Vampire: Bloodlines

" Quality tends to be valued more than quantity among Kindred."

Kinda, if you have obvious sickness in the blood then yeah it carry out to the vampire(they can get drunk that away), and a nazi venture who only feed of jeweish people is going to be happy as hell, the tzimice sourcebook pretty much said some vampires fed from the camps.

"Why? They already rule them from behind, and past experience has shown that humans eventually rebel and cause trouble when they know what's going on. Also the Third Reich is primary ruled by humans, isn't it?

Vamprism ruling mankind is really more posturing(because dear god world of darkness have a lot of posturing), the can influence but is mankind is just damn big they cant(specially when hunter around), if vampire have jump to one nation to prosper it wont be hard to see them in nazis ranks, vampires are parasitaric by nature.

"I fail to see how werewolves siding with nazi would automatically mean vampires would too."

Because many vampire share the same outlook of "we are predator and you prey" and if werewolf who have a holy mission can get so low, vampire sure the hell can.

"... pretty sure Jewish had nothing to do with the curse. "

Since when silly things like logic have stop people to wage war? it didnt for germany, there is a vast abysst of what we know about cain and what vampire know about ether, for many with the rise of naxis they can just join 2 and 2, it can be also said as comentary that no, even supernatural didnt escape those stupid arguments.

"Non-rational nor pragmatic vampires tend to either be Sabbat or short-lived because their peers kill them when they become troublesome.

But when you provke the second war to end all wars suddenly a lot of people can said "hey, we go the chance now!"

Anyway, any change bloodline can let you play any of the minor clan like the Kysad? or just the big 13?

Vampires stay in the shadows, because if they dont, then consensus reality will very rapidly include overt supernatural action, and then the mages are free to just.. summon fire elementals to eat them alive. Also, being the overt masters of the world would make them really, really easy for werewolf packs to find.

I usually explain it like this:

"The older a vampire, the more powerful a vampire is, but they are also lower humanity and that means that they're almost all complete corpses during the day. Barring Methuselahs who can control nations via telepathy while comatose, most Elders can be easily destroyed by a human being tossing them in the sun as they won't react to having smiley faces drawn on their corpse."

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jul 2nd 2019 at 2:54:19 AM

and a nazi venture who only feed of jeweish people is going to be happy as hell

I don't know for sure how the Ventrue Clan weakness works in Masquerade, so I'll just trust you on that one.

if vampire have jump to one nation to prosper it wont be hard to see them in nazis ranks, vampires are parasitaric by nature.

Yeah, but that's kinda my point: I don't see how the Third Reich would help them prosper. To me it just seems like it'd cause them more problem than benefits.

Because many vampire share the same outlook of "we are predator and you prey" and if werewolf who have a holy mission can get so low, vampire sure the hell can.

I don't see the connexion between being predatory and the Third Reich.

Since when silly things like logic have stop people to wage war? it didnt for germany, there is a vast abysst of what we know about cain and what vampire know about ether, for many with the rise of naxis they can just join 2 and 2, it can be also said as comentary that no, even supernatural didnt escape those stupid arguments.

There usually is some kind of logic in these people's argument. Stupid fake logic that makes no sense once you take time to think about it and is based on misinformation, but there is some bad reasoning behind it. I just don't see what would make people think that Jewish are somehow responsible for the Curse. To me, saying "their motive doesn't need to make sense" is dangerously close to lazy writing.

Personally I admit that in general I am not found of the idea of vampires (or anyone else for that matter) being behind every single historical event. Maybe have them having been involved in it every now and then, influenced things, but shaped the event themselves? Meh. Too much messing up with History to my tastes.

Edited by Theokal3 on Jul 2nd 2019 at 2:36:28 PM

Mixing splats is never a good idea. If Mage Metaphysics is right then Vampire metaphysics is wrong and that just devalues VTM's themes.

Not to mention that it's hard to believe that the Camarilla rules the world when the Technocracy exists with their legions of clones and orbit kill sats.

A better explanation is that they'll be put down by normal humans if humanity ever becomes aware of them.

You can do a World of Darkness but you need to dial back everyone's power level.

I do think it was a good idea to have the Avatar Storm wipe out 90% of the Traditions and Technocracy's power levels, though.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jul 2nd 2019 at 7:20:15 AM

This is why I personally prefer Chronicles of Darkness for tabletop games. They do a much better job at making the world-building fit together and keeping a fair balance in power.^^

speaking of crossover though, you think Bloodlines 2 will have ones with other splats? I know we'll almost certainly have some with Werewolves in the first DLC based on the name...

Sure, I don't think it's impossible or intrinsically bad.

Just that if we're answering major metaplot questions of one splat with the metaphysics of another it isn't good, Vampires shouldn't have to care about Consensus and Mages shouldn't have to be concerned about whether Caine or the Antediluvians exists or not.

When we're talking about metaplot it's best to just segregate the splats into different verses.

I don't mind crossovers, and the devs did say that it's World of Darkness instead of just Vampire. So we'll likely get some, which is cool.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Jul 2nd 2019 at 8:26:29 AM

Not the biggest news, but still, it does make me curious:

IGN: Bloodlines 2's Tabletop Origins Reveals What Makes the Vampire RPG Unique

“The original Bloodlines tried really hard to be a 1:1 port of Vampire: The Masquerade and its tabletop format into the digital gaming format,” Jason explains. “Some things worked great. The clans, the lore, the idea that you are part of the hidden world... Feeding and the masquerade work pretty well, but some things didn't work so well. I think that it's fair to say that the blood meter didn't really make you feel so much like a vampire as it did a creature of the night with a gas tank filled with blood strapped to your back…. So in the tabletop V5, we took out the blood pool. Instead, we measure hunger.”

