Vampire: Bloodlines

I have to restart. I was tinkering with some mods and fucked everything up and reloading a save after a fresh install messed everything up. Oh well.

I think I'm gonna try Tremere this time. Kinda funny to think about because doesn't Andrei's Clan hate Tremere? Are there Tremere in the Sabbat?

The Tremere Histories kinda suck, though.... The altered Infernal History allows you to raise Auspex and Dominate more easily but Thaumaturgy caps out at Bloodform. 2 Disciplines are easier to raise, that seems like a good deal, especially if that video I saw is right and Level 5 Thaumaturgy sucks. On the other hand, I just checked and Level 5 Thaumaturgy is no longer Blood Boil but Cauldron of Blood. Maybe the CE mod made it better?

I should probably just go with Eerie Presence for the easier Mental gains. I'll be wanting to max out Perception, Research and Wits.

There used to be tremere in the sabbat but after Saulot posses the body of one, he goes into a SURPISE MOTHERFUCKER! rampage, killing the entire anti tribu until there is only one.

Do you think Bloodlines 2 will have endings like 1?I'm thinking specifically of bad "you done fucked up" endings. I almost sided with Ming Xiao in my first run and only the fact I had known Strauss longer saved my PC. In my defense, my PC was really dumb and had no social skills so I never found out about the extent of her treachery.

But the point is, whatever their faults, I think La Croix and Ming can be charming in their own way. Chalk it up to the writing and voice-acting to make even shitstains likable. So maybe you can say "you deserved this for your poor decisions" but it still works because it's both adequately foreshadowed and yet well done enough that it's believable a PC might still do it.

But this was all a long time ago now. Game design philosophy has changed a lot. Granted I haven't played as many RPG's as some but the only other game I know of with an ending like this is Deus Ex: Invisible War. I have not personally played it but somebody once complained that a female Courier siding with Caesar's Legion in Fallout New Vegas should get an ending like if you side with the...Templars I think it was in DE 2. I don't agree with that for a few reasons but skipping over plot and just looking at game design, maybe game devs don't want to do that to players anymore. A lot has changed in 10-20 years and giving players what might be perceived as a giant middle finger for an ending could be out of fashion.

But I dunno, I'd like to hear hat you all think. Do you expect bad endings in Bloodlines 2? Do you want them?

It's hard to say. I do think those endings were an important part of the game, they'd be a big loss if not there, but it feels like those types of things are also the first to go when things start getting cut.

I'm confused because the Female Courier siding with Caesar IS a horrifying ending.

Its just not for her.

And I admit, I kind of wish La Croix and Ming Xiao had "good" endings for P Cs.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Nov 8th 2019 at 4:06:35 AM

I'd also like a good ending for siding with the Kuei-jin. I even looked to see if anybody had made a mod for that but apparently not.

The good Kuei-Jin ending is that they kill you quickly instead of throwing you into the sea.

I'd rather they keep the Bad Ending.

The Kuei-jin very clearly hate the Kindred, so siding with them is pure stupidity, and stupidity should be swiftly punished.

That's still an improvement and I'd almost be okay wit that if it was the canon ending for them. At least with La Croix you just get instantly vaporized.

Somebody brought up an interesting point on another forum: Ming Xiao shit talks the Kindred alot but you've been a Kindred less than a week. What do you care? What loyalty or feeling do you have for these people? None. You don't have to identify with or like any of them.

You can even tell Caine that you like the Kuei-jin and their ways. Maybe you felt more comfortable wit them than the Cainites.

Edited by Nikkolas on Nov 8th 2019 at 8:00:05 AM

In the end, it's like siding with Mr. Johnson.

You may like the megacorps but if you do, don't be surprised when you're screwed.

I admittedly am no expert on Shadowrun but the Camarilla seems more like the megacorps of this setting. Although Strauss is fair to you and his ending is pretty cool.

See, it isn't about "loyalty to the kin" or anything of the sort, it's about basic self-preservation: you don't join up with the guys who would tie you to a laundy pole and left you to dry if they got so much as a whiff of opportunity.

Yeah, the reason not to side with Ming Xiao is every scene you meet her is she treats you with incredible disdain or tries to attack you up until the very end.

"La Croix is evil!"

"Haven't you been helping him every step of the way?"

"Well not now!"

