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Koorisch posted:It would be nice if someone could do a roundup of Humanity and how it works both in the games and in the setting. If there's one thing that the various bloodlines LPs have taught over the years it's that there's always plenty of people on hand happy to explain to more obscure bits of lore. So don't be afraid to ask.
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May 23, 2016 20:13
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Poil posted:The song played in the club is Chiasm - Isolated in case anyone is curios. It fits quite well with the club. Yeah the music is a good fit, but I really wish developers wouldn't license music. If there was any question as to whether or not my video got ContentID'd for a couple minutes of audio in a 30 minute video where the audio wasn't even the focus of the content, the answer is yes, long before it even went public. Also, this will happen time and time again as we check out more clubs in the game. It's a point of frustration for me, as much as I love the game.
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May 23, 2016 20:54
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You could turn off the music before going into clubs I guess. A bit annoying but it would avoid the problem. Too bad because some of the music is just awesome (even if you ignored their poster in the apartment  ).
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May 23, 2016 21:33
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The soundtrack for the game is amazing and if you can find it, buy it.
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May 24, 2016 02:56
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I've kinda been hankering to replay this game again, but I guess I'll settle with this LP instead, for now. I have finished it three times; As Gangrel, Toreador and Tremere, and way more times I've started and played for a bit before my gaming ADHD has kicked in and I've wandered off into other games. I still need to finish the game as a Malkavian at some point, because Malks loving own. To those not familiar with this game, the Malk experience is the second most different from the other clans, losing only to the Nosferatu who just have to skulk around in the sewers and stay out of sight of the mortals. As Vicissitude explained, every single Malkavian is batshit insane, and in this game it shows in various ways, the most obvious of which is that their dialogue options are weird. Not just some of them, all of them. Complete with a unique font and all, and the NPCs can and will be weirded out by them. And while it might often seem like simple lolrandom comic relief kinda crazy, the Malk protagonist... well, let's just say that under all their insanity, Malkavians just know things and that shows in the dialogue options. They're a hoot. Some other random thoughts I had watching those first videos: - Good God, the cutscenes and animations in this game are some janky poo poo. Afaik the game uses some godawful way-too-early version of the Source engine, and it shows. - That god drat .38 always makes me laugh at how desperately lovely it is, especially if your shooting ability is low. Guns do get pretty baller later on, but in the beginning you'll do better with harsh looks. - Voice acting is loving A+ in this game. DiMaggio is fantastic as Jack, and Jeanette always makes me sad Grey DeLisle doesn't have big roles in games more often, because I really, really love her voice. The prince sounds appropriately posh. - As far as I know, all of the band posters in the game are of real bands, yes. My favourite of them is Ghoultown, which was seen on the walls inside the club. They don't have music featured in the game, which is a bit of a shame but probably a sensible call, because, well it'd probably be a weird fit. There are a couple somewhat bigger bands who even have a song each featured in game, but we can mention those when we get there. EDIT: Basically, Deadmeat5150 posted:The soundtrack for the game is amazing and if you can find it, buy it. Nordick fucked around with this message at 03:24 on May 24, 2016 |
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May 24, 2016 03:17
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First time I played this game was as a gun Malk. It was...weird. I have vague memories of stumbling around with a .38 and 4 bullets for quite a while. I can't think of a single scenario in which a bullet from that .38 is better than a punch from your vamp fists. Malk dialogue/dementation was always a blast though, and guns do get better mid game. Then I played it through as a sword-wielding ventrue. It was a lot of fun. I started another play through a while back as a gangrel that had Warform right off the bat. It seemed really, really easy and overpowered and while it was fun being a huge monster, I lost interest. I still need to do a tremere run, a gun-toreador run, and a nosferatu run. I'm probably not going to bother with Brujah.
