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How long did it take you to realize that Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines is one of the greatest action RPGs ever made and yet Vampire: Masquerade doesn't have much to do with it?
+Showing all 240 replies.
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>>3957722
Both are fantastic games. 2 has shit endings.
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Reminds me of the animation were she pulls out her tits
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>>3957749
Based Redemption enjoyer
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>>3957722
I half agree. The things that make Bloodlines good are mostly ancillary to its setting. Very little lore beyond the surface level gets brought up, and, contrary to what some may think, VtM does not have a monopoly on dark gothic cityscapes. In fact, Bloodlines does quite a deft job dancing around most of the shitty parts of the tabletop. Moreover, it manages to make parts of it look far more presentable than it is in the books. How it depicts the Anarchs is a good example. You have rebels without a clue in Nines' gang, Isaac Abrams whose only problem with the Camarilla is having to swear fealty to another vampire, and Smiling Jack the manipulator hiding his monstrousness behind a veneer of being your fun vampire uncle. The Kuei-Jin are another good example. While personally I still found them the weakest part of the story Chinatown as an area is really fun but the Kuei-Jin themselves are pretty lame. , holy hell is their depiction in bloodlines so much more reasonable than the tabletop. That Troika threw out a good 90% of the lore from the official LA by Night book is quite telling, I think.

However, I do think it being a Vampire: the Masquerade game, instead of just a custom urban fantasy setting, does have something to do with the magic. The idea of VTM is sublime. Bloodlines is able to pick and choose what works and really refine it. Bloodlines isn't a very good intro to the setting in an objective lore sense, but it is immensely faithful to the original spirit of VTM, which matters so much more.
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>>3957722
>>3957751
Damsel's hotter
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>>3957722
>How long did it take you to realize that Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines is one of the greatest action RPGs ever made and yet
the action part sucks? About halfway through the tutorial.
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>>3957763
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>>3957966
what's up with kids pretending this is a good game?
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>>3957751
>>3957942
Post it or give hint where to find!!!!
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>>3957966
>>3957969
kids don't even know the game exists, Bloodlines 2 erased it from search engines basically, if you go bloodlines first game you get bloodlines instead of redemption
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>>3957722
She looks like she fucks H*man men. Some real fat & ugly ones too.
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>>3958000
>kids don't know
brother, youtube exists. nothing is forgotten, ever.
>f you go bloodlines first game you get bloodlines instead of redemption
yes, bloodlines is the first bloodlines games. are you a retard?
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>>3958192
*sister
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>>3958205
why are you so boring? irony is making you into a routine, it's calcifying you, a true curse.
repent.
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>>3957969
It's a solid game largely done in by horrendous pathfinding and AI. I'm talking "leave your party behind and solo the entire level" bad at times.
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>>3958192
>are you a retard?
not him but yes i am
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>>3958219
>It's a solid game
>"leave your party behind and solo the entire level"
ah, yes the solidity of a bowl of fresh milk.
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>>3958219
>leave your party behind and solo the entire level
This is what I did for the whole game. I played a paladin Christof who clung to his humanity and rejected vampirism. Never fed from anyone the entire game, just drank the weird health potions that tasted like copper that I kept finding in dungeons.
Couple parts were pretty challenging, the last form of the last boss in particular, as well as those big fuck off monsters that could one shot you in melee with an animation. Took some luck. Great game though, I had a lot of fun.
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>>3958223
I mean, sometimes it works in your favor. Like how you can kite enemies and trivialize encounters in another level. Your party members are dumb, but so are enemies most of the time.
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>>3958226
HMMMMM?!?
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>>3958228
Oh yeah, he was pretty frustrating too. It's basically pure RNG if you can solo him or not, cause otherwise he can beat you in a straight damage race.
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>>3958228
problem with mercurio is he was overtuned as FUCK on release. this was a 2000 game that had to nerf its boss fight with a patch.
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>>3958227
yes, it's not a good game.
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>>3957751
>>3957986
big tits
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>>3958230
>this was a 2000 game that had to nerf its boss fight with a patch.
They also changed how you could manually save in that patch.
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>>3957928
>Bloodlines does quite a deft job dancing around most of the shitty parts of the tabletop
>How it depicts the Anarchs
>holy hell is their depiction in bloodlines so much more reasonable than the tabletop
>Troika threw out a good 90% of the lore from the official LA by Night book
can you expound on these anon, sounds pretty interesting. while i knew vtmb wasn't lore-accurate in terms of disciplines and power levels, i didn't know it deviated so much in terms of lore too, i just thought it didn't delve too deep beyond the surface level
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>>3958255
>>holy hell is their depiction in bloodlines so much more reasonable than the tabletop
Debatable. Anarchs have way more nuance and political currents as presented in the rolebook, but are generally condensed and simplified as REBELS WITHOUT A CAUSE beyond that. A cynical person might say Anarchs are vampires who didn't have the balls to become Sabbat back in the day.
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>>3958257
i see, however, that particular part from anon's post was referring to the kuei jin
and what do you think about their depiction in vtmb compared to the tabletop?
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>>3958260
>their
sorry, i meant the anarchs', since you were talking about them in your post, but if you feel like talking about the kuei jin too, go ahead. despite dozens and maybe more vtmb threads i don't ever recall seeing a discussion about the lore deviations in vtmb vs. the lore, aside from the overpowered neonate.
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>>3957942
Is vv a joke to you?
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How do people have sex with VV or Jeanette? It doesn't make sense. Wouldn't they know they're putting their penises inside a cold dead corpse?
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>>3958260
>>3958262
The thing about Kuei-Jin is that at least in VtM:B they're presented as enough of a mystery and a shared existence with Kindred to just be
>Vampires, but ASIAN
While in the Kuei-Jin books they're more like
>hilariously asian undead who act like vampires but totally aren't because the ancient vampires would NEVER spread out past the middle east, europe, and africa
The lack of native vampires too is another one that's weird since Caine would pre-date the crossing of the Bering Strait. The Kuei-Jin book is funny and kind of cool, but it's hilariously racist
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>>3958478
Jeanette says "it's a little different but entirely possible" and I assume it involves a lot of biting, considering after you have sex with Jeanette your guy has less blood than before.
With VV, all you get is a picture of her. What a tease. (The real reason to use the plus patch is she gives you a full lap dance and sex after iirc)
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>>3958478
But anon...
(you) ARE an undead corpse
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>>3958478
Vitae can probably simulate natural body heat.
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>>3958469
like yes she's kinda irrelevant
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>>3958479
I think there being a local supernatural that prevents the spread of vampires because they want the same resource is pretty reasonable. The nature of kuei-jin is also not particularly suited for spreading further since they're all basically a select group of cursed souls that keep reincarnating, so there's some pretty limited ability to expand without a lot of delegating.
But it's just common sense the game didn't go into the lore for them. There was no natural place for exposition like that and it wouldn't serve any purpose
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>>3958479
>The Kuei-Jin book is funny and kind of cool, but it's hilariously racist
because it's simultaneously incredibly well researched and melting pot of bullshit depending on what aspects you look at
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>>3958515
>The nature of kuei-jin is also not particularly suited for spreading further since they're all basically a select group of cursed souls that keep reincarnating, so there's some pretty limited ability to expand without a lot of delegating.
I find it amusing this means Asian souls are somehow special as they're the only ones who can become Kuei-Jin. Is it truly a regional thing? Yama Kings' doing? We don't know, but ther
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>>3958515
Even in tabletop KotE was a limited-run game by design. You might go look and say "whoa, it got 15 books" but you have to keep in mind 5+1 of those were Clan book equivalents, two were historical settings and one was San Francisco by Night. A lot of the heavy lifting to flesh out Kuei-Jin sadly had to be skipped.
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>>3958478
https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Blush_of_Life
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>>3958564
Can I get an STD if I ejaculate inside Jeanette? She had sex with Mike (presumably human gigachad, possibly one of the guys that get killed by the Gangrel cat if-route) and Arthur Killpatrick. They got ***** and ** ratings respectively, IIRC.
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>>3958588
Maybe. I think the clinic computer says Arthur has some kind of STD. Damsel said vampires don't get sick but can still act as carriers.
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>>3958611
kek i opened the wiki to remind myself who arthur was and apparently in v5 they made him into a vampire. what is even the point of something like that? kek
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>>3958618
>what is even the point of something like that?
Everything they've tried to do with VtMB afterward has been terrible fanfiction and usually doesn't make much sense. They just can't keep their hands off it.
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>>3958618
What the absolute fuck??? Why would they even use random nobody humies from Bloodlines in the tabletop games? This is unironically verging on Star Wars Legends about Glup Shito's rich personal life before he had a 5 second scene in Phantom Menace before he exploded.
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>>3957966
Great soundtrack

