World of Darkness Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 from Hardsuit Labs

[Storyfag]

Also True Faith only works for hunters if they actually believe in their God, no?

Yeah, but vamp mythology is objective (inasmuch as the Christian or broadly Abrahamic mythos behind Caine is true) while true faith is subjective (i.e. true faith only works if you believe, but it doesn't matter what it is that you believe in; it's not the Christian God that bestows His powers upon Christian hunters, but the hunters' beliefs that they should manifest such powers for believing in whatever it is that particular hunters believe in - Christian God or not, i.e. it being the power of self-delusion changing reality to resemble one's beliefs).

And it is important to stress that it is not known. Well, the mages know. Those oldest Tremere who were mages know. Most Cainites just see this humble pious monk wreaking havoc with them, while that corrupt bishop is so easy to deceive.

 

[Storyfag]

Cain, Kain, Kane, Caine and Khaine,

It is important to note that *two* of the above heavily lean into the byblical myth of the brother-killer.

 

[Wunderbar]

Cain, Kain, Kane, Caine and Khaine,

It is important to note that *two* of the above heavily lean into the byblical myth of the brother-killer.

Someone is missing on this picture. He participated in the development of all those great RPGs of yore, he was like a brother to us. Then he stabbed us in the back by making the outer worlds.

 

[Lambach]

Someone is missing on this picture. He participated in the development of all those great RPGs of yore, he was like a brother to us. Then he stabbed us in the back by making the outer worlds.

And this is exactly why Tim The Betrayer does not belong on that panel. Spit on him, brothers. Spit on the unbeliever. The Accursed One. The Washed-up, and the Has-Been, and The Sellout. May his name be forever forgotten.

Spoiler

Also applies to everyone from Troika's days of glory, with the possible exception of Mr. George Zeits, if for no other reason than the fact he did not have the chance to prove himself a washed-up has-been beyond all doubt.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

RaggleFraggle, your propensity to build Men of Straw and then vigorously attack them will win you few friends here.

Sorry. It’s hard to get across in text, but a lot of what I say is sarcastic or facetious. I used to append /s to make it clear but got told not to do that.

Paradox doesn’t know what to do with this IP. I don’t get the impression anybody does. Bloodlines seems to have been a fluke more than anything else.

It’s impossible to make any substantial criticism when there isn’t a video game to criticize. I’m deeply frustrated that there aren’t any urban fantasy games besides Hogwarts.

 

[Caim]

WtA

lol furballs they can't even read why would you listen to them

yeah if mage came up to me and said 'actually the world is greek mythology wrapped on yazidi-gnosticism' i'd be like ok maybe they are onto something but werewolf no way joseph

According to the books they have their own language and histories going back… *checks notes* many millions of years according to the were-spiders and were-dinosaur/dragons. And they can talk to their gods whenever they want to get confirmation.

i have now decided - beyond memes that is - that within the great unified world of darkness the were-people are literally the only ones who are entirely wrong

The Garou pulled such a Teddy K on humanity it gave them a collective PTSD when it comes to shapeshifters. Also I cannot read about the Garou and not remember this story:

And yes, this does call a corrupt and unscrupulous businessman who is the servant of a dark god and spreads pain and misery as part of his dogma Mr. Kiker.

 

[Harthwain]

I only know the WoD from the computer games, but isn't the first Vampire - The Masquerade game all about Redemption and much more grounded in Christianity? Also True Faith only works for hunters if they actually believe in their God, no?

Yes. It begins in the Middle Ages and you start as a crusader, so it makes sense for it to be strongly centred around Christianity in the early game. It is a good way of introducing the player with the vampire origin myths (Caine, the Book of Nod, etc.), while offering a bunch of in-character conflicts for the main character regarding his newfound vampire nature versus his previous crusader identity. It pretty much goes away once you hit the modern era* (understandably). But it's pretty damn well executed (in my opinion).

*

Spoiler

Although the Society of Leopold level is cool and very in-character, so it helps keeping God in the game for a while longer. It doubles as an effective introduction to the the setting by explaining that there is the literal (titular) masquerade going on by vampires and somewhat filling you in on what happened between you going into Torpor and waking up).