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May 24, 2016 03:30
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Nordick posted:- Good God, the cutscenes and animations in this game are some janky poo poo. Afaik the game uses some godawful way-too-early version of the Source engine, and it shows. Not only was it done on some beta version of the source engine, it was also rushed through production because the publisher wanted a finished product as fast as possible. Not sure why, since it was then delayed as there was no way in hell Valve was going to let Activision scoop them on their own new game engine. So it had to be shelved until Half-Life 2 came out.
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May 24, 2016 03:31
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Oh yeah, I actually forgot about that bit. drat. I mean, this game is still a drat classic, but it could've been so much better still. 
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May 24, 2016 04:10
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It was kind of buggy in general when it first came out. Troika was a solid studio though. I miss them. I'm surprised there's only one Arcanum LP in the archive.
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May 24, 2016 04:18
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Vicissitude posted:In Bloodlines it's more or less a simple metric of how easy it is for you to frenzy and just go berserk (and auto-controlled by the computer). Nordick posted:To those not familiar with this game, the Malk experience is the second most different from the other clans, losing only to the Nosferatu who just have to skulk around in the sewers and stay out of sight of the mortals. Cathode Raymond posted:It was kind of buggy in general when it first came out.
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May 24, 2016 04:29
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Tiggum posted:Actually, I tried playing as a Nosferatu and it's disappointingly normal. Rather than being more challenging, it basically just changes some dialogue and makes you play slightly differently (eg. you can't hire prostitutes but you get more blood than normal from rats to compensate). You don't even have to use the sewers to get around, you can just walk down the street as long as you look where you're going and don't walk into anyone. I never did bother with playing a Nosferatu or using the sewers, since the drat load times for me were always terrible enough that I never wanted to be hopping in and out of the grates to get around. And for the most part the dialogue options didn't seem that different. I also have... opinions on the various clans/sects. WW started cleaning up its act on some of the more tone-deaf stuff before the end but holy hell were there some stinkers in there. And I'm not just talking about Theo "The Uncle Tom-iest Uncle Tom What Ever Uncle Tom-ed" Bell.
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May 24, 2016 04:33
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Cathode Raymond posted:It was kind of buggy in general when it first came out. It had an unavoidable crash to desktop that rendered the game unfinishable. Bug testing was apparently one of the things that got skipped in the rush. Not that Troika had a good track record there anyway. Great writers, not exactly the best programmers.
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May 24, 2016 04:40
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Deadmeat5150 posted:The soundtrack for the game is amazing and if you can find it, buy it. IIRC you could extract all the licensed songs off the original discs as mp3 files. Speaking of voice actors, there are a few other famous ones in the cast--we just haven't met them yet. And we've already heard Leonard Boyarsky and Brian Mitsoda (the project director and lead writer, respectively) in the game, can you guess where? Mitsoda voices the news guy on the TV and Boyarsky is Gomez, the conspiracy nut calling in on the radio show.
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May 24, 2016 05:18
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Tiggum posted:Actually, I tried playing as a Nosferatu and it's disappointingly normal. Rather than being more challenging, it basically just changes some dialogue and makes you play slightly differently (eg. you can't hire prostitutes but you get more blood than normal from rats to compensate). You don't even have to use the sewers to get around, you can just walk down the street as long as you look where you're going and don't walk into anyone. As for the Humanity score (again just unverified impressions though): I've heard it also starts affecting your dialogue options in this game if it falls low enough? Like, getting more and more heartless options the lower you go. I've never gotten particularly low on humanity in the game, because I just don't feel good doing the stuff that lowers it. Seriously, you can do some blood-curdlingly evil poo poo in this game. queserasera posted:IIRC you could extract all the licensed songs off the original discs as mp3 files.
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May 24, 2016 05:30
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Nordick posted:As for the Humanity score (again just unverified impressions though): I've heard it also starts affecting your dialogue options in this game if it falls low enough? Like, getting more and more heartless options the lower you go. I've never gotten particularly low on humanity in the game, because I just don't feel good doing the stuff that lowers it. Seriously, you can do some blood-curdlingly evil poo poo in this game. IIRC it's one of those games that has good and bad options but the bad ones are generally not worth doing unless you're just doing it to see what happens. You'll get better rewards and outcomes by being nice.