>>3958219
The MP sucked. Proto-NWN, but what few tried to RP with a open session usually got someone with a maxed out and decked out character jumping in trying to kill everything and everyone. Most servers were deathmatches anyway with a general bias to the host since he has Storyteller.
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>>3958653
>The MP sucked. Proto-NWN, but what few tried to RP with a open session usually got someone with a maxed out and decked out character jumping in trying to kill everything and everyone.
Because it didn't have 10% of NWN's modding capabilities. I'm not sure if they simply didn't get enough budget allocated to release proper modding tools but what shipped was essentially couple of maps to RP in. Still somehow got massive mods that even added playable Werewolf and Changeling options.
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>>3958654
Wasn't it jjust one mod that add the flavors of vampires, werewolves, etc. I don't remember too much in terms of mods.
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>>3957722
VTM:B is really a strange game held together by duct tape. It is the epitome of working with limitations.
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>>3958661
What were the limitations they worked with?
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>>3958664
>What were the limitations they worked with?
The So*rce engine.
>>3958661
>held together by duct tape.
You’re thinking of Doom 3
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>>3958664
Untested beta version of the game engine with prototype features never used before.
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>>3958699
>Untested beta engine
>prototype features
Just spewing diarrhea and seeing what sticks on /vrpg/
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>>3958706
Lol, the brown can't read.
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https://tiermaker.com/create/vampire-the-masquerade-bloodlines-playable-clans-17702282

Objective clan tier list.
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>>3958562
>mfw their antediluvians and caine-equivalent called xue barely gets mentioned in footnotes
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>>3958657
https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/V:TM_Redemption_Mods
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>>3958824
What is their equivalent, yama kings or something? I thought they were their own antediluvians in a sense
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>>3958722
I think there should be an S-tier for the most basic basic clan available (the 5 non-gimmick clans, of which I think Tremere has it the best compared to the Ventrue)
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>>3958859
Nah, S tier is for "completely changes your experience".
Toreador and Ventrue are the best "basic clan" because they get the most points to spend on talking, can potentially use additional talk options with disciplines and they still have more clan specific hits than Tremere. And they have one great combat discipline too, which is on its own good enough to carry them through most of it.
Tremere and Gangrel have the shared "gimmick ability" appeal (Protean, Thaumaturgy), but at least Tremere's doesn't make combat harder and they get a lot more clan hits. Gangrel appeal is just for LARPing that you're a sigma like Beckett or, the ultimate "just fuck my shit up" challenge run where you ignore all disciplines except Protean + Brawl.
Brujah have no unique disciplines and, although Brujah are the 2nd/3rd most represented clan in NPCs, they get no special interactions with any of them, except for one weird line from Damsel, which you can't even tell was Brujah only.
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>>3958515
The thing is that Vampirism predates humanity (proper) so Kindred should be around before the time of the Shadowlands Wraiths and the Fera and the Kuei Jin (who are kind of just funky Risen) but yeah I can see that being a reason why certain supernatural stuff isn't widespread
>>3958551
True, it is both based and cringe at the same time which is probably the best we can expect
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>>3958255
So the Anarchs on the tabletop suffer from either being writer's pets, OR, entirely forgotten because they weren't that popular to the playerbase. Essentially, the vast majority of Anarchs that are depicted are like Nines' crew only more obnoxious, like a coterie of all Damsels. There's also the fact that Anarch can technically apply to any vampire that rejects the Camarilla and Sabbat but in practice, those are entirely different micro-sects that should get their own name and acknowledgements. The Anarchs also suffer from being more dominated by the Brujah than the Sabbat are by their two signature clans, making them feel very samey. They HAVE other clans, sure, but they often come off as more of an extension of the modern Brujah clan than anything else. I could go on, my biggest issue with the Anarchs is they're essentially advocating for a return to the very system that was so awful it created the Cam and Sabbat in the first place as solutions.

Specifically, the lore on L.A. by Night is where a lot of the worst parts of the Anarchs come out, and I understand why Troika disposed of pretty much all of it. The West Coast Anarchs were led by this guy, MacNeil, who's basically like Nines without the fun flaws. He's also way older, and only succeeded because of a 2000 year old 14 year old named Christopher who runs Hollywood liked him and thought he was neat. In my opinion, Isaac Abrams is a far more interesting head of Hollywood. He's a native, he's got skin in the game, he legitimately loves the medium that made the place what it is. VtM often had this problem where ultra perfect methuselah and elders were used to force whatever dynamic the writers wanted. The best thing I can say about LA by Night is that it had a Malkavian Bela Lugosi impersonator that thought he was Dracula, but he doesn't threaten the Masquerade because it's L.A.
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>>3958255
>>3959260
As for the Kuei-Jin... I could write an essay on why they suck. Putting aside personal taste, their foundational issue is that they feel very artificial, and that it was a mistake to make it a vampire expansion, rather than its own thing like Werewolf. Allow me to explain. Bloodlines is so vague about the Kuei-Jin that you can be charitable in how you interpret them. Hell, I wouldn't blame someone if they assumed Ming Xiao's claims about being able to drink tea were just her keeping up the grift and she was a weird Chinese Tzimisce. It does this with other supernaturals too, and it helps a ton with not breaking the vibe. You don't need to know that the official Werewolf line is about being an eco-terrorist fighting a metaphysical spirit war against X-Rated Captain Planet villains. You just know that a big fuzzy monster is going to rip you a new asshole if you can't avoid, evade, and outwit it. Knowing that the Griffith park werewolf is an eco-fascist that is coming after you and Nines for emitting all this carbon by burning the park might honestly ruin it for a lot of players. This is good, this is why the World of Darkness lines are kept semi-separate in the first place. Someone who is in to vampire intrigue may not be into werewolf eco spirit war, and vice versa.

Kindred of the East betrays this principle and is in essence a forced crossover whose existence prevented official books on vampires in east Asia. They are not vampires, I don't even mean this in terms of "they aren't descended from Caine", I mean this as in they aren't vampires. They're closer in nature to something from Wraith, the Ghost game. They use entirely different powers, are based on a different cosmology and how they come into existence is entirely different. KotE is the equivalent of saying "there are little to no vampires in Egypt, because Mummies exist". Which as I will note, isn't true for Mummies.
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>>3959264
In fact, there's an entire clan with strong historical roots in Egypt, and they aren't the only vampires in Egypt either. And again, Mummies are a separate game entirely. Which is a good pivot to my other issue, which is how artificial and arbitrary they feel.

