Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
Best Splat
Vampire
Werewolf
Mage
Changeling
Promethean
Demon
Hunter
Sin Eater
Deviant
Mummy lol
beast?!
Goku
View Results
 
  • Post
  • Reply
Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

Dave Brookshaw posted:

In nWoD/CofD Helios is referenced quite a bit - Helions have as much detail as Lunes do in WtF 1e, for example, and it's canon that He creates the Hisil's gravity by pushing everything away from himself rather than by everything being pulled towards the earth like in some gaia-centric cosmologies. (With extra added effect that everything in the Shadow World is heavier in the daytime!)

This is part of why Luna-as-Authority-Aligned-With-Status Quo is actually kind of an absurd read. Helios is that guy, and is in fact why the Shadow is largely nocturnal. Helios' gravity is specifically produced by his desire to be Alone and his distaste for other beings, and the heaviness and force of Helios' dislike/hatred forces spirits to hide from his gaze and come out under the much wilder Luna, who is considerably less concerned with them - or anyone - not doing things, because while Helios is a force of stasis and unchanging endurance, Luna is literally characterized by change, if cyclical change.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

Spector29 posted:

Speaking of, how come I hear so much about Luna but never anything about the Sun? They have Solar spirits, right? It feels like there's no gameline book that really explores that at all.

Helios (in the nWoD) mainly interacts with other spirits. He's an omnipresent (and oppressive) force in the Shadow, responsible for keeping terrestrial spirits in while Luna, in addition to her weird ambivalent relationship with werewolves, is tasked with keeping extraterrestrial spirits out.

IIRC almost everything we know about him is just from, like, a paragraph or two about the Shadow in the Forsaken 2E book.

e: also he's associated with bull-shifters, who have a fairly complicated and sometimes-hostile relationship with humanity over the whole "Mages learned how to create Omphalos Stones by studying Bull's act of self-sacrifice and then went on a God-murdering spree to get raw materials to make more" thing, which I believe is detailed in Dark Eras: The Sundered World

e2: also it's not a ridiculous read at all, Helios and Luna are literally a matched pair that fulfill complementary functions in regulating the spirit world and maintaining its boundaries. if Helios is that guy it makes it more likely that Luna is as well.

per pg. 181 Helios is supposed to hate werewolves for the same reason Luna resents them, just with less reserve or forgiveness, and a sidebar on pg. 73 emphasizes that Luna, Helios, and Wolf were basically a stable system between the three of them that Wolf's death disrupted.

Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 23:59 on Aug 16, 2023

bewilderment
Nov 22, 2007
man what



As well as in Werewolf, in Awakening 1/5th of mages care about the Shadow to some degree and Helios stuff is fair game for them. Had a reasonably memorable NPC (according to the players, anyway) who had a positive reputation after managing to bind a Helion as a familiar. Somehow managed to get 'the Sunscarred' attached to his shadow name to the point that people would say the full thing unconsciously.

He was also meant to be a living example that being strong and tough is cool but if you're going it alone and adventuring PC-style but don't really have the charisma or unique vision to back it up, then the Silver Ladder isn't actually going to give you cool responsibilities and things to do. Power is nothing without cooperation and vision!

Lord Hypnostache
Nov 6, 2009

OATHBREAKER
I’m here to interrupt the Werewoof chat with a recap from our latest session in the Big Apple. I’ve yet again made the mistake of waiting too long before sitting down and writing this and I’m starting to forget stuff, but future plans were interrupted in this session and I’ve been busy preparing new stuff. As usual, our coterie consists of Augustus the Amish Banu Haqim and Thomas the Triad Tremere.

Previously Thomas had off-handedly mentioned that he occasionally scouts the art & entertainment scene of their domain, in order to help a neighboring Malkavian, the Critic, who is trying to find a mortal with a great talent and understanding of the arts to eventually become the next Critic. So this session started with the coterie having invited the Critic to some event and the players getting to describe that event. We came up with an avantgarde student movie premiere, threw some details about the movie itself, the Critic gave a devastating yet accurate review which changed the opinions of everyone who heard them. While this event didn’t help the Critic in their quest, they did offer the coterie a divination in return. The coterie requested a divination regarding the FBI agents who are hunting them, and I had to scramble to come up with a suitably cryptic revelation. Here’s what I came up with:

“Rats are weaving patterns/The Big Bad Wolf notices the emptiness”

My players then rolled insight to figure it out and got a pretty decent success. I told them that I didn’t want to just straight up reveal what it means, but I’m willing to give a tip. I gave them enough to figure out that Big Bad Wolf refers to Agent Bigby, one of the agents hunting them (yes it’s a dumb pun and/or Fables reference). What the divination actually means, is that Augustus’ habit of feeding exclusively from animals, mostly rats, is having an effect on the local vermin population. Eventually the hunters will notice a pattern of dwindling rat populations coinciding with the coterie’s area of influence.