I really think Redemption ought to get more recognition and praise as it's very well designed and executed. Although it is a bit hampered by the combat system being somewhat meh, so this could be the reason why people tend to gloss over it.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

Redemption had a toolkit to make your own modules before Neverwinter Nights. I'm surprised it didn't take off on the basis of that alone.

Also I cannot read about the Garou and not remember this story:

The books are full of... stuff. For example: https://www.somethingawful.com/dungeons-and-dragons/vampire-artwork-montreal/11/

They drew Cain as a goth in his first appearance. I can never unsee that and now neither can you. Sweet dreams!

 

[lightbane]

Dammit, quoting is truly fucked up. It doesn't work at times including this thread. Regarding WoD, I loved how the OWwolves' clan choices were all offensive stereotypes: From crazed lunatics that are the leaders for reasons, to literal street rats, to harpy feminists/furies, to nerds with superpowers, and so on.

NWoD also had random edgy stuff such as the Changelings dedicated to celebrate joy to sell drugs to children because EDGE (nevermind doing that would break their morality code).

 

[RaggleFraggle]

Regarding WoD, I loved how the OWwolves' clan choices were all offensive stereotypes: From crazed lunatics that are the leaders for reasons, to literal street rats, to harpy feminists/furies, to nerds with superpowers, and so on.

I’m surprised they didn’t notice at the time and are only now doing adjustments that piss off fans. (I’m not which part is funnier: the fact that it took them so long or the fact that fans are upset.) Then again, at the time they thought a sourcebook that treated real Romani as horror movie stereotypes was a good idea.

I don’t think all these concepts are inherently stupid, but these writers wrote them as a combination of offensive/bizarre ethnic stereotypes and high school cliques. There’s nothing wrong with tying into cultural folklore, but they couldn’t even do that. Britain has a long history of spectral black dogs, and France has the Beast of Gevauden, but that never factored once. Instead they did stuff like claiming the Greek gorgons were actually werewolf feminists and Perseus was an evil patriarch. That is some really low-effort historical revisionism. Also, there’s only 13 and selection of ethnicities feels arbitrary. They decided to have Irish, Romanian, Russian and Nordic, but not French, Italian, Polish, British or Hispanic?

But the vampire classes aren’t a huge improvement imo. Blatant Lestat ripoffs, generic upper class vamps with obligatory mind control, punk Lost Boys ripoffs, shapeshifting hobos, generic wizards, Orlok clones, the obligatory class clown/mental illness stereotypes, blatant Necroscope ripoffs (even down to the space alien part in one book), shadow kineticists, the historical assassins except as vampires, necromancers with a literal global monopoly on necromantic practices for no apparent reason, a vice cult based on Robert E. Howard’s Conan that gets basic Egyptian myth wrong, thieving Romani stereotypes, and Sazan Eyes ripoff. You can tell the writers were throwing stuff at the wall and didn’t have a plan. They really shot themselves in the foot by explicitly limiting it to thirteen classes too, when I get the impression they clearly wanted to keep throwing out silly ideas and had to compromise by introducing minor classes.

Although the Gehenna book confirmed there were at least 23. Can’t wait until the writers get desperate enough to revisit that old chestnut.

 

[jungl]

Thats cool that now trannys that believe they a REAL women or redditer that believes the science can one shot clan founders with their true faith.

 

[lightbane]

I’m surprised they didn’t notice at the time and are only now doing adjustments that piss off fans. (I’m not which part is funnier: the fact that it took them so long or the fact that fans are upset.)

Well, at first they tried to piss off everyone, but then they went woke and ended up broke, as usual. The shitstorm with the gay vampire drama that made the original writers being kicked out (or something like that, I don't remember the details) demonstrated that point.

Then again, at the time they thought a sourcebook that treated real Romani as horror movie stereotypes was a good idea.

I read a review of that one. It was edgy, derpy, and hilariously bad. Also unbalanced.

I don’t think all these concepts are inherently stupid, but these writers wrote them as a combination of offensive/bizarre ethnic stereotypes and high school cliques.

I think it worked at first, but they got stuck rpeeating the same thing over, over and over. In NWoD it became more obvious they had become formulaic, as there was always 4 character classes per splat, a 5th character class/race that is evil and traitorous and contradicts everything about the former four, and a 6th one that is literally pure evil.

