Vampire: Bloodlines

In regards to the prior discussion, I think Bloodlines 1 depicted having a Ghoul perfectly. Vampire The Masquerade is called a game of Personal Horror for a reason, you're playing as a being whose entire existence is optimized to incentivize horrible behavior. If you want to stay a somewhat good person then you have to work for it.

Ghouling is merely one aspect of that monstrous nature, they're chemically enslaved servitors that Vampires create purely to benefit themselves. I would say any depiction that isn't at least somewhat fucked up misses the point.

VTM Vampires are Rape/Organized Crime/Addiction metaphors for a reason, and that should reflect in their Ghouls.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on May 10th 2020 at 11:34:52 AM

Pisha's a cannibal which is you know bad and all but I pretty much immediately thought "CANNIBALISM SEEMS SO ATTRACTIVE WHEN A CANNIBAL SOUNDS LIKE MARY-ELIZABETH MCGLYNN"

Honetsly I want more Gangrel and Caitiff representation as theyre sonme of my faves who rarely get love.

I mean, when you think about it, is there really such a difference between eating flesh and drinking blood?

I always found it very weird you can be like "you eat flesh? GROSS!" to Pisha. Either the Fledgling is a super hypocrite or it's more that since vampires can't really ingest anything besides blood the thought of eating flesh is nauseating just like eating anything else is nauseating.

Pisha was great, I'd definitely love if she turned out to be the returning Bloodlines character.

Less plausibly, it would be fun to play as a Nagaraja. Flesh-eating vampire necromancers? Yes, please!

Blood is more sustainable, you can drink a random person without killing them and risking discovery. But with flesh-eating you need to kill, which risks drawing attention. So practically there is a fairly large difference.

On one hand, yes it's not logically consistent but reflexive feelings like disgust are under no obligation to be logically consistent.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on May 10th 2020 at 11:44:28 AM

My characters never had issue with Pisha, but as I said, I exclusively play low humanity.

Except once, on a Tremere playthrough, which I kept 10 humanity all the way through for the irony of a blood wizard capable of making people explode being a complete saint.

I pretty much always play evil characters and side with evil groups. I think it's the most interesting way to RP since it forces you to think unconventionally.

But some people wanna play superhero with fangs as they're called and that's great, too. To them their Vampire is a good guy or girl fighting the corrupt system or something.

I just hope Bloodlines 2 gives us lots of opportunities for both. That is the mark of a great RPG.

I usually play heroes, myself. Hell, my current tabletop pc is a humanity 8 Caitiff with a pretty strong sense of justice and fighting for the oppressed. I just dont see the appeal in being evil. But more power to ya.

To me the fun of it is knowing theyre probably doomed to fail but trying anyhow to beat the odds.

Edited by Midgetsnowman on May 10th 2020 at 12:03:34 PM

If I could play the tabletop, an idea that came to me is to play a vigilante Brujah who keeps peace in his neighbourhood by hunting down all the criminal and corrupt cops that plague the place.

You know, like a more hardcore version of MCU Luke Cage.

Yeah, hell, in V5 theres a whole coterie type for that. Where their main purpose is keeping a certain neighborhood relatively safe and well-maintained.

Well that's like the core theme of the entire Old World of Darkness. It's as grimdrk as 40K but you fight on anyway. When I first got into the franchise somebody explained Werewolf as "you know you will fail and die and the best thing you can hope for is a glorious death fighting the Wyrm and its agents."

Vampires can't stop the Antediluvians, Werewolves can't stop the Wyrm. The Ascension War is lost and pretty much everyone is unhappy with the result. There is no real hope for a happy ending.

But you struggle on because it's better to go out fighting than to give in, to meekly accept the end or to help that end along.

Honestly I like the idea though that all isnt lost. The road is dark, and a lot of people will fall, but its possible to save the world, or at least make it better. which is another theme the world of darkness does well, I feel.

You could just always ignore that bit of lore, I mean, isn't the the White Wolf stance on the matter of canon? "Just disregard what you don't like"?

yeah, pretty much. I mean, I feel like its more an "end of campaign" goal when you get to it, but a lot of the endings back when we had the time of judgement books did float the posdsibility the P Cs could indeed save the day. Now, granted, most of those endings still were likely to mean a lot of bodies and heartbreak on the way, but there were time of Judgement storties where the Antediluvians died off (Wormwood), or the Garou actually beat the Wyrm, or Mages caused mass Ascension, or Changelings brought glamour back to the world, or Orpheus and the Wraiths managed to stop Grandmother

Currently, yes. M20 keeps saying 'this happened or maybe it didn't or maybe it didn't happen the way we said it happened. You decide."