To bring the scene to a close, the Critic informed that a coterie mate of theirs, Cockroach, wanted to re-negotiate the deal they had. So the coterie meets up with Cockroach to do just that.

Cockroach is a Nosferatu as well as a former FBI agent. She gathers information about the Special Affairs Division and in exchange she is allowed to feed from the unhoused population of the player coterie’s domain. When the deal was negotiated Cockroach had assumed that the Special Affairs Division was just “old Mulders” and conspiracy theorists. Instead these guys are the genuine Second Inquisition. Cockroach is willing to keep spying, but the higher risk demands a higher reward. More specifically the Bedford Avenue subway station. The players wanted to know more about the deal they were offered and a politics roll revealed that traditionally the underground was Clan Nosferatu’s domain, but this tradition is from a time when the underground meant mostly sewers and crypts. Subway stations are in a gray area, the local Nosferatu want them ceded to them and this is one of the many reasons the local clan is not participating in Camarilla activities.

The coterie negotiates so that they share the ownership of the subway station, but since neither of them hunt there in practice it is Cockroach’s territory. In addition, Cockroach is willing to take more risks and gather more information, if the coterie can find somethings for her. First, they need to find her sire. Second, they need to find out who killed her (Cockroach’s abdomen is full of bullet holes, she was already dying before the Embrace). Details of this quest would be given later, since I hadn’t written any yet (in case my players would refuse it). My players have both the power and ritual to learn stuff from vitae, so they will be starting with more information than I had anticipated.

Unrelated to the narrative, during this scene one of my players noted that he doesn’t think that Bedford Avenue station is in their domain. I explained that yeah, it’s kind of far away, but for narrative purposes let’s say it’s the periphery of their domain, I want to keep the borders vague. And after the scene was finished I noticed in my notes that I had pondered the same thing while preparing for this session and that there was a ferry pier right next to the player’s haven that Cockroach should ask for. Well, the mistake had been made, maybe in the future I will remember to clean up my notes before a session.

After all these negotiations it was time to return to Augustus’ quest to contact the local Banu Haqim and convince them to become pacifists. This time the trail led deep into the Bronx and an occupied warehouse, which had been converted into a night cafe and mutual aid. The graffiti and a huge sign with the text “NO CAMS” revealed that this was an Anarch hideout. The local Anarch coterie did have a Banu Haqim fighting for social justice, and despite reservations was willing to listen to the coterie after they sabotaged a nearby building site to prevent gentrification. Unfortunately Augustus’ mic had cut out and we didn’t hear his spiel. When his mic started working again, we didn’t feel like he had to do the same speech again. Also he was just not feeling it, so we just had him do one quick roll to fast forward the scene and end the session.

So unfortunately the session ended on a bit of a down note. Augustus’ player was having serious doubts about his character’s ambition, and felt it was rough to have the same discussion so many times. Part of this is on me, while writing this adventure I didn’t realize that this would be the third session in a row that would end in basically the same debate with only slight differences. Augustus’ ambition is to make the Camarilla adhere to pacifism, so his ambition is antithetical to being a Camarilla vampire and he will see very little success. We’ll see how this develops, but I am frantically writing stuff to give the players something else to do while we figure this out.

juggalo baby coffin
Dec 2, 2007

How would the dog wear goggles and even more than that, who makes the goggles?


that's a bummer when tech problems gently caress with a cool moment. it does sound like a cool storyline though and it's rad you have a group that's like (seemingly based on posts) all pretty invested

Lord Hypnostache
Nov 6, 2009

OATHBREAKER
And here’s another recap to follow the one from last week! I had hastily written a mystery/investigation story and my players were really into it, we had one of our best sessions so far! As usual, our coterie consists of Augustus the Amish Banu Haqim and Thomas the Triad Tremere.

The coterie had been contracted by a neighboring Nosferatu, Cockroach, to find out who was her sire as well as who had killed her and why. Cockroach used to be an FBI agent and before her untimely demise, had been investigating organized human trafficking linked to the Russian mafia. The players first suspect was one Ivan Kuthka who is the Caitiff Primogen and heavily involved in Circulation Inc. and the Russian organized crime. But they had a bunch of details and clues to investigate before jumping to conclusion.

