For a book like this they either should have let this out or go more into detail. And why an outside clan like the Ravnos would be instrumental in pushing the USA into World War I, I have no idea. Btw. the atomic bombs are of course never mentioned here, they are barely mentioned in this game line… makes me wonder why that might be. You see if the Ventrue vampires controlled the USA, wouldn’t that mean they are responsible for the A-bombs?
But it seems in general the author has no idea about anything, e.g. that the Great Depression was worldwide and not concentrated in Germany. Furthermore in what way is Charlottenburg best compared to Manhattan with a twist of Washington DC on the side? And they even mentioned the Berlin Museum in Kreuzberg… which was closed when this book was published...maybe they should have waited 2-3 years before writing about this particular city. And apparently he couldn’t come up with something better than Nazis (and yes Himmler is a vampire and apparently a special one who cannot be blood bound, at least that vampire claiming to be Goehring seems to be a fake) and “occult experiments” and a “Final Reich” (complete with a new Fuehrer, who of course must be a powerful built blond giant with cold blue eyes), yeah because that is all Germany apparently has to offer as fodder for horror stories, Nazis. Lazy, plain lazy.
And for all my followers who might be of Vietnamese ancestry: they erased you from the history of my country and replaced you with Pakistanis. The statement substantial numbers of other foreign families also live in the area seems to count for something... pfff. Not only would many "foreigners" have no longer, or possibly, never been foreign at the time but this lazy writing here is downright making no sense. But hey they have the leading vampire meet Hitler and apparently Hitler didn’t try to … what da heck it’s not worth commenting on. Not to mention if that vampire thought Hitler was a good bet this either means the author is so into the war myths that he thinks Nazi Germany could have beaten Soviet Russia, or he just took the next best “idea” that came into his mind.
Seriously, most of what is written here is so generic considered its topic that it screams of hasty or lazy writing. Especially since all those claims of magickal powers used to stop Hitler (as if) and him having raided on the troves of lore held throughout Europe could have been a source for good concepts, since apparently there have been many books and movies on it. Some of the ideas might have some merit, but they totally ruined every potential they had and the rest is no saving grace of any kind.
And when you see what they came up with: Himmler is a vampire mage, they truly have THE Rasputin in the city, and apparently here Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide were actual people (vampires, btw. they make Hyde be bigger than Jekyll when in the book he was much smaller). They seem to have no idea how to use Berlin’s geography (e.g. “something” below Teufelsberg is pretty much impossible), how the city is (not a word about the many bombs still not found) or how vampires would react (e.g. they have vampires still be in the city when the Soviets attacked… stupid). And one of the most idiotic ideas is that in World War II the Nazis performed “genetic experiments” (I am not making this up) on undead vampires (plus some werewolf and faeries, and called it “project werewolf;” yeah that sounds like a name that would make sense) and the survivors in torpor (why they don't exert any psychic influence is anyone's guess) where left by the other vampires in the rubble heap that would become Teufelsberg instead of killing these aberrations. This seems like some sketchy idea ala “something might rise from below.” I don’t even know why there is a mystical ward (which sometimes are stated as actual walls and other times as simple alarm systems) around former West-Berlin or what its boundaries are.
And if all of this weren't enough: First they come with this uninspired and idiotic ascension of Caine story (the first vampire in this game line), with the actual Caine apparently (albeit that would be odd), and the they say that every animal could be a vampire. Since when? Was that some dumb early idea they had? If not their other books should be full of them, instead of simple animal ghouls. In other books: no animal vampires ever. Some shapeshifters have become undead bloodsuckers but even that is extremely rare.
And at the end of the book they actually put the same map of Europe from the beginning. Did they think readers would be too stupid/lazy to just go back and look at the first one? Or at an actual map...
Technically this book is not even worth mentioning. It is a big waste of time, full of half-baked ideas, bad artwork, bad spelling and geography and a complete ignorance of German society and especially Berlin at the time. Under the line the author could not come up with even one good idea and screwed the topic and the game line over. A plain bad book, nothing redeemable about it.

[Lesebär · Rating 3 out of 5]

Berlin By Night,

dieses Städte Buch zu dem pan and Paper Spiel Vampire the Masquerade liefert einem viele Inspirationen. Die Haupt Charaktere wie Gustav oder Wilhelm sind sehr gut geschrieben. Das beiliegende Abendteuer ist spanend und Bewegend. Erfahrene Spieler mit fortgeschrittenen Charakteren werden hier definitiv ihren Spaß haben
Aber dann gibt es da doch noch ein paar ecken an denen ich mich stoße. Die Handlung ist in den 90er gesetzt. Der Kampf um die absolute macht in Berlin, der beiden Prinzen der ehemaligen Teilstädte bietet so viel mehr als die Autoren sich aus den Händen gesaugt haben. Das wieder beleben ein oder zwei hochrangiger Nazis kann dem ganzen seine Würze verleihen aber nicht wen es der dreh und Angelpunkt der gesamten Handlung ist. Kommen wir zu einer Weiteren Ecke: Ein Gangrel der Werwölfe zu seinen Dienern macht ist ein bisschen zu viel des guten. Selbst unter den dort beschrieben umständen wäre das nicht passiert wen man die Garou halbwegs ernst nimmt.
Dieses Buch lohnt sich nur für den Leiter einer eigenen Chronik oder einem Sammler
Alles in Allem ist es eine brauchbare Quelle für eine Eigene Chronik, aber es ist nicht geeignet um darin eine Chronik zu spielen. Nicht wen man es Konsequent umsetzt. Für Einsteiger ist die Stadt wie sie dort beschrieben ist eher ein Krematorium.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good way to practice German, for those who are horror fans or role-playing gamers, and for those fluent in German, it is an excellent sourcebook for the the game, "Vampire: The Masquerade." The game's premise is that the players are all vampires living in a world that closely parallels our own, but whose politics are secretly manipulated by powerful vampires behind the scenes. This is the reason I put it on my sci-fi shelf; it cannot help but comment upon contemporary politics through the lens of an alternate universe.

This book is specifically about the recently reunited Berlin of the early 1990s. For a modern game, much would have to be modified to match conditions in the real-world Berlin, but it might be more fun to either create a historical campaign or one which extends the premises of the struggle for power between East and West to a logical outcome not based on real-world events. The Berlin described here is still half controlled by the vampires that had run East Germany, and they are not giving up their power easily, in spite of apparent external changes. The characters are a fascinating collection of characters from various points in European history (the cool thing about vampires is that they don't die, so you have the option of bringing historical figures to present day), and the situations are an interesting reflection on the problems of a divided city.

The German is beyond the "beginner" level, but uses few colloquialisms and difficult sentence structures, probably because it is based on an English text. Overall, it could be a useful practice tool for those who find the subject matter interesting.