But the vampire classes aren’t a huge improvement imo. Blatant Lestat ripoffs, generic upper class vamps with obligatory mind control, punk Lost Boys ripoffs, shapeshifting hobos, generic wizards, Orlok clones, the obligatory class clown/mental illness stereotypes, blatant Necroscope ripoffs (even down to the space alien part in one book), shadow kineticists, the historical assassins except as vampires, necromancers with a literal global monopoly on necromantic practices for no apparent reason, a vice cult based on Robert E. Howard’s Conan that gets basic Egyptian myth wrong, thieving Romani stereotypes, and Sazan Eyes ripoff. You can tell the writers were throwing stuff at the wall and didn’t have a plan.

TBF, they were the first ones to do that kind of stuff. They also copied Parasyte for the Tzimisce.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

Well, at first they tried to piss off everyone, but then they went woke and ended up broke, as usual. The shitstorm with the gay vampire drama that made the original writers being kicked out (or something like that, I don't remember the details) demonstrated that point.

This happened back when third edition was released in 1998–2000. The lead writer for Mage, Jess Henig, got so many death threats he was afraid to open his inbox for years.

I think it worked at first, but they got stuck rpeeating the same thing over, over and over. In NWoD it became more obvious they had become formulaic, as there was always 4 character classes per splat, a 5th character class/race that is evil and traitorous and contradicts everything about the former four, and a 6th one that is literally pure evil.

Technically they had several axes of splats. Roughly a half-dozen basically character classes, a half-dozen political splats, and any number of subclasses. This gave a lot of room for players to customize their characters, with hundreds of combinations. Sometimes there were a couple NPC-only groups to be the universal villains.

I don’t think there’s anything else they could’ve done, other than not having a fixed number of splats. What are they supposed to do? Add another lordly vamp stereotype splat with some random superpower to set them apart from the other lordly vamp stereotype splats with random superpowers?

TBF, they were the first ones to do that kind of stuff.

It’s been three decades, innumerable writers and eight editions split across three continuities. “We did it first!” isn’t a valid excuse anymore.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

But the vampire classes aren’t a huge improvement imo.

Eh, depends on how you look at it. It succeeded in creating a neat pastiche of the various vampire tropes which were present in early 1990s pop culture. It's style over substance basically. Doesn't mean that the lore couldn't have been better, but that was a secondary concern for the sort of setting that they were going for.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

But the vampire classes aren’t a huge improvement imo.

Eh, depends on how you look at it. It succeeded in creating a neat pastiche of the various vampire tropes which were present in early 1990s pop culture. It's style over substance basically. Doesn't mean that the lore couldn't have been better, but that was a secondary concern for the sort of setting that they were going for.

Some of it was pastiche/ripoff and some of it was just random ideas shoved into a vampire mold. I don’t see it as representative of vampire fiction at the time either. I’ve looked up books from the time and they don’t really resemble VTM at all. 99% are still horror with a minority of sympathetic vampires. The idea of vampires (or werewolves, wizards, whatever) having secret societies only really starts to take off in the 90s with the general boom in urban fantasy. There were hints of it back as early as the 80s in places, mostly as antagonists for heroes to face, but it doesn’t really take off as a trope until later on. I blame Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt.

Anyway, “They didn’t have hindsight” isn’t a good excuse three decades and so many editions later. It’s fiction. It can be revised and rebooted.

EDIT: Sorry, the first link I posted was YA novels. Here are some adult titles.

 

[Cross]

I don’t think all these concepts are inherently stupid, but these writers wrote them as a combination of offensive/bizarre ethnic stereotypes and high school cliques. There’s nothing wrong with tying into cultural folklore, but they couldn’t even do that. Britain has a long history of spectral black dogs, and France has the Beast of Gevauden, but that never factored once. Instead they did stuff like claiming the Greek gorgons were actually werewolf feminists and Perseus was an evil patriarch. That is some really low-effort historical revisionism. Also, there’s only 13 and selection of ethnicities feels arbitrary. They decided to have Irish, Romanian, Russian and Nordic, but not French, Italian, Polish, British or Hispanic?