When it comes to Cockroach’s sire, she couldn’t remember anything, but suggested the Herald Thomas Arturo might be worth talking to. The coterie had performed the Blood Walk ritual to learn that Cockroach, real name Felicia Page, was of 10th generation so her sire would be of 9th generation and the sire’s name was Gerard Rafin.

So the first order of business was traveling to the Elysium to consult Thomas Arturo. The Herald was after all responsible for bookkeeping and dealt in information, so he should know something. And Arturo was ready to share what he knew for a trade of information, making the players ponder what sort of scandalous things they knew about other Kindred, and who they were willing to throw under the bus (they mentioned that the racist cop from previous session is keeping contact with his mortal family, a potential Masquerade breach). Then they inquired about the mysterious Gerard Rafin, 9th generation, of Clan Nosferatu, who had presumably been granted the right of off-spring a little over ten years ago (when Cockroach was embraced).

The name was not familiar to Arturo, so he excused himself for a few hours to check records and investigate, while the coterie was encouraged to enjoy the Elysium. The players rarely visit the Elysium, so it was a nice opportunity to chat with some friendly vampires, ask around and learn rumors. I had pre-written a bunch of rumors to handout every time the players visit an Elysium or a similar undead social hub and gave them some juicy gossip, from future plot hooks and world-building to outright lies. The players really enjoyed it and will hopefully visit the Kindred social scene more often. Eventually Herald Arturo returned and apologetically informed that he couldn’t find anything from the previous 30 years that he has been the Herald, leaving the players to wonder if the Cockroach’s embrace had been unlawful. Arturo suggests that the coterie should talk with Calebros, the previous Prince. Calebros probably would know something, since he too is a Nosferatu and it probably happened during his reign. Arturo is willing to set up a meeting, if the players do him a tiny favor and deliver a gift to Primogen Ivan Kuthka the following night. The coterie accepted and very dutifully did not open the large box before the hand-off.

But that wouldn’t happen until later, the coterie had time to investigate another lead. A Federal agent getting shot and disappearing should make the news. So they break into a tiny local library to study old newspapers. It takes a while but they do find what they are looking for. The newspaper has a story about a shootout at the Evergreen Cemetery between federal agents and organized crime, with one agent missing. Now the players know where the crime scene is. The article also has a curious detail. In the photo of the crime scene, they recognize one of the Special Affairs Division agents hunting the coterie, though much younger. The players assume that the Special Affairs Division had been involved with this case, which is not what I was thinking but I might change my plans. I had planned that this investigation had convinced the agent in question to join SAD. We’ll see how this develops and what would be most intriguing.

Eventually it was time to meet with Ivan. The meeting took place in a parking lot near, but very specifically not in, Little Odessa. Ivan was waiting in an ambulance that had been painted black (to remind the players of Ivan’s involvement in human trafficking). Surprisingly, Ivan was not alone, but accompanied by Shejana, who the players had briefly met previously while she was in the middle of a drug bender. This time she was quite composed and dressed up for a night on the town. Shejana was quite surprised that Ivan was associating with cults, since previously Augustus had tried to convert her. Which is not quite accurate, but not really untrue either, and Augustus doesn’t deny it.

The coterie hands over Arturo’s gift and it is revealed to be a PPSh-41 submachine gun. Ivan doesn’t hide that he fought for the Red Army during WW2 and loves the weapons he used during the war. He gushes about the museum piece, and suggests to Shejana that she probably hasn’t seen one since the war… And suddenly the mood turns sour. Ivan knows he just blurted something inappropriate, and Shejana looks on with disappointment, having expected more of him. The players don’t know what is going on. Shejana replies to Ivan that her camp was liberated by the Americans and she left Europe soon after the war, so she didn’t see any Soviet soldiers. The mood is tense and I let the silence hang for several long seconds…

…Before Ivan receives a pager message to interrupt the scene. There is a potential Masquerade breach nearby and he’d like some backup. Shejana excuses herself since it doesn’t concern her (she is an independent vampire) and that she has to go “kiss Yurgi’s ring.” The players accompany Ivan, assuming it would be better to do what a Primogen tells them to do. Thomas is a company man ready to do whatever he believes is required of him, while Augustus is apprehensive and believes his morals are about to be tested yet again. Both expect violence and have very different feelings about it.