Sub-Saharan Africa has vampires. Europe had vampires well before Christianization. Fucking pre-columbian America has vampires, and they weren't transplants from Leif Erikson's Vinland colony. In every other case, the Children of Caine were there independent of all reasonable logistics of transportation or the spread of Abrahamic religion. Kuei-Jin are the only example of a parochial supernatural that occupies the same niche as vampires. As a result, they feel extremely artificial and forced. You might argue that other parts of the world should've had their own native "vampire". I'd disagree because there's already too much "x ethnicity but vampire" in VtM proper, but it's a fair stance to have. However, that is not the case. As a result, it feels jarring that the most far-flung corners of the earth have vampires, except one very specific place.

For those reasons I think KotE is a failure in design before we even get into the meat of what it is. They work better as a supplement to Wraith than Vampire, and the biggest sin of KotE is that it actively removes options for people running things on the tabletop. If it were a separate splat, you can easily take or leave it. Being joined to VtM at the hip creates an annoying barrier for any table that wants to do a Vampire adventure in China, which is a crying shame. Not an insurmountable barrier, but it ensures there wouldn't be any official material to go off of, and results in a lot of extra work to build a new VtM east asia from scratch, including how it interacts with the rest of the world.

That's why I like Bloodlines giving them the same treatment as the ghosts or werewolves. It creates that good barrier of separation KotE desperately needed.
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>>3958835
Nah, Yama Kings would basically be very powerful Banes from Werewolf. Or close to it. They're more an aspect of Wraith: the Oblivion. Arhats would be Ante equivalents for Kindred of the East, but only loosely.
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>>3959265
I've never been super immersed in WoD like some other tabletop settings I've played simply because I've never been in a long running game of it, but I always assume one of their problems with basically every book other than Mage and Vampire is they just sort of ate up all the good ideas with them.
If Vampires already have all these ties to every ancient civilization or whatever, then I guess you have to do something else with the others, right? Werewolf seems like the most extreme example of this because turning them into weird eco terrorists fighting spirits. I don't think anyone has ever played a werewolf in a non-WoD setting where they consider something like that to be an appropriate way to use the concept of someone who turns into a monster during a full moon with at best dubious control over it. I suspect if they actually started with Werewolf they'd probably just all be descended from Romulus or some shit and have secret societies like vampires.
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>>3959273
>If Vampires already have all these ties to every ancient civilization or whatever
Just one (((civilization))), really.
>Werewolf seems like the most extreme example of this because turning them into weird eco terrorists fighting spirits. I don't think anyone has ever played a werewolf in a non-WoD setting where they consider something like that to be an appropriate way to use the concept of someone who turns into a monster during a full moon with at best dubious control over it.
Wow, just like the Monkey Wrench Gang!
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>>3959273
Interestingly they did it again with weird concept marriage for Werewolf: the Forsaken where you're no longer eco terrorists, but instead now spirit cops.
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>>3959273
>but I always assume one of their problems with basically every book other than Mage and Vampire is they just sort of ate up all the good ideas with them.
Eh, kinda. I'm not gonna talk good or bad idea, just different ideas. And ideas that don't always fit well together. You seem to like Mage, and that's cool. It's not my personal cup of tea. This is fine, because I don't have any obligation nor expectation to include Mage in my Vampire game. Same thing goes with werewolf.

As for Werewolf... yeah it's not for everyone. You could argue it accidentally aged well what with all the concerns about microplastics, harmful food additives, etc, but I understand that pretty much everyone unfamiliar with WoD wouldn't go to "eco-terrorist spirit warrior" for what a Werewolf is.

While it's certainly not the direction I would've gone in, I can understand not playing Werewolves mostly straight the way they did vampires. Because it's not fun to play a dude who has powers a few nights every month, and when he has them, he can't control them. The "default" idea of what a werewolf is, is far more of an NPC concept than something you make a game around.

Now, they could've gone in a direction where all of the game lines fit together better and were as a result, more explicitly tied together. We do not live in that world, so we can only speculate on if it'd have been better or worse. The people that like WtA REALLY like WtA, to the point of being pretty defensive about it. I think WW made the right call when they decided that if the gamelines were going to be radically different, they should be given a degree of separation. Hence why I hate KotE, it breaks that rule.

Also, in regards to >>3959283, I really like WtF. It isn't perfect, but it does a good job of balancing being actually playable and still "feeling" like a Werewolf.
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>>3959273
>>3959283
>>3959286
speaking of which how is w5? did they scale back on the ecological part?
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>>3959287
I'm not the apoc expert, but I know werewolf fans universally hated it. It sucked all the gonzo stuff out, including the cosmic scale of things. As a vampfag I despise V5 with every fiber of my being for the changes it made, and apparently W5 goes far further in how it changed things.

Big ones I recall off the top of my head are
>They changed the name of the two Indian (feather, not dot) tribes for sensitivity reasons.
>Didn't change the Irish/Celt ones name at first, said "Fianna is just a word" when questioned about it. Fiann was sometimes used as a slur against Scots and Irish. It also referred to a semi-mythical band of warriors. As a result, they changed their name too.
>The Norse/Germanic wolves were made unplayable and turned into slavering irrational lunatics (this is because one developer, a swedish convert to islam, believed they were all nazis, despite being shown text from the old RPG directly refuting that claim).
>One artist was shamelessly photobashing shit he found on google, including images of a folk singer, a maori native activist, and a female IDF soldier
>Most if not all of the important werewolves died, survivors barely know shit about fuck
>The eco shit is still in there, but toned back. They went from eco-fascists to that one aging couple that's really big into recycling and stream clean-up.
>The x-rated captain planet villains were drawn back to be generic evil capitalists

So it's WtA but less.
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>>3957722
She knows...she knows I couldn't beat the game on my own...
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>>3959290
Genuinely dreading what they'll do to Mage 5.
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>>3959283
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>>3959394
I don't understand.
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>>3958554
like the book itself art is also schizoid
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>>3959405
I used guides or cheated in the infamous areas. Got a shitty ending too but deserved I guess. Still loved it.

Also played as a Malk my first run and installed the companion mod after a few hours. Needed to use a out of date patch which I think took some QoL stuff out of the places I struggled in...
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>>3958826
I was thinking more of when the game was still relatively new.
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>>3957722
It is neither a good action game nor a good a RPG
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>>3959601
Also, Bloodlines 2 is better in every way, but if you guys want to play a real good action RPG, try some classics like Deus Ex HR.
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>>3959605
invisible war is better than hr
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>>3959605
7/10 bait
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>>3959464
>dunpeel
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>Attack Tung after the warehouse
>He is invicible, but he can kill me
>I bait him into the street
>Prostitutes, cops, etc. everyone watches as some monstrous creature with tumors on its face is attacking a poor Black man in the street
No Masquerade violation? Tsk.
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>>3959290
>a swedish convert to islam who is extra mad about nazis under his bed continues to ruin the little bit of tabletop left that you didn't know wasn't already ruined.
Liberal purity spiral implosions are something else, holy shit.
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>>3959260
>>3959264
>>3959265
thanks for taking the time to write this out, very interesting stuff. i enjoy reading about people's actual meta thoughts on the tabletop.
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>>3959717
nta, but if you want to know more about the vtm world, you should check out the mod Princes of Darkness for Crusader Kings 3. It recreates the world of kindred in the medieval ages, so you can see all of the different sects and other factions. It predates the Camarilla. It can be very complicated, though. There is just some much lore to absorb, and the politics can be confusing, since they all have their different beliefs, which is represented as Religion in the game, which has some fairly deep mechanics.
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>>3959726
i don't like paradox games and is learning about the medieval world that helpful beyond getting more flavor? i spent half of my first vtmb playthrough wondering why the brujah philosophers and scholars i remembered from redemption were suddenly violent bruisers. and why are the creepy necromancers called giovanni? weren't they called cappadocians before? i imagine that's not the only place where there's such a disconnect.
if i get curious about certain lore i just look it up on the white wolf wiki, but in this case i was more curious as to what a tabletop player thought about vtmb and its relation to the source material
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>>3959736
can just watch a lets play. this one seems good
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_YOgK5INxQ&list=PLNn7c31H7NjlbWJyotjCZ8hAnpzdoJn29
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>>3959739
>1:11
>Emperor of Voivodate
kek, i fucking lost, what the fuck does that even mean? is that a vtm thing? it's complete gibberish, it's like saying "tsar of a duchy"
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>>3959704
White converts to Islam are always the most unhinged people. I met one when taking a cab. He, without prompting, denied that the Sudanese kept slaves, then immediately explained how slavery was fine as long as you followed the quran's rules for it.

