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

[Storyfag]

The real interesting part is that you can have super soldiers who ingest blood from captured vampires, switching between these vampire "juicebags" so as not to get blood bonded.

Wouldn't work, even a single dose of Vitae is enough to bind a mortal.

Or they drain a vampire dry before dusting it.

That, however, would work perfectly.

 

[Maxwell's Demon]

As I said, ambience.

Start the game on a sunny day, and with each subsequent day the skies become more cloudy, eventually overcast, and then a raging thunderstorm/hurricane (environmental hazards galore, and evidence quickly washed away by the rains). As the sky darkens, the vampire gets more and more ability to maneuver during the day. Cap everything off with a solar eclipse (potentially that never ends if you want to lean heavily into the supernatural/Lovecraftian elements).

 

[Ol' Willy]

Yeah, that's true, which is why I'm not in favor of a Hunter game. Basically, you'd be playing a detective that only occasionally brushes against the supernatural, and I emphasize occasionally, because if you do it more often, you'll probably get gutted or drained or burned to a crisp or all of the above. And you'd have to do it during daytime. DAYTIME. In my WoD! Fucking Redemption PTSD flashbacks all over again.

Why daytime? Because if you go snooping after some Vampire while he's up and about, you're probably screwed.

There's no other way around than to make vampire-hunter a Blade rip-off

 

[Larianshill]

Then we are forced to interact with the actual masquerade, which is the most nonsensical part of the setting. Either the masquerade is fragile, and one tiny slip up can break it - in which case, why hasn't it been torn down already, with the sheer number of retarded kindred? Or it is impenetrable, thanks to Camarilla/Technocracy meddling, in which case, what's the point?

 

[Harthwain]

Then we are forced to interact with the actual masquerade, which is the most nonsensical part of the setting. Either the masquerade is fragile, and one tiny slip up can break it - in which case, why hasn't it been torn down already, with the sheer number of retarded kindred? Or it is impenetrable, thanks to Camarilla/Technocracy meddling, in which case, what's the point?

The Masquerade has to be unbreakable. For a few reasons.

1) It limits the players. Otherwise they'd be free to do whatever they want and vampires can do a lot more than humans. With restrictions in place they have to get crafty and play it cool.

2) It maintains the illusion of the real world looking nothing out of the ordinary. Not only it supports the lore, it also gives the players the feeling of being "on the inside" of things when interacting with humans.

Besides that, I think you misunderstand what "breaking the Masquerade" means. It is possible to do it, without necessarily exposing EVERYTHING to the world in the 1-0 fashion.

Imagine the existence clean-up crews making sure that the witnesses are removed, the evidence is destroyed and whatever rumours that manage to surface get laughed at by the internet Nosferatu trolls. Just because you broke the Masquerade doesn't mean the truth is already out. I'd argue it was even more true back when the flow of information was slower than it is now.

To offer a real-world analogy: imagine the vampires pulling the strings of various governments and fighting something similar to the QAnon movement.

 

[Tyranicon]

Then we are forced to interact with the actual masquerade, which is the most nonsensical part of the setting. Either the masquerade is fragile, and one tiny slip up can break it - in which case, why hasn't it been torn down already, with the sheer number of retarded kindred? Or it is impenetrable, thanks to Camarilla/Technocracy meddling, in which case, what's the point?

I would assume it's pretty impenetrable, but it's a system that requires constant maintenance and vigilance.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

masquerade exists to protect the vamps, it's no surprise that they'd be anal about breaking it at all

 

[Storyfag]

How about vampires hunting vampires, ones that break the masquerade and have to be hunted down and dragged before the council to decide their fate.

Replace that Anarch retardation with a proper Prince or Archbishop and you might be on to something.

 

[Ibn Sina]

If you like Vampires anyway, it is probably you have latent homosexual tendencies. Every person I know who liked vampires either turned out to be or are

1) sodomites
2) women
3) trannies

 

[ERYFKRAD]

vamps, it's no surprise that they'd be anal

Trimmed the excess.

 

[Maxwell's Demon]

How about vampires hunting vampires, ones that break the masquerade and have to be hunted down and dragged before the council to decide their fate.

I'm not confident that a video game company can hire a writer competent enough to distance the setting and characterizations from banal capeshit with that as a game's central premise. Besides, gamers always love the idea of overcoming long odds, so it makes better sense to have humans hunt vampires, or vampires hunt (sticking with the VTM analogy) werewolves. This also gives the chance to explore some interesting conflicts, like man (vampire) vs. nature (werewolves, the sun, etc.), and civilization (humans, vampires) vs. the environment (man, werewolves), savagery (vampires, werewolves), or both the environment and savagery. Maybe the allegiances change depending on the threat involved?

 

[lightbane]

Someone just give us a Mage game where you play as a Technocracy agent already. That way you get to hunt down all kinds of nasties with your totally-not magical gear.

 

[0wca]

Wait, this has 22K reviews on steam? How?!

Because it was free to play and a lot of people took a look, myself included. After a short time numbers were already quite low though, so they halted everything to improve it. My guess is that the theme just didn't work with Battle Royal like everybody predicted...

The battle royale genre is a plague upon humanity.

