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

[Spukrian]

Wrong game, you should look for Deus Ex: Invisible War.

 

[Delterius]

Here's the big question. Did Caine drive taxi to troll fledgling or that was like his... fulltime job or something?

the greater mystery is who paid those fares

was it lacroix or was it one of the fae? because i certainly didn't

 

[Storyfag]

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?

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.

Agreed, I think White Wolf had a point because the idea of Caine, the ultimate figure 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.
But you can interpret it whichever way, or just accept it as a mystery.

Considering the wider World of Darkness, the Cabbie being just a Methuselah is better, naturally.

Considering the game on it's own merits, the Cabbie being Caine is better, naturally.

 

[Storyfag]

Oh shit.

I forgot it was a thing.

Is it dead?

"Clinically? Yes."

 

[Storyfag]

Oh shit.

I forgot it was a thing.

Is it dead?

It is both dead and alive, as long as the box remains sealed.

Don't open it!

 

[Storyfag]

I really do think WoD is at its very worst when anyone gives any shit about what the godlike beings are doing.

Well, V5 seems to be mostly scaling things down back to individual city level. That is good.

'Oh no ravnos woke up and it took 100 buddah saints and several orbital nukes to bring him down'. Bro that's retarded as fuck. It's Golarion levels of 'pretend this shit isn't part of the setting'.

C'mon, Ravnos doing his crazy shit and the Technocracy busting his arse (and then making their damned best to make everyone memory hole it) is just a guilty pleasure.

 

[Lambach]

Man, don't even get me started on the Ravnos fiasco, lelz.

Dude can literally alter reality on a whim but he didn't think to turn the incoming missiles into flowers or dildos or something. Cool story, WW.

 

[Delterius]

I mean the cabbie is just Caine in the game files. As far as we are concerned they are just a vampire who's above it all, so above in fact that they are both in the background and behind everything that happened. All we know about them is that they are interested to see how a microcosm of the modern nights reacts to the promise of absolute power.

Short answer is that everyone failed. The Camarilla's doctrine did not prevent the prince from angling for that power, the Sabbat was too weak to defeat the Camarilla, and the Anarchs were too disunited to play at all. Each faction failed at their own premise. Even Jack, the red herring, ends up being caught up in his own politics. The only reason you had a conversation with the cabbie is because you were resourceful enough to insert yourself in the plot. Or because you were chosen as a tool from the start. Or both. Maybe you were just a licker at first, but then you succeed in serving LaCroix in Santa Monica and the warehouse, so you become an useful foil to all the experienced vampire lords of Los Angeles.

The only in-game reason why the cabbie would be Caine is the assumption that the PC's generation is out of whack or, rather, that they somehow became of higher generation in-between attempting to dominate Therese, being dominated by LaCroix, and then resisting LaCroix's final domination. But given that this is a story and character driven world we have tons of leeway to work here. It doesn't take Caine to empower the PC. It could have been some other would be god lower than Caine. And it doesn't take the PC to have been empowered - they could always have been of a lower gen, coming into their own over their ordeal. Or maybe the storyteller decided this isn't a generation thing, and the PC was of lower willpower before. Hell, the number of bloodpoints we have is more likely to be a concession to gameplay than an all important plot point.

C'mon, Ravnos doing his crazy shit and the Technocracy busting his arse (and then making their damned best to make everyone memory hole it) is just a guilty pleasure.

I don't know man, it's probably just me but it's hard to care about a world when power levels get that far. Plus, it could be that warhammer fantasy made me wary of stories where the writers go 'hey our world is set in a supposed near apocalypse, lets end it finally'. I rather like the gehenna in the modern interpretation. It solves both the power curve and the apocalypse issue.

 

[Storyfag]

Man, don't even get me started on the Ravnos fiasco, lelz.

Dude can literally alter reality on a whim but he didn't think to turn the incoming missiles into flowers or dildos or something. Cool story, WW.