>>3959717
No problem. I'm fairly opinionated on such things. Hence my original statement of "the idea of VTM is sublime". I really like its concept, but I find the official material to be very hit or miss.

>>3959726
>>3959736
>>3959739
>>3959744
imo, I don't think Princes of Darkness is actually a good place to learn official lore from. It's a mix of cobbling together a functioning map from every single VTDA book, as well as straight up author creations, including patreon backer vampire OCs. Using that as your basis for lore is... not what I would advise, especially since CK3 can only do so much to accurately model how vampire politics work.

As a game, if you like Crusader Kings and Vampires, yeah it's pretty good. I wasn't 100% sold the last time I played it several patches ago, but it isn't bad.
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>>3959755
>Hence my original statement of "the idea of VTM is sublime". I really like its concept, but I find the official material to be very hit or miss.
Many such cases. When they ruin the source material you just have to decide for yourself where the canon stops
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I just spent the whole day playing the Sabbat ending start to finish. Which one of you convinced his dad to do the voice acting for the Timmy-sce?
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>>3959859
Oh and I found a brand new bug.

If you get 5 Masquerade violations after the credits, the game goes to black/freezes on one frame of "sp_masquerade" (the location where you're supposed to be decapitated). I suppose it's because LaCroix and the sheriff are dead. It's actually impressive that the game just bugs out, instead of spawning them again as if they were still alive.

Send this to wesp5's P.O. box, sirs.
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>>3959862
That sounds like a problem he would have to go out of his way to create, since being able to play after credits at all is a patch thing. One way or another I can't imagine he doesn't know about it
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>>3959859
>>3959862
The Unofficial Patch Sabbat ending? Yeah, it's kind of tacked on just for completion's sake. There's also the Clan Quest Mod Sabbat route, which is much more fleshed out. This is not ALWAYS a good thing though, CQM is very hit or miss, often within five minutes of itself. I like the Sabbat area, but I actually don't like how the Sabbat path goes after that, especially in the endgame.
>>
>>3959859
Which player clan is the most appropriate for Sabbath? I know that originally Andrei only suggested joining them if the PC was Nosferatu. But most Sabbath NPCs are Toreador or Brujah (the fast ones) and Gangrel (the claw ones).
>>
>>3960172
Any can work for the UP Sabbat route, the Sabbat has members of every clan in it, although Ventrue and Tremere are quite rare. Brujah and Gangrel Antitribu make up a lot of the "bulk" of the Sabbat.
>>
>>3960172
I hope the one Sabbath guy who tells the player (only if she's a girl in real life) that she'll get wet is Malkavian. He then gets shit by Ñunez.

Most players never see that scene (it's right after you arrive in Downton), cause it checks the player's real life gender, it's quite accurate.
>>
>>3958588
It's Mikey, and yeah he's obviously human and he got a 5 star rating. Tung, a Nosferatu with tumors/huge scabs on his head got a 2 star rating. Arthur Kilpatrick (the physically accurate self-insert of us) got a 1 start rating only.

A guy called Jack also got 5 stars. Are we getting Jack's sloppy seconds?
>>
>>3958947
>Tremere and Gangrel have the shared "gimmick ability" appeal (Protean, Thaumaturgy), but at least Tremere's doesn't make combat harder and they get a lot more clan hits. Gangrel appeal is just for LARPing that you're a sigma like Beckett or, the ultimate "just fuck my shit up" challenge run where you ignore all disciplines except Protean + Brawl.
In the newest version of the Plus Patch, if you have high humanity you can ask Beckett to teach you any of the Gangrel disciplines. Like it adds them as a 4th discipline. Basically for free. In return Gangrel can learn Celerity, but only if you invested enough in all of your natural disciplines or something?

What the fuck was Wasp thinking?
>>
>>3958255
Anarchs, and LA by night is some of the most stupid shit put to paper. They do literal walk outs in the 1400s, and have entire chapters of the sourcebook about vampires campaigning for minority rights.

>>3958257
They were literally doing protests for equity before the term was coined. It is way worse than "Rebels without a cause" it's gay race communists when they literally have hardwired hierarchies, and even more apparent bloodlines.
>>
>>3960753
>What the fuck was Wasp thinking?
To be fair in the tabletop game you can learn any discipline, if someone teach you. I do agree it's a terrible addition to the video game.
>>
>>3960762
No, you are paying out of clan costs, and you need their blood. Everyone has access to their three clan disciplines, Celerity, Fortitude, and Protean. You end up literally blood bonded to the person who teaches you, so it's not really a thing.

You might see players doing it with party members, but that's different. In sane readings of the setting it's more common to get out of clan powers through diablerie than good natured cooperation.
>>
>>3960764
Now you're mixing stuff. You can learn disciplines if anyone teach you or by committing diablerie. The thing is that most vampires wouldn't teach you unless you offer something really big for it.(why would they?). Shit is most common on Sabbat packs because they're gay tho.
>>
>>3960753
Wesp's problem is that he hasn't had anything to actually fix about the game in like, a decade. The restored library quest was already scraping the bottom of the barrel, much as I do like it (despite how jank the Lasombra VA's mic is). The Unofficial Patch is his claim to fame, and he doesn't wanna let it go, so he keeps adding and tweaking things. I also think a lot of it is the problem of someone who has played the game entirely too many times. I found having a fourth discipline kinda fun, as someone who has played the game entirely too many times, but the novelty quickly wore off.

This issue is compounded by the fact that Bloodlines' unfinished version of the source engine is a bitch and a half to mod, so his attempt at making a custom campaign within Bloodlines moves at a glacial pace. He needs to bite the bullet and quit while he's still more ahead than not.

>>3960764
>>3960771
As a tabletopfag, it depends on the edition somewhat. Generally, you do need to taste another vampire's blood to learn an out of clan discipline. Some editions allow you to learn some common disciplines just with a teacher, no blood tasting required.

Blood Bonds come in three stages, and fade over time if not renewed. The first stage is fairly weak, so what often happens in games is that you'll learn one dot of a discipline, and then avoid the teacher until the bond fades. Hence why even Camarilla vampires sometimes have out of clan disciplines, though almost always at lower levels than they're in-clans.