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May 24, 2016 05:34
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Nordick posted:As for the Humanity score (again just unverified impressions though): I've heard it also starts affecting your dialogue options in this game if it falls low enough? Like, getting more and more heartless options the lower you go. It definitely does. You lose the ability to solve a lot of situations peacefully and actually gain the ability to solve a few violently that you can't at high humanity. For a vampire with low humanity "gently caress it, murder" is a far more viable option than it is for most people and the game reflects that.
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May 24, 2016 05:45
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I've played through this game several times but I've never bothered with guns (besides one of the last ones because holy poo poo does it do good damage). Fists just do so much more damage at the beginning and you need unarmed to be able to feed in combat anyway. Later on you get some nice melee weapons to wreck poo poo with too. Of course I really like the celerity power. You can abuse the combat zone thing to solve a later side quest without taking humanity loss by meta gaming a bit. 
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May 24, 2016 09:55
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Hey guys just a quick announcement - my mic stand broke. Unfortunately that means I probably won't be able to do any videos for the series for the next few days, but hopefully it'll be business as usual starting next week Monday.
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May 24, 2016 14:57
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Brujah and Gangrel are the melee monsters. Potence to boost your damage and Celerity to move and hit fast makes a very deadly combo, especially in tabletop. There's even a combo discipline requiring Potence 3/Celerity 3 that lets you spend a blood point to make yourself hit so hard and fast that for one round you do Aggravated damage with your brawling damage. Gangrel can top that by simply morphing their hands into nasty animal claws that do Str+1 Aggravated damage and it lasts the entire scene rather than one turn. Oh, I should probably explain damage types. You've got three of them: Bashing, Lethal and Aggravated. Bashing is blunt force trauma and can be soaked (absorbed, rolled with or otherwise mitigated) by every creature. The attacker rolls to hit and applies the damage of the weapon used (plus bonus successes to hit), and you roll your Stamina to reduce their successes and thus take less damage. Somehow you managed to absorb the blow better or worse than any other. Lethal is cutting or piercing attacks meant to kill. Vampires have no "vitals" to traumatize, so they treat gunshots as Bashing (and halve the damage dealt), but otherwise such attacks are Lethal to most beings. Mortals cannot soak Lethal damage without some manner of intervention like magic. Vampires and other supernatural beings can. Aggravated is something above and beyond Lethal. For vampires it's sunlight, fire, or the teeth and claws of other supernatural creatures. Werewolves take Aggravated damage from silver, and there are plenty of other nasties that have their own weaknesses. Some Disciplines and magic just flat out do Aggravated damage. To a mortal, Aggravated damage is just Lethal. Probably uglier wounds, but just as deadly as a stabbing. For the creatures who can take it, though, it takes a while to heal. Vampires have to spend blood like crazy and really focus their will on healing the damage. Damage does loop around. Every character has a health bar, or sorts. You go from fine to injured to seriously injured to unconscious/dead. Enough Bashing damage starts to break bones or rupture organs. It starts to turn into Lethal. An electric shock only does Bashing damage, but if someone's hooked up to a car battery the flesh starts to burn and cook. It'll become Lethal and while that's enough to kill a mortal, the ones who can still survive that suffer Aggravated. Once you lose that last box of health to Aggravated damage, though, you're ash.
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May 24, 2016 15:00
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Tiggum posted:
You do get a couple of good scenes as a Nosferatu, though. The first time you meet Fat Larry always makes me laugh.
