Caught in the Machine - Let's Play Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Caught in the Machine - Let's Play Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines

Pickled Tink: Apr 28, 2012; Have you heard about First Dog? It's a very good comic I just love.

Also, wear your bike helmets kids. I copped several blows to the head but my helmet left me totally unscathed.

Finally you should check out First Dog as it's a good comic I like it very much.; Fun Shoe

gatz posted:

I know, but that's really the only interaction we're allowed to have with him.

You can tell him there is no cure, but it makes him very sad. That said, I always take him for every penny he has and send him off to Kill the President.

Also, this thread inspired me to do a complete game run through with firearms (my first ever run in the plus patch, but my fourth with guns). Even the thirty-eight was useful and effective early game assuming you buy the skills for it and use it right.

# ¿ Nov 25, 2013 11:27

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 15:47

Pickled Tink: Apr 28, 2012; Have you heard about First Dog? It's a very good comic I just love.

Also, wear your bike helmets kids. I copped several blows to the head but my helmet left me totally unscathed.

Finally you should check out First Dog as it's a good comic I like it very much.; Fun Shoe

Caustic Soda posted:

In my experience, Celerity is way, way more important for a ranged build than Auspex is. Auspex 2-3 only gets you 1 extra point in ranged, which is pretty negligible, whereas Celerity is useful from the get-go for shooting fools and avoiding melee. Later on, high Celerity also lets you dodge bullets.

The thing Auspex does not get enough credit for is that it primarily boosts your Wits, which directly feeds into your defence stat. Having it running, especially when you have pumped it up, reduces the amount of damage you take considerably.

# ¿ Nov 25, 2013 20:50

Pickled Tink: Apr 28, 2012; Have you heard about First Dog? It's a very good comic I just love.

Also, wear your bike helmets kids. I copped several blows to the head but my helmet left me totally unscathed.

Finally you should check out First Dog as it's a good comic I like it very much.; Fun Shoe

Sinking Ship posted:

Does the patch in the OP work with the steam version of the game ? I sort of really want to play this game after reading this far into the LP.

I got it working when this LP started, but it is a bugger to get working properly since the steam installation instructions are installed as part of the installation. I'll just quote them for you to make it easier:

quote:

On problems with Steam run Steam and game as administrator, then the
unpatched game once, go to offline mode, disable steam community and
auto update, exit Steam and install to \steamapps\common\vampire ...

Following that got it working properly. My first attempted install broke everything and I had to wipe everything and reinstall the game for my second, successful, attempt.

# ¿ Dec 19, 2013 20:52

Pickled Tink: Apr 28, 2012; Have you heard about First Dog? It's a very good comic I just love.

Also, wear your bike helmets kids. I copped several blows to the head but my helmet left me totally unscathed.

Finally you should check out First Dog as it's a good comic I like it very much.; Fun Shoe

I'm kind of torn about posting this since it regards upcoming events, but also events just passed, so I'll spoiler it and we'll see.

Teeny tiny spoiler about upcoming quest/note for gatz:
In the plus patch, there's humanity loss for taking the donation box money. You can bypass it by telling Jeanette that you aren't going to take the money, and she explains what really happens to the money, letting you take it with a clear conscience. This does not affect her happiness with you.

# ¿ Jan 7, 2014 08:34

Pickled Tink: Apr 28, 2012; Have you heard about First Dog? It's a very good comic I just love.

Also, wear your bike helmets kids. I copped several blows to the head but my helmet left me totally unscathed.

Finally you should check out First Dog as it's a good comic I like it very much.; Fun Shoe

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...

A Malk run is the best run, but you should really only do it after beating the game at least once. You get so much extra insight into some characters personality once you have the foundation of knowing the story, and you'll see that with later game NPC's.

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.

# ¿ Jan 8, 2014 09:31

Pickled Tink: Apr 28, 2012; Have you heard about First Dog? It's a very good comic I just love.

Also, wear your bike helmets kids. I copped several blows to the head but my helmet left me totally unscathed.

Finally you should check out First Dog as it's a good comic I like it very much.; Fun Shoe

That garage is a pain in the backside to stealth. You could have used blood buff in the harder areas to boost your sneaking a bit though. Also, slow and steady does it. You really should have been able to pull it off.

