Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines: 2 - I want to believe, but...

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Adamska said:
Eh.

I do the same thing, but my brain just says "It's the real world rather than a shittier version, since reality itself is funny". I'm not above stupid; one of the most noted incidents I had happen was when the gang escaped from an assassination effort at a Sears between an Assamite v. a fairly high ranking guy in the local Sabbat. It became a sort of Noodle Incident with the group until it broke apart.
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As I said, suit yourself. If you can make it work in a more serious setting, more power to you. It's definitely easier to do it if you restrict yourself to a single splat.

The whole Vampire metaplot, for example, really doesn't work when you try to mesh it with the Pentex plot from Werewolf, or with how the New World Order would never allow the Sabbat to terrorize entire cities. Keeping it to a single setting and using the other supernatural creatures as sparingly as the splatbooks suggest you do works well.

ETA: despite all that talk about the setting being dumb, I have had perfectly enjoyable, serious games in the World of Darkness. But it does require a certain level of suspension of disbelief, and the ability to move on when the ST tells you to. We had a situation where one of the players was convinced his character was being investigated by the police after a botched burglary, and it took him five or six sessions with his character in hiding (and the player complaining about it) to accept that the ST meant it when he told him there was no evidence the police even considered his character a suspect.

Adamska said:
Also Prometheans are from Chronicles, not World.
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I wasn't talking about Prometheans. I was talking about the shit the Progenitors, the Iteration X and even the Etherites come up with on occasion. Hence mentioning cyborgs, too.
 
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Corn Flakes said:
As I said, suit yourself. If you can make it work in a more serious setting, more power to you. It's definitely easier to do it if you restrict yourself to a single splat.

The whole Vampire metaplot, for example, really doesn't work when you try to mesh it with the Pentex plot from Werewolf, or with how the New World Order would never allow the Sabbat to terrorize entire cities. Keeping it to a single setting and using the other supernatural creatures as sparingly as the splatbooks suggest you do works well.
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I just kind of do the Moon Knight approach of "Random Bullshit Go!"

Utterly ignore all but the most basic structures in the WoD, ignore the X by Night books, and just go "Okay, here's this magical plotline in a big city. You're this horrid monster pack. You have this going on for you" and roll from there.

It's kinda why I like Chronicles more and more now.
Corn Flakes said:
ETA: despite all that talk about the setting being dumb, I have had perfectly enjoyable, serious games in the World of Darkness. But it does require a certain level of suspension of disbelief, and the ability to move on when the ST tells you to. We had a situation where one of the players was convinced his character was being investigated by the police after a botched burglary, and it took him five or six sessions with his character in hiding (and the player complaining about it) to accept that the ST meant it when he told him there was no evidence the police even considered his character a suspect.
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Reminds me whenever I know there's traps in a dungeon. I slow down like a lump spamming poles and stuff to avoid getting yeeted.
Corn Flakes said:
I wasn't talking about Prometheans. I was talking about the shit the Progenitors, the Iteration X and even the Etherites come up with on occasion. Hence mentioning cyborgs, too.
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Ah. Mage stuff.

I've never been able to play it. I've had minor interest at points but the 20th Anniversary was fuck to read.
 
Dom Cruise said:
If anything multiple delays are a sign that something's gone wrong and the game will suck, I always think of Bioshock Infinite, the original Bioshock had 1 delay, but when Infinite kept delayed again and again it was clear it wasn't going well.
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Yeah, Shigeru's quote about delayed games has aged like milk in the last decade plus, hasn't it? At some point, sunk cost fallacy alone dictates a game will be released, but the condition of the game may vary. Between Paradox more or less firing the studio that pitched the damn game, and I'm assuming whoever took over has had to take a chainsaw and flamethrower approach to the scraps of completed game they were given, I'll be amazed if we get this game by 2025.

As for VtMB2, assuming it ever comes out? I still might grab it for cheap - am still a console peasant, but it definitely wouldn't be the worst game I'd've ever bought. I don't trust anything about it to pay full price, never mind preordering a game in current year, but sometimes it's almost worth grabbing a game I know will be shit. Either I'm pleasantly surprised, or I get to laugh at a broken piece of shit.
 
Adamska said:
I just kind of do the Moon Knight approach of "Random Bullshit Go!"

