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gatz posted:Goddamn, that really makes me want to run through Santa Monica with a Malkavian once we move on to another hub. Actually, that sounds like a good idea for a couple updates between hubs... Also, if/when you do a Malk run, listen to the TV and radio every time you cause an update to either. Some interesting stuff to be heard. Also, I should update my earlier comment on the humanity loss. It is broken in the base game (Which is why I mentioned it, since my first few runs were in a functional unpatched game) and you get the humanity loss either way that way, but it gets fixed with patching either plus or not. I was in a hurry when I typed my previous one and just ran with the patch version I used as a shorthand to refer to the whole patch. I am sorry. Also: Make peace.
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Jan 8, 2014 09:31
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Traxus IV posted:Stuff I thought it was pretty clear. Theresa was molested by her father and "created" Jeanette as a coping mechanism. The way I interpreted it,"they" were shrinks of some kind.
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Jan 8, 2014 09:35
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I'd love to be contrarian, but multiple personalities make a person twice as interesting (or more). Make peace.
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Jan 8, 2014 09:41
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PEACE I love this part of the game. quote:I’m curious, does anyone have any ideas where the idea for the Malkavians came from? Most of the other clans seem to be based on existing vampire archetypes – Ventrue are Dracula-style aristocrats, Toreador are Lestat-style hedonists, Gangrel are animalistic killers, Nosferatu are… Nosferatu. But I can’t think of any precedent for ‘batshit insane’ as a vampire archetype, and it seems like such a strange concept for White Wolf to pull out of nowhere. I think they took the concept of Renfield from Dracula and make it into a vampire clan. But there are the OCD vampire weaknesses from legend. They could have expanded on that, too.
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Jan 8, 2014 10:16
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OAquinas posted:The sound files for her are labeled that, so it was a deliberate act by Troika. There's a lot of Easter eggs in the sound files, some of which never come up in the game. Cut content? A hidden secret? A happy coincidence? For example, it never comes up in the game, but a minor character we've yet to meet, the taxi driver, gets named in the sound files.
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Jan 8, 2014 10:53
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Elfface posted:For example, it never comes up in the game, but a minor character we've yet to meet, the taxi driver, gets named in the sound files. Of course, that doesn't stop a lot of people calling bullshit on Troika regarding who they say that guy might be. I find that that guy and those sewers are the only two major points where you can just vaguely describe the point in that manner and most will go "oh right, that guy/those sewers". The latter more than the former, though.
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Jan 8, 2014 11:02
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Vicissitude posted:
Also white wolf had a hardon for crazy mystics and put them in every game line in some fashion for a while.
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Jan 8, 2014 13:05
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MajesticMonkey posted:I thought it was pretty clear. Theresa was molested by her father and "created" Jeanette as a coping mechanism. That's one interpretation. Another is that they were both alive and grew up as kids together, explaining the painting, and when one got turned, the other died and because she snapped she 'saved' her sister by creating the multiple personality. Yet another is that we've got a bunch of supernaturals and they are literally two distinct people that were pushed into the same vampire body by _____.
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Jan 8, 2014 13:33
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Make Peace  So, thinking on this, Theresa/Jeanette are remarkably lucid for a Malkavian(?), and are you actually making the Malkavian better? I thought being permanently crazy was their deal, can you just stabilize one like that? Is there going to be some threshold for her bloodline that goes "Welp, looks like she's happy and stable, so it's 'fish fish fish' time."?