Technocracy, man. A mid-level mage enlightened scientist can do this shit. You can bet they brought out proper Masters for Ravnos.

 

[Lambach]

The only in-game reason why the cabbie would be Caine is the assumption that the PC's generation is out of whack or, rather, that they somehow became of higher generation in-between attempting to dominate Therese, being dominated by LaCroix, and then resisting LaCroix's final domination.

A Botched attempt to Dominate makes the target immune to it for a certain period of time, so LaCroix could've just been shat on by RNG Gods and rolled a bunch of 1's.

 

[Storyfag]

C'mon, Ravnos doing his crazy shit and the Technocracy busting his arse (and then making their damned best to make everyone memory hole it) is just a guilty pleasure.

I don't know man, it's probably just me but it's hard to care about a world when power levels get that far. Plus, it could be that warhammer fantasy made me wary of stories where the writers go 'hey our world is set in a supposed near apocalypse, lets end it finally'. I rather like the gehenna in the modern interpretation. It solves both the power curve and the apocalypse issue.

I get that, especially in light of that Warhammer reference (for the record, I am such a fanatic of WFRP that I routinely forget that the End Times were ever a thing). But just one little Antediluvian wreaking havoc is nice to have. A showcase of the impending doom, but not the end of the setting as we know it. It also crosses that over the top silly treshold above which things are so stupid they're cool.

 

[Delterius]

It also crosses that over the top silly treshold above which things are so stupid they're cool.

Well, I'd like to point out that for all I've said itt I'm not just a stick in the butt, someone sent me this video (timestamped) and I laughed a lot.

 

[Lambach]

It also crosses that over the top silly treshold above which things are so stupid they're cool.

ITT: that Gehenna scenario where the Top G's wake up and declare open war against humanity, clap their cheeks and enslave them.

'Course, it's never mentioned why other supernaturals never react to a planet-spanning all-out war, but hey, pew pew 9th and 10th level Disciplines go brrrrrr so it's cool. It's like when you save a game in an RPG then start randomly slaughtering everything just to see how much damage you can do.

 

[Roguey]

A Botched attempt to Dominate makes the target immune to it for a certain period of time, so LaCroix could've just been shat on by RNG Gods and rolled a bunch of 1's.

Dominate doesn't work that way in Bloodlines: The Video Game. You either pass or you don't.

 

[Delterius]

man speaking of dominate making it through stealth sections by making people sleep was the best. it makes me hate every other stealth section in the world

 

[Lambach]

Dominate doesn't work that way in Bloodlines: The Video Game. You either pass or you don't.

Thanks for the info, bro. Having completed the game like 16 times or so, I was never able to figure out how Dominate works.

 

[Roguey]

Dominate doesn't work that way in Bloodlines: The Video Game. You either pass or you don't.

Thanks for the info, bro. Having completed the game like 16 times or so, I was never able to figure out how Dominate works.

So why did you put forth as a theory that the story is operating under rules that the game itself isn't?

 

[RaggleFraggle]

Well, V5 seems to be mostly scaling things down back to individual city level. That is good.

VtR did that first and got hated for it. V5 is also hated for it. The folks in this thread seem to be on a completely different wavelength from tabletop fans. I think you guys would be genuinely more satisfied by VTR with translation guides.

And who cares if TTRPG's heyday was 20 to 30 years ago, games and media evolve like everything else. DnD for instance has spawned tons of games and different kinds of media. The TT portion just becomes a baseline for the numbers systems and features as a part of a bigger whole.

The IP is firmly tied into a zeitgeist that no longer exists and doesn’t really appeal to new audiences. It’s attempts to “evolve” have so far gone very poorly. CoD was hated by lorefags for trying to be more playable and accessible, then cancelled by Paradox only for the 5e books to copy ideas from CoD and get hated for it. (H5 is basically Hunter: The Vigil except with a giant middle finger aimed at Vigil fans. “Oh you, actually liked the orgs? Fuck you, they’re all evil! Fuck you for liking CoD you filthy heretic!”)