But the vampire classes aren’t a huge improvement imo. Blatant Lestat ripoffs, generic upper class vamps with obligatory mind control, punk Lost Boys ripoffs, shapeshifting hobos, generic wizards, Orlok clones, the obligatory class clown/mental illness stereotypes, blatant Necroscope ripoffs (even down to the space alien part in one book), shadow kineticists, the historical assassins except as vampires, necromancers with a literal global monopoly on necromantic practices for no apparent reason, a vice cult based on Robert E. Howard’s Conan that gets basic Egyptian myth wrong, thieving Romani stereotypes, and Sazan Eyes ripoff. You can tell the writers were throwing stuff at the wall and didn’t have a plan.

The design of the vampire clans is much better for the simple reason that they're based on the traditional vampire abilities depicted in vampire fiction and folklore: hypnosis, shapeshifting into animal form, mist form, super strength, etc. The way those traditional vampire abilities are splintered into various disciplines that have to be mastered also reinforces the 'punk' aspect of the setting wherein modern vampires are diminished compared to earlier generations, as opposed to a more romantic depiction of vampires.

Unlike the wealth of vampire lore that exists, there is no deep well of werewolf lore the creators of WtA could have drawn from.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

The design of the vampire clans is much better for the simple reason that they're based on the traditional vampire abilities depicted in vampire fiction and folklore: hypnosis, shapeshifting into animal form, mist form, super strength, etc. The way those traditional vampire abilities are splintered into various disciplines that have to be mastered also reinforces the 'punk' aspect of the setting wherein modern vampires are diminished compared to earlier generations, as opposed to a more romantic depiction of vampires.

Mark and friends exhausted that well pretty quickly and then immediately went into essentially original territory. After they wrote splats closely based on Dracula, Interview with the Vampire, The Lost Boys, Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror and Necroscope, then they went for stuff like arbitrary mental illness (this might've been inspired by that Nicholas Cage movie but I can't be sure), importing wizards from their prior work on Ars Magica, the historical assassins, a Sazan Eyes pastiche, thieving Romani stereotypes, etc.

I get the general impression that these writers grasped for straws after running out of primary sources, whether it be for vampires or werewolves alike. I don't get the impression that the thieving romani vampires are "much better" than the romani werewolves literally cursed to wander: it's the same picture meme.

A lot of the problems stem from trying to expand highly specific shticks into major splats, not that such ideas were used in the first place.

as opposed to a more romantic depiction of vampires.

*glances over at art depicting voluptuous vampiresses* Could've fooled me.

Unlike the wealth of vampire lore that exists, there is no deep well of werewolf lore the creators of WtA could have drawn from.

There actually isn't a lot of vampire lore, not much that they drew from anyhow. The writers made up most of their stuff wholesale with only a handful of original pop culture influences to start with (basically Dracula, Interview with the Vampire, The Lost Boys, Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror and Necroscope). With werewolves, there are actually several research books that they could've used. The works of Sabine Baring-Gould and Montague Summers come to mind. Even so, that's really no excuse for the silliness of the ideas they came up with and they had the same problem with the vampire splats after they exhausted their pop culture sources.

If you want a comparison, there's GURPS Blood Types and GURPS Shapeshifters. There's not a whole lot of lore in either, certainly not enough for the work done by WW, but there are ideas here and there that they could've used. I don't get the impression that WW consulted folklore research tho. Their splats are very eurocentric compared to, idk, The Everlasting that was published by an ex-freelancer of theirs a few years later.

Also, there's a surprising amount of 19th and 20th century werewolf fiction that they could've drawn from but clearly didn't. It does get repetitive fast but there are a few gems here and there. Robert E. Howard's "Wolfshead" has lycanthropy spread to a werewolf killer simply because he killed a werewolf and its spirit possessed him... which did inspire C.J. Carella's work on WitchCraft anyhow.

I don't get the impression that WW suffered from a lack of existing lore. I don't get the impression they really did much academic research anyway. I get the impression that they simply weren't very good at coming with ideas on their own, regardless of what they were working on.

