Yeah, unfortunately one of the first things I thought of when the news broke last week is.....Bloodlines may sink another developer. HardSuit Labs last released a game in 2012, and the PC servers aren't running anymore.....toss in a black mark like this, and it's going to be a struggle.
Thanks to everyone who recommended Night Road in this thread, it's fantastic. Upon finishing it as a 'playing both sides' Tremere I immediately did a second playthrough as a pro-Camarilla Gangrel.
I went from being lukewarm about it to eagerly awaiting Parliament of Knives and Out for Blood.
Oh speaking of Night Road, a big expansion just came out for it adding a whole new mission, 5 new clans and 3 new disciplines. It's 40% off on Steam until April 1st.
The World of Vampire: The Masquerade Is Being Developed for Film and TV
I'm in.
I can't wait for ten years of rumors and development teasers filled ultimately with delays, disappointment, and ultimately cancellation before it is ever delivered.
Here’s some fun news, VtM: Rivals comes out next month!
If you aren’t familiar, it’s an expandable card game, meaning the core set comes with four Clans in the box and they’ll release more in expansions down the road. The core set comes with Brujah, Toreador, Malkavian, and Ventrue. The first expansion releases in a few months and has the Tremere and Thin-Bloods.
It looks really cool, it’s set up for 2-4 players, which is unusual for this type of game. One of the other players is your rival, and defeating them wins you the game. You can also fulfill your agenda to win, so there’s a strategy aspect of deciding whether to kill your rival, pursue your agenda, or both. There’s also a political aspect, with things like conspiracies (cards played face down and potentially shown to another player to target another) which anybody can put influence on to further, and in a more meta sense the players can see somebody close to finishing off their rival and band together to prevent their victory.
Here’s some fun news, VtM: Rivals comes out next month!
If you aren’t familiar, it’s an expandable card game, meaning the core set comes with four Clans in the box and they’ll release more in expansions down the road. The core set comes with Brujah, Toreador, Malkavian, and Ventrue. The first expansion releases in a few months and has the Tremere and Thin-Bloods.
It looks really cool, it’s set up for 2-4 players, which is unusual for this type of game. One of the other players is your rival, and defeating them wins you the game. You can also fulfill your agenda to win, so there’s a strategy aspect of deciding whether to kill your rival, pursue your agenda, or both. There’s also a political aspect, with things like conspiracies (cards played face down and potentially shown to another player to target another) which anybody can put influence on to further, and in a more meta sense the players can see somebody close to finishing off their rival and band together to prevent their victory.
Well, sure, until you’re vaccinated avoid playing it. My wife and I are vaccinated so we plan on having other vaccinated people over for game nights sometime and this is a good excuse.
Here’s some fun news, VtM: Rivals comes out next month!
If you aren’t familiar, it’s an expandable card game, meaning the core set comes with four Clans in the box and they’ll release more in expansions down the road. The core set comes with Brujah, Toreador, Malkavian, and Ventrue. The first expansion releases in a few months and has the Tremere and Thin-Bloods.
It looks really cool, it’s set up for 2-4 players, which is unusual for this type of game. One of the other players is your rival, and defeating them wins you the game. You can also fulfill your agenda to win, so there’s a strategy aspect of deciding whether to kill your rival, pursue your agenda, or both. There’s also a political aspect, with things like conspiracies (cards played face down and potentially shown to another player to target another) which anybody can put influence on to further, and in a more meta sense the players can see somebody close to finishing off their rival and band together to prevent their victory.
There's also a mini con called Elysium: Weekend of Darkness which includes a storyteller workshop with Jason Carl and the premier of VtM: The Nightlife, which has some rad people in it.
I may need to look into V5. The first 3 books were a bit unimpressive but I liked the free supplement and have been meaning to look into some onyx path stuff becausw I have been hearing good things.
Listening to that interview it seems like more what the sabbat should be. Less of an excuse for players that just don’t want to play by the camarilla rules (anarchs are thataway), and more a bunch of complete monsters that everyone should be a bit afraid of like the antagonists of other settings.
My impression is that in previous versions of Vampire, the Sabbat was presented alternately as near-mindless monsters, as vampires who do their vampire thing to the max and don't bother to clean up after themselves, or as ancient political theorists and philosopher-scholars who are really interested in what it means to be a vampire, and how that differentiates them from humanity. In the end, I think they kind of settled on all of these being plausible manifestations of the Sabbat mindset, which was: vampires are not humans, and they should therefore embrace () vampirehood and not worry about living by human morals or restraints. So for the younger vampires that might mean running around a city out in the open and doing careless mass embraces, while for older vampires that might mean evolving your mind and body beyond anything recognizably human.
I wonder if any of that fits what V5 will be doing.
Iiirc one thing they are doing is that when the second inquisition comes around the sabbat takes a lot of the brunt of it. Which makes a lot of sense of course, that the vampires who are careful about the masquerade and maintain contacts in human government and society are less likely to get mysteriously blown up by a drone strike or spec ops kill team than the ones who mass embrace in the open and run around the streets openly fighting other vamps and humans.