[...] “We don't have dice in our game, obviously, because it's an electronic thing,” explains Rachel Leiker. “But the hunger system that we have in Bloodlines 2 is something that you constantly have to be aware of. Any time you feed, any time you take damage, anytime you use an ability, your hunger meter will oscillate up and down. It's something that you just have to constantly be aware of and that is something that we took direct inspiration from the tabletop version because it is something that you are doing in pretty much all of your dice rolls. It's something that you have to maintain. It's something that you have to be constantly aware of, lest you fall to the beast.”

[...] “In the video game, Resonance is a cornerstone of play,” Carl explains. “It is always with the vampire. It's necessary to account for Resonance whenever the vampire feeds, and it's a little bit easier to discover what the particular Resonances are and where to find them. In the tabletop version, there's a little bit more legwork and investigation that goes into finding the Resonances of mortals and figuring out how they fit into the play.”

Technically they ran a big one-and-three-quarter hour V5 campaign rather than a straight interview, though I haven't sat down and watched it. Anyway, that is something I'd agree with: that the way the blood meter worked did make it more of a gas tank than much of a hunger. I'd use it in combat, I'd find people to feed on, and then maybe I'd refill it between missions if need be. I remember some mods for the first game do go ahead and make it so the blood meter's constantly ticking down, so as to encourage you to hunt a bit more, stay on top of it. Still, I don't know how well the new system will work in practice — we'll have to see, I suppose. Handled poorly, I could imagine it being frustrating.

They also talk about Resonance a bit. Apparently they and White Wolf co-operated on bringing it together; it makes me wonder about when and where V5 was influenced by the Bloodlines 2 as they were both developed. Right now I don't have much to comment on the Resonance system, though.

Since the thread's been dormant a while, some people might have missed but be interested in this Dev Diary. It just talks a bit about the 'pillars' behind the game's design. It is good that they're not feeling completely beholden to copying Bloodlines, and I did like the bits of playing between factions and betraying/lying to them we saw in the quest they showed off.

Edited by Lavaeolus on Aug 10th 2019 at 10:45:27 AM

Yeah, done poorly, a hunger system can completely take over gameplay. To the point the player spends their time managing that meter and gameplay becomes incidental.

Hopefully they get that balance right.

Hopefully. I personally didn't mind the Blood meter, as it was running low rather fast, so I apprehend the Hunger system a little. Still will give it a change though.

I feel the need to point out that replacing the blood pool with hunger is a tabletop feature, as shown in the gameplay videos Bloodlines 2 has the blood pool like the original.

The blood pool's still there, but as quoted Bloodlines 2 is going to have some feature where 'any time you feed, any time you take damage, anytime you use an ability, your hunger meter will oscillate up and down'. Inspired by the tabletop, some sort of hunger-like system is making its way in, though I'm not clear on the specifics of the mechanics.

Fair enough.

That's rather interesting, hopefully, they manage to execute it in an interesting manner.

about crossing spat, the problem I think was that whitw wolf didnt expect that to happen and it only did later so each system was build in a self contain world on their own.

... I actually don't mind the idea. I loved Bloodlines 1, but it did feel like Frenzy was REALLY easy to avoid. Like, seriously, I managed to do some playthrough where I never frenzied once. And the ones where I did, it rarely happened more than once or two, usually in situations of combat. Would be nice if it was more of a real danger.

Edited by Theokal3 on Aug 10th 2019 at 12:14:52 PM

Hmm, very good point.

If that makes Frenzy actually something you have to be concerned about, especially if you're a low humanity Kindred, then it would greatly improve verisimilitude and really help with encouraging players to behave like Vampires.

The only time I've frenzied was when I deliberately went out of my way to start a rampage in the middle of... Chinatown, I think? Just to see what happened.

Feels like something that could easily turn into a Scrappy Mechanic, though.

The only time I frenzied was when I was doing a low humanity run in Chinatown and the thug threatened me after I planted the bad luck doll in his locker.

Again, the Frenzy mechanic was so easy to avoid I actually didn't even realized it existed for a while.

Admittedly that was because I always play at high humanity (I don't enjoy being a bad guy), but still.

Yeah, it was virtually irrelevant.

Which is... not good considering how central the Beast is to Vampire The Masquerade.

I'm interested that the devs seem intent on rectifying that flaw.

I always do low humanity runs and I don't remember Frenzy ever being a concern.

As I've said, I literally had to trigger it just to see what happens.

It can trigger if you have very low blood but considering how easy it is to get blood that doesn't really mean much...

Yeah, low blood and aggravated damaged will see a fair few frenzies.

Heads up, the game's release is being delayed from the initially planned Q1 2020 date. The plan is still for a release sometime in 2020, but there's no specific date beyond that given. You can read the developers' statement here.

Since I'm already bumping the thread, I found the latest Dev Diary an interesting read. It talks a bit about environmental design, about them trying to make Seattle always 'drearily wet and misty' and them figuring out what a new vampire's living space would look like. The game apparently takes place during Christmas, incidentally. Hoping the game's tingled with festive spirit!

The bigger news since this thread was last active, though, is that they revealed the factions.