 

[Outlander]

If you like Vampires anyway, it is probably you have latent homosexual tendencies. Every person I know who liked vampires either turned out to be or are

1) sodomites
2) women
3) trannies

Or just stop frequenting gay bars.

 

[TT1]

This Valkyrie Entertainment just joined Playstation Studios and they are saying they worked on Bloodlines 2.

Was this public knowledge?




http://valkyrie-entertainment.com/

 

[Tyranicon]

Minor support studios almost never get mentioned. Each AAA game has a few of them now.

 

[agris]

Yeah, it was likely contracted to port to Sony hardware and so they can claim to have "worked on" it, but it was tangential not material development.

 

[Xelocix]

Given the player character's lore-unfriendly absurd power level, the only way Bach could beat you is if he had True Faith 5 or more.

The PC being 8th gen isn't lore-unfriendly, if anything the PC killing/surviving/doing all the things they did without a coterie only really makes sense if they're of an unusually low generation. Especially since the PC is cast into the world as little more than a Caitiff, and achieves everything they do within a months time. Lower generation embraces in the modern nights are uncommon, not impossible.

I mean, they do call him the greatest hunter in Society of Leopold, but True Faith 5 is reserved for Saints and shit, I don't think Bach fits the bill.

I don't think so. The guy is pretty much already a saint within the society, and everything we see/hear from him suggests he really is a fanatical true-believer. I think something like True Faith 7 would be over the top, but I think 5 fits well.

 

[Cryomancer]

Lower generation embraces in the modern nights are uncommon, not impossible.

Yep. Set can awake from his slumber, sire dozens of new vampires and go back to sleep hence we will have a great number of 4th generation neonates.

 

[Lambach]

The PC being 8th gen isn't lore-unfriendly, if anything the PC killing/surviving/doing all the things they did without a coterie only really makes sense if they're of an unusually low generation. Especially since the PC is cast into the world as little more than a Caitiff, and achieves everything they do within a months time. Lower generation embraces in the modern nights are uncommon, not impossible.

Generation by itself doesn't mean much, though. A 4th Generation Vampire is still as weak as a newborn kitten if he was Embraced a week ago. Generation determines your maximum potential, but you still need time to achieve it. The PC can theoretically speedrun his way to 5 Dots in 2-3 Disciplines during the time the events of Bloodlines take place i.e. about a month, and without a dedicated teacher to boot. That's the part that makes sense for a video-game, but is completely lore-unfriendly, even if Caine himself is the PC's Sire.

 

[Cryomancer]

Generation determines your maximum potential,

That part I honestly don't like about generation. IMO a vampire generation should be his "floor', not "roof".

speedrun his way to 5 Dots in 2-3 Disciplines during the time the events of Bloodlines take place i.e. about a month, and without a dedicated teacher to boot. That's the part that makes sense for a video-game, but is completely lore-unfriendly, even if Caine himself is the PC's Sire.

Yep. When I played VtMB, I mastered Thaumaturgy before I even had the chance to get accepted into Tremere pyramid.

 

[Lambach]

That part I honestly don't like about generation. IMO a vampire generation should be his "floor', not "roof".

Well it actually makes sense from a BALINCE perspective, otherwise you'd just have bunch of Methuselahs constantly Embracing people to make Low-gen, uber-powerful shock troops.

 

[Xelocix]

The PC being 8th gen isn't lore-unfriendly, if anything the PC killing/surviving/doing all the things they did without a coterie only really makes sense if they're of an unusually low generation. Especially since the PC is cast into the world as little more than a Caitiff, and achieves everything they do within a months time. Lower generation embraces in the modern nights are uncommon, not impossible.

Generation by itself doesn't mean much, though. A 4th Generation Vampire is still as weak as a newborn kitten if he was Embraced a week ago. Generation determines your maximum potential, but you still need time to achieve it. The PC can theoretically speedrun his way to 5 Dots in 2-3 Disciplines during the time the events of Bloodlines take place i.e. about a month, and without a dedicated teacher to boot. That's the part that makes sense for a video-game, but is completely lore-unfriendly, even if Caine himself is the PC's Sire.

Well yeah, you're not wrong, but what I'm getting at is the entire plot of Bloodlines is all-around pretty lore-unfriendly from a tabletop perspective. Having the PC be a rare mid-generation fledgling mitigates the more combat-heavy parts of the plot imo. Having the PC thrown into all of these constant unlife-and-final death situations and surviving is made more believable by having their blood potency be extra high, giving them that extra sturdy set of training wheels a 13th gen (like most of the Sabbat shovelheads you face) wouldn't have. I think the only real way a fledgling vampire could survive doing everything that the PC does is if they had that extra few drops of vitae to help snowball them into a discipline-wielding power-house by necessity, which is exactly what happens.

 

[FreshCorpse]

547 pages on this thread but there is no game

 

[The Wall]

Codex LOVES drama, trainwreaks and decline

Atom: Trudograd and Vagrus: The Riven Realms, two excellent new cRPGs released this year barely get talked about. Even Colony Ship Early Access thread is ghost town

Threads about forum drama, situation in Middle East or Russo-Ukranian border, Todd Howard Temple or Cyberpunk funeral get updates and hundreds, upon hundreds, upon hundreds of pages. Let's stop lying ourselves, Codex loves FIRST PERSON, OPEN WORLD, AAA games and cuckold porn