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May 24, 2016 23:17
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Vicissitude posted:Bashing is blunt force trauma and can be soaked (absorbed, rolled with or otherwise mitigated) by every creature. The attacker rolls to hit and applies the damage of the weapon used (plus bonus successes to hit), and you roll your Stamina to reduce their successes and thus take less damage. Somehow you managed to absorb the blow better or worse than any other. Note that vampires automatically cut bashing damage in half after soaking it. And they treat firearms as bashing, unlike mortals who it's lethal for. There's a reason that Jack specified a shotgun blast to the head as dangerous: because something like a .38 to the stomach will just piss a vampire off. Not actually needing most of their internal organs anymore makes even the weakest of them hellishly tough to put down. Stroth fucked around with this message at 12:33 on May 25, 2016 |
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May 25, 2016 02:26
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Yeah, the heart is only vulnerable to wooden stakes which merely paralyze the vampire, not kill them. And you need your brain to do anything so a headshot does Lethal damage to a vampire.
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May 25, 2016 10:23
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Does WoD ever provide an explanation for why stakes work the way they do, beyond "it's basically vampire movie rules but with the twist that stakes paralyze instead of kill because that works better for our game"?
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May 25, 2016 16:25
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Cathode Raymond posted:Does WoD ever provide an explanation for why stakes work the way they do, beyond "it's basically vampire movie rules but with the twist that stakes paralyze instead of kill because that works better for our game"? It involves Lilith and yet another Curse being leveled on Caine for basically being a loving terrible human being and petulent manchild. First Edition had some weird poo poo in it re how the various curses worked (food would literally turn in to ash if vampires tried to eat it, efforts at planting/growing crops would fail, they'd have an actual "seeing the pearly gates" moment before they were yanked back to earth, etc) as well as the physical changes vampires went through when Embraced (their skulls would morph and grow spongy tissue that let the fangs retract, all the organs but the heart and stomach would wither). The average recently embraced vampire usually ends up spending a week locked in their room as their body forcefully evacuates itself from both ends. And then once that's done your clan flaw starts to manifest itself and most of your soul's been replaced by something that's basically a shard of the personification of corruption and destruction. Literally. The Beast is part of the Eater of Souls and will either cow or devour any other weaker evil spirit that tries to possess the body. If the Werewolf gameline is to be trusted at least.
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May 25, 2016 16:54
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Actually, it was something the Crone taught him. After she had tricked him into becoming blood bound to her, she demanded he Embrace her. Basically, he was enslaved by "love" of her and she wrung every bit of info out of him she could. All the while the 3rd Generation were running around like drunk kids at spring break and Caine asked if she had a way to bring them to heel. She snapped of a branch and sharpened it, saying that if driven through the heart it would render a vampire powerless. And that's just what Caine did to the Crone later. The blood bond wore off after a year and a day because it has to be renewed and she didn't realize that her magic was no longer the same after being reborn as the undead.
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May 25, 2016 19:13
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This discussion has been really interesting so far! It kind of makes me feel like the role of Humanity is downplayed a fair bit in VTMB as compared to the tabletop rules. I think I've frenzied once in all my time playing the game, even with histories that increase the possibility, and it wasn't a big deal. Though that was in a combat zone so maybe I just got lucky. One of these days I'm going to have to get some of my D&D friends together so we can try some WoD stuff.
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May 26, 2016 05:57
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rojogames posted:This discussion has been really interesting so far! It kind of makes me feel like the role of Humanity is downplayed a fair bit in VTMB as compared to the tabletop rules. I think I've frenzied once in all my time playing the game, even with histories that increase the possibility, and it wasn't a big deal. Though that was in a combat zone so maybe I just got lucky. I've finished the game once and played up to the sewers another time and never even come close to frenzying, because there are just so many opportunities to gain humanity and you basically have to really gently caress up badly to lose it.
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May 26, 2016 06:18
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rojogames posted:This discussion has been really interesting so far! It kind of makes me feel like the role of Humanity is downplayed a fair bit in VTMB as compared to the tabletop rules
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May 26, 2016 07:03
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Stroth posted:Just about everything is heavily simplified for the sake of streamlining gameplay. Not really a bad thing though. Yeah, that's fair. Not everything from a tabletop experience will translate perfectly to a video game one.