Ivan took the players to Coney Island, making sure to avoid Little Odessa. Not that he had any issue with the area, but he doesn’t know about the coterie and wouldn’t want to make any trouble for them. Little Odessa is home to a community of independent Kindred, who will kill any outsiders without hesitation, unless proper rites of respect are performed.

As they arrive in Coney Island, they find the following scene under the pier. A group of thinbloods were trying to make their way to Brighton Beach aka Little Odessa. One of the group had unsuccessfully tried to Embrace their lover, and now there was a corpse. The thinbloods had heard a rumor that if they could get to “the sauna on Brighton Avenue and kiss Yurgi’s ring” they would be allowed to live in peace in the neighborhood. Ivan immediately shuts down their idea, telling them that it is a lie, there is nothing for them in Little Odessa and that they will be killed if they set foot there. The players do pick up that Shejana had also mentioned kissing Yurgi’s ring, so there’s probably some kernel of truth in the thinbloods’ plan.

I let the players take the lead on how this should be handled. Augustus thinks that they should just be allowed to go to Little Odessa, surely they won’t really be killed (Augustus is quite naïve). Thomas is quite the opposite. He wants the thinbloods to show their worth or they will be killed on the spot. One of the thinbloods is an alchemist and is recruited by Ivan. The others are just a bunch of scared and confused fledglings. I let the situation develop until it becomes apparent that Thomas will murder them in cold blood and I, as the GM, felt that I don’t want our story to go there. So Ivan takes control of the situation and tells the thinbloods to get lost, that he won’t be so merciful if he catches them again.

As players, we were all satisfied with this resolution and I gave Thomas a stain. One of our chronicle tenets is “Never kill innocents” and while Thomas didn’t kill anyone, he was ready and willing to. And with that scene done, Ivan considers their task complete, so Arturo considers their task complete and sets up a meeting with the former Prince, Calebros, for the next time.

Twibbit
Mar 7, 2013

Is your refrigerator running?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6b6LGubq6I

The Chinese Room was a bit of a surprise

Soonmot
Dec 19, 2002

Entrapta fucking loves robots




Grimey Drawer
I posted my disappointment in the video game thread, but combat looks like trash. I have no idea what's going on with those arms. I hate first person view already, but seeing this fists just pistoning out from the bottom of the screen was almost as ridiculous as that slide attack. Seeing my gangrel in bloodlines 1 whiff with his protean claws while in third person view is better than what this preview had.

Lurks With Wolves
Jan 14, 2013

At least I don't dance with them, right?

Soonmot posted:

I posted my disappointment in the video game thread, but combat looks like trash. I have no idea what's going on with those arms. I hate first person view already, but seeing this fists just pistoning out from the bottom of the screen was almost as ridiculous as that slide attack. Seeing my gangrel in bloodlines 1 whiff with his protean claws while in third person view is better than what this preview had.

I think my problem is that their approach to making you look unnaturally fast just hits the same neurons in my brain as clips of people doing stupid combos in VR. It feels like it should be cooler than it is.

neaden
Nov 4, 2012

A changer of ways
Yeah everything about this looks thoroughly mediocre. Looks like they threw out the plot from HSL work too with you starting as an elder instead of a thin blood. I'll be surprised if this isn't trash.

Whirling
Feb 23, 2023

I still have no idea why they fired all the previous lead writers, including the guy who was lead on the first game.

Pakxos
Mar 21, 2020
Choosing The Chinese Room for an action game is certainly a choice.

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.
oh it's the people who made the lovely knock-off Amnesia game lol

amazing

neaden
Nov 4, 2012

A changer of ways

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

oh it's the people who made the lovely knock-off Amnesia game lol

amazing

Good? News, they laid off their entire staff in 2017 so no one who worked on that game is still there working on this.

PoontifexMacksimus
Feb 14, 2012

I'm just glad they're emphasising the high octane combat action, like all the fans of the first game were hoping for.

Soonmot
Dec 19, 2002

Entrapta fucking loves robots




Grimey Drawer
I don't mind that because #1 this studio was known for walking simulators, so putting out a combat heavy trailer makes sense to head off the fear that this is just a more complex visual novel. and #2, if your vampire games doesn't have a "sigh and draw your katana" option, you loving failed.

It's just that the combat is bad. loving celerity is bullet time not whatever the gently caress we saw.

Gatto Grigio
Feb 9, 2020

Vampire: A God-Machine for Pigs

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

Gatto Grigio posted:

Vampire: A God-Machine for Pigs

CAPT. Rainbowbeard
Apr 5, 2012

My incredible goodposting transcends time and space but still it cannot transform the xbone into a good console.
Lipstick Apathy
That didn't look terrible. Cartoony? Yes. Terrible? No.

