The Red Sign (Vampire)

Rating:
Summary: A tragic waste
Review: For those who'd rather not read in detail; To put it simply, you can learn almost as much by reading the back of this book as you can by reading the book itself. The abstract idea (a conspiratorial cooperation between mages and vampires to attempt to restore one of the latter to humanity) is an immensely interesting one to me, and I thought it would serve as an absolutely great leadup to the cataclysmic events of scenarios like those given in "Gehenna". However, redundancies bog this book down to a crawl. No single point is made only once; Had this been ensured, I think the book might be simply pamphlet-sized.
Essentially, the entire volume seems more or less devoted to 1: Filling Vampire players in on the basics of how Mages work (and vice versa. Unneccessary if you've read even just each core book), and 2: Offering polite little suggestions about how to go about doing what's given on the back. A few concrete nifty ideas are given, such as systems for tomes and a few examples of such. However, these are nearly buried under layer upon layer of information that you had probably already decided the minute you started turning the plot over in your head. This is an important, earth-shaking event, the book reminds us incessantly. "No kidding. That's why I wanted to play it." we say. "You'll need to figure out whether you want to work this part out as pure roleplay, dice roll centered, or a combination of the two." Gee, really? In other words, we get to do it however we want. Why bother even writing that, then?
All in all, the only really useful section was that which provided a huge armload of potential conspirators, operatives, and other NPCs. This was admittedly quite helpful, as it saves one the trouble of thinking out characters, and they're a fairly interesting selection as well. Designing large casts can be a pain for any ST, so this does help. However, do you really need to buy a book to give you an idea that's entirely available in summary on its back cover, and then page upon page of reminders that you can do it however you want, as well as lists of information that should be common sense to anyone with a grasp of the backstories of Mage and/or Vampire? Even a detailed, well-described list (not even a single explanation, just a list of possible onse) of possible forms the ritual of the Red Sign itself could take is witheld from the reader.
As fun an idea as this is, save yourself some money. Take the time to write up your own NPCs and do it yourself. You probably don't need to be reminded to.