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May 26, 2016 07:12
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Tiggum posted:I've finished the game once and played up to the sewers another time and never even come close to frenzying, because there are just so many opportunities to gain humanity and you basically have to really gently caress up badly to lose it. That's a good point. Unless you murder a bunch of innocents in this game I don't think there are a ton of opportunities to lose Humanity, but plenty to gain it as we've seen so far.
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May 26, 2016 07:14
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rojogames posted:That's a good point. Unless you murder a bunch of innocents in this game I don't think there are a ton of opportunities to lose Humanity, but plenty to gain it as we've seen so far. There's a snowball effect in certain dialogue options from the start of the game that basically start with you being a bit of an rear end in a top hat/liar and ends with you sending people off to an unwitting and messy doom. Kinda neat. But yeah, I think the only real way to hit rock bottom is to either play a Toreador who double their Humanity losses/gains (because their actual clan flaw of randomly stopping to look at pretty things would have been hard in the game) or to willingly go around draining hobos dry in back alleys or whacking people over the head with a baseball bat. Vicissitude posted:*Crone chat* Ah, that's the one. I never really paid much attention to the lore of Caine/Lilith/Crone since most of that would never really come up in the more modern day. Was always more of a Camarilla or Anarch player than Sabbat. And then there's the True Black Hand and things just get -wacky-. Or there's the Baali and things just get 'no why are you doing this whyyyyyyy'.
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May 26, 2016 14:31
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Things got cleaned up a little in Revised (3rd) edition, but the metaplot was still very messy. For a while, the Vicissitude discipline was alien parasites from space. The "True Hand" had a home base in the underworld, the place where ghosts come from, and supposedly had 4 of the antediluvians entombed there. Now it's a bit more streamlined and in-character for the setting. [Tzimisce] evolved to the point where it could control all aspects of its blood through the discipline, meaning it's own clan descendents, the Tremere (who used stolen Tzimisce blood to Embrace themselves), and anyone who's tasted Tzimisce blood. The Black Hand is a paramilitary group that is, at it's heart, just a doomsday cult waiting for the world to go to hell.
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May 26, 2016 19:41
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Vicissitude posted:Things got cleaned up a little in Revised (3rd) edition, but the metaplot was still very messy. For a while, the Vicissitude discipline was alien parasites from space. The "True Hand" had a home base in the underworld, the place where ghosts come from, and supposedly had 4 of the antediluvians entombed there. Now it's a bit more streamlined and in-character for the setting. [Tzimisce] evolved to the point where it could control all aspects of its blood through the discipline, meaning it's own clan descendents, the Tremere (who used stolen Tzimisce blood to Embrace themselves), and anyone who's tasted Tzimisce blood. The Black Hand is a paramilitary group that is, at it's heart, just a doomsday cult waiting for the world to go to hell. The Black Hand's underworld home base was also blown up by the ghost of either Fat Man or Little Boy by a group of pissed off wraiths, right? I thought that was what tore open the Abyss and let the demons out, unless it was when the Technocracy went full General Sherman on Zapathasura/[Ravnos] via a combination of monsoons, enchanted nukes, and shining the equivalent of three or four suns on it for a day or two. And it took all that to kill off one antediluvian that was 1) supposed to be one of the weaker of the big 13 and 2) was also starved of blood and worn down from a week straight of brawling with three super-beings all across India right after waking up. It did let them erase the worst aspects of that clan at least.
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May 26, 2016 20:17
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The Vampire "world" is the stupidest thing ever, and Troika did well to ignore most of it, save for the general themes.
