thats a weird reading of the storytrolling a bunch of kids
thats a weird reading of the story
He isn't just interested in what the player thinks though. He gives you a ride to wherever you want. When you say you could simply make a run for it, he suggests that by doing so you'd have to keep watching your back forever, which ends up being a push to rewrite the political landscape of the city. Additionally, each ending is pretty much self-contained, with only one showcasting the cab driver at the end (if my memory serves).A weirder one would be that a god-figure like Caine is interested in what an insect like our Fledgling PC thinks about Vampire society. That's like you asking your hamster to give you his perspective on your electoral process and political parties.
I do agree to an extent that lore is a bit overrated but it does give a decent scope to build on. You are however not going to get a good product without a good writer and a narrative that stays consistent. Good lore will fail with a bad writer, but a good writer will succeed even with bad lore. I do think however if you get good lore and a good writer, you can make some magic.
I completely agree! But speaking of lore, I recently saw a video of the HSL BL2 demo in which the Tremere uses some kind of blood spikes appearing from the ground to kill distant enemies. Is this part of the V5 lore? Because compared to the original Thaumaturgy disciplines, which either manipulate the blood of the victim or use a littel bit of the Tremere blood, this makes no sense at all!
If Caine is interested in vampire society then Caine is interested in his children. He threw the sarcophagus into the middle of LA and watched how everyone reacted. The experienced, the rebellious, the scholarly, even the alien. That includes the neonate. The final conversation with the cabbie is wether about you can rise above it all or fail miserably, with everybody else.thats a weird reading of the story
A weirder one would be that a god-figure like Caine is interested in what an insect like our Fledgling PC thinks about Vampire society. That's like you asking your hamster to give you his perspective on your electoral process and political parties.
If Caine is interested in vampire society then Caine is interested in his children. He threw the sarcophagus into the middle of LA and watched how everyone reacted. The experienced, the rebellious, the scholarly, even the alien. That includes the neonate. It's really that simple.
Dracula is Victorian/Gothic. Redemption starts in medieval times and ends in year 2000. You can make "something from the 90s" and it will be self-contained well enough as such. At this point it's history, meaning you don't have to deal with "today" or whatever the Current Year is. The only question is how catchy this would be for the mainstream.Somethings from the 90s simply do not mesh well with today. They belong in the bookshelf next to goosebumps and vampire chronicles as relics of their time collecting dust.
Pretty sure the storyteller trumps meta-plot canon, no?But isn't it canon
Agreed, I think White Wolf had a point because the idea of Caine, the ultimate figure (if he even exists) behind the ever deepening circles of bigger and bigger jerks that constitute VtM, being there for your little story makes the world of darkness seem just a bit smaller. Getting manipulated by some weird lunatic metuselah meddling in LA is already more than spooky enough a twist.It's one of those situations where leaving it open to interpretation is better than providing an answer (hence it worked in the game's favor that White Wolf didn't allow the devs to have the game's story confirm the cabbie as actually being Caine). Might be Caine, might be a Malkavian thinking that he's Caine or he might just be some random vamp like any other that has nothing to do with Caine who just happened to tag along for Jack's independent trolling of the city's vamp denizens with the whole sarcophagus fiasco.That's the problem with trying to insert these god-like characters like Caine into the story - how are you supposed to know what a 6000-year-old being with superhuman, alien intellect would behave like?
Pretty sure the storyteller trumps meta-plot canon, no?
I dunno about 'estabilished official canon' but apparently at some point Caine was supposed to be chilling sealed away in a cave somewhere?Pretty sure the storyteller trumps meta-plot canon, no?
I mean sure, there's no Lore-Police that's going to arrest you if you deviate from it, but we're talking about what makes more sense within the context of established "official" canon.
The heyday was really in the early 90s. The ttrpg market as a whole started declining in mid-late 90s due to competition from video games and collectible card games. WoD’s popularity at the time (at one point it was second only to D&D) was due a variety of external market factors and social factors that no longer exist.White Wolf's heyday was late 90s/early 2000s. By the time Bloodline was out it was already diving into the dumpster if we look at it in retrospective.
