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Estee


On the Sliding Scale Of Cynicism Vs. Idealism, I like to think of myself as being idyllically cynical. (Patreon, Ko-Fi.)

More Blog Posts1258

Aug
4th
2020

And in VtM Bloodlines 2, White Wolf's truest legacy finally lives on · 3:41pm Aug 4th, 2020

The stupidly overpriced collector's edition. (Also available for Xbox and PS4.)

Honestly? I saw this one coming when the game was announced. I've been checking with my local Gamestop to ask about the inevitable physical release, because it ain't an old-school WoD product unless there's the option to pick it up with a bunch of stuff you're never going to use. As such, this blog is not a request for tips or donations. I already had Bloodlines 2 as a Ko-Fi goal: posted that shortly after the trailer came out, the original goal was reached, and that money has remained untouched. I have X set aside for the Blood Moon edition (includes all DLC): I just haven't ordered it yet because the pandemic has been pushing everything back.

As for the extras? I'm a sucker for steelbooks: I freely admit that. If I could get the steelbook case by itself for an extra $5 or so? Done. But the map of Seattle is useless (especially since it doesn't show Bellevue and EFNW remains cancelled), the statue is impractical, I have nothing I can play a vinyl soundtrack on, and I have the travesty which is Fifth Edition in hardcover. Oh, and there's also this: after converting that posted cost to dollars, it's paying $200.09 for what, with all DLC paid for, is a $90.00 game. Plus shipping. From Germany.

I am posting this blog for two reasons.

#1 Called it!

#2 Because some things never change. Because old-school WoD was pendants and pins and engraved lighters and they made a replica klaive (werewolf weapon) once, plus it reached the point where every major hardcover had a slipcase version. Anything they could sell you, every time. So of course there was going to be a physical release with all the trimmings. The company is dead, but the sales tactics survive.

"Please pay $35 for the next 128-page book to gain one new piece of information."

Electronic Arts: Tabletop Edition.

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Comments ( 31 )
Wanderer D
Moderator

old WoD was the best thing.

5328996

*is the last Wraith player*
*was possibly the only Wraith player*
*ever*
*seriously: you can't run it without a disaster unless your group happens to be a professional drama improv unit with side degrees in psychology*
* also, VtM was the worst branch*
* fight me*

5328998

You played Wraith!

My respect for your mental fortitude, already quite high mind you, just soared.

Who played your shadow? Unless you did it yourself.

I remember when V:tM was made by Mind's Eye Theater and it was a small booklet and it was actually pretty cool.

5329012

The quickstart stiffcover magazine passed out at gaming shops at no cost to the recipient?

First hit's free, kid...

At least they had the self-awareness to have their in-universe counterparts run by the villains of... I think it was Werewolf?

5329020
I think this predates that. This was a full game, before White Wolf bought them out.

People talk about how exploitative video game companies have gotten, while tabletop RPG makers just smirk at watching the new kid finally figure out that the money never stops coming in if the game is never finished.

Wanderer D
Moderator

5328998 I was more into Woof-woof than V:TM but I still loved them both.

5329063

Best group in woof-woof was caw-caw.

Wanderer D
Moderator

5329079 It was really hard to find good Corax players tbh

5329026
Black Dog Publishing.
Owned by Pentex iirc.

I liked M:tA best. Though the bit at the end of the apocalypse book for Demon which revealed that Lucifer started the War in Heaven on God's orders was my favourite twist.

My friend tried to play Wraith, and always said it was a good way to ruin a friendship.

5329150 You want to really ruin a friendship among a group, have them over for a game of Diplomacy. Just put away any sharp objects first.

Played VtM and WW on paper over the last... (mutters quietly about President McKinley) on and off. It's hard enough for a RPG where the GM lies to the players, but when the players lie to each other, and have complicated inter-NPC relations to boot... I had to make a cheat sheet, and more than once I bluffed myself out of a situation by claiming something that never happened six months before. Our bunch videotaped a WW moot where the lupus acted out The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, and I've got to see if I can get a copy online sometime. It was break-a-rib funny.

5329115
With great games titled like "Warlock: the Pretension" and "Pixie: the Delusion."

It's too bad the rules for the oWoD were such a mess when trying to get one game's splats interacting with another's.

Also, oWod: at least it wasn't Aberrant.

5328998
Isn't Hunter: The Reckoning same universe?

5329369

'tis.

Possibly including the videogames.

(We don't talk about the videogames.)

HtR had its points, but had the misfortune to come in as a countering faction for a world which had insisted that such things were never going to work. Also, mandatory punishments for advancing too far. Something which had the misfortune to become the hallmark of the reboot.

However, if I'm going to breathe fire about HtR: I can sum it up in one word: Wayward. 'There are nine creeds. The one which was supposed to be the leadership faction? They're universally insane. They see killing as the only solution. This includes killing the supernaturals who are trying to keep everyone else from dying. And they will kill everyone who they deem as not doing enough killing. Incidentally, that's everyone on the planet. There's always that one group in a WoD game trying to keep everyone else from working together, but HtR happily created the one which treats blowing up an apartment complex to take out the one changeling who lives in the basement as the best idea. The thousand normal people who lived there? Collateral damage.

One of the "canon" endings seemed to imply that at the moment someone was trying to fix it all, a Wayward showed up and shot them in the back. Better to have the planet die than see a supernatural save it.

Any reflection on 2020 is purely coincidental.

5329375
Hey I played the one game for NGC. It was pretty okay for what it was.
It's always felt like 40k's addiction to grimdark dark grimness to me

CCC

Hey, if people are going to keep paying for this stuff, then of course they're going to keep selling it...