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May 26, 2016 20:44
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citybeatnik posted:The Black Hand's underworld home base was also blown up by the ghost of either Fat Man or Little Boy by a group of pissed off wraiths, right? I thought that was what tore open the Abyss and let the demons out, unless it was when the Technocracy went full General Sherman on Zapathasura/[Ravnos] via a combination of monsoons, enchanted nukes, and shining the equivalent of three or four suns on it for a day or two. It's a bit of a toss up of what it was that destroyed the Hand's base. Maybe it was the ghost of an old bomb, or maybe it was a ritual gone terribly terribly wrong. But the bottom line is that yes, it cracked open Hell and let the Fallen out, thus launching Demon: the Fallen (which is totally awesome and a great game in my opinion). But when Ravnos woke up early he was still too early to take his full potential. He was unfinished and that's why he was killed. But it was the mass-embracing of his own bloodline to send as suicide shock troops against the Catahyans that roused him. He hadn't finished his apotheosis, and that's why he was considered the weakest of the antediluvians. Considering the power of Chymerstry at high levels, he could have been one of the most powerful had he finished pupating. And it was only the light of one sun that actually killed him. Ravnos had conjured up a monsoon to darken the sky so he could walk the earth day and night. 3 of the oldest of the Cathayans, the Dragon, Crane, and Tiger, fought him off and wore him down. The Technocracy launched 3 gnosis-nukes at him, weapons designed to be more deadly to spiritual beings than physical ones, and that sapped him of enough strength that the clouds finally parted. Then they positioned satellites to redirect the light of the sun over India. The shining sun finished him off. Fortitude or no, any vampire out in the middle of daylight is going to die regardless of their age and generation.
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May 26, 2016 22:10
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steinrokkan posted:The Vampire "world" is the stupidest thing ever, and Troika did well to ignore most of it, save for the general themes. It really loving was. Washington D.C. had a literal refugee camp set up on the Capital Lawn due to the Sabbat's take-over of the city. Also, institutional racism in the United States was being upheld by the Ventrue because when one of their childer went "hey, i noticed that a lot of the Sabbat are recruiting from these African American and Latino neighborhoods because they're disenfranchised, maybe if we used all of our resources making things better there'll be less problems" all they heard was "Sabbat = minorities" and doubled down on racism. But then you had fun stuff like the Camarilla "court" in some small town in Kansas or something that was just three chill, friendly vampires that each took turn being Prince/Sheriff/Seneschal on a rotation. Vicissitude posted:It's a bit of a toss up of what it was that destroyed the Hand's base. Maybe it was the ghost of an old bomb, or maybe it was a ritual gone terribly terribly wrong. But the bottom line is that yes, it cracked open Hell and let the Fallen out, thus launching Demon: the Fallen (which is totally awesome and a great game in my opinion). I mostly found it funny that something that old never bothered to pick up 3 ranks in Protean. But in the Chaining the Beast book they talk about how he's now kicking it in the Indian underworld as the Yama King or something, chilling out with Set.
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May 27, 2016 00:45
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Hey, when you can alter reality itself at your whim, you tend to assume you'll be okay most of the time
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May 27, 2016 05:33
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Vicissitude posted:Hey, when you can alter reality itself at your whim, you tend to assume you'll be okay most of the time Also the fact that he had so much Fortitude that it took four suns several minutes to kill him. It's entirely possible he could have made it out of there if they didn't bring three big rear end orbital mirrors to help take him out. Stroth fucked around with this message at 09:54 on May 27, 2016 |
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May 27, 2016 09:52
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Three nukes and then the sun, but semantics at this point. The Ravnos as a clan were no more after that week. EDIT: vv Oh, we've barely scratched the surface. Wait until we dig into what's going on with Tremere and Goratrix
Vicissitude fucked around with this message at 17:20 on May 27, 2016 |
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May 27, 2016 15:55
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citybeatnik posted:when the Technocracy went full General Sherman on Zapathasura/[Ravnos] via a combination of monsoons, enchanted nukes, and shining the equivalent of three or four suns on it for a day or two. This will never not be my favourite story. 
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May 27, 2016 16:59
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