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Jan 8, 2014 13:44
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Amnistar posted:the other died and because she snapped she 'saved' her sister by creating the multiple personality Or Jeanette died during the events we're about to hear about, which drove Therese around the bend before she was embraced - a lot of Malks pick already-insane people for their own insane reasons. Or Jeanette really was Embraced by Therese, with Therese's control freak-ishness and prudishness and Jeanette's nymphomania and mood swings being their brand of Malkavianity, or possibly their tumultuous and codependent relationship was. And then one diablerized the other during a previous argument - diablerie can cause one party to pick up the mannerisms and sometimes be taken over entirely by their victim. Or the entire history of Therese and Jeanette was false memories created out of whole cloth when they were originally embraced into Clan Malkavian. The Saga of Tourette has a lot of gaps and a pair of incredibly unreliable narrators. It's a masterpiece. Rockopolis posted:So, thinking on this, Theresa/Jeanette are remarkably lucid for a Malkavian(?), and are you actually making the Malkavian better? I thought being permanently crazy was their deal, can you just stabilize one like that? Is there going to be some threshold for her bloodline that goes "Welp, looks like she's happy and stable, so it's 'fish fish fish' time."? Malkavians are permanently and incurably crazy, but that doesn't mean they're inherently unstable or constantly gibbering messes climbing the walls. Tourette's got Therese and Jeanette inhabiting the one body, and Therese is a control freak and Jeanette's a nympho. Those are their Malkavian insanities. Even if Jeanette and Therese stop being constantly at one another's throats, they're still crazy, just more functionally so. If memory serves, it is technically possible to cure a Malkavian's brand of crazy, but they immediately pick up a whole new derangement. Their insanity is mystical in nature, not biological or neurochemical. Tehan fucked around with this message at 13:54 on Jan 8, 2014 |
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Jan 8, 2014 13:49
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You can actually avoid the fight with the thugs in the diner, you can talk to them and if you have a proper speech feat you can intimidate them into leaving you alone. Therese just calls the phone afterward as if they attacked you. My favorite way to deal with the cop guarding the art gallery is to use Dominate on him too. After ordering him to unlock the door, you send him to go dancing and the next time you head to the Asylum you will find that he complied with that order too: 
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Jan 8, 2014 14:03
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Amnistar posted:That's one interpretation. Another is that they were both alive and grew up as kids together, explaining the painting, and when one got turned, the other died and because she snapped she 'saved' her sister by creating the multiple personality. I've always assumed that it was more-or-less this. The two were sisters, they were abused by their father, Jeanette died (possibly killed by the father), Therese became a vampire and her Malkavian madness turned out to be dissociative identity disorder manifesting as her dead sister. However I haven't seen the Tourette dialogue, and the Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines wiki suggests that Jeanette never actually existed, so the painting must have been commissioned by Therese after becoming a vampire rather than painted when she was a child. Dr. Abysmal posted:My favorite way to deal with the cop guarding the art gallery is to use Dominate on him too. After ordering him to unlock the door, you send him to go dancing and the next time you head to the Asylum you will find that he complied with that order too: Hahaha, that's excellent. 
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Jan 8, 2014 15:21
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My personal theory for them talks about stuff we haven't heard about in-game yet. So I'm just gonna stick the word in spoiler tags, but if you don't know WoD, you won't know what it is, and if you do it's just one word. Diablerie.
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Jan 8, 2014 15:29
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Elfface posted:My personal theory for them talks about stuff we haven't heard about in-game yet. So I'm just gonna stick the word in spoiler tags, but if you don't know WoD, you won't know what it is, and if you do it's just one word. Diablerie. Well Tehan talked about it about 2 posts up so I think you're safe.
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Jan 8, 2014 15:35
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Yeah, it's already come up quite a bit in the lorechat. And though it hasn't been mentioned in-game at all, it's a general concept that's pretty basic in-universe knowledge for vampires.
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Jan 8, 2014 15:42
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I guess...Theresa/Jeanette seems more with it than ostensibly sane people.  I guess the split personality thing just doesn't phase me, it seems relatively...I don't know, for lack of a better word, 'normal'. I also now wonder about Malkavian whack-a-mole, messing with them until a non-crippling/non-irritating derrangement pops up. Also, for extra  The diablre is recent
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Jan 8, 2014 15:55
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Amnistar posted:That's one interpretation. Another is that they were both alive and grew up as kids together, explaining the painting, and when one got turned, the other died and because she snapped she 'saved' her sister by creating the multiple personality. These theories are unnecessarily complicated. The painting could be commissioned regardless of whether the other sister ever actually existed and I'm inclined to believe that's the case since neither girl in the painting has heterochromia like Tourette does. The "Jeanette as coping mechanism" is the most human, and the most likely answer. Also, re: the Anarchs... It's incredibly unlikely the writers weren't aware of the hypocrisy of the Anarchs. They are vampires at the end of the day and the hypocrisy is the entire point. That will only become more apparent in time. They talk a big game about freedom and all that bullshit but de facto authority manifests itself regardless, and is cheerfully enforced.
