Man, they'd hate the way I played Brujah. Total Anarcho-Capitalist all the way down with absolutely no human sympathy or empathy to get in the way of "top-down efficiency" and "synergistic solutions to our current challenges". He was an Anarch, too. I had a ST literally tell me I was doing Brujah wrong because he wasn't some neolib communist. I wasn't long for that group.
What's a ST, and what caused you to get kicked from said group? Was it some anti-leftwing action, or a gradual process where the players hated your character more and more?
ST means Storyteller. That's Vampire/Mage/Werewolf-speak for Game Master/Dungeon Master.
Ironic.
Yeah, that was the long and short of it. I stuck around for a bit, but while the other players were okay it was obvious the ST was trying to get me killed. We finally had it out (without making a scene) and he basically said if I wasn't going to play "right" then I could find another group. So I did, new ST was cool with a Brujah whose unlife goal was to out-Ventrue the Ventrue and previous game collapsed because after the easy target was gone he started nitpicking the other player's characters.
Story teller, WOD's equivalent to a Dungeon and Dragons dungeon master.
By the way, that ST had no clue how Brujah are supposed to be. There's nothing saying that they have to be progressive or adopt any specific political position. What they need to be is rebellious and enthusiastic. They're literally the Punk Clan, as described in all but name way back in 1st edition. Brujah adopt a cause and passionately attempt to change the world, not necessarily for the better. Whether they're fighting for equality, or to fuck the Ventrue over for their own benefit, or even just to accelerate the downfall of society, so long as they're pissing someone off and unwilling to back down, they're perfectly fine as Brujah.
Yes, agreed. To help get the thread back on track, I really wanted this game to be good. But the way things are, it'll just be WoD political spergery in game form. Ah well.
On the bright side, whatever happens to this game is likely to provide this thread with plenty of content. If they go woke, they'll go broke and have woke people complaining that they didn't pander to their specific grievance. If they don't go woke, there will be massive reeeee-ing. If they end up canceling the project, there will be a lot of preorder controversy. It'll be fun either way.
Every braindead ideology potentially has a Brujah believer since their whole thing besides face breaking is philosophy. It's similar to how the Carthians in Requiem can actually vary from full on RETURN TO MONKEY an-prims to A COG IN THE MACHINE fascist neo-feudalism. Both involve reform, but the only commonality is "we have more control" tbh.
yeh, but star citizen is offering itself for a community starved of games.
you forgot waste time on twitter instead of developing the game, not only they didn't do a sequel but they also hardly worked on it. if paradox doesn't learn with that...
The biggest issue of this was the fact Bloodlines didn't have a likeable Ventrue character. Every major character had some level of likeability other than LaCroix and Ming Xiao. Strauss was polite and fairly decent to you from day one, but he was Tremere. Smiling Jack was charismatic and the tutorial bro, and Nines reminded everyone of that socialist buddy they had who'd they drink with and discuss philosophy (who also soloed a fucking WEREWOLF). Both were Brujah. Isaac was a dick at first but warmed to you like everyone else in Hollywood. Those were all Toreador. The Voerman Sisters were sympathetic Malkavians, as was Strauss on a very weird level. All the Nosferatus you met were likeable. not counting Imalia, and Gary Golden was fucking awesome. The only Gangrel, Beckett, was massively popular in the tabletop game and from his limited appearences you can see why. The ONLY representative Clan Ventrue had other than the PC was a short, power hungry Hitler youth-looking motherfucker who actively dicked you over at every turn to assuage his own ego while whining about how hard his job was. Granted, you can flip it on its head and point out each character I mentioned had problems, but LaCroix had no redeeming qualities unlike them. Hence, Ventrue are just the "dick" faction in a lot of people's minds.
The only way they could write a sympathetic Ventrue character is if they wrote a plotline about two competing groups of Ventrue, or the Ventrue having to deal with some external threat (like encroaching Werewolves or whatever). That's just the problem with being the assigned leader in any story in which you're not the protagonist. If you're the guy at the top and the player character is under you... unless you're going to die halfway through the story to allow the player character to progress/survive, you're going to need a truckload of charisma to make it.
That's a good point but it's also not necessarily true. There's an easy trick to make a Ventrue sympathetic, and it's to literally have their ideas of nobility and leadership be something they actually believe and strive for rather than something they just pay lip service to as a means to an end. Hell, I'm not even saying they should not have had La Croix in the game. He's a good villain and a great way to show how nasty a Ventrue could get. But that really needed to be counterbalanced with a Ventrue who sees being a leader as more than just bossing everyone around and getting your way more often than not. Hell, a Ventrue like that could easily come across as both likeable and fatherly/motherly (as opposed to the cold courtesy Strauss exemplifies).
You know what you could do to make it happen really easily? Replace Smiling Jack in the tutorial with this new Ventrue, depending on the player character's clan. Make him say "I don't care LaCroix has made you his lackey, I'm not letting a fledgling out in the streets without a clue of his new nature. LaCroix may have deserted his duties as a leader in order to fashion himself a tyrant, but I refuse to. Come with me.".
That's a chef's kiss if I ever saw one. He actually wouldn't have to do much past that point either. Strauss could just pull age on him and dick him over to become the new Prince in the Cammy ending. Actually, until 20th Anniversary fuckery, there was a small group from each clan that had Anarch sympathies IIRC. Now, I'm not saying he should replace Nines or Jack completely, but if he could be supporting them on the DL to try and worm his way into the big chair it'd be very much in character. If the devs really wanted Strauss as the big guy in the Cammy ending, he'd have the perfect reason to get rid of this hypothetical Ventrue.
Could take it up a notch. Instead of Strauss dicking the guy over, the guy rises to power because of Strauss, and Strauss makes it clear to him that that's the case. Because why would Strauss want to bother with the day-to-day running of the sect when he could have the Prince by the short hairs instead? That way the Ventrue don't grumble about not being the leaders, but Tremere are still the ones ultimately calling the shots.