This isn't really related to VTM anymore, but interesting in the context of "what the hell happened to Bloodlines 2" at least:
It looks like Brian Mitsoda and Cara Ellison are working together again, as writers on a fairly neat looking game called The Fermi Paradox. I'm glad to see they found something, and there wasn't some weird fallout; I'm guessing at shadows on the wall but it does put more weight on "Hardsuit Labs is a tirefire and fired them for bugetary reasons", but it's still mostly guessing.
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
It pains me to think that B2 might get cancelled, but that's starting to feel like a very real possibility.
It pains me to think that B2 might get cancelled, but that's starting to feel like a very real possibility.
It hurts less when we're actually getting other good games based on the setting.
I recently played through Night Road as a Lasombra (the clan that glitches out technology and can't use it properly) computer hacker and it was hilarious.
Speaking of Night Road... Choice of Games has a new VtM coming out at the end of next month! VtM: Out for Blood.
You’ve barely settled into your new home of Jericho Heights on the outskirts of Chicago, before discovering that vampires live in town. You’re struggling to start a new life, meet new people, and maybe even find love. But when your neighbors start disappearing, you’re forced to take action.
Take on the role of a vampire hunter to save your town from the influence of Chastain, a vampire more than a century old. When a group of young thin-blood vampires start a war with Chastain, will you choose sides, or hunt them all?
Gather your forces and sharpen your stake to take back the night!
Night Road is great, so these folk get an instant buy from me.
I wonder if it's going to be written by Kyle Marquis, as well. I feel like in a game that's entirely text, the writer prooobably deserves much of the credit (although of course we gotta recognize and acknowledge that he's using an engine and ecosystem that has been developed and maintained by lots of other people).
The first time I played Night Road, it was an absolutely enthralling experience. I couldn't put it down. I played it a few times since then, 3-4 times I think, trying different characters and in some cases aiming for specific goals. I don't know if that was the wisest decision, because it definitely peeled the facade way back. I could see the actual structures underlying the game, and that kinda brought it back down to earth a little - rather than living the experience, I was playing a game. It was still very neat to see some of the different paths the game could go down, but I definitely got hella burned out on it. I grabbed the recent DLC primarily because I wanted to support them, but also because I hoped I could squeeze a little more wonder out of it. I really wanted to try a Nosferatu in the original game, and was bummed that wasn't an option - but it's understandable, you'd probably need an entirely separate game to work around the Nosferatu clan peculiarities. I was excited to see them as an option in the DLC, but the actual execution ended up being a big disappointment (although, again, completely understandable) - they sorta take a shortcut to explain away why you can still play the exiting game with very minor changes, despite looking like Count Orlock.
It pains me to think that B2 might get cancelled, but that's starting to feel like a very real possibility.
It hurts less when we're actually getting other good games based on the setting.
I recently played through Night Road as a Lasombra (the clan that glitches out technology and can't use it properly) computer hacker and it was hilarious.
I guess, but the premise and characters we'd seen so far from B2 looked really great. It seemed to be going so well.
Rivals is really fun. It takes a game or two to figure out how to make all the different clans do what they’re supposed to, but we didn’t read the cards before playing so that might just be us.
I’ve played the Brujah which is extremely straightforward compared to the others and the Malkavians which depend heavily on conspiracies to win. My wife played Malks her first game and Ventrue the next one, and she preferred the Ventrue because she is a snobby bossy snob. :P
Super excited for the Tremere/Thin Blood expansion coming.
It pains me to think that B2 might get cancelled, but that's starting to feel like a very real possibility.
It hurts less when we're actually getting other good games based on the setting.
I recently played through Night Road as a Lasombra (the clan that glitches out technology and can't use it properly) computer hacker and it was hilarious.
None of them really feel the same niche though.
+1
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
I finally got to take a crack at Bloodlust thanks to @an_alt , so here's my initial breakdown.
Yes, there's a club.
No, you can't dance crazy.
The characters are... okay, but the writing really needed an editing pass.
The combat is serviceable enough, but it's very dungeon crawl heavy, massive RNG dungeons that can be pretty draining. It's almost like a roguelike, but it's not permadeath, you just run the risk of losing your gear when you wake up from torpor(?).
It also wears the V:TM influence on its sleeve, but it barely takes the time to explain the world or the clans(not-Brujah, not-Ventrue, not-Gangrel, etc... subtle much?), you just get tossed into the deep end and have to figure it out yourself.
On the bright side, it does have the atmosphere, but a VERY sparse OST(I swear it has one track with variations, and that's it).
Magic is also OP, so there's that. You can also sire and drain people in the street with no consequence, so uh... these guys don't worry about a Masquerade, apparently.
Posts
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2021-03-07-wraith-the-oblivion-afterlife-resurrects-the-tedium-of-early-vr-horror-games
I went from being lukewarm about it to eagerly awaiting Parliament of Knives and Out for Blood.
I'm gonna do that on the run where I try to get my generation as low as possible. But I also want to
The pro-Camarilla run was much more satisfying than I expected, mostly due to Lettow.
