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

[hello friend]

Superheroes are awful on a conceptual level. It's magic for atheists. It's magic for atheists. There's no quest, only mundane people with mundane hopes and dreams who happen to have been bitten by a radioactive mosquito. It isn't scientific, but it adopts a vague shell of anti-fantasy for the terminally unimaginative.

I don't agree with "magic for atheists". Sure the Iron Man would suit that description, but then there are characters such as Doctor Strange, who is a literal mage. Superheroes are modern heroes, usually transformed from an average person. That's the main draw. An ancient hero wouldn't suit the modern times as much (even Captain America has issues, and he is not that old). Since we're on this topic, what's your opinion on Watchmen?

If Doctor Strange is a literal mage, then what makes him a superhero? Wouldn't that just make it urban fantasy? I'll admit I'm not deeply versed in comics. I don't particularly care for superheroes - I enjoyed the Blade films and have a vague feeling of having enjoyed another incidence of a superhero on film but I can't think of it right now. I haven't read the Watchmen comics, but I did watch the film which, while decently made, is not my cup of tea. It wasn't painful to watch but it just isn't interesting to me on a conceptual level.

Actually the Tick was funny, but I wouldn't be able to take such a character seriously in a non comedic setting.

 

[Hammer Of The Heretics]

It's common for superhero universes to mix science and magic. There are plenty of characters in both Marvel and DC with magical or divine backgrounds: Doctor Strange, Doctor Fate, Zatanna, Raven, Etrigan, Felix Faust... Wonder Woman has Greek gods and demigods in her rogue's gallery. Thor is a literal Norse god.

What you don't see as much is stuff from the Abrahamic religions. My guess is that the overt monotheism makes it harder to mix with all the other fantastic elements.

 

[GhostCow]

Or maybe because comics are made by kikes and kikes hate Christianity

 

[NecroLord]

I never get tired of edgelords like Garth Ennis with their overused "hurr durr christianity is bad, fuck religion" shit.
Nigga, at least bother to explain WHY, in your author's opinion, religion is so bad, but, nope, they just like to insert their prejudices and baggage into their dumb stories with no explanation.
Religion is not bad. Mankind is.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

I don't think there is much point considering "queer folx" (I am guessing you mean LGBT by that)

I mean a lot of the people I meet when I frequent those sorts of venues label themselves “queer.” They’re mostly straight women with a minority of bisexuals and lesbians, but they call themselves “queer”, “nonbinary” and so on. Also, I get the impression a lot are zoomers.

At least they "fixed" Dramatic Failures by making them optional in the sense players can take them for some exp, but it results in smart players avoiding them most of the them anyway.

Fumbles have been a thing in BRP since the 80s. Every roll always had a chance of fumbling. I don’t see BRP players complaining. What kind of wimps are you playing with?

They do have that in most cases in WoD already. The issue is that in the case of vamps for example, newcomers such as the players have little room for growth as everyone is stronger than them and will not hesitate to crush them to avoid competition. That's why Bloodlines 1 took some liberties so that you're allowed to do stuff.

Yeah, I think that ageist bullshit can fuck off and die in a fire. It was never fun, the writers were just projecting their GenXer anxieties into the game. I’m too old for that bullshit. If I wrote a game, then I’d let players play thousand year old vampires or whatever.

It’s stupid bullshit like that which makes me appreciate D&D even more.

men are less inclined to write such fantasies

They do write other fantasies tho. I’m reading Fall of Night’s Blood by Al Hawkins and he’s clearly a man.

I just checked and the series has vanished from stores. Oh well.

 

[lightbane]

Fumbles have been a thing in BRP since the 80s. Every roll always had a chance of fumbling. I don’t see BRP players complaining. What kind of wimps are you playing with?

I never had a chance to play with people NWoD games, only read the sourcebooks, probably for the best. I'm not sure if you would call it fumbling, as you have to willingly take the bullet, as the mechanic is to turn a regular failure into a crit-failure.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

I like global conspiracies because it makes the world feel bigger. See Deus Ex's ones.

I think the opposite. If everything is connected then the world feels smaller. There’s less room for things to exist, especially mysteries. I’ve seen so many writers write themselves into corners this way.

Without a monolithic global conspiracy running everything, then you have a setting where anything could pop up out of nowhere without prior explanation and then vanish just as mysteriously. You don’t have to shoehorn it into a space where it doesn’t fit.

I never had a chance to play with people NWoD games, only read the sourcebooks, probably for the best.

Reading rpg books is no substitute for playing the game and seeing how it actually works in practice. Why are you even discussing a game you’ve never played?

 

[Harthwain]

If Doctor Strange is a literal mage, then what makes him a superhero?