I think my favourite run of that place was when I got down there, stole the case, and everything bugged out so neither side killed each other and the top three floors guards didn't despawn. I had to fight may way up four floors of parking garage with my fists and that little handgun :negative:

double nine posted:

edit: that security guard in the apartments is something that the unofficial patch added. Does he ever do anything? He seems like a pointless addition that I really have no clue what his added benefit is.

He does do something. He shoots you if you open that door, which is probably at least part of the reason Gatz went around him.

Oh, a vote!

I vote for keeping Mercurio's secret, and as much as I love sassing Lacroix, it is probably best to suck up to him

# ¿ Feb 10, 2014 14:41

Pickled Tink: Apr 28, 2012; Have you heard about First Dog? It's a very good comic I just love.

Also, wear your bike helmets kids. I copped several blows to the head but my helmet left me totally unscathed.

Finally you should check out First Dog as it's a good comic I like it very much.; Fun Shoe

gatz posted:

Hey man

That guy on the left was right in the way of where I needed to go. I waited for a bit, but he didn't move.

That guy should move eventually (Unless bugged). That said, the guy in the left of your screenshot in the distance never does, and I have never found a way to get past him without stealth killing him, but you still get the bonus exp for this so long as you aren't seen. This in itself suggests a solution to the magically super-aware man...

# ¿ Feb 11, 2014 02:13

Pickled Tink: Apr 28, 2012; Have you heard about First Dog? It's a very good comic I just love.

Also, wear your bike helmets kids. I copped several blows to the head but my helmet left me totally unscathed.

Finally you should check out First Dog as it's a good comic I like it very much.; Fun Shoe

Unless you go left, straight, then left again, in which case you walk to his door without being teleported.

# ¿ Feb 13, 2014 11:13

Pickled Tink: Apr 28, 2012; Have you heard about First Dog? It's a very good comic I just love.

Also, wear your bike helmets kids. I copped several blows to the head but my helmet left me totally unscathed.

Finally you should check out First Dog as it's a good comic I like it very much.; Fun Shoe

This is one of those times in your unlife where you can indulge in the carnage your beast so desperately wants and be certain that you are making the world a better place at the same time. Drain Boris dry, and then kill everyone else on the floor, and then steal all the loot.

# ¿ Feb 16, 2014 14:10

Pickled Tink: Apr 28, 2012; Have you heard about First Dog? It's a very good comic I just love.

Also, wear your bike helmets kids. I copped several blows to the head but my helmet left me totally unscathed.

Finally you should check out First Dog as it's a good comic I like it very much.; Fun Shoe

A few things:

There normal way out of Brother Kanker's arena is actually a lever in the room that opens the gate that locks you in.

The easiest way to take out Brother Kanker is to turn that wheel and exit through the swimming path you used to leave and sit outside shooting him through the locked gate.

The "Brokk" pistol you can buy from Fat Larry is probably the best weapon for this part of the game given its accuracy, meaning you can quickly pop a lot of zombies very quickly with headshots, and it is especially good against Vic since you can stand on the other side from him with minimal/no cover and just chip him away while his shotgun blasts have trouble even winging you. I keep using that gun for a very long time.

Pickled Tink fucked around with this message at 09:21 on Mar 1, 2014

# ¿ Mar 1, 2014 09:15

Pickled Tink: Apr 28, 2012; Have you heard about First Dog? It's a very good comic I just love.

Also, wear your bike helmets kids. I copped several blows to the head but my helmet left me totally unscathed.

Finally you should check out First Dog as it's a good comic I like it very much.; Fun Shoe

Gatz, for some amusement you should listen to the stuff Chunk says in the lobby. Just make sure you listen carefully because he only cycles through those lines of dialogue once (or at least I couldn't get him to go through them again).

# ¿ Mar 16, 2014 13:44

Pickled Tink: Apr 28, 2012; Have you heard about First Dog? It's a very good comic I just love.

Also, wear your bike helmets kids. I copped several blows to the head but my helmet left me totally unscathed.