The Sabbat sidesteps this because every Sabbat Pack practices a specific ritual form of blood bonding called the Vaulderie. So any two packmates can teach each other disciplines.
>>
>>3960753
The bonus discipline you get costs more exp and can only go to 3. Still worth at least considering if it's celerity or fortitude though.
>>
I'm strange because I'd have no interest in it were it not VtM, but I'm only curious about VtM because Vampire: The Requiem is never getting anything besides text adventure games which only exist because generative AI hadn't been on the open Internet at the time.
>>
Wesp still hasn't fixed the Scholarship/Beckett bug. Even in the latest version, you can enter the character sheet while Beckett does his TL;DR which ends with a scholarship bump, raise the stat, and go from 4 to 5. Saves you a whole 3 skill points. Or you can get max Scholarship with just 9 points spent if you can point three mental points in Scholarship at the start.
>>
>>3961274
IIRC that works for every NPC that gives free skill points. It's a well know bug so chances it isn't fixable.
>>
>>3960760
All the real "Anarchs" from the late medieval became the Sabbat, the Brujah for once in their clan's sordid history actually realized they had gone too far and more joined the Camarilla than didn't.

Then the enlightenment hit Europe and a cadre of dipshit mostly Brujah neonates convinced themselves that actually rules are gay and they should be in charge now. It didn't go very well.

The ultimate and final BTFO of the Anarchs is that when you scratch off the "underdog, for the people, rebel" coat of paint, they're actually a deeply reactionary ideology. No structure beyond the local level was how vampires unlived for most of history. And we know what that looked like: The oldest, meanest vampires with the most potent blood ruled as absolute dictators. There was no loyalty outside of mutual convenience or in some cases, clan ties. Blood bonding was far more common. As a system, it sucked so much that the Cam and Sabbat were considered IMPROVEMENTS on it. The Anarchs say they're against gerontocracy but if they ever succeeded all the Methuselah would come out of hiding and re-enslave everyone.
>>
How does "Subterfuge" make you better at seducing but "Manipulation" doesn't? How foes "Intelligence" make you more intimidating? Shaking my heads.

Stamina should increase Bashing resistance & Combat Defense.
Charisma should increase Persuasion & Haggle.
Manipulation should increase Haggle & Intimidation.
Appearance should increase Intimidation & Seduction.

Intelligence should increase Research & Hacking.
Wits should increase Seduction & Inspection.

Rename Subterfuge to Seduce or
Seduction.

Inspection should let you find extra loot in containers, or be required for some generic weapon/money containers.

Discuss.
>>
>>3961496
Because the basic idea of the system is to just have every check be some combination of a physical/mental attribute and more specific skill, and they knew charisma would be a god stat in something so talky, so they split it up as much as they could.
The system itself that was adapted I mean, not for Bloodlines specifically
>>
>>3957722
>>3957928

I like VTMB, but I think it's overrated. Even if we take the plus patch as the 'base' and ignore how unfinished the main game was, it has a lot of weaknesses. I think people like it because they like the idea of VTM or urban fantasy in general, and the game brings the setting/genre to life very well in a way that isn't matched elsewhere in videogames.

However:
>plot
Uninspired. It's a lot of "A tells you to get B from C who wants you to do D in exchange", and of course the big reveal in the end is that it was all in essence a pointless wild goose chase on your part, since you were just interfering in Jack's plan to get rid of LaCroix. You're given no personal reason to care about the Sabbat or the Kuei-Jin outside of them representing a barrier to your orders, and in any case they're both woefully underdeveloped.
>characters
Mostly one-note caricatures. LaCroix could have been an iconic villain if he was a little more competent, but he's presented as an impatient moron to expedite the plot. Andrei and Ming Xiao are saturday morning cartoon villains. I didn't find the Voerman gimmick very interesting considering they're both very one dimensional. Nines is a theatre kid DMPC mary sue self-insert (admittedly this fits the source material well). Abrams and Strauss are interesting but get no development. I felt Beckett and particularly Jack were good, and Jack's manipulation fits neatly into the setting even if it required dumbing down the main villain to make workable.

Where the game shines for me is in all the little vignettes that bring their version of LA to life: the Giovanni party, Pisha, Gary's bizarre collections, the thin-blood quests, the radio station, the gargoyle, the Venus and Larry quests, that sort of thing.
>>
Now that the dust has settled, is the worst discipline Auspex or Presence?

Auspex gives you a free +1 to hacking, and it is cheaper to spend 5+10 points to go from 1->3 Auspex than put the last point in Wits. It would be an epic gamer move if the Unofficial Patch prevented you from manually entering the correct passwords before your character reads it somewhere. Auspex stocks would go up, mildly.

Presence sounds like Fortitude but better if you look at the numbers. At least if you play with a melee character. But I read online that it doesn't work on bosses? That tanks Presence stocks, bigly. But Wesp5 says "it's complicated, akshully".
>>
>one of the greatest
a.k.a one of my favourites but I really want others to share my opinion
>overrated
a.k.a. people seem to be enjoying it more than i did... stupid people!
>>
>>3962096
Yes.
/thread
>>
>>3962096
Objectively wrong. The only thing that matters in determining whether something is great or not is whether I like it, because I have the best taste on Earth.
>>
>>3961831
>I think it's overrated
How? Most people praise the aesthetics, atmosphere, tone and the first two hubs, then it goes downhill pretty fast, unfinished and with boring combat and slog action sections. The good parts are really good but is mostly a waste of potential.
>>
>>3962055
Points toward hacking, seeing through walls for stealth, and a couple combat defenses points are all pretty universally useful (even if only in minor ways), and hitting 10 firearms for perfectly steady aim is nice (though I usually would want that on a more permanent basis). It does have one of the longest durations if you level it up as well.
The penalties for presence feel kind of minimal to me, but if you lower strength enough it could mean you're negating more attacks. For normal enemies it's in a weird place between only being significant for them and not really being worth it. iirc the way it works on bosses is only the stat penalties work. Presence does have some dominate-like dialogue in the plus patch iirc though, but I think it's mostly redundant with persuasion (or dominate if you're a Ventrue). Might be worth considering if you're going full seduce as a Toreador in that scenario I guess, but I'm sure there's still a lot of holes in there
Basically both are something you only consider after leveling everything you actually care about (and with the plus patch extra discipline, that pushes them back even more), but I'd favor auspex
>>
>>3962119
>mostly a waste of potential.
Is it a waste of potential though? I'd say that considering the budget, time and situation they made much lemonade out of very few lemons.
>>
>>3962198
>Is it a waste of potential though?
Considering their budget and time, yes. All they had to do is wait for HL2 to be released and develop their game with a stable engine with proper documentation. Being the first RPG on Source doesn't outweigh working with an early and crappy version of the engine and was the source (heh) of most of their problems.
>>
>>3962217
Do you really thinking waiting was an option for Troika?
>>
>>3962224
Do you really thinking [sic] developing Bloodlines was the only option for Troika?
>>
>>3962228
I haven't heard of them having other options
>>
>>3962229
Your dad worked for Troika or something?
>>
Please understand. Small indie studio, first game.
>>
>>3962119
>How?
Quoth the OP: "One of the greatest action RPGs ever made"
I think people get too excited about it, that's all.
>>
>>3962119
>first two hubs
Hollywood was good too, had lots of stuff to do in a smaller area than downtown which took ages to traverse
>>
>>3962466
Name 5 better action RPGs.
>>
>>3962466
>OP
One (pretending to be) retarded homosexual is the worst anecdotal evidence you could bring.

