It gets better. As soon as it starts getting worse. Cheat to make combat easier. That's a ways away though.
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Paradox aquires White Wolf from CCP
- Thread starter Chariot
- Start date
It gets better. As soon as it starts getting worse. Cheat to make combat easier. That's a ways away though.
Why would you need to cheat? The last fight was mildy more difficult that the rest of the game, but I never had trouble. You only get in trouble if you rush trough and ignore all the side stuff.
Didn't found that troubling, but I only played Tremere and Ventrue so far, of course the inferior clans may have trouble *nips wine smugly*
I can still see those little critters running at me down those endless corridors.
I see it in my dreams.
Lupin the Third
Member
Exactly. One day f my all time favourites. What I wouldn't give for amother one of these (minus bugs and off the rails final mission that is).
Time for another visit to the haunted hotel...
You know what? I'd totally play a Street Fighter rpg.
I'll admit that there's relatively few things that you can put in front of the letters RPG that won't at least vaguely pique my interest, but darn it, I think that could work.
Hell, I think it'd be fun to go out and find your "home stage" as a base, pick a theme song to go with it, decorate it ok I'll stop thinking about this now.
I'll admit that there's relatively few things that you can put in front of the letters RPG that won't at least vaguely pique my interest, but darn it, I think that could work.
Hell, I think it'd be fun to go out and find your "home stage" as a base, pick a theme song to go with it, decorate it ok I'll stop thinking about this now.
Pilgrimzero
Member
The sewers section really make you wish you built toward combat.
Oh that could very well be. Maybe my memory is rosetinted.
Oh, that explains a lot. I think my Tremere was pretty much geared to combat.
Pilgrimzero
Member
That and I always felt the
Werewolf
Seeing as there are some knowledgeable folks, as someone that lost touch with WOD around 2002, is there a particularly good resource to get up to speed with the new world of darkness and changes from what I guess is now the old setting?
no build should help you. I thought it was a great idea for an encounter, maybe hampered by the difficulties of dealing with the engine at the time.
A werewolf in crinos form is a killing machine built to fight things much tougher than a young vampire
The idea of that encounter is awesome. The actual execution is terrible.
I actually thought the last 1/4 of the game (aside from the actual ending) was flat out bad. Three "dungeons" in a row with dozens and dozens of tough enemies in endless, featureless halls, punctuated by a boss battle that is exceptionally more difficult than anything before it, all in a game that doesn't have good combat to begin with. So you're stuck playing a harder version of the worst part of a game for a number of hours straight. It's the only time I have ever implemented cheats to complete a game (making myself invincible) and it was still incredibly tedious.
XiaNaphryz
LATIN, MATRIPEDICABUS, DO YOU SPEAK IT
The end of the game was like that because tthe devs had to rush and finish the game. No time to properly build out the encounters and create proper non-combat paths and whatnot.
It'd get backed to hell and back.
On a side note, I hope they keep the third person perspective of bloodlines. I mean, top down is fine and all, but there's something to be said for how personal third/first person feels. The mansion wouldn't have worked in a top down RPG.
*sigh* This is one of the diminishing list of franchises that would do gangbuster business on Kickstarter. So most probably yeah.
I totally hope that they do, just so I can buy it at a discounted price AND give them some seed money to help with development.
Plus, you can tell that there is a total groundswell of support. All they have to do is hit all of the important check-boxes (getting the original personnel working on it, first/third person, talking about the importance of hitting the mood, etc) and they would totally clean up.
GeordieMark
Member
Lol. I did exactly the same
Basileus777
Member
Paradox has never touched Kickstarter, it's hard to tell if they'd be willing to.
I have no doubts about that. I still really like Bloodlines, but I can only judge what I played, not what the developers wish I could have played. I feel like, with the lack of development those areas had, I wish the devs would have went the modern route of truncating them or making them easier (to account for non-combat builds) than just keeping the areas large and "challenging".
But Obsidian did with Pillars of Eternity that was also published by Paradox.