Finally you should check out First Dog as it's a good comic I like it very much.; Fun Shoe

Samuel Clemens posted:

If your humanity is really low, talking to McFly will make your character frenzy and you're forced to kill him. This is the only part I remember where frenzy is triggered through dialogue, which is kind of neat.

There's one other spot later on in a forced confrontation from a sidequest where you can dialogue-frenzy. I just completed an entertaining low humanity run. Gods sassing people in Hollywood is fun.

Hollywood isn't a bad hub. Each hub seems to have their own theme. Santa Monica is basically a dilapidated ghetto, Downtown is modern and polished, but it is all window dressing and when you dig beneath the veneer you find that it is just occupied by a higher class of scum. Hollywood is focused on sex and degradation, etc.

Also, the place at the end of this hub is not that bad. Some good and thematic reading in there if you are willing to poke around. I figure most people hate it because they can't find exits/were built almost solely for talking when they first reached it.

# ¿ Apr 3, 2014 02:43

Pickled Tink: Apr 28, 2012; Have you heard about First Dog? It's a very good comic I just love.

Also, wear your bike helmets kids. I copped several blows to the head but my helmet left me totally unscathed.

Finally you should check out First Dog as it's a good comic I like it very much.; Fun Shoe

I posted the instructions earlier but I'll repeat them now, since the instructions for a steam installation are inside the installation itself (Meaning that by the time you can read them you've hosed your install).

quote:

On problems with Steam run Steam and game as administrator, then the
unpatched game once, go to offline mode, disable steam community and
auto update, exit Steam and install to \steamapps\common\vampire ...

# ¿ Apr 23, 2014 06:24

Pickled Tink: Apr 28, 2012; Have you heard about First Dog? It's a very good comic I just love.

Also, wear your bike helmets kids. I copped several blows to the head but my helmet left me totally unscathed.

Finally you should check out First Dog as it's a good comic I like it very much.; Fun Shoe

Talk because I have done murder so many times already.

# ¿ Jun 5, 2014 07:45

Pickled Tink: Apr 28, 2012; Have you heard about First Dog? It's a very good comic I just love.

Also, wear your bike helmets kids. I copped several blows to the head but my helmet left me totally unscathed.

Finally you should check out First Dog as it's a good comic I like it very much.; Fun Shoe

You got lucky there with your murdering of her, picking the moment when the Chunk lookalike was out of the booth to pull it. To get rid of him you have to rob the cash machine (Which he was returning from) to make him leave since he can't get the small change needed to operate the peepshow.

# ¿ Jul 24, 2014 05:31

Pickled Tink: Apr 28, 2012; Have you heard about First Dog? It's a very good comic I just love.

Also, wear your bike helmets kids. I copped several blows to the head but my helmet left me totally unscathed.

Finally you should check out First Dog as it's a good comic I like it very much.; Fun Shoe

I would also vote Ally if the voting was open. As a Ventrue, one schemes for greatest advantage, and avoids directly participating in bloodshed wherever possible because it might mess up ones hair or get ones clothes dirty.

# ¿ Aug 25, 2014 06:14

Pickled Tink: Apr 28, 2012; Have you heard about First Dog? It's a very good comic I just love.

Also, wear your bike helmets kids. I copped several blows to the head but my helmet left me totally unscathed.

Finally you should check out First Dog as it's a good comic I like it very much.; Fun Shoe

I played through plus a few months ago and when I did the Lasombra was clean shaven and he instead had a very powerful pistol. Maybe wesp thought that it was too easy for shooter characters and decided to buff him with a better gun for offense, and bushy beard for defense?

# ¿ Aug 29, 2014 02:15

Pickled Tink: Apr 28, 2012; Have you heard about First Dog? It's a very good comic I just love.

Also, wear your bike helmets kids. I copped several blows to the head but my helmet left me totally unscathed.

Finally you should check out First Dog as it's a good comic I like it very much.; Fun Shoe

TheMcD posted:

Yeah, that's why I wanted 5 Ranged for the Glock. Something that I can fire somewhat accurately while running around trying like hell to dodge terrible poo poo.

Those little head and arm dudes? You can interrupt their attack animation in melee combat because hitting them puts them in knockback mode. It works because while they leap up to you, they don't actually make their swing for a bit afterwards so you have time to push them away. It is entirely possible to destroy them all without being hurt with only one dot in unarmed combat. Using guns on them is a terrible idea.