Utterly ignore all but the most basic structures in the WoD, ignore the X by Night books, and just go "Okay, here's this magical plotline in a big city. You're this horrid monster pack. You have this going on for you" and roll from there.

It's kinda why I like Chronicles more and more now.
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Not gonna lie, that's just about the best way to play OG WoD. It started out well, but the more they tried to write a metaplot for each game, and then try to mix-and-match elements from different games into an overarching metaplot, the worse it got.

Ironically, Bloodlines 1 does it very well because the story is absolutely centered on the vampires. Anything outside that sphere is strange and mysterious and dangerous as fuck. Case in point, the werewolf fight.

Adamska said:
Reminds me whenever I know there's traps in a dungeon. I slow down like a lump spamming poles and stuff to avoid getting yeeted.
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I do that, too. And then I invariably fall for the only trap in the dungeon I didn't check for. Every. Single. Time.

The last three times it happened the GM even showed me that he wasn't just trolling me, he had these traps in his pre-game notes.

Adamska said:
Ah. Mage stuff.

I've never been able to play it. I've had minor interest at points but the 20th Anniversary was fuck to read.
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I would suggest Second Edition and Revised instead, since both have a different tone and they're still good. M20 is just an abomination.

Harbinger of Kali Yuga said:
So was this another case of, "Go woke, go broke?"
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Surprisingly, no. This was a case of plain old corporate mismanagement assigning an ambitious game to a crappy development house, resulting in development hell.

The game would be woke as fuck, no question about it. But we won't know until Paradox gets their shit in order.
 
Corn Flakes said:
Not gonna lie, that's just about the best way to play OG WoD. It started out well, but the more they tried to write a metaplot for each game, and then try to mix-and-match elements from different games into an overarching metaplot, the worse it got.

Ironically, Bloodlines 1 does it very well because the story is absolutely centered on the vampires. Anything outside that sphere is strange and mysterious and dangerous as fuck. Case in point, the werewolf fight.


I do that, too. And then I invariably fall for the only trap in the dungeon I didn't check for. Every. Single. Time.

The last three times it happened the GM even showed me that he wasn't just trolling me, he had these traps in his pre-game notes.


I would suggest Second Edition and Revised instead, since both have a different tone and they're still good. M20 is just an abomination.


Surprisingly, no. This was a case of plain old corporate mismanagement assigning an ambitious game to a crappy development house, resulting in development hell.

The game would be woke as fuck, no question about it. But we won't know until Paradox gets their shit in order.
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But were they mismanaged because they were stupid woke assholes?
 
Corn Flakes said:
Suit yourself, man. I'm just going to tell you this: the World of Darkness makes a lot more sense once you realize how fucking dumb it is. It's ridiculously, joyously and unremittingly stupid.

It's a world where werewolf ecoterrorists, masterminding vampires, literal wizards, celtic fairies, mummies, demons, three other different kinds of demons, hypertech cyborgs, men in black, starship troopers, eldritch abominations, Frankenstein monsters and Captain Planet-tier megacorporations all exist at the same time, all backstopped by at least eight separate all-powerful entities from beyond the veil of reality. And the mortals don't know about any of it. Taking it seriously is just a very quick way to develop an aneurysm. Embracing the stupidity and treating it like an 80s dystopian action movie makes everything much easier to understand.
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That’s why you treat the game that you’re running as the only one that exists unless they’re about to butt up against someone else as an antagonist. But you never mix themes.
 
I'm not going to hold my breath on Bloodlines 2. They pretty much canceled this game by shelving it in development hell. It could be a whole 10 years or never. When some games get shelved, they risk never coming out and I suspect this game is one of those games we'll never see. I guess I'll check to see if there's any more updates in a few years or find an article why it never saw the light of day. This game was fucked from the get go.
 
The most entertainment from this whole debacle isn't from the game itself but the fucktards over on the steam discussions page riding Paradox's dick and using strawmans such as Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk for the delays and lack of news. Is the game dead? Nah probably not, in a coma vegetative state? Absolutely.
 