Well Played Mauer
Jun 1, 2003

We'll always have Cabo
Not nearly as bad as the first trailer from a year or two ago, but it’s hard to have even mediocre expectations seeing how snakebit this franchise seems to be.

Saman
Oct 23, 2008

Next, you'll say...
"What a good post!"


Honestly the biggest red flag to me is that its coming out fall 2024 after they basically shuttered hardsuit over not finishing. If that game has any level of polish, idk how the hell they produce a full game in a year unless Paradox like, kept the assets when they took the project back and just handed them over to Chinese Room like 'here, make something with this'.

joylessdivision
Jun 15, 2013



Saman posted:

Honestly the biggest red flag to me is that its coming out fall 2024 after they basically shuttered hardsuit over not finishing. If that game has any level of polish, idk how the hell they produce a full game in a year unless Paradox like, kept the assets when they took the project back and just handed them over to Chinese Room like 'here, make something with this'.

That's exactly what they did. CR even said that themselves

Fuzz
Jun 2, 2003

Avatar brought to you by the TG Sanity fund

Saman posted:

Honestly the biggest red flag to me is that its coming out fall 2024 after they basically shuttered hardsuit over not finishing. If that game has any level of polish, idk how the hell they produce a full game in a year unless Paradox like, kept the assets when they took the project back and just handed them over to Chinese Room like 'here, make something with this'.

A year?

Hardsuit was canned over 2 years ago, TCR has been working on it the entire time.

Saman
Oct 23, 2008

Next, you'll say...
"What a good post!"


Fuzz posted:

A year?

Hardsuit was canned over 2 years ago, TCR has been working on it the entire time.

Goes to show how much I'd followed it after Hardsuit got canned. Also christ, 2 years. I feel like that was like 6 months ago.

Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world
https://twitter.com/earthdistance/status/930845411581054978?s=20

Skios
Oct 1, 2021
Latest World of Darkness news video. It has some stuff on PAX West/Bloodlines 2. About half the video is dedicated to really trying to convince the viewer of the fact that The Chinese Room really aren't the walking simulator studio anymore. Also, mobile card game announced (VTM: Clans of London).

Slig
Mar 30, 2010
Is it just me or does it seem weird that Bloodlines 2 is having you start as an elder when V5 is doing everything in its power to remove elders from the game? I think coming up as a thin blood would have been the more interesting track for carving your own path instead of having one at least partially decided for you.

Free Cog
Feb 27, 2011


Skios posted:

About half the video is dedicated to really trying to convince the viewer of the fact that The Chinese Room really aren't the walking simulator studio anymore.

Considering how the entire company got turned over, even it's founders, that's honestly not wrong. I get the impression it might as well be a brand new company with an old brand name.

As for the Elder stuff, I figure Paradox isn't about to turn down a concept from a studio willing to pinch hit like this, and there's one, maybe two people who are still connected to V5's original direction. Plus with Achilli come and gone, it wouldn't be the first (and probably not the last) time the edition shifts focus. If Bloodlines 2 is a hit, we're pretty much guaranteed an Elder play style in the tabletop game even if it's just a short, free PDF of bonus rules or something.

Skios
Oct 1, 2021
I mean... on some level an awakening elder could work? Like you wake up from torpor and need to relearn a bunch of stuff. Not so much unlocking new abilities as remembering them. It makes more narrative sense than Bloodlines 1, with a fledgling basically reaching Elder levels of power and ability in a matter of days.

Slig
Mar 30, 2010

Skios posted:

It makes more narrative sense than Bloodlines 1, with a fledgling basically reaching Elder levels of power and ability in a matter of days.

You can't deny this kind of fashion sense the ability to gain godlike power in a matter of days

https://imgur.com/a/tb2KLlc

I Am Just a Box
Jul 20, 2011
I belong here. I contain only inanimate objects. Nothing is amiss.

Skios posted:

It makes more narrative sense than Bloodlines 1, with a fledgling basically reaching Elder levels of power and ability in a matter of days.

I always viewed this as only a mildly exaggerated expression of the fact that player characters, unlike NPCs, are living eventful lives that track experience points to spend on things. You learn fast when you're spending your time doing Player Character poo poo while everybody else is running a nightclub or a secret nightclub or a sewer nightclub.