Also, there is a way to respec one dot, but it is very circumstantial. You need to have an attribute boosted to 5 dots, and then have a charm boosting it as well. The game doesn't really know how to handle that and clicking on it undoes one dot of purchased attribute and gives you back the exp. Mostly useful at the very end of the game.

# ¿ Oct 17, 2014 00:06

Pickled Tink: Apr 28, 2012; Have you heard about First Dog? It's a very good comic I just love.

Also, wear your bike helmets kids. I copped several blows to the head but my helmet left me totally unscathed.

Finally you should check out First Dog as it's a good comic I like it very much.; Fun Shoe

TheMcD: That room where you pulled all those little hopper dudes is best snuck through. Stationary hoppers are only slightly less blind than the big monstrosities.

citybeatnik posted:

Waaait, you can jump to that god drat grate and inch along the edge? I always thought you had to use one of the planks to make a bridge!

Wow... I just kicked the barrels at the far end of the trench down the pit then walked across the narrow ledge and around to the grate...

Pickled Tink fucked around with this message at 06:16 on Oct 18, 2014

# ¿ Oct 18, 2014 06:14

Pickled Tink: Apr 28, 2012; Have you heard about First Dog? It's a very good comic I just love.

Also, wear your bike helmets kids. I copped several blows to the head but my helmet left me totally unscathed.

Finally you should check out First Dog as it's a good comic I like it very much.; Fun Shoe

Sidequests are the spice of unlife. B

# ¿ Oct 23, 2014 04:02

Pickled Tink: Apr 28, 2012; Have you heard about First Dog? It's a very good comic I just love.

Also, wear your bike helmets kids. I copped several blows to the head but my helmet left me totally unscathed.

Finally you should check out First Dog as it's a good comic I like it very much.; Fun Shoe

OAquinas posted:

You CAN actually save Zhao in the warehouse, but its a pain to do. I believe he has some additional dialogue.

I also love that at this point when Melissa goes to see Wong Ho and he's wailing about throwing a kiki she doesn't even try to ask about her business first and just assumes she has to go retrieve the girl first.

There is also bonus EXP for saving him. It is hard, but they made it worth your while.

# ¿ Dec 4, 2014 23:37

Pickled Tink: Apr 28, 2012; Have you heard about First Dog? It's a very good comic I just love.

Also, wear your bike helmets kids. I copped several blows to the head but my helmet left me totally unscathed.

Finally you should check out First Dog as it's a good comic I like it very much.; Fun Shoe

Shugojin posted:

Technically, Augustus was lucky to not absorb all of Cappadocius. It's basically the only reason he didn't just get his brain overwritten.

Diablerizing Antediluvians: it just never works out well.

It worked for Troile.

# ¿ Dec 8, 2014 01:08

Pickled Tink: Apr 28, 2012; Have you heard about First Dog? It's a very good comic I just love.

Also, wear your bike helmets kids. I copped several blows to the head but my helmet left me totally unscathed.

Finally you should check out First Dog as it's a good comic I like it very much.; Fun Shoe

You missed some of the Manadarins dialogue.

If you hesitate before entering the second chamber. He says that if you cooperate he'll give you a dog for your good behaviour, and that he finds that subjects much prefer it to the rats he usually gives them.

Also, the "does that hurt?" dialogue is triggered in the spinning blades chamber when you get about two thirds of the way across.

# ¿ Dec 10, 2014 21:32

Pickled Tink: Apr 28, 2012; Have you heard about First Dog? It's a very good comic I just love.

Also, wear your bike helmets kids. I copped several blows to the head but my helmet left me totally unscathed.

Finally you should check out First Dog as it's a good comic I like it very much.; Fun Shoe

There are two more conversations between hunters in the caverns area of the mission. There's the two who chat near Ash (that you blew up) and let slip that there is an underwater passage linking that room to the main chamber. There's also two talking about Bach near the pier there.

# ¿ Dec 24, 2014 12:21

Pickled Tink: Apr 28, 2012; Have you heard about First Dog? It's a very good comic I just love.

Also, wear your bike helmets kids. I copped several blows to the head but my helmet left me totally unscathed.