Mad Man said:
I'm not going to hold my breath on Bloodlines 2. They pretty much canceled this game by shelving it in development hell. It could be a whole 10 years or never. When some games get shelved, they risk never coming out and I suspect this game is one of those games we'll never see. I guess I'll check to see if there's any more updates in a few years or find an article why it never saw the light of day. This game was fucked from the get go.
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Has anyone seen any ads or promotion of any sort for the recent 5 VTM games? They seem to be pumping them out and the only way I find out they exist is from occasionally searching up what's happened to B2. Swansong almost looks like what they showed for B2 a couple of years ago, I wouldn't be surprised if they shared assets with Hardsuit Labs then completely cannibalised the rest of the game when HSL got kicked out, would give some more meaning to the name too. It doesn't look bad though, I'll probably pirate it when it comes out.

5 was a guess, apparently there are 8 of them, including the pubg clone coming out in less than a week. How they're handling the IP is just completely bizarre.
 
wrangled tard said:
Has anyone seen any ads or promotion of any sort for the recent 5 VTM games? They seem to be pumping them out and the only way I find out they exist is from occasionally searching up what's happened to B2. Swansong almost looks like what they showed for B2 a couple of years ago, I wouldn't be surprised if they shared assets with Hardsuit Labs then completely cannibalised the rest of the game when HSL got kicked out, would give some more meaning to the name too. It doesn't look bad though, I'll probably pirate it when it comes out.

5 was a guess, apparently there are 8 of them, including the pubg clone coming out in less than a week. How they're handling the IP is just completely bizarre.
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It's apparently part of some game jam which they hosted for VTM series.

They're also apparently trying to get the community to make games for them instead.
Indie developers now have the chance to create new games using the Vampire: The Masquerade IP.

The initiative, entitled Unbound, comes under World of Darkness, the transmedia horror brand that encompasses the aforementioned vampire franchise as well as Werewolf: The Apocalypse and Wraith: The Oblivion.

World of Darkness was originally published by White Wolf Publishing, which Paradox Interactive acquired back in 2015. Paradox took more direct control following controversy over LGBTQ+ depictions in a previous Vampire: The Masquerade handbook.

Unbound invites developers to build new titles set in the world of tabletop RPG Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition. Successfully chosen games will be published via Itch.io, with studios receiving a share of the revenue from their work and potentially additional marketing support.

According to the website, developers will retain up to 67% of revenues from monetised projects and they can decide how much to pay the Itch.io platform.

Any assets that do not directly use elements of the World of Darkness IP will be owned by the developer and can be reused and redistributed as they see fit, with the company giving artbooks, soundtracks and asset store packages as examples.

World of Darkness notes that while Unbound games will not be canonically part of the Vampire universe, developers will be allowed to "express their creative freedom."

Details on the submission process and criteria can be found at the website. The World of Darkness brand team will review submissions and follow up with studios about their decisions as to which games get selected.

The initiative follows the success of Vampire Jam, a game jam in which developers were allowed to prototype new titles set in this universe. More than 80 were built, with World of Darkness selecting six as the first Unbound titles.

These games are now available via Itch.io, and include:

  • Descent, a survival horror adventure set in an old cabin in the mountains
  • The Chantry Trials, a puzzle game with horror elements
  • The Game of Elders, a strategic card game focused on the elder vampires
  • The Autumn People, a first-person shooter set in Phoenix, Arizona
  • Praxis, a mix of 4X strategy and role-playing
  • Prodigal, a point-and-click adventure set in a rotting mansion

Vampire: The Masquerade has a cult following in the video games space thanks to the 2004 adaptation Bloodlines, which has previously been explored in our Why I Love series.

A sequel is currently in development, originally due in 2021, but there's no word of a release date following Paradox's decision to drop developer Hardsuit Labs.

Meanwhile, Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong -- an RPG developed by Big Bad Wolf and published by Nacon -- is due for release on PC and consoles next month.
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I agree, they really do not know what they're doing with the series since the Hardsuit Labs failure.
 
I don't swear said:
I just want a vampirie FP/TP RPG man, is it that hard?
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They did have Vampyr that came out in 2019. It wasn't so good.

Why it kind of sucked: If you feed on an NPC, you gained levels instantly. While that sounds great and all but killing up to 2 or more innocent NPC's in the game would incur major consequences such as causing enemy vampires, ghouls, and vampire hunters quickly turning London into a war zone with each area you operate out of.

They encourage you to do miscellaneous quests for experience which levels you very slowly. All in all it was not a great game.
 
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