Nightborn - vampire detective action rpg, with lineages

[RaggleFraggle]

Found this while surfing, thought you might be interested in.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

I read and watched through the promotional material so far on the youtube channel. It’s clearly inspired by Bloodlines, but does a lot of its own stuff.

You play as a detective, the “bloodhound”, for a secret vampire underworld. There are 3 political factions, 10 lineages to choose from, with 5 sets of powers distributed between them.

There are three political factions, chosen by individual choice.
* The Establishment: maintains the status quo.
* The Orthodoxy: wants a return to the old ways.
* The Libertines: wants radical reform.

There are ten lineages, passed down from “maker” to “charge”:
* Lamia: Carnal & Dominion
* Strix: Dominion & Eternal
* Marra: Eternal & Nocturne
* Bruxo: Carnal & Psyche
* Draugr: Nocturne & Psyche
* Barabbas: Carnal & Eternal
* Orlok: Dominion & Nocturne
* Carmilla: Carnal & Nocturne
* Dracul: Dominion & Psyche
* Ruthven: Eternal & Psyche

The names aren’t just arbitrary. Those named after mythical monsters tend to be more conservative, while those with literary names are more adaptive to the times. They’ve changed their names more than once.

The powers aren’t explained by themselves yet, but you can guess what they do by piecing together the mentions. These five are:
* Carnal: emotional manipulation, physical enhancement.
* Dominion: weather control, summon nature spirits.
* Eternal: necromancy, time manipulation, speed.
* Nocturne: darkness, terror, plague
* Psyche: mind control, telekinesis.

According to another short, your dialogue options are affected by what you eat. If you feed on other vampires, then it makes you high and you start talking like a stoner. If you feed on animals, then you become more beastial.

There are other magical creatures, such as fey, ghosts, demons, spirits and werewolves, who the vampires sometimes deal with.

 

[luj1]

Niggerborn

 

[Tyranicon]

The juxtaposition between the last two posts is hilarious.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

Anyway, the way that the powers are setup and distributed between lineages is actually pretty clever imo. In Bloodlines the powers were not remotely balanced in their distribution, but here there's an even distribution where each lineage has 2 powers in non-repeating combinations and each power is represented in 4 lineages each.

I actually think 10 lineages is more than necessary and runs into the same problems that Bloodlines' source material did. After a while the concepts become redundant or too arbitrary/silly to justify their placement among the most important organizations. You could probably do just fine with 3-5 representing broad readily accessible archetypes while more specific stereotypes can be relegated to single NPCs and subclasses.

 

[luj1]

Lowkey better than Bloodlines 2?

 

[S.torch]

Lately there are more vampire stuff surging up than normally. There's some sort of Chaos magic egregor going on?

 

[RaggleFraggle]

Lowkey better than Bloodlines 2?

I would need to see the implementation before making any judgement. But I imagine that it would be hard to do worse.

It definitely has the “dancing like marionettes” down.

But there’s more to BL1 than just dancing. It needs hammy larger than life characters, black comedy, and an irreverent tone. (E.g. the various written logs in BL1 end with the author writing “aah!” while they are being assaulted.)

From what little I’ve seen of Nightborn so far, the tone seems pretty self-serious. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but vampire fiction is already so self-serious that I prefer levity.

Lately there are more vampire stuff surging up than normally. There's some sort of Chaos magic egregor going on?

I think indie devs saw the writing on the wall and decided to put their eggs in other baskets. Or they couldn’t get the license and decided to go original. Nighthawks was originally pitched to Paradox, got denied, then the programmer made it an original game.

 

[Tyranicon]

Lately there are more vampire stuff surging up than normally. There's some sort of Chaos magic egregor going on?

Just a natural return to popularity. Vampires are evergreen content (lol), and the foreverdev of VtMB2 probably is inspiring some people.

I actually think 10 lineages is more than necessary and runs into the same problems that Bloodlines' source material did.

Agreed. This appears to be a solodev project and the scope of the game is massive, and that's coming from me. But that doesn't mean it's impossible. Looking forward to the kickstarter campaign.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

the foreverdev of VtMB2 probably is inspiring some people.

I wouldn’t say “inspiring”. I would say they’re pissed off that Paradox shit the bed and they realized “hey wait, I can make my own game and IP; I don’t need to rely on Paradox.”

Contemporary fantasy is one of the easiest genres to write and worldbuild. You have access to the whole of human history for inspiration. It’s over saturated in prose fiction and has been for a couple decades now. It’s about time that programmers realized this.