Finally you should check out First Dog as it's a good comic I like it very much.; Fun Shoe

TheMcD posted:

I cut the one referring to the underwater passage, mostly because I was just coming in over the character limit, wasn't going to split the update in two and didn't know the underwater passage was an actual thing, but I thought the one at the pier about Bach was the one referring to how he once killed somebody for not following orders, which I did put in, just not when it happened (because I'm pretty sure there's more than those two down in the caverns and I just didn't see it because I wasn't sneaking). I went into the conversations folder in the game files and grabbed every conversation I could find there, so if there's another one, I wouldn't know where it came from.

Yeah, you are right about the second conversation. I missed it when reading your post, and when searching text for references to it because I had misremembered the quote.

# ¿ Dec 24, 2014 13:23

Pickled Tink: Apr 28, 2012; Have you heard about First Dog? It's a very good comic I just love.

Also, wear your bike helmets kids. I copped several blows to the head but my helmet left me totally unscathed.

Finally you should check out First Dog as it's a good comic I like it very much.; Fun Shoe

F-3 - The secret ending. You will know it when you see it, provided you did something earlier.

# ¿ Dec 31, 2014 06:24

Pickled Tink: Apr 28, 2012; Have you heard about First Dog? It's a very good comic I just love.

Also, wear your bike helmets kids. I copped several blows to the head but my helmet left me totally unscathed.

Finally you should check out First Dog as it's a good comic I like it very much.; Fun Shoe

Omobono posted:

Nines isn't trustworthy because "Nines" killed Grout, and Rosa didn't realize it was a shapeshifter.

Malkavians often do not understand the insight they are presenting. In this case, her relevant quote from her regarding the visit to Grouts mansion is: "He's not who he says she is and it's going to burn." The first bit is giving away that it isn't Nines, but a female impersonating him. The second bit is the building being burn down.

# ¿ Jan 1, 2015 13:29

Pickled Tink: Apr 28, 2012; Have you heard about First Dog? It's a very good comic I just love.

Also, wear your bike helmets kids. I copped several blows to the head but my helmet left me totally unscathed.

Finally you should check out First Dog as it's a good comic I like it very much.; Fun Shoe

Zephro posted:

I last played Bloodlines years ago, and really liked it, so I've been reading this thread with interest. People were talking about the PC's oddly high power level, and hinting that some characters make in-game references to how quickly they're growing. I remember noticing the same thing and wondering who the PC's sire could be.

- A know-nothing high-generation newbie might just be dumb enough to do the illicit siring, but that doesn't explain the PC's power.
- A moderately low-gen vampire might explain the PC's power, but probably wouldn't be dumb enough to run around performing illicit sirings.
- A seriously low-gen vampire is going to give no fucks about rules on siring, and is cunning enough to not to let themselves be caught and killed by a bunch of weedy Camarilla arrivistes. And would explain why the PC hulks out so fast.

Trouble is there aren't that many low-gen vampires in the game. Beckett is 7th gen and I think he's the lowest we meet. But he's obviously not the daddy. So who is it? Given his role in the plot I could see Jack doing it, and setting someone else up for the fall, just about. But that would make the PC 11th gen and that seems too weak. The only other option seems to be the Cabbie, who does take quite an interest in what you get up to. But the two leading theories about him are that he's either Caine or some random Methusaleh and neither seems all that plausible.

edit: of course I could be hugely overthinking something that's just a necessary gameplay mechanic, but if we can't out in an SA thread about pretend vampires then I don't even want to know any more.

Or it could have been that a seventh gen had a patsy grab you and drain you to unconsciousness, then finished the job of siring you themselves before leaving the loyal/dominated/blood bound patsy to take the fall knowing that LaCroix is a moron and wouldn't investigate properly in his zeal to show he is upholding the Camarilla traditions in his new city. Hell, they may have even been the one who tipped off the Cam, just to set the events in motion. It's not like they even bothered questioning your "sire" before they dusted him.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2015 04:09

Pickled Tink: Apr 28, 2012; Have you heard about First Dog? It's a very good comic I just love.

Also, wear your bike helmets kids. I copped several blows to the head but my helmet left me totally unscathed.