But most players I know basically do what Bloodlines did which is hint at the wider "metaplot" while keeping things fairly localized. Small time vampires with small time problems but with the looming darkness overhead.

Because that's important. Vampire Society is integral to VTM's atmosphere. Never forget the elders are all powerful and alien and have a vested interest in keeping the vast majority of Kindred down and embroiled in petty, worthless scheming.

Speaking of Changeling, I actually created a character for that with a former friend of mine that I was actually kinda proud of: he's this Vietnam veteran who was kidnapped by the Fae durimg the war and, after getting himself freed, he became obsessively dedicated to killing them all despite knowing it will all be for naught at the end.

Never got the chance to actually play with him, though.

As someone who’s not familiar with the lore or the setting, is there a good clan to pick for role playing a Bad Powers, Good People character? Like I want my dude to have become a vampire unwillingly, but he wants to help what people he can while stuck in the sucky situation of undeath.

I'd say the Nosferatu, them being the woobies and token good characters of the setting.

Heh,I've always wanted to a do a Nos playthrough but everyone freaking out at you probably gets tiresome

In truth, they're all pretty suited. Just by being a vampire, you're a stronger, more agile person except with a constant urge to hunt and kill and so on. Not to mention both your life and your powers are sustained by feeding on people's blood. Bear in mind that people do not, generally speaking, give out blood freely to strangers.

As far as strictly the in-game powers go, Brujah is probably the most down-to-earth: they simply get jacked up strength and speed. A lot of them are presented as kind of thuggish, but their in-game powers don't seem particularly dark by comparison.

Tremere, meanwhile, will be delving into dark, forbidden magics that make people literally vomit up blood. Or explode. Ventrue, Toreador and Malkavian, meanwhile, will all be engaging in different kinds of mind-fuckery, whether that be outright taking control of minds, supernaturally attracting and disorientating people, or just cracking into people's heads and driving them to madness.

Pick your poison, really.

Tremere are the Clan even other Vampires shit on for being evil and fucked up.

They're jealous, of course. But some could interpret their powers as bad.

Also I think they stole their powers or something?

Well yeah that's a big reason a lot of vampires hate them. They used to be human wizards (albeit pretty much immortal mages) but magic started to go away (it's complicated) so they were afraid of dying and decided to become vampires. This necessitated capturing and torturing vampires from the Clan Tzimisce and then they did a ritual and the big names in House Tremere became vampires through magic instead of being sired.

Then they went and ate an ancient vampire. Some legends say that was a really good and kind vampire they ate which makes it worse since nobody would care if they just devoured some jerk.

They also created these monsters called Gargoyles which are Tzimisce and I think otehr bits of vampires tortured and magically blended into a new being to be a slave to the Tremere.

They'e good folks. Don't get along with the Tzimisce too welll even though the two are quite a lot alike.

Edited by Nikkolas on May 10th 2020 at 4:31:40 AM

And the Gargoyles are actually rather pleasant. Never played Tremere, mained a Toreador because I always try to go for Charm Heroes. Pistol whipping means I've failed.

As for the clans, well - the devs have made it clear they want to add more as DLC as time goes on - which means rewriting core elements and dialogue to reflect the new changes. So the bunch we have at the start are just the "core" lot. So we could see some minor clans or offshots turn up too.

What I find amusing is how every Vampire does a LUNGE BITE - like proper tilts their head back and slams it into the neck. Even the ones in the clubs. No subtlety there!

May try a Tremere though AND a replay of Bloodlines as one as I never quite realised how OP their "Kill everything" spells could get. I always forget to use the powers (Ironic....)

AS for Heather, yeah... First playthrough she got killed. Next one sent her away. There's apparently a mode that says you can tell her to stay in the apartment or something so the Sabbat don't get her, but that feels a bit "have your cake and eat it" - and shows there's no bad consequence to your treatment of her.

But if the sequel gives us the option... which was why a VTM game in the vein of Ev E where you can grow in power could have been quite interesting - move the experience beyond combat and minor quests and end up playing as an actual Prince?! Yeah that could've been interesting.

But I'll be happy with this.

Technically it will be FLC, post-release Clans have been confirmed to all be free.