Or maybe you're secretly the first new second generation vampire in thousands of years

Omnicrom
Aug 3, 2007
Snorlax Afficionado


I swear someone did the math and concluded the protagonist of VtM:B1 was probably 8th Generation, but "The PC is the only person doing poo poo and actively working to get stronger" is also a wholly justified approach.

disposablewords
Sep 12, 2021


Omnicrom posted:

I swear someone did the math and concluded the protagonist of VtM:B1 was probably 8th Generation, but "The PC is the only person doing poo poo and actively working to get stronger" is also a wholly justified approach.

If I recall, that idea is based on the size of your blood pool, since you have a bigger one than a normal starting character would have. Which could be the case, or could be because it's a video game and the devs decided a bigger pool allowed you to have more fun before needing to refill. It's a neat supposition but it does have some issues that tend to get patched over with a liberal application of Caine.

a7m2
Jul 9, 2012


Slig posted:

Is it just me or does it seem weird that Bloodlines 2 is having you start as an elder when V5 is doing everything in its power to remove elders from the game?

Books like Chicago By Night has a whole bunch of elders in it so I'm not sure about "everything in its power"

Explodingdice
Jun 28, 2023


Doesn't the character in Bloodlines seem to go up in generation over the course of the game? I recall the prince being able to dominate you early on but not later?

Certainly the character may well have drained vampires to death depending how you fight, but I don't recall a clear diablerie scene to explain the change.

I Am Just a Box
Jul 20, 2011
I belong here. I contain only inanimate objects. Nothing is amiss.

Explodingdice posted:

Doesn't the character in Bloodlines seem to go up in generation over the course of the game? I recall the prince being able to dominate you early on but not later?

I think the assumption that Bloodlines adheres strictly or even somewhat loosely to the mechanics of Vampire the Masquerade is likely to lead astray. Dominate is a power to override people's will that can be resisted by stronger targets. Lacroix tries to dominate you but by the end you've grown too strong.

Fuzz
Jun 2, 2003

Avatar brought to you by the TG Sanity fund

Skios posted:

I mean... on some level an awakening elder could work? Like you wake up from torpor and need to relearn a bunch of stuff. Not so much unlocking new abilities as remembering them. It makes more narrative sense than Bloodlines 1, with a fledgling basically reaching Elder levels of power and ability in a matter of days.

Also provides closure since no matter what ending you pick you get Beckoned at the end.

Explodingdice posted:

Doesn't the character in Bloodlines seem to go up in generation over the course of the game? I recall the prince being able to dominate you early on but not later?

Certainly the character may well have drained vampires to death depending how you fight, but I don't recall a clear diablerie scene to explain the change.

This was explained away as the PC being a tool of an elder, possibly Caine himself, and they were bolstering/manifesting their power through you. There's also an ongoing theory that Mitsoda sparked that the sire who is executed at the start of the game isn't actually your sire and while they did drain you, maybe someone else did the actual embracing and left that "sire" as a patsy.

Fuzz fucked around with this message at 11:51 on Sep 9, 2023

Gatto Grigio
Feb 9, 2020

There was a Bloodlines 1 LP back on the forums LP thread that’s still archived. It tied the whole thing into a narrative that also worked to complete the unfinished parts of the game.

In that story, the narrative justification for the PC’s rise in power was that they were committing a gently caress-ton of diablerie on defeated vampires off-camera.

(Including diablerizing Kuei-jin, which is technically impossible, but no one likes kuei-jin anyway, gently caress em)

Goa Tse-tung
Feb 11, 2008

;3

Yams Fan

Gatto Grigio posted:

There was a Bloodlines 1 LP back on the forums LP thread that’s still archived. It tied the whole thing into a narrative that also worked to complete the unfinished parts of the game.

In that story, the narrative justification for the PC’s rise in power was that they were committing a gently caress-ton of diablerie on defeated vampires off-camera.

(Including diablerizing Kuei-jin, which is technically impossible, but no one likes kuei-jin anyway, gently caress em)

it makes sense, Jack tells you everything to survive but never forbids diablerie, and the first time you get a taste...

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

NikkolasKing
Apr 3, 2010



Gatto Grigio posted:

There was a Bloodlines 1 LP back on the forums LP thread that’s still archived. It tied the whole thing into a narrative that also worked to complete the unfinished parts of the game.

In that story, the narrative justification for the PC’s rise in power was that they were committing a gently caress-ton of diablerie on defeated vampires off-camera.

(Including diablerizing Kuei-jin, which is technically impossible, but no one likes kuei-jin anyway, gently caress em)

I almost sided with Ming Xiao in my first run but I was already committed to Strauss so I guess I dodged that bullet.

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply