Vampire Gehenna (2004)
by Dean Shomshak, Travis-Jason Feldstein, Christopher Kobar, Ari Marmell
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Book Summary Information
Author: Ari Marmell, Christopher Kobar, Dean Shomshak, Travis-Jason FeldsteinCo-editor: Bjorn T Boe
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2004-01-14
ISBN: 1588462463
Number of pages: 244
Publisher: White Wolf Publishing
Book Reviews of Vampire Gehenna (2004)
Book Review: Unholy Gutless Non-Ending!
Summary: 1 Stars
For those less familiar with Vampire: The Masquerade and other World of Darkness "1.0" settings, let me give you a hint as to why people either love or hate with undying loathing this whole Time of Judgement Series: Gehenna, Apocalypse, Ascention, and Time of Judgement:
For years now the guys at White Wolf have been doling out what they coined "metaplot" book by book (and in fact, in whole series--such as Exalted, which was about nothing so much as the far distant legendary fantasy genesis of the World of Darkness that overlays our modern age.) Piece by painstaking piece the developers would lay down a clue here, a hint there. There were apparently three primal forces in the universe, the Weaver, the Wyld, and the Wyrm--organization and stasis, insane fecundity, and entropic decay respectively. Somehow these powers fell out of alignment. Most scholars blame humanity. Suddenly stasis (the Weaver) was indominable, mankind and science were logging their discoveries in libraries that would last unchanging for generations. Cities were made from concrete and steel. Disease and old age were pushed further and further back. Without the turnover caused by destruction (the Wyrm) there was no outlet for new creative bursts (the Wyld). The fae creatures of the Wyld had to leave creation entirely or be consumed by order into dry, static, unmagical forms. The Wyrm went crazy, needing to undo all the carved in stone order of the world, mutating people into engines of destruction called formori. Werewolves, long those responsible for shepherding the three forces were now set against stagnant humanity on one side and the Wyrm's corruptive minions on the other--but were dying. Mages likewise were fighting their own war, Traditions kicking against the bars of stasis to allow more magic into the world, while the ancient and fascist Technocracy who have promoted order to "protect" and control the average unmagical mortal fought against them.
Set against this were two other stories, much odder and in contrast to the others--Demon and Vampire. Both of these stories suggest a creation centered universe without the three primal powers, but rather a judeo-christian god who created everything, and the Demons and Vampires respectively who rebelled for their own reasons and were cursed. Their games were the crawling back from the brink. They were beautiful tragedies of creatures hated by goodness, but trying to salvage what good was in them.
Every book revealed a sliver more of these great storylines, and what's more, moved ever closer to revealing who was right and who was mistaken--what secret lore had the greatest fragments of truth to them and what the final true picture of the world was to be.
A wonderful story that I was proud to be part of and longed desparately to see fulfilled.
Then tragedy insued. The developers chickened out. After all the interesting, compelling material they'd produced, they feared their audience would be furious if they were to finally know what had really been going on the whole time...so they copped out. They came out with a different book for each supernatural race, taking the end from their point of view. Not only that but the end was a choose your own adventure. No answers were given, just suggestions and gentle prods in certain directions. I was furious. So were others. It'd be like watching your favorite TV show and halfway through the last season they give alternate endings based on whatever you wanted to think happened. It was a mess. The integrity of the setting fell apart.
Then to make things worse, it turns out the whole thing was a ploy to create a new World of Darkness 2.0, with dumbed down mechanics and a mishmash of the same old ideas, but with books that look awfully like D20 books in their layout.
So that's why some people (like me) hate this whole line of books so much. The people who like them largely are the people who never much liked all the metaplot or didn't see the point of all the extra stuff getting in the way of their games.
So you make the call. It's not a 1-star because it's awful. It's a 1-star because it disappointed me, which in some ways may in fact be much worse.
Summary of Vampire Gehenna (2004)
The End of the World...The prophecies of Gehenna were true. The world teeters on the brink of an undead apocalypse, the night when the progenitors of the vampire race rise to consume their childer amid a rain of blood and fire. As the fated Armageddon for the Kindred arises, what can they do?
FOR THE DAMNED
Drawing the Vampire Line to a close, GEHENNA brings about the conclusion of Vampire's World of Darkness. Featuring a sliding scale which Storytellers can custom-tailer the events of The End to their own chronicles, this book places the final accounting for the curse of Cain in the hands of the players' characters. Part of the Time of Judgement series. Hardcover.
See also: Vampire: Gehenna, The Final Night (ISBN 1588468550).
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