For comparison, here's the list of vamp bloodlines from Everlasting: (this isn't an exhaustive list, the setting has no fixed number because founders pop into existence every so often)

Bathora : Descended from Elizabeth Bathory. “They are among the most hip and seductive of the vampires.” They’re sunlight immune and know blood magic, but have no fangs.
Cihuateteo : They’re descended from the Peruvian Moche god, Ai Apaec, a seriously scary motherfucker who was usually depicted as a spider or a dude cutting people’s heads off. Go look it up. Anyway, they have spider-powers and illusion-powers, and prefer bleeding victims with their knives. They get a free Magickal Path.
Dakinis : From the Indian god Kali, most of them are assassins who can shapeshift into an eight-armed form resembling their progenitor.
Dracul : Dracula’s descendants share his array of powers, and they were responsible for the Age of Lamentations, the Blood Wars among vampirekind. (Goddammit, why does every fucking thing in this game have two names?)
Kingu : Descendants of the Babylonian god, these guys are either grotesque carnival freaks or incredibly beautiful. (Mechanically, they all get a physical deformity or a mental illness.) They’re really good wizards.
Lamiae : Descended from an ancient Libyan queen, most of them are female and they can transform into, you guessed it, great white worms.
Lilim : Possibly the oldest bloodline. They can command spirits and birds of prey, and have demonic features like strange eyes, tails, little horns, and bat wings. They go as “slutty devil” for Halloween every year.
Nosferatu : Spawn of Czarnobog, the Black God of Slavonic myth, these fuckers look like, y’know, Orlok from Nosferatu. They’re immune to disease, masters of vermin, and have a power to make their face temporarily human.
Obayifo : North African zombie-masters who wear metal mouthpieces since they don’t have fangs. Is that cool? I think that’s cool. Like HHH in Blade: Trinity, but black.
Penanggalans : Malaysian wizards who can detach their heads and limbs and send them flying around. Other vampires consider them insane, because they are jealous.
Tantalusi : Greek vampires descended from the mythical Tantalus, they are honor-bound peacekeepers of the vampire world.
Xiang Shi : Descended from a Chinese warrior-king, they’re immune to many traditional vampire weaknesses. They also get a bonus to Martial Arts. Seriously. Because they’re Asian. Seriously.

Bathory is a real historical figure, Dracula and Nosferatu are fictional characters, Kali, Tantalus and Qingu are mythological figures (Kali is the only one who immediately makes sense in a vampire context), cihuateteo, lamias, lilitu, obayifo, penanggalans and jiangshi are folklore vampires that are all listed in most vampire encyclopedias you'd find at the library. Compared to WW's list of classes, I get the distinct impression that the writer consulted one of those vampire encyclopedias at the library rather than just consulting some vampire novels and movies available at the time. Anyone could do that and it's doesn't scream originality, but what are you gonna do? Ripoff WW while lying that you aren't?

I think WW could totally have done better for both vampires and werewolves. Then and now. Even if they didn't have a plethora of primary sources (which I don't buy, considering how easily Everlasting did it), that's no excuse for their random dart throwing once they ran out. And they didn't exactly make it easy for themselves, since they made all the vampires one species and all the werewolves one species, limited to 13, and I think that really limited what they could do with them compared to more diversity in that regard.

but even if they can't change history, they can certainly improve now. They have all these editions to give them hindsight. Requiem has a bazillion additional bloodlines they could mine, to say nothing of the other CoD splats. They've thrown enough ideas out there by now. Some of the ones I've found the most interesting are those with highly specific shticks that aren't forced to be expanded into major splats, like one bloodline that needs to feed on drug blood and this naturally forces them to become drug lords without needing to do ridiculous things like give them 10,000 years of history and three splats with their own unique superpowers.

 

[hello friend]

No mention of the xiang shi hopping and skipping. That's a missed opportunity. Can you imagine a whole vamp council running a city from the shadows, and they can't move without making these weird bunny jumps?

 

[lightbane]

This happened back when third edition was released in 1998–2000. The lead writer for Mage, Jess Henig, got so many death threats he was afraid to open his inbox for years.

I was talking about a more recent event, when WW tried to use real world events for the 5th edition of Vampire (as in, using "vampires!" as a reason why a RL massacre happened, a common thing in their early games), people got butthurt, and Onyx axed White Wolf. I don't remember the specific details.

Technically they had several axes of splats. Roughly a half-dozen basically character classes, a half-dozen political splats, and any number of subclasses. This gave a lot of room for players to customize their characters, with hundreds of combinations. Sometimes there were a couple NPC-only groups to be the universal villains.

I don’t think there’s anything else they could’ve done, other than not having a fixed number of splats. What are they supposed to do? Add another lordly vamp stereotype splat with some random superpower to set them apart from the other lordly vamp stereotype splats with random superpowers?

