good vampire game (twilight fans need not read)
- Thread starter Planlixix
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See, I hate Twilight. However, I feel like a lot of the Twilight hate here is, well, hypocritical. Clan politics and badass superpowers and PVC catsuits are softball fiction that avoids the heart of the "vampire" idea just as stridently as Twilight does.
So, I'm going to threadcrap a bit. There, you've been warned. Feel free to skip it if you want...
The first four suggested points actually make a great progression. So, let's use those.
Because that's what it means to be a vampire and anything less is wussing out.
Because that's what it means to be a vampire and anything less is wussing out.
Because that's what it means to be a vampire and anything less is wussing out.
Because that's what it means to be a vampire and anything less is wussing out.
-- Alex
So, I'm going to threadcrap a bit. There, you've been warned. Feel free to skip it if you want...
The first four suggested points actually make a great progression. So, let's use those.
If you want hardcore vampires, then they're all the same -- monstrous parasites. They may have a complicated cliquish vampire society or a special vampire bloodlines or whatever, but that's all just stupid fluff they try to use to distract themselves from the truth of their nature. Vampires may all start different, but they end up the same twisted things, only capable of murder and abuse. Every other vampire you meet is just a reminder of the terrible monster that you are.
Because that's what it means to be a vampire and anything less is wussing out.
And then you kill her. You absolutely, positively have to murder her. Because a story about being a vampire isn't complete until you hurt someone that actually matters to you instead of just sucking off hobos and bad guys, until your hunger and selfishness and predatory fear drive you to destroy anything that could've mattered to you, and you're left thinking "Did I ever love? Ever? Or was it all just selfishness the entire time?"
Because that's what it means to be a vampire and anything less is wussing out.
Sure, daylight kills you. Dawn is the sweet release, the suicide that'll free you from your corrupt life. At the end of every night, you see the most noble thing you could do with the rest of your life peaking out over the horizon, but you turn away from it -- because you're a craven fuck who doesn't have enough humanity left to pull off that kind of self-sacrifice. So instead of meeting your end like the man or woman you still try to pretend to be, you wallow in your misery while spreading nothing but pain to anyone whose path you cross.
Because that's what it means to be a vampire and anything less is wussing out.
Walk into a bar, find the most helpless, lonely, frightened person there, befriend that person, spin a whole relationship into being on the spot, and then throw it all away just for a moment's sustenance. And as this becomes routine, you begin to realize that sometimes you don't even do it for the blood in that corpse, you do it because you crave the way that drug addict or suicidal depressive or teenage runaway or homeless undiagnosed schizophrenic reaches out to you with trust and basic human need a moment before you begin your brutal slaughter. That last fleeting memory of human warmth and kindness is itself just driving you to kill.
Because that's what it means to be a vampire and anything less is wussing out.
-- Alex
Plot aspects
You start as a Fearless Vampire Killer (as Roman Polanski was in that great film). Any era is fine, specially acute would be during Inquisition times. We all see the benefits of ridding earth of the plague of vampirism, cheer the hero and delight in the destruction of each member of the damned.
Then, our luck runs out and we are turned by one of our nemesis.
We are hunted presently by our former foes, who also luxuriate in our precarious situation (since we are novices in the practical use of our talents), and by our former delighters and supporters. So we must, to survive from now on, with passion embrace our undead selves and experience the world in the exact opposite way. We explore moral complexities in full from both points of view.
Love interest relation (that you mention in your post) has now multiplied its interesting factor. Maybe even new vampire love interest surfaces, out of need but also maybe out of true love.
Game mechanics
Real sandbox, most definitely. Ample character customization. Blood is always a concern. Sunlight is fatal so there must be a full day and night cycle, to make some adventures the more perilous if we undertake them at the wrong time. A wealth of vampiric skills available, even though we can only specialize in but a few.
You start as a Fearless Vampire Killer (as Roman Polanski was in that great film). Any era is fine, specially acute would be during Inquisition times. We all see the benefits of ridding earth of the plague of vampirism, cheer the hero and delight in the destruction of each member of the damned.
Then, our luck runs out and we are turned by one of our nemesis.
We are hunted presently by our former foes, who also luxuriate in our precarious situation (since we are novices in the practical use of our talents), and by our former delighters and supporters. So we must, to survive from now on, with passion embrace our undead selves and experience the world in the exact opposite way. We explore moral complexities in full from both points of view.
Love interest relation (that you mention in your post) has now multiplied its interesting factor. Maybe even new vampire love interest surfaces, out of need but also maybe out of true love.