I’m not gonna say CoD didn’t have its problems (pretty much everything after Lost and Vigil suck ass imo), but unlike WoD it actually seemed to cater to the small scale experiences that posters in this thread claim to want. I would suggest CoD be adapted for video games instead of WoD if I thought anybody alive would take that suggestion seriously.

I don't know man, it's probably just me but it's hard to care about a world when power levels get that far. Plus, it could be that warhammer fantasy made me wary of stories where the writers go 'hey our world is set in a supposed near apocalypse, lets end it finally'. I rather like the gehenna in the modern interpretation. It solves both the power curve and the apocalypse issue.

The time of judgment was pretty integral to the lores and retconning it into a whole lot of nothing takes all the teeth out of it imo. I prefer how CoD sidestepped that whole problem by just not having apocalypticism.

As much as WoD lorefags irrationally hate CoD for being different, all the evidence convinces me that (for the most part) it would be a better fit for video games folks in this thread would like. Provided you ditch geist and god-machine in favor of actual ghosts and fallen angels (you can sanitize the angels into a pan religious thing to avoid problems), make the werewolves and wizards more multicultural rather than their weird monomyths, and use the translation guides to adapt what ideas from WoD are worth keeping around. In other words, reboot everything again. Not that I expect anyone alive to take that suggestion seriously.

 

[Lambach]

So why did you put forth as a theory that the story is operating under rules that the game itself isn't?

Because we were talking about plausible explanations for certain things that happen in the game from the PnP perspective?

 

[Storyfag]

It also crosses that over the top silly treshold above which things are so stupid they're cool.

Well, I'd like to point out that for all I've said itt I'm not just a stick in the butt, someone sent me this video (timestamped) and I laughed a lot.

The summary of Pentex is exquisite. RPG settings NEED this tongue-in-cheek stuff. They cannot be always sirius.

 

[Storyfag]

The folks in this thread seem to be on a completely different wavelength from tabletop fans.

Untermensch, I *am* a tabletop fan.

 

[Roguey]

So why did you put forth as a theory that the story is operating under rules that the game itself isn't?

Because we were talking about plausible explanations for certain things that happen in the game from the PnP perspective?

"In-game" is not "pnp perspective." PnP rules were absolutely irrelevant both to the developers (who discarded them) and the players (who shouldn't need metaknowledge of a ruleset they know nothing about to understand a story).

 

[Lambach]

"In-game" is not "pnp perspective." PnP rules were absolutely irrelevant both to the developers (who discarded them) and the players (who shouldn't need metaknowledge of a ruleset they know nothing about to understand a story).

What the fuck are you on about?

The topic was "how come Lacroix could successfully Dominate you throughout the game but was suddenly unable to at the end?"

Since neither the game's story nor its mechanics provide a direct explanation, you can only speculate based on the mechanics the game adapted from PnP, even if the adaptation isn't 1:1.

 

[leino]

Considering the wider World of Darkness, the Cabbie being just a Methuselah is better, naturally.

Considering the game on it's own merits, the Cabbie being Caine is better, naturally.

I think it's maybe better for the game itself to preserve the ambiguity around Caine and the deeper layers of the WoD since that's part of what makes the atmosphere work. Juicing him for maximum momentary drama might be a detriment to Bloodlines since a loss for the setting dimishes the game as well. At least that's my particular hangup with the ending, probably worthless to anyone else.

 

[Roguey]

"In-game" is not "pnp perspective." PnP rules were absolutely irrelevant both to the developers (who discarded them) and the players (who shouldn't need metaknowledge of a ruleset they know nothing about to understand a story).

What the fuck are you on about?

The topic was "how come Lacroix could successfully Dominate you throughout the game but was suddenly unable to at the end?"

Since neither the game's story nor its mechanics provide a direct explanation, you can only speculate based on the mechanics the game adapted from PnP, even if the adaptation isn't 1:1.

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