Finally you should check out First Dog as it's a good comic I like it very much.; Fun Shoe

Zephro posted:

Yeah, like I said in the post, the logical person to do that is Jack, given his role in the plot. Trouble is he's only 10th.

Except that LaCroix consistently shows himself to be barely competent, openly power hungry, and openly ambitious on a scale where he is willing to throw caution to the wind. There is almost no conceivable way that he didn't step on powerful toes along the way on his rise to power, and it is very plausible that an elder took the opportunity to set him up to fail. Carefully selecting a mortal with the right mental traits and giving them the blood strength they need to throw a wrench into everything is hardly a troublesome excursion.

Hell, even the simplest version of such a plan, should nothing else in the plot have happened, would have been to engineer your survival at the start and then point out later on after your strength has manifested that your blood is too strong to have been the childe of the vampire he had killed, thus showing him up to being an incompetent publicly and causing embarrassment to him and his backers, etc. But sending the sarcophagus to the city was a master stroke given LaCroix's nature. The end result being multiple failed blood hunts, potentially losing control of the city, being caught assassinating a primogen, and forming an alliance with the Quei-jin against his own kind (Something highly likely to seriously antagonise the Anarchs, something the cam elders don't want because they see a potential second Sabbat in them, thus their use of kid gloves when dealing with them).

It wouldn't even be hard for an Cam elder to pretend to be Autarkis and bring Jack into the plot, especially if they didn't want to show their own hand so he could claim credit for everything.

Sorry, I have been forced to think like an elder recently due to game planning stuff and discussions, and this whole thing ranks as a pretty simple plot by their standards.

# ¿ Jan 24, 2015 01:23

Pickled Tink: Apr 28, 2012; Have you heard about First Dog? It's a very good comic I just love.

Also, wear your bike helmets kids. I copped several blows to the head but my helmet left me totally unscathed.

Finally you should check out First Dog as it's a good comic I like it very much.; Fun Shoe

Stroth posted:

Well, if you want a proper mindscrew, how about this? Being an eighth generation might explain your bloodpool, but it absolutely does not explain hitting five points in your disciplines in under a month. Your power curve is drat near vertical when compare to other vampires. So how do you explain that? What if she's not learning them? What if she's remembering them?

Let's create a hypothetical situation. You have an elder, probably fairly high up in the Camarilla. Not local, he's over in Europe. Pretty old, pretty powerful, but not hugely important. Sixth, seventh generation, around there. He hears the news about what's happening over in california. Anarchs organizing, Kuei-jin invading and some complete moron of a Prince not doing anything useful to secure of the biggest ports on the continent. So he decides to do something about it. But he can't be seen taking an interest in something so far away or meddling in a prince's domain without reason or his enemies will use it against him. So he decides to use a sleeper agent.

So he takes one of his problem solvers, eighth generation, a few centuries old, and plants a hypnotic suggestion in her. When someone says the right words to her she'll pass out for a few minutes and wake up with her memories suppressed and thinking she's human, at least until someone tells her she's been turned into a vampire. Then she heads over to LA, plants a few suggestions of her own into some mortals so the new neonate will have a backstory if anyone bothers to check, seduces a local of the right clan, calls in a tipoff to the Sheriff and gets her date to say the words to trip her programming. A couple of hours later she's embedded in the local court with no one at all the wiser.

Two big problems with that. First is that an active vampire character gains EXP at a vastly greater rate than an "inactive" character, so it is entirely plausible for a player vampire to reach five dots in disciplines in a month or even less. The more a vampire is forced to overcome challenges, the faster they learn the skills they need, and you are thrown straight into a shitstorm.

The second is the mortal who you meet in Hollywood after Isaac who remembers you from your life, causing a masquerade violation if you don't either convince her you're not you or murder her before she reaches the phones if you fail that. There is literally no possible reason for any elder to set such an encounter up. You are way too busy to be thinking about anything but the business at hand and there are no discernible benefits of it any way it plays out for an elder.

# ¿ Jan 24, 2015 05:39

Pickled Tink: Apr 28, 2012; Have you heard about First Dog? It's a very good comic I just love.

Also, wear your bike helmets kids. I copped several blows to the head but my helmet left me totally unscathed.