Game mechanics
Real sandbox, most definitely. Ample character customization. Blood is always a concern. Sunlight is fatal so there must be a full day and night cycle, to make some adventures the more perilous if we undertake them at the wrong time. A wealth of vampiric skills available, even though we can only specialize in but a few.
I feel the urge to add to this as a long time fan of WoD and particularly the Vampire: The Masquerade game, however I think Phanlix has a pretty good cover of what a truly epic vampire game would require.
My two cents: I can see a lot of potential in an infamous/prototype-esque style vampire game. I loved the whole "this is the world you roam do what you will but go here to start the actual story" thing. I've also found Prototype to be a great game for reckless killing of computer AI.
My two cents: I can see a lot of potential in an infamous/prototype-esque style vampire game. I loved the whole "this is the world you roam do what you will but go here to start the actual story" thing. I've also found Prototype to be a great game for reckless killing of computer AI.
Alex, Alex, Alex... it took me a while to decide on how to respond to this one, first off just let me say you might have a few issues that need to be worked out.Alex_P said:
I will agree with you on several points... yes vampires are supposed to be monsters in the dark killing for blood whenever they are hungry, but I definitely do not agree that is all they are. For example killing your love interest because you're hungry/injured is a great point, especially if this is being told from you as a newly created vampire not having full control over your bloodlust yet.
As far as everything else goes man, bravo on the psychotic front, and yes it was truly a threadcrap, cause not one of your points were delivered with anything less than vehemence. I was most annoyed at the ending of every 'point' you had "cause anything less would be wussing out." Not true, anything 'less' (hate to use that word cause leaving out raw bloodlust in favor of some humanity is, as I see it, an added benefit to the story and level of satisfaction to the player during the game's development) just adds to the character's humanity, which as the main character has to exist, otherwise you're just playing a monster who goes around killing random people, no depth.
ok, didn't really have time to read beyond the first few comments, but what if instead of sunlight damaging you, it drains some of your abilities. You are still stronger than most humans, but for the most part you have to rely on other strategies such as stealth and utilizing the enviroment during daylight hours. Nightime combat could be all about baddassness and wreaking havok, and daytime would require you to think on your feet as you are taking constant damage and can't do as much with your abilities. It could create variety in gameplay, as games like Prototype can get somwhat monotonous.
Also, a language barrier. It pisses me off in games where everybody speaks the same language, even the aliens from the other end of space.
Also, a language barrier. It pisses me off in games where everybody speaks the same language, even the aliens from the other end of space.
It's a rant. I'm trying to earn rant points. Don't freak out. I think that's a solid 7/10 -- not enough misspellings, capital letters, and personal attacks, but otherwise just about right.Phanlix said:
Twenty years of White-Wolf fandom has been all about missing the whole point of the "personal horror" that Vampire was supposed to represent. Folks picked up VtM, made characters who were basically Nick Knight as played by Johnny Depp, and then congratulated themselves for how deep and dramatic their fluffy stories were. Even worse, large sectors of the fanbase thought that vampire society, the deep wall of bullshit vampires built up to allow them to pretend they weren't parasitic monsters, was a good thing -- that vampires were meaningfully better than "kine" rather than deluded monsters who dehumanized other people because it made it easier to deal with their own inhumanity. Even when some writers did their best to channel the worst essence of Victorian-level classism and racism in their description of the Camarilla, the fans celebrated it as some kind of awesome ideal. It's "fans are slans" times ten, man. And that's screwed up even for geeks.
"Full control"? You never have full control. It's not some magic mutant power that makes your teenage years awkward and then lets you be a superhero once you figure it out. Even the romanticized vampires in Anne Rice's novels fall prey to their horrible lusts and obsessions. VtM's Beast and Humanity mechanics denied you the opportunity to be absolutely safe -- no matter how experienced and saintly you are, something can always push you over the edge. Being a vampire means being addicted to fucking murder. It's not something you can get used to. You have highs and lows but that's it. And you can't keep the lows away forever. (The other kind of vampire is the classical Dracula-type character, who can't be a protagonist because he's basically a calm, collected, and powerful Satan.)Phanlix said:
The "personal horror" thing that White Wolf tried to bottle and sell in the early 90s was all about a loss of control, the powerlessness to change your corrupted nature. That is a very human story -- it's also a horror story, which means that, no, your character isn't supposed to end up a happy, well-adjusted anti-hero like Angel or Nick Knight.Phanlix said:
I understand why the "superheroes with fangs" thing won out over the "personal horror" -- that part was honestly more fun to play. But, jeez, all the attacks on Twilight for being vapid wish-fulfillment? They're deserved, but they're freakin' hypocritical when they come from people whose idea of vampire fiction avoids the actual horror of being a vampire just as stridently as Twilight.
-- Alex