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Jan 8, 2014 16:10
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Rockopolis posted:I guess...Theresa/Jeanette seems more with it than ostensibly sane people. Think about how many resources have been poured into this feud between the two personalities. The art gallery is ruined, the pendant would have been dropped into the ocean if the protagonist went along with Jeanette, four hired thugs are dead in the diner in what could easily have ended in a Masquerade breach on their territory, and that's just what's happened since the protagonist entered the picture. They might be able to hold a conversation better than the average drooling lunatic but they're no less insane and potentially self-destructive. And even if the rift between them is healed, they'll still be insane. They spend half their night dressed as LA's sluttiest schoolgirl and hitting on anything with or without a pulse, and the other half as a repressed control freak disgusted at the very concept of sex. The thing about Malkavians is their insanity is not necessarily debilitating. Not every Malk is a gibbering, nonsense-spewing nutjob. For example, the example characters in Clanbook: Malkavian (Revised) are: A bulimic art dealer who sells artwork done by mental patients. An introverted, obsessive-compulsive collector who switches obsessions every few months - insects, oak leaves, quarters, children's shoes and human left hands are the examples given. A manic-depressive composer who is never completely focused on the real world, focusing instead on the music 'within' and trying to express it through his work. An EMT with 'sanguinary animism' - vampire schizophrenia, basically, where they hear voices and receive impulses they believe to be from those they feed from for hours afterwards. A blue-blood mouthpiece with cripplingly low self-esteem and a subconscious death wish. Captain Oblivious posted:These theories are unnecessarily complicated. Discussion > Games > Let's Play! > These theories are unnecessarily complicated - Let's Play Vampire: The Masuerade - Bloodlines!
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Jan 8, 2014 16:22
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Thesaya posted:I never saw the Anarch movement as actual anarchists, just the Vampire equivalent. True anarchism is kind of hard when you have a Sire system built into your very nature. The tricky thing with the Anarchs is that they're a bit more. . . diverse than the Camarilla or the Sabbat. Technically they're supposed to be a part of the Camarilla rather than an independent organisation, but we get examples, like the Anarch Free State, that are completely independent, until the Camarilla came back to bring in some order! The whole Baron system seems pretty common among the Anarchs, but different Anarch groups have different systems for running things and you get the whole gamut from the Lost Boys style biker gangs to the philosophizing iconoclasts that appear to actually have an idea of what they want to achieve. I've read more about the Anarchs than I have actual political anarchist/socialist/communist/libertarian/revolutionary/whateverarian movements which is why I'm curious about hearing from gatz seeing as he seems to know more about the real world in this case. Captain Oblivious posted:It's incredibly unlikely the writers weren't aware of the hypocrisy of the Anarchs. They are vampires at the end of the day and the hypocrisy is the entire point. That will only become more apparent in time. They talk a big game about freedom and all that bullshit but de facto authority manifests itself regardless, and is cheerfully enforced. That also seems quite likely, especially as there is a running theme in V:TM that vampires are not innovators and no longer possess the same creative spark that they may have had as humans, so even the most rabble-rousing rebel is (even unbeknownst to him) really going through the motions and will eventually become so utterly consumed by ennui that he'll lose all interest in the cause, presuming he's not left out to meet the sunrise for being a trouble-maker first!
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Jan 8, 2014 16:24
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I vote for making peace.
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Jan 8, 2014 16:45
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Xarlaxas posted:
More or less it. There'll always be motivation to not want to get poo poo on for all of eternity, but take your average human activist: depending on the cause/progress made after a while almost all of them eventually succumb to cynicism (believe in the cause, but don't believe anything will work) or they get jaded and just don't care anymore or even see it as embarrassing. Now apply that to creatures decades or centuries old who are even more inclined towards a static existence. The desire for a better life is certainly there, but it gets a bit tricky to avoid the ancient leadership tropes that have defined vampiric existence. Inertia is a hell of a thing. Now there are the 'lucky' few who avoid those failings, who can stay focused and motivated towards their cause/goal. Those are the ones who are truly dangerous. Smiling Jack is one of these (though arguably he's just in it more for the stirring poo poo up and not the politics). OAquinas fucked around with this message at 17:08 on Jan 8, 2014 |
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Jan 8, 2014 17:05
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OAquinas posted:More or less it. There'll always be motivation to not want to get poo poo on for all of eternity, but take your average human activist: depending on the cause/progress made after a while almost all of them eventually succumb to cynicism (believe in the cause, but don't believe anything will work) or they get jaded and just don't care anymore or even see it as embarrassing. Now apply that to creatures decades or centuries old who are even more inclined towards a static existence. The desire for a better life is certainly there, but it gets a bit tricky to avoid the ancient leadership tropes that have defined vampiric existence. Inertia is a hell of a thing. Alternatively, think of vampire elders as your grandparents who have trouble grasping the notion that the world today doesn't work like it did in the 1950s, only up that to 1850s. Even if they're politically active, most of them are probably campaigning for something woefully out of date.
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Jan 8, 2014 17:09
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Make peace. Also, if it helps the decision, I think the post-Hub Malk run for dialogs is a great idea and possibly one of the best ways to handle it, as it would allow for us to really pair up revelations and additional cryptic information.
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Jan 8, 2014 18:05
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Make peace with the dark daughters of Janus
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Jan 8, 2014 18:38
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Is "Anarch" an exonym, was it originally an insult that got adopted by the group? It seems like an umbrella term for disimillar groups, basically being "Not Camarilla and not Sabbat". Kind of like "Third world"?
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Jan 8, 2014 18:57
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Anarchs are anyone who isn't part of one of the other major vampire power structures. There's obviously the Camarilla and Sabbat, and then there are the Independent Clans (Giovanni, Ravnos, Assamite, and Setite). The Independents continue to exist as such because they're generally considered more trouble than they're worth to mess with, as each is sort of notorious for some or another sort of serious trouble they can bring down on you.
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Jan 8, 2014 19:27
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Jumping on the Peace bandwagon.Vicissitude posted:I think they took the concept of Renfield from Dracula and make it into a vampire clan. But there are the OCD vampire weaknesses from legend. They could have expanded on that, too. * Old World Tzimisce predate the formation of the Sabbat and do not have the Vicissitude (fleshcrafting) "infection", and instead have the clan disciplines Auspex, Animalism, and Dominate.
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Jan 8, 2014 21:03
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Stroop There It Is posted:Right, I think in addition to White Wolf's boner for insane oracles, it is related to assorted worldwide vampire myths that vampires would have to compulsively count grains of rice or what have you. Renfield could possibly be interpreted as a Malkavian ghoul (although VtM-canon Dracula is an Old World Tzimisce elder*). That's interesting, are there any other literary or historical figures that have been added to or defined in the series canon?
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Jan 8, 2014 21:16
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Stroop There It Is posted:Jumping on the Peace bandwagon. If that's what Old Tzimisce disciplines were, what was their role? New Fleshcrafting tzimisce is easy to understand - I want to make unholy abominations and freaks of nature using my magic - but with that discipline list they seem little more than slightly less moral Ventrue... Did they have a niche or was the reason the fleshcrafting was added because old tzimisce weren't interesting enough?
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Jan 8, 2014 21:50
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double nine posted:If that's what Old Tzimisce disciplines were, what was their role? New Fleshcrafting tzimisce is easy to understand - I want to make unholy abominations and freaks of nature using my magic - but with that discipline list they seem little more than slightly less moral Ventrue... Did they have a niche or was the reason the fleshcrafting was added because old tzimisce weren't interesting enough? Tzimisce were inspired by Dracula and their clan disciplines make sense in that light. Vicissitude only comes about when the young Tzimisce diablarize their founder, at which point his corrupt unlife-force manifests within them as Vicissitude. Indeed, this was basically the Tzimisce founder's plan all along, he was trying to transcend vampirism and had reached the limits of what he could do in his present form so he allowed himself to be consumed and become one with his blood (and eventually in most Gehenna scenarios, everything). It makes sense if you take the Path of Metamorphosis as predating Vicissitude rather than a result of Vicissitude.
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Jan 8, 2014 21:56
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double nine posted:If that's what Old Tzimisce disciplines were, what was their role? New Fleshcrafting tzimisce is easy to understand - I want to make unholy abominations and freaks of nature using my magic - but with that discipline list they seem little more than slightly less moral Ventrue... Did they have a niche or was the reason the fleshcrafting was added because old tzimisce weren't interesting enough? Old clan Tzimisce don't have a "role", per se IIRC. They are what amounts to feudal lords and they live out their existences away from politics, controlling their own plots of land and squabbling with each other over scraps of power in places that haven't been colonized by the other sects. They are basically lords of their own little village with the scary castle not far away and their word is law and that's all they're concerned about. They don't see other vampires much and they have some strangely chivalric rules about hospitality if they should ever cross paths. That's the extent of their involvement I believe. Another interesting thing about the Tzimisce is that the new clan has been forced out of the feudal lord niche because, without Dominate, they can't really intimidate or control people without causing terror with vicissitude and destruction with their golems and turning their villages into masquerade breach central, attracting the inevitable attention of humanity at large. At least, they could in the Dark Ages or when places weren't all that well connected, and isolated villages could be somewhat self-sufficient. In the age of the internet that's much much harder so they've mostly been co-opted in the Sabbat as scholars and leaders.
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Jan 8, 2014 22:16
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Stroop There It Is posted:Right, I think in addition to White Wolf's boner for insane oracles, it is related to assorted worldwide vampire myths that vampires would have to compulsively count grains of rice or what have you. Huh. I always thought that was a joke about Sesame Street, not a real legend.
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Jan 8, 2014 22:41
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Kloro posted:Huh. I always thought that was a joke about Sesame Street, not a real legend. It was part of an episode of X-files, so I think it is based on a real legend.
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Jan 8, 2014 22:51
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Traxus IV posted:That's interesting, are there any other literary or historical figures that have been added to or defined in the series canon? Re: Tzimisce discussion, Old World Tzimisce also rarely had access to Koldunic Sorcery, which is basically the only way to do explicit "magic" as a vampire besides Thaumaturgy. It was based around controlling the classical elements (Earth, Wind, Water, etc.) by dealing with/manipulating/enslaving nature spirits/demons/god knows what. Kloro posted:Huh. I always thought that was a joke about Sesame Street, not a real legend.
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Jan 8, 2014 22:59
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ArchWizard posted:If we hadn't already had the Fishmalk discussion, I'd suggest calling him Random Stark. I was thinking of going with Dev/Null. PS, BloodNet is coming to GOG tomorrow. I'm curious as to what the bonus content will be. Vicissitude posted:I love this part of the game. Me too. That plot twist really blew me away the first time I played Bloodlines. Xarlaxas posted:I've read more about the Anarchs than I have actual political anarchist/socialist/communist/libertarian/revolutionary/whateverarian movements which is why I'm curious about hearing from gatz seeing as he seems to know more about the real world in this case. I have the revised guide to the anarchs pdf which I'll try to read to completion before I do whatever it is I have planned for the anarchs. That update won't come until we've met the anarchs in their downtown LA bar.
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Jan 9, 2014 00:48
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Stroop There It Is posted:Rasputin was... something (conflicting information about him). Rasputin was a bit of a running joke in the early days. The Brujah, Malkavian, Nosferatu, Setites and Ventrue all claimed him as a member, ghoul or ally at one point or another, as did the Mages of the Cult of Ecstasy and the Shadow Lords werewolf tribe. It's also said that he was a Wraith Puppeteer or a Hunter Archon or Justicar. He was going to be used further, but Revised turned away from using actual historical figures, so his story never got told outside of fan interviews. The truth (or at least the truth that was intended during 1st edition, so up to you how much that's worth) is he was an Alchemist that worked his way into a position of influence in pre-Revolution Russia, and was ghouled by the Ventrue so he'd use his influence for them. He started experimenting with vampire blood using alchemy and found a way to cure the Tsar's hemophiliac son, and eventually found a way to break blood bonds and 'distill' blood, effectively lowering it's generation. He broke free of the Ventrue and drank an ultimate concoction he called 'the blood of Caine' - blood that had been effectively lowered to 1st generation. It made him an incredibly powerful vampire with control over all Disciplines, but it also meant he started getting tormented by visions of Gehenna. He got killed during the Revolution but it didn't stick, and he ended up a pretty major mover and shaker during the Gehenna scenarios, eventually being killed and delaying Gehenna as the universe tries to figure out if it was actually Caine that died or not.
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Jan 9, 2014 02:29
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gatz posted:
For some reason, it really struck me that you are forced to lie here; considering how important politics is to this game. Was there a dialogue option here you skipped over?
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Jan 9, 2014 02:35
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I didn't do it! I swear!
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Chuu posted:For some reason, it really struck me that you are forced to lie here; considering how important politics is to this game. Was there a dialogue option here you skipped over? No, that was the only option available. Pickled Tink posted:Also, I should update my earlier comment on the humanity loss. It is broken in the base game (Which is why I mentioned it, since my first few runs were in a functional unpatched game) and you get the humanity loss either way that way, but it gets fixed with patching either plus or not. I was in a hurry when I typed my previous one and just ran with the patch version I used as a shorthand to refer to the whole patch. I am sorry. I accidentally forgot to reply to this post. It's been edited into the previous update.
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Jan 9, 2014 02:44
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gatz posted:Me too. That plot twist really blew me away the first time I played Bloodlines. I didn't get it the first time through, and still thought they were separate people arguing, until the explicit Malk reference came in and someone pointed this poo poo out to me outside the game. Before you think this is a one-off and I'm the stupidest person ever, I ended up buying the game for a friend, and he thought the exact same thing. Maybe it's the camera work, maybe we're BOTH dunces. I dunno.
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Jan 9, 2014 04:12
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OAquinas posted:Now there are the 'lucky' few who avoid those failings, who can stay focused and motivated towards their cause/goal. Those are the ones who are truly dangerous. The Anarch book talks about this. There's no real difference between the elder with their well fortified haven and the elder that moves around constantly looking to stir up trouble. You get old enough, you're not going to change period. You're locked in to your habits.
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Jan 9, 2014 05:28
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