Influences

There are two primary White Wolf Game Studio supplements that influence this project beyond current canon.  The 2nd Edition era of Vampire: The Masquerade had a nasty habit of creating characters and settings and then never revisiting them.  As an example, Los Angeles was defined in Los Angeles By Night in the early nineties and was never again revisited until Nights of Prophecy and the integration of the Kindred of the East metaplot.  Castle Rock By Night seeks to avoid this by providing an in-depth and up-to-date setting that builds upon established 2nd edition Vampire: The Masquerade settings.

The local picture that this project takes it's inspiration from is Milwaukee By Night.  In the World of Darkness, Milwaukee is a city cut off from the larger world.  The vampires that are trapped in that maze inhabit a metropolis isolated from even nearby cities by the terrain of Wisconsin. They're surrounded upon all sides by werewolves and Sabbat Vampires that see them as nothing more than the tools of the Wyrm or the tools of the antediluvians. This is also one half of the predicament that the kindred of Castle Rock find themselves trapped within.  Castle Rock is a cage: It is the closest thing to a safe harbor that Camarilla or Anarch vampires can interact with; the alternative consists of lupine and Sabbat haunted forests that extend for miles between friendly shores.

Image Credit: American Hauntings

The larger political picture surrounding this setting is drawn from Dark Colony.  This was a setting sourcebook that covered the entire New England region of the North-Eastern United States.  Outside of the Boston region, New England has few, if any, Large Metropolitan areas and Certainly nothing on the order of a Los Angeles or a Houston.  New Hampshire was chosen because most of the major population centers do not exceed a population in the mid-five digits, nor do the towns in neighboring Maine and Vermont.  New England is overcrowded and a trio of very old and very Ruthless European elders have come over to assert control over the region.  For the kindred, the Revolutionary War is back on, courtesy of the Nosferatu Stanford Warwick in southern New England, The Malkavian William Biltmore in central New England and the Brujah Roman Pendragon in northern New England.

Castle Rock By Night aims to integrate and pay homage to these classic supplements while updating them for the V20 play environment while also being tonally compatible with the intent of the current White Wolf Game Studio IP owners going forward for the fifth edition versions of the respective game lines within the World of Darkness.  As such, certain setting details may be altered to be brought more up to date with these game lines as they stand today.