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

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DDBCAE CBAADCBE said:
Vampire The Masquerade has never not been gay in any of it’s various incarnations.
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The big difference is that in its original incarnation (the OG VtM is from 1991) being gay was still somewhat seen as "not normal". Homosexuality has been massively normalized since, along with a bunch of other things that used to be edgy in 90s and early 00s. Vampire the Masquerade was 100% playing off counterculture and the perceived decadence of society back when it was first released, but these days all these things are just normal. "Diversity" isn't edgy or different. It's the party line in Current Year.

So now we have creatures that are supposed to be highly sexualized predators of the night, to which the act of feeding takes on heavy sexual undertones, constrained by game design that screeches about "rape culture". We have creatures that never had any compunctions about feeding on either sex, being defined by which genderspecial bullshit the creators are spewing that day.

I could sperg on and on, but suffice to say: Vampire the Masquerade and the other White Wolf products tried to stay ahead of the curve and failed. They were engulfed by the mainstream and became that which they used to make fun of. Don't expect anything really groundbreaking out of this game, it will 100% attempt to feed off your nostalgia while shoving Current Year down your throat.
 
Corn Flakes said:
The big difference is that in its original incarnation (the OG VtM is from 1991) being gay was still somewhat seen as "not normal". Homosexuality has been massively normalized since, along with a bunch of other things that used to be edgy in 90s and early 00s. Vampire the Masquerade was 100% playing off counterculture and the perceived decadence of society back when it was first released, but these days all these things are just normal. "Diversity" isn't edgy or different. It's the party line in Current Year.
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Imagine if the next edition included a line about how vampires hate gays because they tend to be diseased and eagerly spreading said diseases. The howling would reach the moon.
 
Erischan said:
Druggies, degenerates, sex-havers, etc having awful tasting blood is already established canon.
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Yep. But making explicit by having some vampires routinely go out and kill gays/druggies/blacks/flavor-of-the-months would drive it in how vampires don't see humans as people, not really.

I'm still baffled they haven't retconned it yet. Like, "sorry, but homos tend to be killed on sight because of their awful diseased blood" is bound to trigger the sjwtards.
 
mindlessobserver said:
Its more that english departments have spent the last 3 decades deconstructing meta plots in story telling for the sole purpose of teaching their idiot and credulous students to not write any meta plot at all.

I sort of get the impulse. You should try and come up with something new that does not involve "no name farm boy becomes the chosen one, slays the dark lord and gets the girl." The problem is the reason these meta narratives are so ubiquitous is because they are a tried and true method for crafting a good story. And most of the morons getting churned out of liberal arts colleges are absolutely incapable of going off the reservation.

It does not stop them from trying though.
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Different Metaplot. RPG metaplot is when your setting has a plot that gets advanced as you release more books.
 
Erischan said:
Yeah but they weren't fags about it.
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I dunno, I went to this emo guy’s house party once and there were a bunch of pretty faggy looking kids doing like vampire larp. I asked a chick what the fuck they were doing and they were like “It’s Vampire The Masquaerade you wouldn’t understand.” So I pushed her in the pool and never talked to that emo kid or his friends again.
 
DDBCAE CBAADCBE said:
I dunno, I went to this emo guy’s house party once and there were a bunch of pretty faggy looking kids doing like vampire larp. I asked them what the fuck they were doing and they were like “It’s Vampire The Masquaerade you wouldn’t understand.” So I pushed her in the pool and never talked to that emo kid or his friends again.
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This is the true VTM experience.
 
Adamska said:
The true vampire experience is to randomly bomb a homeless shelter filled with Nos and then murder them with swords dressed like the Ultimate Crack Smoking Warlock, alongside your fellow friends Bootleg Blade, Crazy Johnny, and Mongo. Or at least that's one of the true vampire experiences.
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An important aspect of the game is trying to control your hatred of your fellow players. The gothapotamus, the pervert, the attention whore, the edgelord and the powergamer who doesnt know how to powergame, personally I feel the GM should give me a bonus xp point whenever I don't punch any of them.
 
Pentex said:
Without a doubt. Some prescient commentators noticed that Paradox and Hardsuit Labs' behavior even last year as the first release date approached was odd. No gameplay has released, but they're pushing pre-orders and DLCs? Red flags. Then core clans (Gangrel and Nosferatu) aren't playable with the base game? More red flags. Paradox buys 30% of Hardsuit Labs to basically give them a cash infusion? We're getting into Chinese military parade territory. Mitsoda and Cluney getting fired finally wiped the shit out of the optimists' eyes so that they could clearly see this game is doomed, and it won't be doomed in a 'Redemption was fun' way or 'Bloodlines was well-written but charmingly bad.' If this game drops, it will be a disaster.

The whole 20th anniversary gimmick was nu-Wolf dick-teasing oldfags for those nostalgia-bucks while trying to reestablish fan goodwill for the release of V5. It was pretty clever, but, true to form for LARPers, they had to show their asses and try to get those woke-points, and dug themselves into a hole they couldn't dig back out of (Anarchs and Camarilla sourcebooks). But you're pretty much destined to fail eventually when your game of 'political horror' is written by people with the political acumen of goldfish. The same people who claim 'X was always political' have no capacity to write politics because politics is about competing interests within the confines of written and unwritten rules.