Finally you should check out First Dog as it's a good comic I like it very much.; Fun Shoe

Tiggum posted:

In case LaCroix (or someone else) tries to check up on just who Melissa was when she was alive. It would be suspicious if no one knew her and she just turned up out of nowhere.

Cainites really couldn't care less about who others were when they were mortal. The only possible reason to search it out would be on a neonate to threaten their families in order to get them to comply, and LaCroix has better means of control available. People move around so much these days that it is entirely plausible that they would have no local connections, especially in a city like LA.

An Elder does not introduce a potential point of failure into their plan unless there is a commensurate reward to be gained from it. The ones that do tend to lose at Jyhad and end up either as Autarkis if they are lucky or destroyed if they aren't, especially when there are potential stakes as high as this games story indicates. There just isn't a benefit worth the risk in this case.

# ¿ Jan 24, 2015 06:13

Pickled Tink: Apr 28, 2012; Have you heard about First Dog? It's a very good comic I just love.

Also, wear your bike helmets kids. I copped several blows to the head but my helmet left me totally unscathed.

Finally you should check out First Dog as it's a good comic I like it very much.; Fun Shoe

Stroth posted:

Most don't. Some do. And when you've got people like Smiling Jack and Beckett running around in the background then you don't leave any lose ends. Besides, it's the little details that sell something like this. The fact that you think no one would bother with that level of detail is exactly why you should when doing a plan like this. Because if no one would bother setting it up and it happens anyway then that's proof that it wasn't a setup at all.

You missed the point. The point I was making was that, especially in cities like LA, being unable to locate a persons acquaintances or even track down much on them there is outright common. Failing to do so throws up no red flags. They assume the person was just another person come to make their fortune.

Introducing a mortal to interact with someone, if it is not, in fact, genuine, introduces a major point of failure to the plan, especially given the myriad ways vampires have of extracting information from people. Tossing a "mortal acquaintance" in when you have set up someone to have powerful enemies is like asking those enemies to take said mortal and rip all the information out of them they can and there's not really much you can do to stop them finding out that the person is a fake.

Also, no way is an experienced 8th gen going to comply with that kind of a plan given there's gently caress all reward and a massive chance of being destroyed. Furthermore, they generally have the skills, willpower, and support required to prevent an elder from abusing them in such a fashion. There's a reason subtle manipulation is preferred. 8th gens are the highest gen typically considered "elders", and the odds of an elder that experienced having a humanity of 7 at the start of the game are abysmally low unless they are trying for Golconda (In which case they wouldn't get involved in this kind of poo poo).

# ¿ Jan 25, 2015 05:24

Pickled Tink: Apr 28, 2012; Have you heard about First Dog? It's a very good comic I just love.

Also, wear your bike helmets kids. I copped several blows to the head but my helmet left me totally unscathed.

Finally you should check out First Dog as it's a good comic I like it very much.; Fun Shoe

Actually, it is quite probable, given his appearance, that he is Nagloper. The Laibon (African vampire lines) have this weird dual morality system with some interesting quirks. They have Aye, which is how well they relate to people, and the higher they are on that the more human they look. They also have Orun, which is the same but for supernatural. They look much more powerful and obviously supernatural if that is high. Given the fact that he looks like he is built like a truck and has glowing eyes he is likely a low aye, high Orun Nagloper. I think someone mentions that LaCroix picked up the Sheriff in Africa, but for the life of me I can't remember where I heard that.

Pickled Tink fucked around with this message at 02:16 on Feb 1, 2015

# ¿ Feb 1, 2015 02:10

Pickled Tink: Apr 28, 2012; Have you heard about First Dog? It's a very good comic I just love.

Also, wear your bike helmets kids. I copped several blows to the head but my helmet left me totally unscathed.

Finally you should check out First Dog as it's a good comic I like it very much.; Fun Shoe

You can get him to admit the kuei Jin alliance though. If you try to blackmail him over it he starts to order the sheriff to kill you and you hastily back down.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2015 04:53

Pickled Tink: Apr 28, 2012; Have you heard about First Dog? It's a very good comic I just love.

Also, wear your bike helmets kids. I copped several blows to the head but my helmet left me totally unscathed.

