I read somewhere that the game apparently lets you choose your own pronouns in the char creation process...so you may be onto something there lol.Here Comes Tomorrow said:
Can't wait to play as "your royal majesty dinosaur king Dreiko"
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Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2!!
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Can't wait to play as "your royal majesty dinosaur king Dreiko"
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From: https://kotaku.com/vampire-the-masquerade-bloodlines-is-getting-a-sequel-1833479366undeadsuitor said:
This was a big red flag for me.
The WoD isn't a sensitive place. It's deliberately supposed to be a horrible place where everything is dirty and everyone is waiting to use whatever method they can to further their own ambition, by trying to be sensitive to people in such a setting you're just hobbling yourself narritivly.
I played through as a Malkavian and thoroughly enjoyed the weird / stealth / ambush style. Although I expect I would have gotten more from a more standard playthrough first, only peeling back the layer of reality afterwards. I feel that I needed to be more intellectually engaged with it, rather than just responding to tasks - how rare is that, now?
In terms of content I'm sure it'll satisfy no one 100%. It's impossible from the design perspective to do that anyway.
In terms of content I'm sure it'll satisfy no one 100%. It's impossible from the design perspective to do that anyway.
OK, maybe someone.Dreiko said:I read somewhere that the game apparently lets you choose your own pronouns in the char creation process...so you may be onto something there lol.
Can't wait to play as "your royal majesty dinosaur king Dreiko"
World of Darkness, especially as seen through the lens of Vampire: The Masquerade is gothic horror set in urban fantasy. I can't speak for the new source books, but the old editions of V:tM always emphasized that gothic horror meant seeing the beauty in the darkness as much as it was about seeing the darkness itself. There's no coincidence that the Nosferatu of Bloodlines live in a collective and protect each other, because even in the darkness of looking monstrous and being shunned even by other monsters they can find kinship. VV's quest about dissuading an old lover and saving her from vampire hunters and the way she desperately tries to gain the affection of the player character is similar.Here Comes Tomorrow said:
Sure the WoD is meant to be a horrible, dark place where corruption, violence and crime runs rampant. It is also, to use the words of the developers, a place where you can feel sexy and powerful. Vampire is meant to be equal parts oppressive drama of violence and bestiality and power fantasy. The lure of the Beast for vampires is, after all, that they have all this power to wield against mortals and the constant temptation to do it. Now, it isn't much of a power fantasy if your character keeps getting put down by being misgendered, especially if you want to play a transsexual or non-binary character. Considering that White Wolf, with VtM in particular, where some of the leading RPG developers of the early 00's to work towards inclusiveness for everyone, irregardless of gender or ethnicity, the quote you're afraid of is a sign, to me, that the devs of Bloodlines 2 understand the heritage of their game. You can still show and tell some really dark shit even if you don't go straight for overt sexism, racism or classism against the actual player.
Gethsemani said:
Did the games ever actually insult the player in the past? I would assume in-game characters being rude in any specific way is just the game's flavor and how it communicates to you that the character your character is interacting with is a jerk, which in a power fantasy is something that happens a LOT, and then you get the fantasy by overcoming them. I don't think a character "misgendering" your player character is something that is perpetrated on you, it's perpetrated on your character, like a million other horrible things that are gonna happen to your character. I'm sure you don't feel like someone's literally out to kill you for trying to kill your character so it doesn't make sense for you to feel "misgendered" if someone did that to your character either. It's just one more bad thing that happens. Isn't it odd in such a world for that to be the one bad thing that somehow does not happen?
I think the concern is that if you limit the scope of things you get to feel powerful by overcoming to only things that don't trigger people's modern sensibilities that you limit the power to be felt for overcoming them too, as well as limiting too many things that are genre staples.
If the opinion is that "people don't feel power by overcoming homophobia/sexual assault/what have you", that's a dumb opinion imo. Nobody should get to decide that. Each individual just has to experience the game and see for themselves how they feel about it. If they go into the game having already decided that for people that's a reason for worry.