>>3962469
Hollywood is nice but you can see the cracks, plenty of places that should have been quests, probably a haven or two and few NPCs with dialogue. Then Chinatown doubles down on that.
>>
It's one of the few games where I don't instantly hate the majority of NPCs.
>>
>>3962523
Bloodlets won't. The acceptable answers are Deus Ex and Gothic 2, maybe Gothic. System Shock 2 is inferior, Morrowind is slop, and FNV is unplayable without a hundred of mods.
>>
>>3962554
All those games are mid compared to real ARPG bangers like Dark Souls & Skyrim.
>>
>>3962229
It was their decision to make a game using an unfinished engine. They went to Activision, who told them to make it VtM. They could have used Unreal. It would have had worse facial animations, but may have been a more polished game.
>>
>>3962651
VtM:R devs just made their own engine. Devs being beholden to the engines of others is pathetic.
>>
>>3962658
Troika did make their own engine for Arcanum and reused it for ToEE, but it wouldn't have worked for the first-person real-time game they wanted to make. It was more manageable to license something else than to make another propriety engine from scratch.
>>
>>3962651
Source? I'm 99% sure I heard Tim say that the engine was forced on them. What you're saying doesn't even make sense from a production perspective. In Fallout they planned to do GURPS from the start before they got rug pulled. It would be like making ToEE before they knew they could get the license.
>>
>>3962671
>Troika did make their own engine for Arcanum
Modified Fallout engine, Troika didn’t make it
>>3963136
>I'm 99% sure I heard Tim say
You did not hear “Tim” say anything. You do not know him. You have never met him. You are not his friend.
>>
>>3963341
>You did not hear “Tim” say anything. You do not know him. You have never met him. You are not his friend.
put some points into social stats friend. tim cain has made multiple videos talking about vtmb. you don't have to know him personally or meet him or be his friend to hear him say something.
>>
>>3963341
Not her but I can tell you are just a seething zoomerchud who is talking out of his ass. Whether you like it or not, both Interplay and Tim Cain confirmed the Arcanum engine is not based on Fallout's engine at all and was built from scratch. Interplay suspected that it was Tim's Fallout engine being "plagiarized" (...by its creator) but he deleted all data and source code he had from it and when they begged him to provide "his copy" because they lost theirs he didn't have it.

I'm so tired of all these brownoids/kids/kikes who just seethe & screech at everything Tim says just because he took notes and he felts the 90s to early 2000s gaminindustrii just by sharing what he had in his notes.
>REEEEEEE IF YOU LISTEN TO WHAT SOMEONE SAYS IN HIS VIDEOS YOU ARE BEING PARASOCIAL... BECAUSE I SAY SO
Pathetic.
>>
>>3963375
>>3963384
Tim Cain is a gay faggot and he is not your friend. Troika is a failed company who never made a good game in they lives.
>>
>>3963385
nobody is claiming tim cain is their friend, you stinky butthole
>>
a good thread on /v/? april fool's day was ten days ago

MODS
>>
>>3963385
lmfao not any of those anons, but i've never seen someone as completely BTFO as you, thankfully this is anonymous so you can just leave and go to another thread and nobody will know
>>
>>3958228
Mercurio was originally a heckin Redemption boss?
>>
>>3963385
>>3963341
speak for yourself, dirty pleb. i'm an insider.
>>
>>3963438
Oh wow is that you Leonard? I've met you through Tim before.
>>
>>3963445
oh yeah, you're that uhh... i remember you
anyway i've gotta go, see you... man
>>
>>3959287
>>3959290
Common consensus on all of 5th Edition WoD is it's mostly worse unless you're extremely in love with low level street play and theater larping. The lore raping gets discussed to death as well, but essentially they want to have their cake and eat it too, so they force the setting to be in a state of stasis where you're an underdog but you fundamentally can't do anything because the villains, bad guys, elder characters, etc, are all pretty much untouchable and vastly out of your league so you're stuck playing the local janny for a city no matter what you pick, whether it's a vamp, hunter (not supernatural this time) or werewolf. There's also a big focus on gimmick dice and even more failure conditions for your character to just permanently lose any sense of self. It's certainly playable and occasionally there's good art (not in the W5 main book barring the cover) but for the most part you're playing a more restrictive WoD meant to appeal to European fence-sitters. Werewolf in particular makes a big point that corporations aren't actually evil and that you shouldn't do too much since the Apocalypse already happened
>>
>>3963136
https://www.eurogamer.net/p-vtmbloodlines-pc
>What's more, Valve actually approached Troika to use the engine, which is why the team is in the privileged situation of having a head start on everyone else.
The original plan was to make Journey to the Center of Arcanum with Source, but Valve hated Sierra because they screwed them on Half-Life so they took the idea of an "RPG made with Source" to Activision.
With Fallout, Tim Cain started work on his own engine, made an open call for any dev at Interplay to show up to a meeting where they could spitball ideas of what kind of game it would be, and they all settled on a GURPS RPG.
>>3963341
If it was a modified Fallout engine, Interplay would have sued them into bankruptcy. Tim Cain says they even sent a programmer over to look over his code to check if any of it had been stolen.
>>
>>3958664
deadlines.
>>
>>3963682
VtM:Deadlines
>>
>>3963682
And then delays. It's like if (yet again) working with Source was a mistake.
>>
>>3963591
>Werewolf in particular makes a big point that corporations aren't actually evil
holy fucking cringe
>>
Reminder that you're not a real gamerchud if you never managed to defeat the werewolf in Griffith's Park mano-a-mano.

I did that as Gangrene with Protein and Fortunate and a lot of gamer skill and gamer juice.
>>
>retard has gangrene
Hopefully he'll stop posting soon.
>>
>>3963445
>>3963487
The real Leonard said he regrets putting all the antisemitic conspiracies in Arcanum and doing Gomez in Bloodlines.
>>
>>3964129
you can only do that in the unofficial patch plus

i don't think it makes much sense because nines tells you very intently and anxiously that you can't fight them
>>
>>3964129
>>3964141
The way you killed the werewolf in the base game was fine. Don't need to punch it to death. No one cares about your tedious modded powergaming.
>>
>>3964141
>i don't think it makes much sense because nines tells you very intently and anxiously that you can't fight them
nines killed a werewolf with brawl +impotence +celery
>>
>>3964154
Only because he was allergic.
>>
>>3964154
yeah and he was nearly dead and unable to do anything after
>>
>>3963591
>Werewolf in particular makes a big point that corporations aren't actually evil
Jesus Christ, no wonder why nobody likes nu-WoD. I thought it was abandoned in favor of the "remake", whatever is called (Anniversary?).
>>
>>3958515
>>3958554
Actually in the lore its revealed that kuei-jin can manifest outside of Asia but its kept secret and all research into it is banned. One blurb is a bunch of Giovanni slaves trying to tell the LA invasion council that they found out that kuei-jin can appear anywhere, from any kind of people if the Shroud is suitably wrecked.
They don't want that knowledge to spread because it completely throws out the narrative that they're reincarnating fallen ancient heroes and not just jumped up Risen (ghosts who possess their own corpses).
>>
>>3964141
>i don't think it makes much sense because nines tells you very intently and anxiously that you can't fight them
How did you defeat a Hengeyokai then?
>>
>>3964301
Even if they manifest somewhere else, aren't they basically "born" as a mindless undead thing and slowly work their way back to being functional? I'd think the ones born further out are kind of fucked unless they have some xmen style bullshit method of finding them worldwide
>>
>>3964007
>>3964296
Yeah, it's a MASSIVE footnote in the main W5 book. It's pretty much just Pentex that's evil in the immediate sense and bla bla corporations irl and most in-game aren't evil etc. Anyway, the anniversary edition is 20th ed right? Basically a compendium of the different editions. A lot of anons consider it to be superior but a lot of the writing in it is a bit worse than the originals or less coherent. It came out before W5 I believe
>>
>>3964129
Before that faglord wesp changed it, I managed to 1v1 the werewolf as a Ventrue with the Tal'Mahe'Ra Blade.
>>
>>3964322
The Wereshark is weaker in terms of regen or something. The real reason is that the Garou you fight are just higher ranked than the Hengeyokai
>>
>>3964322
fish out of water
>>
>>3964463
>>3964472
You also do have a hunter backing you up, even if mechanically I'd say she's mostly irrelevant I don't think it's supposed to be seen that way
>>
>>3958221
based retard
>>
Which version of the unofficial plus patch turned Boris (from the Downtown Venus quest line) into a Cal lookalike? And when did Damsel and Skelter change downstairs/upstairs positions?
>>
Why does the whitewolf wiki have this picture for Therese? Who bitch this is?
>>
>>3964576
Is that even supposed to be cosplay of her? It's not even the right outfit
>>
>>3964576
>>3964582
that's me
>>
>>3964584
begone thot
>>
>>3964476
That's a good point, I think making her a closet Imbued would have probably gone over better but I have a sneaking suspicion they didn't have the budget for all that they planned
>>
>>3964576
It says LABNTherese so it's the L.A. by Night thing they do. I dunno why he used that pic. Maybe he's just a simp or a shill.
>>
>>3964576
she looks like me irl
>>
>>3964576
As others said, it's from a critical role knockoff made at the behest of the V5 people.