Are you from The Gaming Den? That webpage was (no idea if it's still around) hellbent on hating WW and WOD no matter what.
Anyway, I didn't say that 5+1 Traitor NPC class+1 EVIL class structure was bad, it just that it repeats itself too often, even after the vampire games, which you are seemingly mono-focused. The writers did try to stop repeating the same numbers with stuff such as Changeling The Lost IIRC.

It’s been three decades, innumerable writers and eight editions split across three continuities. “We did it first!” isn’t a valid excuse anymore.

*glances at the art of 5th ed Nosferatu and the hundred-years old gay Gangrel vampire anarchist* I think you're expecting a lot from writers that no longer have any juice.
Or that they're too edgy for their own good. The main writer behind Beast The Primordial was denounced as a sex-pest, but I dunno if it was for real or a "Metoo case".
Also, remember: Many things were done because they were cool. If WW wanted to do seriously freaky vampires, they could have borrowed the char creation tables of Nightbane, but that's another can of worms.

No mention of the xiang shi hopping and skipping. That's a missed opportunity. Can you imagine a whole vamp council running a city from the shadows, and they can't move without making these weird bunny jumps?

You could have the Malks do that.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Some of it was pastiche/ripoff and some of it was just random ideas shoved into a vampire mold. [...] Anyway, “They didn’t have hindsight” isn’t a good excuse three decades and so many editions later. It’s fiction. It can be revised and rebooted.

I agree, but ultimately as random as it was - it was primarily a product of that pop culture, whether it was directly related to other vamp works that they had plagiarized or just unrelated stuff that was 'cool' back then that they integrated within their vamp setting (akin to what Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or the more modern Penny Dreadful TV show did with Victorian pop culture in order to make a hodgepodge of a setting which comes together as aesthetically pleasing). Issue with updating WoD (besides WW being a bunch of hack frauds whose idea of an update boils down to making it inoffensive rather than necessarily better) is that that sort of hodgepodge is precisely what gives it its charm. And yes, you'll get a 'higher quality' vamp setting if you take it all out, but at that point it would stop being the same setting in terms of atmosphere and aesthetic appeal. WoD is a time capsule, same as with the cyberpunk genre. And to work on that parallel - sure, you could make a cyberpunk setting 'better' as a SF work by removing the silly notion of a Japanese ascendancy with its great impact on global culture (although that yellow scare can at least be updated from Japanese to Chinese in order to keep the East Asian aesthetics) and replacing the various technologies that today appear as being implausible retrofuturistic stuff rather than SF high tech for a 21st century audience, but at that point you've just neutered it into a contemporary SF work with the same sort of themes as cyberpunk rather than it being an updated cyberpunk work. Can't have cyberpunk without the 'retro' and neither can you have WoD.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

Anyway, I didn't say that 5+1 Traitor NPC class+1 EVIL class structure was bad, it just that it repeats itself too often, even after the vampire games, which you are seemingly mono-focused. The writers did try to stop repeating the same numbers with stuff such as Changeling The Lost IIRC.

Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply it’s bad. I just don’t think there’s much anything else they could do. Requiem and Forsaken were just trying to reduce the redundancy from their predecessors (re: the multiple lordly splats distinguished mostly by additional superpowers) and Awakening was just along for the ride (the paths are based loosely on the five classical elements and the Orders were made up without basis in prior work). Lost had 6 seemings based on fairy tale archetypes and 4 courts based on seasons, which isn’t significantly different from the prior 5x5. I’m pretty sure Promethean broke that too but it’s been forever since I read. Vigil didn’t have a fixed number of splats and definitely benefits from that freedom: one of the splats is basically Blue Exorcist while another is basically the Chronos Corporation.

I think the 5x5/6x4/whatever format works just fine for a game. I haven’t seen anything better anyway.

EDIT: I’m not from gaming den but I read their After Sundown game and the tone felt insulting to the reader.

Also, remember: Many things were done because they were cool. If WW wanted to do seriously freaky vampires, they could have borrowed the char creation tables of Nightbane, but that's another can of worms.

They could’ve always leaned into b-movie campiness. I’d forgive a lot of their shit if they could make fun of themselves rather than be painfully pretentious all the time.

And yes, you'll get a 'higher quality' vamp setting if you take it all out, but at that point it would stop being the same setting in terms of atmosphere and aesthetic appeal.

I don’t find that argument convincing since Requiem seemingly did just fine by basically sanding a few edges here and there (I still think it’s pretentious af but at least we got characters like “Count F**king Dracula” or a Bogleech pastiche out of it), but even so they could’ve leaned into campiness instead of pretension.

No mention of the xiang shi hopping and skipping. That's a missed opportunity. Can you imagine a whole vamp council running a city from the shadows, and they can't move without making these weird bunny jumps?

It would be hilarious and immediately set the tone. I’m tired of all the “crawling in my skin!” mopey vampires. (Watch JLongbone’s sporking of AMC’s Interview with the Vampire if you wanna laugh.) I want to see writers have fun with the genre again. If that means b-movie camp, then sign me up.

 

[Twiglard]

it's neither the story nor even the vampire theme (nor the VtM brand, although I agree that the latter might've helped in its subsequent popularization), but the sort of night (& often low) life atmosphere that it manages to consistently evoke throughout combined with the setting's pastiche style of 1990s pop cultural elements that give flavor and soul to the various NPCs & the hubs that they inhabit.

I think Dragonfall's art direction and lighting had similar potential, if only they used it more judiciously (see how Underrail does it with its greens and reds, with generally less overall graphical aptitude) rather than splatter oversaturated highlights onto each and every scenery sprite. But if you look at the Bazaar's flat ground tiles, you can see that they all have some form of colored gradient on them. There's a lot of subtle lights practically everywhere with well-chosen color palette. They could've done so much with it. Alas.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

I don’t find that argument convincing since Requiem seemingly did just fine by basically sanding a few edges here and there (I still think it’s pretentious af but at least we got characters like “Count F**king Dracula” or a Bogleech pastiche out of it), but even so they could’ve leaned into campiness instead of pretension.

I'm not that familiar with VtR (besides being against the broader changes that they've made to sects and clans which might've biased me against it), so I can't really argue with that. Ultimately though, I guess it's just a matter of personal preference.

it's neither the story nor even the vampire theme (nor the VtM brand, although I agree that the latter might've helped in its subsequent popularization), but the sort of night (& often low) life atmosphere that it manages to consistently evoke throughout combined with the setting's pastiche style of 1990s pop cultural elements that give flavor and soul to the various NPCs & the hubs that they inhabit.

I think Dragonfall's art direction and lighting had similar potential, if only they used it more judiciously (see how Underrail does it with its greens and reds, with generally less overall graphical aptitude) rather than splatter oversaturated highlights onto each and every scenery sprite. But if you look at the Bazaar's flat ground tiles, you can see that they all have some form of colored gradient on them. There's a lot of subtle lights practically everywhere with well-chosen color palette. They could've done so much with it. Alas.

I've quite enjoyed DF (& HK) both for the art direction and the NPCs tbh.

 

[NecroLord]

The story provides an explanation, it just doesn't spell it out.

No it doesn't. The reasons behind the PCs spikes in power are never directly confirmed by anything in the game. "Cabbie Caine is empowering you" is the most commonly accepted and plausible theory, but it's just that - a theory.

Off-screen Diablerie could also fit, for example.

You're the MacGuffin Man's pawn. The emails say it. Andrei says it.

"The game begins. A pawn is moved".

 

[RaggleFraggle]

I'm not that familiar with VtR (besides being against the broader changes that they've made to sects and clans which might've biased me against it), so I can't really argue with that. Ultimately though, I guess it's just a matter of personal preference.

It’s a glorified rehash with different window dressing updated for the then-contemporary 2000s. imo the hate against it is overblown and misplaced. Then again, I may be biased because I was introduced to CoD before I was introduced to WoD.

While it did have problems, and by god did it have problems (remember how VtM has a few dozen bloodlines? VtR easily has twice that much), overall I’m glad that the writers had a few years to exercise their creative muscles before the neverending nostalgia train ran them over. The Khaibit and Cult of Seth in particular are just *chef’s kiss*. (For reference: They’re vampire superheroes/demon-hunters with shadow powers who venerate the Egyptian god Seth in his original incarnation as Ra’s bodyguard against the evil Apophis. Also they like pulling potentially quite destructive “pranks” to stave off the evils of stagnation and entropy.)