Finally you should check out First Dog as it's a good comic I like it very much.; Fun Shoe

EponymousMrYar posted:

Regarding the Cabbie as Caine bit, one thing I think is glossed over a bit is the overall timeline of when the game takes place. Namely that Gehenna's going to happen soon.
The only evidence that has all of the vampires thinking towards that end (even if they don't believe in it) is the bad mojo going around and tying it to the Antideluvian in the Sarcophagus.

Since the ending reveals it's just a regular sarcophagus that ties the uneasy feeling to Caine being in town. Which means that 'Gehenna is coming' is also something of DM-Fiat in this case. So if you think of that as being a giant false-alarm, it solidifies Caine being the cabby and discounts White Wolf's say on the matter since I doubt they have his entire history mapped out.

Actually, if Messerach is a methusulah in torpor, then it is quite possible they have access to a high end presence power that they can use to create that eerie feeling over the area.

As for Grout, you are all reading way too much into it. The Malkavian clan curse ensures they always have a dementation. Should their existing one be cured, they immediately develop a new one. His original one was a relatively mild manifestation, believing that he was diseased and not a supernatural monster and manifested in his endless search for a cure. Meeting others changed that slowly. It then flipped to paranoia along with the malk insight. Until very recently, relatively speaking, Grout had not been in contact with the rest of vampire society and had no knowledge of them. There is also absolutely no evidence to suggest that Grout had any form of martial training.

Grout knew that Lacroix was up to something unspeakably evil, and he knew that an attempt would be made on his life. So he arranged for Bach to know of him, in the hope that even if he did die, Lacroix would be killed too. Just because a malk has insight does not make them omniscient. Ming Xiao walked in over his defences which were woefully inadequate to protect from most vampires and other creatures (See audio log where he mentions how the house was built with defence in mind).

Honestly, the speculation about Grout is entirely based on him being an omniscient super-Malkavian in the face of evidence that shows that he has always been a shut-in and, more recently, a paranoid lunatic. It attributes to him skills, disciplines, knowledges, and abilities not in evidence, and directly contradicts a bunch of the established facts about him.

He was a troubled, paranoid Malkavian who knew too much, and was killed as part of a greater game. There's nothing more to it.

That being said, it is a pet theory so people will defend it to the death. :shrug:

# ¿ Feb 21, 2015 07:24

Pickled Tink: Apr 28, 2012; Have you heard about First Dog? It's a very good comic I just love.

Also, wear your bike helmets kids. I copped several blows to the head but my helmet left me totally unscathed.

Finally you should check out First Dog as it's a good comic I like it very much.; Fun Shoe

There is no evidence he was an elder. He was selected for the role of primogen because he was more lucid and eloquent than others of his clan. In fact, age-wise he ranks as Ancillae. The post of Primogen has no generation requirement and given an estimate for his siring of about 80-160 years before the events of the game, it is pretty likely that he's somewhere in the region of 10th to 13th generation, especially given the story he relates of the death of his sire.

Also, IIRC, despite how the game portrays a vampires death, the amount of decay is dependant on the age of the vampire being destroyed (I may be wrong on this. I can't find it in the few books I have on hand).

# ¿ Feb 22, 2015 06:09

Pickled Tink: Apr 28, 2012; Have you heard about First Dog? It's a very good comic I just love.

Also, wear your bike helmets kids. I copped several blows to the head but my helmet left me totally unscathed.

Finally you should check out First Dog as it's a good comic I like it very much.; Fun Shoe

I enjoyed the style of this update.

I bet you can't write the next update in Iambic pentameter.

# ¿ Jul 13, 2015 11:58

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 15:47

Pickled Tink: Apr 28, 2012; Have you heard about First Dog? It's a very good comic I just love.

Also, wear your bike helmets kids. I copped several blows to the head but my helmet left me totally unscathed.

Finally you should check out First Dog as it's a good comic I like it very much.; Fun Shoe

I have been convinced for some time that the mod is an elaborate trolling exercise to see just how far the boundaries can be pushed while retaining idiotic praise.

Good work surviving it.

# ¿ Aug 9, 2015 02:18

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Caught in the Machine - Let's Play Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines