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WoD Midnight Roads (World of Darkness (White Wolf Hardcover))

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According to the introduction, Midnight Roads attempts to show the dangers that result in most World of Darkness supernatural creatures clinging to the cities. Does it succeed? Well, the book doesn't showcase danger as much as pure weirdness. It is generally aimed at mortal chronicles, but there is plenty here for any character on the road. The book begins with a good piece of atmospheric fiction. Unfortunately, the fiction also features the Road Gospel, a fascinating concept nowhere else referred to. The introduction and first chapter set the tone and provide an overview of America's road, its history and the many components that make it up. As with many White Wolf books, the authors found a huge amount of weird and dark material before they start adding the fictional shadows of the World of Darkness to it. After the short but interesting history, legend and fetish section, comes a section on the commercial support for travellers, gas stations, diners, truck stops, campgrounds and such, and finally an examination of various types of travel apart from driving, such as buses and hitch-hiking. Each section features plot hooks and plot sidebars.

The second chapter is about character mechanics. It starts off light with a review of basic survival skills of vagabond travellers: finding food in the wilderness or on the streets, conning people, that sort of thing. Then it moves into systems for dealing with cars. Cars and the Crafts skill is a big section all its own, and features Modifications (fun stuff to do to your car) and Sabotage (fun stuff to do to other people's cars). There is good coverage of other things like car chases, combat inside cars and various other issues. It finishes with new merits. It introduces a car 'Fighting Style' as it were, with special maneuvers as you buy dots, such as the Smuggler's Turn and Offensive Driving (and they don't mean tail-gating). It is a short but focused chapter.

The third chapter is about story ideas while the fourth features full-size stories. The third chapter has a few too many "Oh look, there's a Changeling/Promethean/Whatever" types for my taste. Just having a Storyteller character be supernatural isn't enough of an idea. Plus, if the PCs' chances of catching up with their stolen car are remote, why should they care what type of supernatural being stole it? On the other hand, many of these stories are good ideas about how mortals can cause unexpected problems for overconfident supernatural beings. The fourth chapter opens with a section on storytelling on the road. One of the issues it mentions is how to pin down the PCs long enough to have an adventure. The first two stories solve this in heavy-handed fashion, by simply trapping wanderers until they escape. One of the other stories is mostly the introduction to a road trip and framework for using material from chapter three. Another story shows how an area can have a haunted reputation and something genuinely supernatural, without the two actually being directly connected. The last story is one in which the antagonists wander where the PCs do, and on the dangers of prophecy.

This is what the VTR Nomads should have been. And at least White Wolf has that particular book off the catelog listing of Requiem books. If you're wondering what was so special about Nomads, don't worry about it.

This book is far better in quality and caliber then it. If you play Prometheans, you'll find this book useful as it talks about the perils and dangers of traveling on the roads, cars and a discussion of the Craft skill in relation to automechanics.

The book is pretty decent and to me is part of a series with Tales from the 13th Precinct, Asylum and Dogs of War.

Table of contents
Prologue road gospel 1
Introduction 12
Chapter one journeys and destinations 20
Chapter two construction ahead 42
Chapter three road hazards 60
Chapter four the dangerous intersections 88

this book is 128 page.