Depends on what your definition of a superhero is. If it's "a fictional hero having extraordinary or superhuman powers", then I would say that magic counts as an extraordinary power and being a hero with that kind of power is fairly easy.

Wouldn't that just make it urban fantasy?

I don't think so. Magic does exist in superhero setting(s), but it tends to be very rare and there isn't much to follow it (You're more likely to encounter aliens than fantasy creatures, for example). Then again, if we disregard the pseudo sci-fi label and treat it as fantasy, then I guess the vast majority of superhero stuff would flip into urban fantasy.

They’re mostly straight women with a minority of bisexuals and lesbians, but they call themselves “queer”, “nonbinary” and so on.

Sounds like a fad to me.

They do write other fantasies tho. I’m reading Fall of Night’s Blood by Al Hawkins and he’s clearly a man.

I didn't say they don't write fantasies. But it's much less common compared to women. Women are more expressive about these things than men.

 

[Wesp5]

I like global conspiracies because it makes the world feel bigger. See Deus Ex's ones.

I think the opposite. If everything is connected then the world feels smaller.

I completely agree. Also using all conspiracies at once in Deus Ex was just ridiculous!

 

[hello friend]

It's common for superhero universes to mix science and magic. There are plenty of characters in both Marvel and DC with magical or divine backgrounds: Doctor Strange, Doctor Fate, Zatanna, Raven, Etrigan, Felix Faust... Wonder Woman has Greek gods and demigods in her rogue's gallery. Thor is a literal Norse god.

What you don't see as much is stuff from the Abrahamic religions. My guess is that the overt monotheism makes it harder to mix with all the other fantastic elements.

Despite lifting characters and locations whole sale from Norse mythology, comic book rehashings of them completely lack any kind of mythological weight, and are as far from what they're imitating as mass effect: andromeda is from a real rpg. Superheroes namechecking greek gods is like an alien attempt to create music thinking it's just an arrangement of sounds. It's hollow.

 

[NecroLord]

I mean a lot of the people I meet when I frequent those sorts of venues label themselves “queer.” They’re mostly straight women with a minority of bisexuals and lesbians, but they call themselves “queer”, “nonbinary” and so on. Also, I get the impression a lot are zoomers.

That's what Western woke education does to kids. They constantly push that shit on them, to the point where you get stuff like "trans kid" or "non binary kid".
Just sick, evil stuff.
Women do not necessarily only like vampires because they are seductive creatures of the night or some Twilight shit. You would be surprised at the number of women who read good horror books. Fuck the modern era of slasher/blood galore movies. Horror needs a return to tension, psychological degradation, evil spirits, self-destruction, insanity, etc.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

What you don't see as much is stuff from the Abrahamic religions. My guess is that the overt monotheism makes it harder to mix with all the other fantastic elements.

I'd wager that it has more to do with playing it safe since your typical superhero comic book is aimed at a mass audience and you wouldn't want to alienate potential customers due to an offensive (or lame) portrayal of their faith. I'm sure that there are plenty of niche comic books and graphic novels that do integrate such themes though (and plenty of manga since the Japanese don't have the same sorts of sensibilities).

 

[lightbane]

I never get tired of edgelords like Garth Ennis with their overused "hurr durr christianity is bad, fuck religion" shit.
Nigga, at least bother to explain WHY, in your author's opinion, religion is so bad, but, nope, they just like to insert their prejudices and baggage into their dumb stories with no explanation.
Religion is not bad. Mankind is.

He's not the only one, most comic book writers are like him, but they got worse since 2018 with the rise of Trump. I remember that Bats' Dark Knight sequel where the Joker and Darkseid team up for... Ensuring that Trump wins the elections. Legally.

Then there was Grant Morrison having Animal Man meeting up a parody of Wily E. Coyote to make an unsubtle dig at Christianity.

WoD writers are just edgelords.

There’s less room for things to exist, especially mysteries. I’ve seen so many writers write themselves into corners this way.

If you want that to happen, you can still do it. Bloodlines had that mansion with ghosts that was barely explained. Or how outside of cities roam wwolves ready to hunt vampires.
The issue is having all of the other splats' conspiracies running at the same time. Then there's pure chaos.

Without a monolithic global conspiracy running everything, then you have a setting where anything could pop up out of nowhere without prior explanation and then vanish just as mysteriously. You don’t have to shoehorn it into a space where it doesn’t fit.

You can always have lovecraftian abominations showing up. The fact global conspiracies exist doesn't mean they are around every corner.

Reading rpg books is no substitute for playing the game and seeing how it actually works in practice. Why are you even discussing a game you’ve never played?