Yeah there's a mountain of baggage that comes with the VtM IP at this particular moment in time, that sadly actually has less to do with the actual game and its setting than personal vendettas between creatives, and Bloodlines 2 is basically predestined to be a complete internet outrage shit show no matter what happens. 5E has been a cluster fuck since day one, and Paradox more or less mercy-killed White Wolf outright over the Chechnya debacle. And, this is all within the greater landscape of Paradox being on thin ice with the torches-and-pitchforks crew thanks to Europa Universalis and Crusader Kings, but having managed until now to avoid controversy due to a low radar profile.undeadsuitor said:
"Equally" in this context meaning "based on the proportional occurrence in real life"? As in, if 0.3% of the world is trans, 99.7% of the insults being aimed at them and 0.3% of them being aimed at cis people for being normal. Then sure, I think that'd make sense.undeadsuitor said:
It's not equal to pretend everyone in the world has just as much of a chance of being trans as they have of being cis, so insults behaving in this 50-50 way you're implying would severely disproportionately represent the trans population for no logical reason.
You could I guess make the story revolve around some weird coalition of lgbt vampires and putting them into every story and having your player char be persecuted by them if they're normal, in which case the inflated anti-cis sentiment would make sense and be fine. But you need something plot-based like that to have this make sense.
I mean, think about it, you know how in South Park they had a bathroom for "cissies", intended to parody people thinking being cis is somehow noteworthy. I don't think you can make people insult you for being cis with any form of regularity and have it not come out as some type of joke or self-parody, no matter how earnestly you go about it.
undeadsuitor said:
Ok so, this is interesting.
Your supposed insulter would need to be someone who for some reason doesn't go for the lowest hanging fruit of insults but is specifically interested in only making sexuality-based insults for that to make sense. As in, the guy wouldn't insult a short fat bald guy with a crooked arm and no teeth for any of those traits despite them being obvious and easy to make fun of but rather for him being straight. And even then, I think if that very very unfortunate guy was a Gangrel, a bestiality insult would make more sense than a cis one. Maybe a combined one? "Do you only fuck female sheep too?" or something like that.
I think that such a character is interesting but needs some form of establishing for them to make sense and not have it come off as contrived, and you can't have the entire game's worth of characters be that person (without the aforementioned lgbt vamp gang plotline) or it'll feel forced.
But yeah, if you put in the proper foundation such a character would be great. They should be in~
I just can't believe that some people are upset that an RPG will feature a lot of choices and options to play with. But since it does upset a lot of people, I hope it upsets them to their very core. At least it will be fun to observe those freaks.
That's probably true but I think it's a small sacrifice for someone to get to rp as who they like.undeadsuitor said:being short or fat isn't limited to the cis experience thoughDreiko said:undeadsuitor said:
Ok so, this is interesting.
Your supposed insulter would need to be someone who for some reason doesn't go for the lowest hanging fruit of insults but is specifically interested in only making sexuality-based insults for that to make sense. As in, the guy wouldn't insult a short fat bald guy with a crooked arm and no teeth for any of those traits despite them being obvious and easy to make fun of but rather for him being straight. And even then, I think if that very very unfortunate guy was a Gangrel, a bestiality insult would make more sense than a cis one. Maybe a combined one? "Do you only fuck female sheep too?" or something like that.
I think that such a character is interesting but needs some form of establishing for them to make sense and not have it come off as contrived, and you can't have the entire game's worth of characters be that person (without the aforementioned lgbt vamp gang plotline) or it'll feel forced.
But yeah, if you put in the proper foundation such a character would be great. They should be in~
im just afraid straight white cis men are being left out here. theres nothing really inherent about them to overcome triumphantly and Im afraid they're receiving less of an experience
I tend to play as the "weird one out" races in most of these kinds of self-insert style rpgs (Qunari in Dragon Age, Orc in TES etc.) since that's most removed from my experience hence most novel for a similar reason. I think playing as the default human knight dude (Nord/imperial in skyrim for example) is kinda dull in most wrpg stuff anyhow.
Yes and no. Back in the day, the World of Darkness was the refuge for all the weird queer kids in the TTRPG spaceHere Comes Tomorrow said:
Because while yeah, you were a fucked up monster, but so was everybody else, and you were a fucked up monster that got to belong and either be powerful or rage against the fucked up monster status quo. Shape shifting, reality warping body sculptors tended to appeal to folks who didn?t otherwise fit in to society?s rigid definitions of acceptable ways to be. Kinda like how being a corporate Shaodowrunner was *supposedly* the way of being a sellout.
Or in short, what you get out of the WoD and what a lot of other people get out of the WoD are vastly different things
Again, not what I was talking about.altnameJag said:
I'll try to clarify:
The Jeanette/Therese dynamic in Bloodlines is one of the highlights of the game in Bloodlines because the questline is well written (IMO), most of us didn't see the twist coming and it's really the first time you're exposed to the personality flaws that result in being a vampire (what with clan traits amplifying certain aspect of the psyche). If it was submitted to the Bloodlines 2 writers it probably would have been trashed because it involves sexual abuse of children, Jeanette's whole personality (not even thinking about her appearance) would be considered misogynistic and there's some slut shaming in there as well (I don't remembr every line of dialogue, this is off the top of my head). If you're being sensitive to players then the whole thing is a big pile of offensive content that would upset people, so into the trash it goes. I just don't see storylines like that being written into Bloodlines 2 if they worry about offending people.
I'm focusing on Jeanette and Therese btw, because every 8 month or so I revisit Bloodlines and usually I at least get to the second hub, so I'm more familiar with them. If we want we can talk about the human traffiking questline in Chinatown or murdering a stripper in Hollywood or the fairly lengthy quest involving a snuff film and an exploitation porn studio we can do. I just don't think the atmosphere would be the same if you avoid writing about subjects that make people might find (for lack of a better word) triggering.
And what I think me, AltnameJag and others are reacting to is that you are conflating writing about dark and sensitive issues and respecting the players choices. If a player makes the choice to play a transsexual or non-binary character and the game reacts appropriately by changing dialogue when appropriate, that's cool reactivity. It also says nothing about the writing, mood or topics of the stories in the game. One can be an ultra-progressive feminist and still write a story about sex trafficking, in fact, one might argue that a feminist take on such a story would be more topical and probably better suited for WoD (as it'd be a horror story of desperate women being easy prey for evil men) then a more traditionally masculine take on the issue (Kill evil men, optionally have sex with quest giver girl as reward). Being aware of the sensitivity and topicality of many of the subjects routinely touched upon in the WoD is not a drawback, it is an important aspect in making sure that these issues are treated with respect instead of having them become rote backdrops for murder-hobo gameplay.Here Comes Tomorrow said:
I mean, the reason no one is making a fuzz about the Voerman-plot is that it is genuinely well done. Jeanette and Therese are both compelling characters in their own right and the reveal of their actual relation is shocking but deliberately paced. The fact that the only way to get the best resolution is to not take Jeanette up on her flirting or succumb to Therese scheming is also a testament to the writer understanding the sensitivity of the issues brought up in the plotline. That's not because the writer was all about being an edgelord who wanted to include incest and sex molestation of children as a dark and provocative ingredient in a quest. It is because the writer understood that writing about those topics and making an engaging quest out of it requires a deft touch and an awareness of the volatility of the issue.
I think you're kinda contradicting yourself. Was the game prior this sort of "masculine" thing or was it well written by someone who understood how to treat sexual abuse stories without them actually being a feminist or what have you? If it was the latter, do you even gain anything by changing this up outside of ticking more boxes? It sounds to me the masculine fantasy handled things just right and it also gave you more options to play around with if you were so inclined.Gethsemani said:
Would it be better to remove some options or what? What's the issue with it?
I'm always gonna be skeptical of "person of group X is by definition more topical" claims. In the end you just want a good story and if the good story is written by someone who isn't who you'd expect to write it that's an even greater accomplishment to rejoice over, not something to bemoaningly accept. If the story isn't good then similarly it wasn't good and it's not some type of failure at being this group of person that was the cause, the writer was just bad. I wouldn't absolve someone of the responsibility of their actions with the excuse of "of course you couldn't write this story, you aren't X".