5329185
I just checked out Diplomacy on wikipedia, and now I am afraid to ask my friend about it because I know she is going to want to play it.

5328998
I could never find any Wraith books. They were always these mythical objects spoken of but never seen in my play groups.
None of us really tried that hard to find them mind you, since everything can be found on-line, even back then then. Nor did we, you know, ask our game store to order copies because that was still a viable choice at the time.
No one really ever wanted to play it since WoD, old or new, is already just so depressing... .

As such Wraith is one of the few oWoD settings I have no books for. I really should fix that maybe, just to sate my collector side.
Only ~$80 on Amazon!

V:tM was the one I got the most games for and Vampires will always be my favorite of the 'race' choices but the system I liked most was actually Mummy: The Resurrection.
Hardly anyone ever talks about Mummy.
I was only ever able to run one session of it before that group collapsed sadly.

5329012
MET was the Live-Action version, based on the table top and was always owned by White Wolf. I had a lot of fun playing with my local group but I have...problems playing just one character so the structure of a LARP didn't really resonate with me. And I didn't want to take the time to get involved enough to reach any level of GM status.

5329079
caw-caw was my second fav, meow-meow being my top. It just really sucked they got the first add-on book and as such the test product to see if there was any interest and the thus smallest.
Except maybe, ah, whatever sound foxes make, since they didn't even get their own book! Though I think they still wound up getting more pages than the cats did.

5329498
https://www.playdiplomacy.com/ It's actually really fun!
Going to link 5329185 here as well in case they want the free on-line version as well.

I do have a physical copy but have never actually played it in RL yet. Mostly because my group of friends wouldn't trust me to keep my word because of some other games we've played together and they won't accept my reasoning that if I lie every time I might as well just tell the truth... .

Great ... thanks, Estee, now I'm strongly considering playing Bloodlines (original) again while I wait for my pre-order of 2 to arrive ... (I've already beat it as a Gangrel, Toreador and Malkavian ... maybe try a Nos this time?)

And I have to admit, mechanics wise, nWoD is much cleaner, but I prefer the oWoD lore ....

5329565
5329498
5329185
DagaYemar has written a couple of fics about ponies playing Diplomacy, one with the Mane Six, and the other with Lunaverse Trixie, Derpy, Lyra, Carrot Top, Raindrops, and Cheerilee. ...Reading about it seems safer.

You probably already know this, but since you have a Patreon account

No, Patreon does NOT "have to pay"
YOU the Patreon user "have to pay"

I always liked Mage: The Ascension best.

Mind you, IMO the magic system was the Absolutely Most Unplayable Ever Combat System, beating out such worthy contenders as the first addition Villains & Vigilantes combat system and the Aftermath combat system (the rule book had a 2 page flow chart to help you understand it).

5328998

Wraith is such a cool setting... and such a miserably difficult game to play.

I was always more of an Apocalypse fan myself. Nine foot tall furry eco terrorists who know full well that they've already lost, the world is fucked, and they can only hope to go down fighting are my Jam.

5329342
HEY! That joke goes too far. I happen to love the fuck out of Aberrant. And Adventure. And Trinity.

5334108
It's an interesting question of which White Wolf property was written with the most railroad-y plot and metagame.

5334566
To be fair, Aberrant HAS to have it's metagame end in certain ways. As the middle, and darkest, part of a trilogy it was always going to go to shit hard and fast with, canonically, nothing anyone could do to stop it. This includes a guy who's entire shtick is time travel and who KNOWS it's going to go to hell but that if he stops it then it will go even worse.

However, unlike WoD's multiple conflicting backstories/endgames, Aberrant at least had both a solid origin story and a confirmed endgame in mind when it was created. After all the revival and rise to the stars of humanity in Trinity rather required the near destruction of it that is the ending of the Aberrant war.

More importantly, especially given Aberrant Nexus, there was always the intent of "This is how the story ends, in this universe. Yours doesn't need to go this way. Maybe, somehow, someone will change the ending." for the setting as a whole. Hell of the multiple campaigns I've run of Aberrant, I don't think I've followed the canon metagame 100%, ever. Indeed for my personal favorite all I did was change Divas Mal into more of a straight up villain rather than a misguided fool. Canon Mal ABSOLUTELY BELIEVES that superior power of Novas gave them superior morality. As the ending of the war proved, he was wrong. Indeed it's why HE ended the war, by surrendinger.

My prefered version of Mal never has a "My God What Have I Done?!" moment, because he feels he IS GOD. In the campaign where the players, aware and warned by Max (and a third party) tried, and failed, to prevent the war, things were WORSE than canon. In the end the players had to do what Mal did, set aside their humanity and become gods themselves. The fallout all but destroyed the planet, and the species. In the end Earth was rendered uninhabitable in its entirety. Humanity was forced to the stars, if only so they could survive.

And, as the Aberrant team themselves would say, "That's a perfectly valid outcome." As is the campaign where the players DID stop Mal BEFORE the world was destroyed, and allowed themselves to step back so that Humanity could continue to grow into it's full potential. (I tried SOOO HARD to get them to rule the world, but for some reason they decided to remain heroes...)

WoD on the other hand... As much as I love it, everyone is screwed no matter what anyone decides to do. There isn't a single outcome that doesn't end with "And the world was destroyed". It's less of a 'darkest before dawn' metagame and more of a 'You always knew this was a doward spiral.' plot. Especially given the lack of a 'Trinity-esq' sequel for things to improve. And as everyone knows, it was the Garou's fault.

5329375
Oh yeah, I almost forgot Hunter existed and had games. I'm honestly still hopeful Bloodlines 2 is good, even if the narrative guy got the yeet. Also excited for Werewolf the Apocalypse. And Fifth Edition wasn't THAT bad

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