They can't comprehend anyone else's interests from a rational standpoint and don't believe that rules should apply to them personally, or their designated self-insert 'hero' (Anarchs and Caitiff), so they can't write compelling antagonists, which in turn diminishes the 'hero's journey.
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I honestly think the 20th Anniversary Edition of Vampire was initially meant to be a genuine one-off as a way to celebrate the franchise and the few who still held on and probably because CCP Studios wanted to distract people from how badly the WoD MMO's development was going.

It really was meant to be a metaplot-neutral compendium where any of the more iconic metaplot stuff would be confined to sidebars and stated to be optional and the game would be tweaked in a way that could support any playstyle and go along with any of the "styles" that each of the original three editions had.

V20 sold like gangbusters and you had a few supplements released like Hunters Hunted Part II, Children of the Revolution, and some adventure modules like Dust to Dust (which was originally a cancelled module from 1st Edition) and that's when White Wolf was spun into Onyx Path.

Werewolf 20th got greenlit and it was similarly neutral in most of its approach since they were still riding high off the success of V20 but were still very small and didn't want to rock the boat.

Then Mage 20th came out and that's when everything goes off the rails since Phil Brucato was given a blank check and no real oversight or anyone to rein him in. Also, this game came out around 2015 or so, just as the "Current Year" mindset was really picking up steam. They also were announcing a "Fourth Edition" for 2016 that would recognize the Revised metaplot in full sans the Gehenna book and that V20 wasn't a "real" edition, just a compilation. Apparently, Onyx Path hadn't learned their lessons and all the old White Wolf guys who were brought in to work on Vampire and Werewolf 20th were gone by then.

Shortly afterwards, Paradox Interactive buys out White Wolf and gives the license for New WoD to Onyx Path. They greenlight V5 and the rest is history. I'm curious to know how much of the planed "Fourth Edition" made its way into V5.
 
Syaoran Li said:
I honestly think the 20th Anniversary Edition of Vampire was initially meant to be a genuine one-off as a way to celebrate the franchise and the few who still held on and probably because CCP Studios wanted to distract people from how badly the WoD MMO's development was going.

It really was meant to be a metaplot-neutral compendium where any of the more iconic metaplot stuff would be confined to sidebars and stated to be optional and the game would be tweaked in a way that could support any playstyle and go along with any of the "styles" that each of the original three editions had.

V20 sold like gangbusters and you had a few supplements released like Hunters Hunted Part II, Children of the Revolution, and some adventure modules like Dust to Dust (which was originally a cancelled module from 1st Edition) and that's when White Wolf was spun into Onyx Path.

Werewolf 20th got greenlit and it was similarly neutral in most of its approach since they were still riding high off the success of V20 but were still very small and didn't want to rock the boat.

Then Mage 20th came out and that's when everything goes off the rails since Phil Brucato was given a blank check and no real oversight or anyone to rein him in. Also, this game came out around 2015 or so, just as the "Current Year" mindset was really picking up steam. They also were announcing a "Fourth Edition" for 2016 that would recognize the Revised metaplot in full sans the Gehenna book and that V20 wasn't a "real" edition, just a compilation. Apparently, Onyx Path hadn't learned their lessons and all the old White Wolf guys who were brought in to work on Vampire and Werewolf 20th were gone by then.

Shortly afterwards, Paradox Interactive buys out White Wolf and gives the license for New WoD to Onyx Path. They greenlight V5 and the rest is history. I'm curious to know how much of the planed "Fourth Edition" made its way into V5.
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I'm working off of memory, but I remember nu-Wolf effectively cut OPP out of the loop on Vampire, which is why there was that odd period in 2015 where OPP announced a Fourth Edition at GenCon, Paradox did the buyout from CCP for cash, announced they were restarting White Wolf as a company, and because Swedes are dumb, said it would be the Fifth Edition.

Onyx Path was born because CCP fired most of White Wolf's writers after EVE Online shit the bed in 2011 and cash got tight. Rich Thomas felt which way the wind was blowing and formed OPP to keep publishing books instead of waiting for CCP to turn White Wolf into a stagnant IP mill (ironically, Paradox did that anyway).
 
Has this become the de facto WoD thread? Probably should be. Been digging through some of the stuff.

I never was a big fan of Werewolf because the players were just... too much. But I do kinda feel for it as seeing as the Current Year folks are into it, I'm seeing things like purges of any Nazi references to the Get of Fenris, the tribal totem of the women-only Black Furies is accepting troons, and that there are long conversations on how to change sex in the game, despite, y'know, being able to regenerate your balls unless cut off by enchanted silver, or whatever.
 
Titan Lithos said:
and that there are long conversations on how to change sex in the game, despite, y'know, being able to regenerate your balls unless cut off by enchanted silver, or whatever.
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What's with WOD and self-castration?
Titan Lithos said:
Has this become the de facto WoD thread? Probably should be. Been digging through some of the stuff.
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Yeah, I think it's beginning to evolve into a general WOD thread. It's not too off-topic to cover the brand as a hole anyway since all of their games inter-mingle. If it becomes an issue, I'm assuming a mod will just tell us to make a new thread.
 
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