Despite V5 having its own dedicated wiki, you have paradox niggers trying to colonize every part of the IP. They go out of their way to muddle any clear line of delineation so they can shill their skinsuit setting. It saddens me to see someone who only knows the setting through Bloodlines talk about it and use the V5 cover art out of ignorance. God, I fucking hate swedes.
>>
I'm the only person in the world who liked Werewolf: Earthblood. Gonna play Requiem sometime this year. Any other ludo I'm missing?
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>>3964863
Productions like LA by Night at least made more sense than Critical Role since WoD is, by default, more narrative-centric. It being scripted and more of a theater play fits.
>>
>>3965223
>I'm the only person in the world who liked Werewolf: Earthblood.
People ganged up on what was a 6/10 game released before the new Werewolf edition would so it's kinda stuck in limbo when it comes to identity.

>Gonna play Requiem sometime this year.
All those CofD game lines have sadly been entirely ignored when it comes to adaptations. There are some novels but that's it.
>>
>>3965223
>I'm the only person in the world who liked Werewolf: Earthblood
Probably. I wanted to like it but got bored after playing the same mission/level for the 4th or 5th time in a row.
>>
>>3965223
>>3965289
>>3965303
Earthblood has some legitimate upsides ngl
>Crinos is sexo (maybe a bit too much), incredibly cool
>Main character is almost hilariously a 7th gen stereotype
>Gifts and general gameplay is cool
>Enemy design is neat
>Great soundtrack
It's just the game doesn't really do anything with it. It's not a problem with the studio I think since they originally wanted to make an RPG and they seem to understand werewolf enough (except for the Red Talons being pacifists bit) but had a lot of corporate meddling. WoD in general is just cursed man, you only get flawed masterpieces like Bloodlines or Wraith VR or Redemption, or you get games that had potential but the suits decided there was more need for politics or modern appeal (Earthblood, Bloodlines 2, Swan Song), or text games. VtM Justice is pretty much just okay though so maybe there is hope, especially with the new Hunter game.
>>
>>3965315
oddest thing to me was how eartblood managed to marry stealth and action while also making stealth entirely optional. you don't have to skulk around as a wolf or human, but it helps to even the odds a bit.
>>
>>3965321
Pretty smart system where the whole point of stealth is to sabotage reinforcement points so you actually have a reason to do it instead of just annihilating all enemies in open combat immediately
>>
>>3965321
>>3965324
>Play game stealthy to play game brawly less
I understand why they do it, but it feels very un-Werewolfy despite being cool. If it leaned into the mechanic a lot more as an RPG like with dishonored it could have really been something but I don't blame them for not doing it under the pressure. Admittedly, if you had a pack doing this sort of stuff I'd get it but a fucking Ahroun definitely isn't the type to do this sort of stuff
>>
>>3965328
But that's the thing. It's not at all out of character for WoD Werewolf. Lupus form is your pick when you need move unseen because you can pass for a dog or when you want to track someone's scent. I'd argue Earthblood made the right call by trimming forms down to three from tabletop's five.
>>
>>3965329
The subterfuge bit is very much neither Ahroun nor Fianna but yeah, I can see some form of stealth but the whole
>sabotage reinforcements
Approach feels like it's a bit incoherent with the main character. I do agree that trimming shapeshifting to 3 forms is probably for the best in a werewolf game. All 5 would be cool but mechanically two of those are just the one form but bigger. I don't have a complaint on the gameplay, more so that the game doesn't handle themes well imo.
>>
>>3965332
In the end it all comes down to not making a full RPG. Though this sounded weird to me
>>3965315
>since they originally wanted to make an RPG
Cyanide has never made a real RPG. Closest they came was Of Orcs and Men and that's basically just a Spiders game
>>
>>3965332
>The subterfuge bit is very much not IRA
Anon I...
>>
>>3965328
Saddest fact about Werewolf is it would make THE perfect party-based RPG due to how integral your pack is to the experience. But it's Werewolf so people always imagine it as an action game. Something people not familiar with the tabletop game overlook is every Werewolf is an absolute killing machine that primarily differ in how they're going to kill you.
>>
>>3965321
I don't know what this is from but Gangrel in VtMB should've transformed into a wolf at level 5 protean, just like Beckett. The actual Protean skill as depicted is cancer through and through. Literally LARP: the discipline. The wolf from could've given the player something like increased mobility, running speed while crouched, and, uhhh
>>
>>3965338
>wolf at level 5 protean
4, actually. And you also get bat. 5 dots is mist form.
>>
>>3965334
Truth, but a lot of the dev talks focused around how they had wanted to make a more RPG-esque game but deadlines and the publisher forced them to move in an action focus since that was most finished
>>3965336
Fianna are more the loud drunk Irishmen than the edgelords who hate the English though. Touche though, that was on me not realizing it.
>>3965337
Between imagining that you'll play a walking murder machine as depicted in Bloodlines and Werewolf being more combat focus, I do understand why Earthblood went in this direction, but yeah. Party stuff is pretty kino either in a coop game or with good RPG companions. Werewolf is probably a lot more fitting to run a real coop game with than Vampire, but for some reason Paradox hates money.
>>3965338
Probably too much coding to do on Troika's deadline, but yeah Protean is hilariously sparse on features compared to the Tremere discipline.
>>
>>3965315
Are the VR games worth it?
>>
>>3965353
Depends if you have a VR rig though you're already hungering for games if you do but yeah, I'd say so. They're quite unique though.
>Horror game that does ambiance for the first hour before you actually see scary shit and gaslights you
>Vampire dishonored in venice
>>
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Something seems off with Jeanette in my game?
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>>3965367
Is booba meant to be so flat?
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>>3965367
Cursed console command usage
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>>3965353
Surprisingly decent, but it kills me the only Wraith game we got is a VR one.
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>>3965519
What the hell is Wraith anyway? Everything in WoD is pretty much all urban fantasy stuff you would expect aside from some weird focuses here and there, but when I hear stuff about that one it sounds like they're talking about outer planes in DnD or something
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>>3965528
Wraith is like 20% urban 80% fantasy, as opposed to Mage being 50/50, Vamp being 80/20, it's kind of like Changeling.
>The Shadowlands is nearly a 1-1 with the real world, just really fucked up and edgy, dilapidated buildings etc, like if every building was a resident evil level
>populated by Wraiths (there's a lot more wraiths than there are other supernaturals) that are just humans with regrets and specters which are mostly just monsters/wild animals
>there's a big government controlling shit and it's basically afterlife slavery
>the alternative is the void eats and kills everyone because the main spooks didn't do their jobs