This appears to be a solodev project and the scope of the game is massive, and that's coming from me.

So much. One guy trying to make a spiritual successor to friggin Bloodlines. It’s ridiculously ambitious.

 

[ColaWerewolf]

I read and watched through the promotional material so far on the youtube channel. It’s clearly inspired by Bloodlines, but does a lot of its own stuff.

[snip]

This is based. I'll definitely play it when it comes out.

 

[Harthwain]

Just a natural return to popularity. Vampires are evergreen content (lol), and the foreverdev of VtMB2 probably is inspiring some people.

I'd argue that the success of your Kickstarter was more inspiring than Bloodlines 2 at this point.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

Just goes to show how easy it is to write lore for this genre. I’ve read numerous commenters claim that it is vitally important that we use Paradox’s IP, but I’ve always found that unconvincing. The Bloodlines IP is very generic. The writers in 1991 liberally pulled from existing stories like Lestat, Dracula, Necroscope, Sazan Eyes, etc. What made Bloodlines work was Troika’s writing and tone. That’s the part that’s hard to replicate. The lore is very easy to replace.

 

[Tyranicon]

Just goes to show how easy it is to write lore for this genre. I’ve read numerous commenters claim that it is vitally important that we use Paradox’s IP, but I’ve always found that unconvincing. The Bloodlines IP is very generic. The writers in 1991 liberally pulled from existing stories like Lestat, Dracula, Necroscope, Sazan Eyes, etc. What made Bloodlines work was Troika’s writing and tone. That’s the part that’s hard to replicate. The lore is very easy to replace.

What makes quality worldbuilding has always been the strength of the writing.

Anybody could make a bunch of pokemon vampire clans, but it takes skill to make them believable and evocative.

The problem with the video gaming industry is that it never respected writers, so the best examples you see of writing in mainstream vidya is garbage like The Last of Us.

lol

I have so much contempt for this field it's hard to describe. And my writing's not even that good, so imagine someone who's actually talented!

Fuck, I hope that even if I'm not the one to bend this industry over, someone else will.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

The Bloodlines IP is very generic. The writers in 1991 liberally pulled from existing stories like Lestat, Dracula, Necroscope, Sazan Eyes, etc. What made Bloodlines work was Troika’s writing and tone. That’s the part that’s hard to replicate. The lore is very easy to replace.

Bloodlines has pulled from all known vampire works of fiction to the point where it's drained them dry, and if you're going to make a new game like that, what have you got left for inspiration that hasn't been used? Nothing.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

Anybody could make a bunch of pokemon vampire clans, but it takes skill to make them believable and evocative.

Honestly, I never thought the IP achieved that much. Bloodlines’ strength is in its characters, not their clan membership. If you removed mention of clans from the script and made it a matter of personal proclivities (or sheer bad luck in the case of nosferatu), then I don’t imagine it would have any noticeable impact on the story. The concept of a clan tries to squeeze so many unrelated things together (race, class, faction, personality, high school clique, cult indoctrination, invite only clubhouse, etc) that the execution ends up falling apart under its own weight. Then further complicates itself by adding a second layer of affiliations like anarchists, vampire supremacists, etc. I think the execution is terrible and I’m critical of the concept altogether in other games.

Your Vampire Syndicate does it a lot better imo by… completely changing the execution. Your lineages are written like mystery cults or guilds. You have to apply for membership, require approval by the leader, and suffer consequences if you change your mind later. Now it’s not condensing a bunch of distinct aspects into too small a space.

Bloodlines has pulled from all known vampire works of fiction to the point where it's drained them dry, and if you're going to make a new game like that, what have you got left for inspiration that hasn't been used? Nothing.

Well, everything available to the writers in 1991. It even pulled from stuff that never had vampires, like the works of Robert E. Howard. After that you’re scraping the barrel. It’s impossible to avoid comparisons because they wrote clans for so many bizarre concepts. Arab ninjas, fairies, gargoyles, voodoo zombies, sirens, etc. The best you can do is something that’s not a direct 1:1 comparison, such as Everlasting or Codex of Vampiric Bloodlines.

Or you can have multiple different magical races outright: vampires, werewolves, demons, ghosts, frankensteins, fairies, creatures from the black lagoon, etc. Then add Planescape-esque factions on top of that. Just a suggestion.

 

[Hydro]

Ah, another vaporware. Added to the watchlist.