They work as these abstract threats you’re trying to prevent so and so cult from summoning, but they don’t work as actual characters. TV god characters like Glorificus, Illyria or Amaru only really worked because they were fish out of water who were either trying to adapt to their new circumstances or trying to cause the apocalypse to restore their power. By contrast, the gods in those 90s adventure shows like Xena or Beastmaster were hilariously campy, petty and incompetent. Supernatural gave up trying and used god cameos as canon fodder.The problem of writing godlike characters is that they're so utterly alien that nobody really knows how to write one.
This is why they either do weird ass shit like drive cabs, are actually insane, or are just minding their own business.
Immortal beings that can easily change the fabric of reality tend not to be chessmasters, because if they are, they've likely already achieved their goals a long, long time ago.
The fandom is full of self-styled lore police that tell you your homebrews and actual plays are badwrongfun for defying canon.Pretty sure the storyteller trumps meta-plot canon, no?
I mean sure, there's no Lore-Police that's going to arrest you if you deviate from it, but we're talking about what makes more sense within the context of established "official" canon.
Yeah. The lorefags have steadily driven those people away. The text games failed because the writers are lorefags more interested in advertising their credentials to other lorefags than actually telling good stories. Aside from Bloodlines and maybe Redemption, can anyone name interesting stories that use this lore? For that matter, what really distinguishes the IP from generic faire like Vampire Chronicles or True Blood?I dunno about 'estabilished official canon' but apparently at some point Caine was supposed to be chilling sealed away in a cave somewhere?Pretty sure the storyteller trumps meta-plot canon, no?
I mean sure, there's no Lore-Police that's going to arrest you if you deviate from it, but we're talking about what makes more sense within the context of established "official" canon.
The way I see it Bloodlines isn't that different from any group of people actually playing pnp WoD and telling interesting stories, using the canon as they so desires. Cherrypicking from what actually serves the story is a hallmark of the medium. As far as I care the in-world mythos claims that Caine will one day return to judge vampirekind. And whatever happened in Bloodlines is a small fragment of that.
The way I see it Bloodlines isn't that different from any group of people actually playing pnp WoD and telling stories, using the canon as they so desire
Now, me personally I think Caine is on a level that is so far beyond the other would be demigods of vampirekind that he doesn't really give a shit. He's been there done that in every sense of the word.
On the contrary, if he acted super alien I'd think he was having a middle aged crisis and reverted to tzimisce try hard mode. That's where we should agree to disagree.Which is precisely why I don't think it makes sense for him to act so.... human.
It is both dead and alive, as long as the box remains sealed.Oh shit.
I forgot it was a thing.
Is it dead?
WoD’s reliance on all these godlike superbeings running around doing the most ridiculous shit for no apparent reasons is not the “amazing lore” that people seem to think it is.
Bloodlines 2 could still happen, and I guess media stuff like those 'by Night' larps can cultivate fandoms more oriented towards the actual experience of playing WoD. Or at least of watching people play a campaign set in WoD. Well, the question I have is wether lore-wanking is what drove people away, or if its the lack of people that gives the lore-wankers a disproportionate voice.Yeah. The lorefags have steadily driven those people away. The text games failed because the writers are lorefags more interested in advertising their credentials to other lorefags than actually telling good stories. Aside from Bloodlines and maybe Redemption, can anyone name interesting stories that use this lore? For that matter, what really distinguishes the IP from generic faire like Vampire Chronicles or True Blood?
I really do think WoD is at its very worst when anyone gives any shit about what the godlike beings are doing.
Yeah. The lorefags have steadily driven those people away. The text games failed because the writers are lorefags more interested in advertising their credentials to other lorefags than actually telling good stories. Aside from Bloodlines and maybe Redemption, can anyone name interesting stories that use this lore? For that matter, what really distinguishes the IP from generic faire like Vampire Chronicles or True Blood?