Authors: Brian Campbell, Patrick ODuffy and Greg Stolze
Release Date: 2004-12-09
On Sale: Yes
Price: 24.99
ISBN: 1-58846-252-8
Product Type: Resource
Product Style: Hardcover
Page Count: 128
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Review by: Sterling Jenson
Rating: 8/10
A useful addition to any Requiem collection.
Nomads starts out with the obligatory introductory story which details a rock band on tour, the Living Daylights, which is composed of a collection of vampires and ghouls. The layout of the story is written on posters promoting the band’s stops, but instead of details of the locations and times, details of the story are written on the posters. This layout can be difficult to read at first, but after a while, you get used to it. Overall, the story was a good start to the book as it details the problems of nomadic life as a nomad on the open road.
After a brief introduction, the book begins with a chapter entitled, “Call of the Road,” which details why vampires leave the safety of the cities to become a nomad. This chapter describes possible reason why members of each clan and covenant might have taken to the road. I liked how each of the write ups for the clan describes how a particular member of the clan might fit into a road coterie. This addition will help players create the basics of where the character fits into the group, should they have trouble during character creation. Next in the chapter are write ups for various covenants and how or why a member might become a nomad, including a list of official positions from each covenant which requires the character to travel from city to city. I personally hope that the covenant books remember to include these positions. At the time that I am writing this, only the Lancea Sanctum book has been released, and I have not been able to buy it to see if they retain Legate position. One thing that disappointed me about this section is the simple fact that the Unaligned were not given a write up in the covenant section. This might be a strange idea, but I would have liked to have seen a section describing how the unaligned are perceived when they enter a covenant’s domain. A section on the Unaligned would have been useful simply because I suspect that the majority of nomadic characters will be Unaligned.
The second chapter in the book, “Those Who Wander,” is broken up into two sections on various Nomad Archetypes and one on road coteries. Personally, I think that the archetypes might have better served in the first chapter so that players using the book would read about archetypes first, clans second, and covenants last, in the hope that they create the human aspect of the character first, the clan aspect next, and finish the character with details of the covenant which they join. Though this might not always work out since a vampire might choose to become a nomad were as if he was human, he would never have left the safety of the city. Despite this flaw, this section is well written and gives several ideas of what type of people become nomads rather than the ordinary badass biker vampire. Each archetype gives suggestions on areas to focus on during character creation as well as disciplines works that particular archetype. While I would suggest that players try create their own character, this section will be useful for creating the basics of a character, especially in conjunction with the first chapter, if a player is having difficulties creating a character. One of the flaws with the book can be seen in the fact that some of the sub-sections use different terms to describe the same thing. Normally this would not stand out, but since the majority of the sections use the term “Mechanics” seeing the term “Traits” for the madman section stood out. Though this is only a minor complaint as it is easy to understand what each section was describing. The second part of the chapter, describes how nomad coteries are set up, and the problems with maintaining such a coterie. The last four sub-sections, called “The Buddy System,” “The Fuck-Your-Buddy System,” “The Desert Island Itch,” and “Along for the Ride,” are practical suggestions for how such a group behaves and how ghouls are used by nomads. Each of these sections would be an excellent starting point for a session or a story.
“Surviving the Wild,” is the best chapter in the book, as far as I’m concerned. It does not matter if a character is a Mekhet occultist from the Ordo Dracul, a Ventrue Hermit with no ties to a covenant, or an Invictus Gangrel Hunter, if player characters cannot survive the nomadic lifestyle; they are piles of ash waiting to happen. This chapter gives players ideas on how to survive. In this chapter, the authors give solid suggestions on getting blood or finding shelters as well as the pros and cons of various transport options are presented. All of these sections are practical and potentially useful for player characters to use and exploit to create new ideas. The next section deals with various locations, from large cities to Death Valley, that a nomad could wander through and the hazards each location presents. The chapter ends with a section on Nomad rituals and devotions, some of those presented seem to be more useful than others, such as “Scent of the Beast” and “Bleeding the Tarantula.” All of the devotions and ritual presented are focused on survival, as they should be.
Chapter four gives the details the un-lives of a series of “Notable Nomads.” Each write up includes potential story hooks for including these notables as well as everything, including histories and stats. Either someone did not realize that the Gangrel curse was different in the Requiem or we should expect a Gangrel bloodline in the future that has the same Gangrel curse from Masquerade. Because of this, I was disappointed with the write up for the Unholy, but still even that NPC has some great story hooks.
The appendix is called “Route 666” and is a potential story for players to run about leaving New Orleans for Chicago. So not to spoil any secrets, I won’t go too much into details, but I think that it has the potential to be a great introduction to a Nomads game. One problem with the appendix was the unimaginative name, “Route 666.” But, a more important problem with this section is that one of the side bars “Rules of the Road,” felt like it should have gone into an earlier chapter and not one in a section intended for Storytellers only.
Overall, the book is a useful addition to any Requiem collection, especially one that focuses on the nomads. While people have complained about how few pages Nomads has in it, I liked how Nomads was straight to the point and how it did not try to limit players to a particular location. With a little research, a Nomads game could take place just about anywhere. That being said, I would have liked to have seen a chapter on how to be a nomadic vampire across the world, so that if I want to set the game in Turkey or in Europe, I could see suggestions on how to do so. For the majority of the artwork, I felt that the art was well done and in the spirit of the book; though I am not a big fan of the sketchy drawings that began each chapter. Overall, I rate this book as being an eight out of ten.