Played a smart Ravnos dude that basically kicked ass and only failed at a couple of things over the run
Basically any time there was a mandatory dex/str check early on, he couldn’t handle it
But then he went to the gym and got swole, went the Julian route first
I'm in.
They were ahead of the game, alright.
To this day, I recall Tube's reaction to finding out this was a thing.
Real talk, it's actually a pretty fun show, and nails Cainite politics. The antagonists are a little half-baked, but the characters are enjoyable.
I can't wait for ten years of rumors and development teasers filled ultimately with delays, disappointment, and ultimately cancellation before it is ever delivered.
If you aren’t familiar, it’s an expandable card game, meaning the core set comes with four Clans in the box and they’ll release more in expansions down the road. The core set comes with Brujah, Toreador, Malkavian, and Ventrue. The first expansion releases in a few months and has the Tremere and Thin-Bloods.
It looks really cool, it’s set up for 2-4 players, which is unusual for this type of game. One of the other players is your rival, and defeating them wins you the game. You can also fulfill your agenda to win, so there’s a strategy aspect of deciding whether to kill your rival, pursue your agenda, or both. There’s also a political aspect, with things like conspiracies (cards played face down and potentially shown to another player to target another) which anybody can put influence on to further, and in a more meta sense the players can see somebody close to finishing off their rival and band together to prevent their victory.
Getting a group together for a RP session is a hard sell but something like this where it’s a 30 minute commitment is a bit easier for me.
Sounds like a low-impact Vampire: The Eternal Struggle.
Steam Badger A greasemonkey script for better gifting and peering
Basically think of it as a VTES 2.0. If memory serves, the lead designer for Rivals had worked on VTES back in the day as well.
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
New cards for V:TES are still coming out, actually! I think they're on their third or fourth developer.
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
I may need to look into V5. The first 3 books were a bit unimpressive but I liked the free supplement and have been meaning to look into some onyx path stuff becausw I have been hearing good things.
Listening to that interview it seems like more what the sabbat should be. Less of an excuse for players that just don’t want to play by the camarilla rules (anarchs are thataway), and more a bunch of complete monsters that everyone should be a bit afraid of like the antagonists of other settings.
I wonder if any of that fits what V5 will be doing.
It looks like Brian Mitsoda and Cara Ellison are working together again, as writers on a fairly neat looking game called The Fermi Paradox. I'm glad to see they found something, and there wasn't some weird fallout; I'm guessing at shadows on the wall but it does put more weight on "Hardsuit Labs is a tirefire and fired them for bugetary reasons", but it's still mostly guessing.
It hurts less when we're actually getting other good games based on the setting.
I recently played through Night Road as a Lasombra (the clan that glitches out technology and can't use it properly) computer hacker and it was hilarious.
Night Road is great, so these folk get an instant buy from me.
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
The first time I played Night Road, it was an absolutely enthralling experience. I couldn't put it down. I played it a few times since then, 3-4 times I think, trying different characters and in some cases aiming for specific goals. I don't know if that was the wisest decision, because it definitely peeled the facade way back. I could see the actual structures underlying the game, and that kinda brought it back down to earth a little - rather than living the experience, I was playing a game. It was still very neat to see some of the different paths the game could go down, but I definitely got hella burned out on it. I grabbed the recent DLC primarily because I wanted to support them, but also because I hoped I could squeeze a little more wonder out of it. I really wanted to try a Nosferatu in the original game, and was bummed that wasn't an option - but it's understandable, you'd probably need an entirely separate game to work around the Nosferatu clan peculiarities. I was excited to see them as an option in the DLC, but the actual execution ended up being a big disappointment (although, again, completely understandable) - they sorta take a shortcut to explain away why you can still play the exiting game with very minor changes, despite looking like Count Orlock.
I guess, but the premise and characters we'd seen so far from B2 looked really great. It seemed to be going so well.
I’ve played the Brujah which is extremely straightforward compared to the others and the Malkavians which depend heavily on conspiracies to win. My wife played Malks her first game and Ventrue the next one, and she preferred the Ventrue because she is a snobby bossy snob. :P
Super excited for the Tremere/Thin Blood expansion coming.
None of them really feel the same niche though.
Yes, there's a club.
No, you can't dance crazy.
The characters are... okay, but the writing really needed an editing pass.
The combat is serviceable enough, but it's very dungeon crawl heavy, massive RNG dungeons that can be pretty draining. It's almost like a roguelike, but it's not permadeath, you just run the risk of losing your gear when you wake up from torpor(?).
It also wears the V:TM influence on its sleeve, but it barely takes the time to explain the world or the clans(not-Brujah, not-Ventrue, not-Gangrel, etc... subtle much?), you just get tossed into the deep end and have to figure it out yourself.
On the bright side, it does have the atmosphere, but a VERY sparse OST(I swear it has one track with variations, and that's it).
Magic is also OP, so there's that. You can also sire and drain people in the street with no consequence, so uh... these guys don't worry about a Masquerade, apparently.
I am hyped because hey I like VtM and even if it is a runny shooty VtM.
Seems surprisingly faithful, mechanics-wise, right down to enforcing the Masquerade.
I am amused that the game tells you to avoid fire, so you went and picked fire magic as your dicipline.