I DID play pnps such as WH40k ones, and some of NWoD, but the latter was for a crossover with Call of Cthulhu done online that didn't last long. Probably for the best as the QM was infected by the toxic behaviour that OWoD encouraged: Having the QM tell a story at the players' expense, which explains why there are so many god-npcs running around.
I tried running a CTLost game online but couldn't do it, I found the game too complex (or perhaps the rules too shit and didn't realize it so at the time).

Sounds like a fad to me.

A fad that has been going on for nearly a decade and growing stronger.

I completely agree. Also using all conspiracies at once in Deus Ex was just ridiculous!

All of them at once (plus Bob Page being part of like 3 conspiracies at once + his own) was ridiculous yes, but in cyberpunk having a worldwide conspiracy doesn't sound that different from corpos controlling the entire world.
It gave DE1 a B-Movie quality that was charming.

 

[Harthwain]

A fad that has been going on for nearly a decade and growing stronger.

I am not talking about LGBT. I am talking about the whole "queer" thing specifically. This started gaining popularity fairly recently.

 

[NecroLord]

I never get tired of edgelords like Garth Ennis with their overused "hurr durr christianity is bad, fuck religion" shit.
Nigga, at least bother to explain WHY, in your author's opinion, religion is so bad, but, nope, they just like to insert their prejudices and baggage into their dumb stories with no explanation.
Religion is not bad. Mankind is.

He's not the only one, most comic book writers are like him, but they got worse since 2018 with the rise of Trump. I remember that Bats' Dark Knight sequel where the Joker and Darkseid team up for... Ensuring that Trump wins the elections. Legally.

Then there was Grant Morrison having Animal Man meeting up a parody of Wily E. Coyote to make an unsubtle dig at Christianity.

WoD writers are just edgelords.

There’s less room for things to exist, especially mysteries. I’ve seen so many writers write themselves into corners this way.

If you want that to happen, you can still do it. Bloodlines had that mansion with ghosts that was barely explained. Or how outside of cities roam wwolves ready to hunt vampires.
The issue is having all of the other splats' conspiracies running at the same time. Then there's pure chaos.

Without a monolithic global conspiracy running everything, then you have a setting where anything could pop up out of nowhere without prior explanation and then vanish just as mysteriously. You don’t have to shoehorn it into a space where it doesn’t fit.

You can always have lovecraftian abominations showing up. The fact global conspiracies exist doesn't mean they are around every corner.

Reading rpg books is no substitute for playing the game and seeing how it actually works in practice. Why are you even discussing a game you’ve never played?

I DID play pnps such as WH40k ones, and some of NWoD, but the latter was for a crossover with Call of Cthulhu done online that didn't last long. Probably for the best as the QM was infected by the toxic behaviour that OWoD encouraged: Having the QM tell a story at the players' expense, which explains why there are so many god-npcs running around.
I tried running a CTLost game online but couldn't do it, I found the game too complex (or perhaps the rules too shit and didn't realize it so at the time).

Sounds like a fad to me.

A fad that has been going on for nearly a decade and growing stronger.

I completely agree. Also using all conspiracies at once in Deus Ex was just ridiculous!

All of them at once (plus Bob Page being part of like 3 conspiracies at once + his own) was ridiculous yes, but in cyberpunk having a worldwide conspiracy doesn't sound that different from corpos controlling the entire world.
It gave DE1 a B-Movie quality that was charming.

Deus Ex managed to get all those conspiracies thrown in and make them work smoothly.
Also, if you factor the current state of the world, many of those "conspiracies" in Deus Ex have proven to be true.

 

[Delterius]

It's common for superhero universes to mix science and magic. There are plenty of characters in both Marvel and DC with magical or divine backgrounds: Doctor Strange, Doctor Fate, Zatanna, Raven, Etrigan, Felix Faust... Wonder Woman has Greek gods and demigods in her rogue's gallery. Thor is a literal Norse god.

What you don't see as much is stuff from the Abrahamic religions. My guess is that the overt monotheism makes it harder to mix with all the other fantastic elements.

i think god exists in the marvel universe. as in yahweh literally is the creator god of the multiverse. or one of its infinite parts. i don't actually read comics but i think i remember some page of spiderman talking to god and he looked straight out of the michelangelo painting.

 

[Dave the Druid]

I never get tired of edgelords like Garth Ennis with their overused "hurr durr christianity is bad, fuck religion" shit.
Nigga, at least bother to explain WHY, in your author's opinion, religion is so bad, but, nope, they just like to insert their prejudices and baggage into their dumb stories with no explanation.
Religion is not bad. Mankind is.

He's not the only one, most comic book writers are like him, but they got worse since 2018 with the rise of Trump. I remember that Bats' Dark Knight sequel where the Joker and Darkseid team up for... Ensuring that Trump wins the elections. Legally.

That sounded too fucking stupid that I had to look it up for myself to make sure it was real. Turns out it is. Good lord. What are you doing Frank?

I can't believe I'm saying this but can we get early 2000s, ultra-conservative, alcoholic, schizophrenic Frank Miller back? Cause at least he was funny. This is just cringe-worthy

 

[Roguey]

This is just cringe-worthy

It was fucking hilarious. I loved it.

 

[Tyranicon]

It's common for superhero universes to mix science and magic. There are plenty of characters in both Marvel and DC with magical or divine backgrounds: Doctor Strange, Doctor Fate, Zatanna, Raven, Etrigan, Felix Faust... Wonder Woman has Greek gods and demigods in her rogue's gallery. Thor is a literal Norse god.

What you don't see as much is stuff from the Abrahamic religions. My guess is that the overt monotheism makes it harder to mix with all the other fantastic elements.

i think god exists in the marvel universe. as in yahweh literally is the creator god of the multiverse. or one of its infinite parts. i don't actually read comics but i think i remember some page of spiderman talking to god and he looked straight out of the michelangelo painting.

I think both Yahweh (christian god) and the One Above All exists in Marvel's multiverse.

Abrahamic God is present in a lot more media than you'd imagine. After all, even Tolkien's LoTR has Eru Iluvatar, which is a direct embodiment of Christian God according to the author.

Christian "lore" is endlessly fascinating.

 

[Zeriel]

Who would win five generation 3s or one generation 2, no prep time, and describe the conflict

No need to ask the question, this already happened in the lore.

 

[sosmoflux]

Was it cool?

 

[lightbane]

That sounded too fucking stupid that I had to look it up for myself to make sure it was real. Turns out it is. Good lord. What are you doing Frank?

Welcome to 2018, where Trump revealed leftards as being fucking insane and do constant attacks against the former all day, all the time, in all settings, no matter what Trumpf did or did not: From DnD to a random vampire game set in the 1900s IIRC (Vampyr), to nu-Wolfenstein 2. It was an eye-opener of how corrupt and deranged the media is.

I can't believe I'm saying this but can we get early 2000s, ultra-conservative, alcoholic, schizophrenic Frank Miller back? Cause at least he was funny. This is just cringe-worthy

Too bad. All of American writers (and most Europeans) seem to be like this lately. Those that try going independent are attacked and censored and not allowed to promote their product with the excuse of being "conservative nazis" and the like. Even if the protagonist is black.

https://boundingintocomics.com/2023...ts-ceo-cries-victim-to-left-wing-journalists/

Spoiler

he banning came off the heels of a hit piece by the Daily Kos, alleging the book is racist, despite the main hero being a person of color. Because of the article, an online mob falsely reported the Private American campaign. The companies caved, alleging Baron violated their terms of service.

Private American’s publisher, Chris Braly, made attempts to speak with representatives of the Crowdfundr platform to plead with them to allow art to be made without censorship. His results were not fruitful, but he obtained a Zoom call with the company’s CEO, David Barach...

All while doubling down on insane stuff such as race-swapping characters, making The Joker, a guy, pregnant (also in that webpage, DO NOT GOOGLE IT, quite NSFW, and impossible to know if it's meant to be taken seriously or not) and so on. The Clownworld makes WoD look tame.
Funny that Bloodlines had some edgy takes such as that ad joking about castrating males that would be taken seriously nowadays.

 

[Harthwain]

to a random vampire game set in the 1900s IIRC (Vampyr)

Really? That's the first time I am hearing of this and I think such news would make more waves.

 

[Elttharion]

to a random vampire game set in the 1900s IIRC (Vampyr)

Really? That's the first time I am hearing of this and I think such news would make more waves.

He is probably talking about Aloysius Dawson, a rich guy who wants to build a wall to keep the poor people out of the rich parts of the city during the plague or something like that. You can turn him into a vamp, kill him or convince him to accept death and donate his money.

 

[lightbane]

e is probably talking about Aloysius Dawson, a rich guy who wants to build a wall to keep the poor people out of the rich parts of the city during the plague or something like that. You can turn him into a vamp, kill him or convince him to accept death and donate his money.

This. I didn't play the game, but I know that around 2018 or so, many, many, many, works had unsubtle references to building walls or destroying them (see Life is Strange 2), people in power doing the former, or outright having not-Trump around to insult him (or actual Trump in the flesh, as seen in the comic pics at the start of this page). It was a non-stop storm against Trump, whether he deserved it or not, in the mass media, all the fucking time. Not even the Bush family had that much vitriol directed at them.
Wolfenstein 2's devs also explicitly talked about the anti-Trump rhetoric openly IIRC.