Wraith is a game about exploring the cool hot topic++ version of your city, a game about being a sad guy with regrets trying to earn his way into heaven or cessation, and a game about how the government sucks real bad and how bureaucracy makes everything worse. The Wraith VR game funnily enough doesn't actually capture the proper setting of Wraith since the twist is this is all happening in your head as you're a fresh Wraith waiting for someone to remove his caul or you'll turn into a specter so it's less angsty post apoc version of the world and more like your character's FUCKED dreamscape
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Did you know? Every female model has nipples and every male model has a penis. The 3D modeller went out of his way to model this for every character even though he knew they would never be shown.

t. saw that on Wesp5's channel
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Also holy shit, I never noticed that the cop from the Elizabeth Dane that gets called by the cop who mistakes you for a reporter is D. Marsh (named after David Marsh, a level builder in Troika), the same D. Marsh who suffers sexlexia according to the SM Hospital database.
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>>3965615
Truly the deepest lore.
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>>3965532
The biggest divisive point about Wraith is that your Shadow aka equivalent to the Beast in Vampire, played by a fellow player at the table out to fuck you over so it can bring you to Oblivion.
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>>3965655
which explains why wraith is the most difficult game to actually find players for. you ALL need to be on exactly the same page for what you're playing. something like p'o from kindred of the east is the beast, but more intelligent and less feral. so it can screw you over in the worst possible social situation where you lose your standing and reputation.
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>>3965614
Are you telling me that we could've had a Bloodlines derived H-mod if only it weren't on a janky unfinished version of the source engine, making it hell to mod?
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>>3965655
>>3965658
It does make it significantly harder to play the game having mandatory PvP and needing to make your friends feel bad to get into the spirit of it, but honestly it blends together extremely well with the setting. It's just borderline unplayable unless you guys really enjoy depressive horror, gallows humor, or dicking over your friends. Wraith is great, too bad most people won't be able to play it without harassing their friends constantly or short campaigns only before someone gets a bit too mad over it
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Would having the Auspex discipline let you post on 4chan without having to wait 2-3 minutes for the captcha to expire while the same captcha you successfully submitted is being processed?
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>>3965711
No but you can buy a pass with 1 dot on resources.
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Maybe in like 2009-2010 I used to frequent an old forum on yuku where some Finnish guy was a hardcore shill for Promethean: The Created, kept saying it was the second coming of Plansecape Torment, a real high quality product, with lots of philosophizing, metaphysical musings and contemplations on the nature of a man. Always made me curious but life got in the way and I never checked it out. Looking it up now, it seems to be a pretty niche game nowadays, anyone here ever play it? What was it like? What state is it in nowadays? I guess this is more of a question for /tg/ but I don't even know where to start with that board.
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>>3965698
Yes. Bloodlines is notoriously difficult to mod, especially to introduce new assets. That's why a lot of the stuff mods use are re-skins and alterations in some way.
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Don't worry, 10 years from now I will purchase the worthless Masquerade license from Paradox and make a 30 years later remaster of Bloodlines with remade Chinatown + Endgame, customizable player character models, more NPC models and nudes + sex scene support. Everything that Bloodlines fans truly want.
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>>3965726
Not if I purchase it first and make all WoD material public domain
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>>3965743
I just want someone to make a Requiem game. It would basically let you create whatever since so little is set in stone. Hell, clans have their origins stories and vampire potency is more rooted in passage of time rather than how related you are to daddy Caine.
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>>3965726
Don't forget the jungle level. No idea where that possibly could have fit into the narrative though
>>3965744
Being free from so much of the lore baggage is as bad as it is good.
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>>3965744
Well that'd be the joy of making it all go public domain, anyone who wanted to would be free to do so. It's a personal belief of mine that the way we handle IP nowadays is actively harmful for the creative process and worse, stifles cultural development. WoD, specifically vampire, did a lot to influence the urban fantasy genre and it was in turn, highly derivative of existing works that already existed. Storytelling is iterative. but whenever someone wants to show that inspiration they have to dance around it or use a knock-off. Best example is Lovecraft's stuff being public domain. His works got used so much that honestly they've become kinda blase, but both horror and fantasy are still so much better off for it.

As for Requiem, I'm not one of those nWoD haters. I think it definitely did a lot of things better, and not just mechanically. I will also admit I'm nostalgic for a lot of the old VtM stuff so I can't say without caveat that I strictly prefer it. I'd say its biggest advantage is actually ancillary to its no metaplot approach, which is that Requiem feels more vast. You don't need to engage in any cross-splat to feel as if you're in a World of Darkness with a bunch of other supernatural denizens. Vampirism itself feels less limited in scope. I do have some problems with it, but I also have problems with Masquerade. I like both.
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You are now remembering that Troika spent some time workshopping a multiplayer mode that was an asymmetric Vampires vs. Hunters affair. Bloodlines' combat definitely wasn't up to snuff for it, but I've always found the idea of asymmetrical PvP to be fun, and I can't think of another game that tried it besides that one Nosgoth game.
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>>3965771
Aliens vs predator 2
Natural selection mod for hl1
Command and conquer renegade
vampire the masquerade: redemption
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>>3965771
There was that Vampire Slayer mod for HL1.

I liked Nosgoth but if your team was bad it made playing feel pointless since you couldn't really do anything on your own no matter your skill level.
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>>3965753
>Don't forget the jungle level.
A jungle level? Why should there be a jungle level? There are no jungles in California.
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>>3965814
I don't know the why (as it makes no sense), only that it's something people have mentioned in the past when describing some unused assets and could be complete bullshit for all I know
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>>3965788
Meant to specify "monsters vs. hunters asym PvP". My bad. Also, Redemption had a multiplayer mode?

>>3965808
>There was that Vampire Slayer mod for HL1.
Neat, wasn't aware of that.

>I liked Nosgoth but if your team was bad it made playing feel pointless since you couldn't really do anything on your own no matter your skill level.
Many such cases, sadly.
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>>3965814
>>3965837
Maybe it was for an extended Ming Xiao's lair. She seems like the type who would have a bunch of expensive, non-native flora in her haven to flex how chinese she is.
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>>3965814
>>3965837
>>3965840
Chances it's just some leftover default assets or test level from the Source prototype or something in that line. Good enough for Wesp to make a whole OC jungle level if he could.
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>>3965884
Honestly the atmosphere in Bloodlines is so excellent that despite the thoroughly mediocre gameplay I don't hate the combat as much as some do, but I've also played the game enough to understand it and thus, avoid the worst parts of it I would absolutely play the shit out of more bloodlines standalone mods.

Shame that Prelude abandoned the play as Hunters conceit so early on, and that War Games' plot is a mess even if you can parse the ESL writing and voice acting.
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ayy carambe
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>>3965838
Did everyone forget Evolve already?
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>>3965726
While Paradox owns the IP, to remaster Bloodlines you'd need to deal with Activision. Paradox can use ideas from the game, but they can't actually do anything involving the game itself.
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>>3965921
I find it interesting Activision's ownership of Bloodlines didn't matter when the sequel was greenlit.
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>>3966185
That's the difference between intellectual property and copyright.
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>>3965367
diminished assets
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>>3966249
Yeah that's what they agreed to when they licensed the setting. What was then-White Wolf would own any ideas created for the game but the actual code, art, voices, that's all Activision's because they paid for all of it. Paradox has the legal right to remake Bloodlines with entirely different art, voice lines, and engine but not the right to use any files from the original game.
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>>3966265
>Different voice lines
Would be DOA, the vocal performance almost makes the game

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