Well fuck, I dunno if this is a Clan Quest or Unofficial Patch addition but Tremere can't raise Physical stats beyond 3 Dots so it is impossible to get Lockpicking 10 which means it is impossible to get into the room with the info linking Mandarin and Ming. I was looking forward to finally reading the emails that implicate Ming in the Fu Syndicate but I guess that ain't happening this run.

I've been building up my Hacking skill all game for this moment and...nope. I can't ev en ge t to the comp. Talk about an anticlimax.

That doesn't make sense since TRPG Tremere have no such restrictions on attributes.

I'm assuming it's a balancing thing since Thaumaturgy is so strong but their Clan profile says "The pursuit of arcane knowledge comes before all else, and the reliance upon it has weakened the bloodline. Tremere can raise no Physical Attribute or the Blood Buff discipline above three points."

Edited by Nikkolas on Nov 9th 2019 at 2:11:01 AM

What about using blood buff to get a couple extra points of Dex?

It's hard capped at 3 and will never go above that, even with Blood Buff.

I'll live, I was planning to replay Bloodlines again after this run anyway. Gonna try out another mega mod like Antitribu or The Final Nights.

Speaking of mods, Iam loving my Sabbat Run. Earlier I think I noted hating Malks. But apparently Rosa the Thin Blood doesn't have to be a Malkavian, Thin Bloods can just see the future sometimes. So that's my bad.

More relevantly though, my PC was glad to join the flock of Bishop Hazel Tomes. Hallelujah! The voice-acting and writing in the mod is pretty impressive for main characters. I'm very sad he's locked off into a Sabbat run and that in turn locks off everything else. I would love to see him in future non-Sabbat playthroughs. Oh well, the point is, he's a new favorite character of mine and I retract my dislike for Malkavians.

Edited by Nikkolas on Nov 9th 2019 at 6:41:17 AM

Regarding the Kuei-Jin ending, should we expect them to still be there anyway? I kinda got the impression Kuei-Jin weren't that popular in the Tabletop game.

Kuei-Jin will probably feature in DLC,depending on how well the games sells

There is no sign that the Kuei-Jin will be in Bloodlines 2, which likely fits the lore. I know they had an incursion on the East Coast but I'm not sure if they went as far north as Seattle.

Why not there? :S

I did not expect Kuei-jin to be in Bloodlines 2. They haven't even gotten a Kindred of tee East 20th Anniversary Edition.

Unfortunately it seems like they are throwing the baby out with the bathwater. They recognize how Orientalist and racist some of it was and are just gonna quietly shove the whole great concept and lore under the carpet. Damned shame. I was just talking to people yest er day - Asian posters in fact - about how they find KOTE interesting and fun and still run games to this day. They just use their storyteller rights to exorcise the more cringey racist bits and keep the good.

Which reminds me, I was also asking old time fans about how popular WOD is with ladies. Bloodlines clearly panders to a lot of horny teenage men (although I talked to a lesbian who liked it so that's pretty cool) Nerd circles got a bad rep as boys' clubs thanks to Gamer Gate and Sad Puppies and Comis Gate. But I was informed that Wo D was possibly the most popular tabletop game with women. Women always played D&D or whatever but World of Darkness was the one where entire groups were composed of women and they were seen going out and buying games and books.

Seems like a pretty inclusive franchise and fandom.

Edited by Nikkolas on Nov 10th 2019 at 11:17:09 AM

overall, Wo D has always been of two minds at the same time, and I say this as a longtime player

On the one hand, its a lot of very inclusive, LGBT friendly gamers of all genders and creeds wanting to tell interesting stories collaboratively.

On the other..theres also a nasty streak of other players who love it for getting to play literal neo nazi werewolves or psychotic abcesses of anti-humanity like Sabbat on a path

Edited by Midgetsnowman on Nov 10th 2019 at 5:46:18 AM

While I've never really got into World of Darkness and therefore never played Vampire: The Masquerade (I'm a Chronicles of Darkness fan), I've definitely heard horror stories about some of the campaigns people played.

I recall an internet personality (I think it was Noah Antwiler from The Spoony Experiment?) who said something along the lines of "You want to know what someone's really like, play Vampire: The Masquerade with them."

Edited by dragonfire5000 on Nov 10th 2019 at 10:03:50 AM