Basileus777
Member
Paradox had nothing to do with the Kickstarter, they didn't become involved with the project until later. It's questionable whether or not Paradox is interested in Kickstarting their own IP.
I don't see it as anything other than a win-win. It reduces financial risk and help gauge the interest in the IP and a potential game. It works both as reducing financial risk and increase awareness/mindshare of an upcoming game.
Yes, what I am saying is, that they can leave it just to Obsidian.
Basileus777
Member
Why would they do that? We're talking about Paradox owned IP here, they couldn't handle this like they did with Pillars of Eternity. Whatever happens is going to be initiated by Paradox, and even if it is Kickstarter, funded by them.
Obviously. I said leave it to Obsidian not that Obsidian should go rogue and just make the kickstarter without Paradox. I am saying that if Paradox decides to do a kickstarter that they can and should leave the organisation to Obsidian. The knowledge that they already did a successful one could be useful. I suspect that they would need a bigger budget for such a game than Paradox games usually have and Paradox next hit games take a bit until they are released and make money.
The sewers always made me uneasily.
Well, well. Break out your trench coats and katanas, boys! We're finally going back to the world of darkness.
And yes, yes, yes, bloodlines sequel/spiritual successor. That would be good.
But someone should make a pitch black horror game set in Wraith: the Oblivion. Some of the expansion books for that line left fucking scars on my tiny mind. The book on Specters had some of the most disquieting illustrations I'd ever seen up to that point, to say nothing of what was on the page next to them. I don't know if it should be one of those first person shit-your-pants-em-ups that give you no weapons and no hope but to run and hide or if it would be better as just a straight up Souls clone (which actually fits really well the more I think about it), but that setting was far and away the most fantastic thing in the classic WoD. It was a godawful tabletop game, mind. But the idea was stupendous.
...And I do acknowledge that I've never met another WoD fan who was into that gamebook and especially none that are into it the way I am, but goddamnit, a man can dream.
And yes, yes, yes, bloodlines sequel/spiritual successor. That would be good.
But someone should make a pitch black horror game set in Wraith: the Oblivion. Some of the expansion books for that line left fucking scars on my tiny mind. The book on Specters had some of the most disquieting illustrations I'd ever seen up to that point, to say nothing of what was on the page next to them. I don't know if it should be one of those first person shit-your-pants-em-ups that give you no weapons and no hope but to run and hide or if it would be better as just a straight up Souls clone (which actually fits really well the more I think about it), but that setting was far and away the most fantastic thing in the classic WoD. It was a godawful tabletop game, mind. But the idea was stupendous.
...And I do acknowledge that I've never met another WoD fan who was into that gamebook and especially none that are into it the way I am, but goddamnit, a man can dream.
I feel that Obsidian is at their best when working in existing universes and building their story on that (PST, KOTOR2), their original universe games are good, but they do lack a certain depth that is very very hard to build from scratch. It's especially good when there's decades of crazy material to draw upon and that is certainly the case here.
Having ready built mechanics doesn't hurt either.
That's the neat thing about Wraith; so many ways to approach that. The Shadow could be a really cool game mechanic, let alone Harrowings. Hell, you could potentially have an entire game just based on the Shadowlands political scene and weird crap in the Tempest.
I immediately imagine a game that stands somewhere on the boarder between Planescape: Torment and Sunless Sea. But yeah, you totally could.
Goddamn, I get so excited about that setting whenever I think of it. Makes me so sad it's so widely overlooked. It was so weird and alien, but at the same time feels like the sort of place I would've dreamed up as a kid. The supplement books for that line were the only ones I read for pleasure rather than with an intent to run a game.
cj_iwakura
Member
If you have particular questions, I can help, but by and large the NWoD Vampire is a huge disappointment. The core universe, Changeling, and Mage are good stuff, though.
TVtropes, bruh.
Strife In a Teacup
Member
I tend to agree (except Dungeon Siege 3), even if I do enjoy PoE quite a lot. I think Obsidian could pull off an Exalted game no problem.
I wouldn't say asexual. There's just no intimacy to it for them, it's a purely animal act, which they have little emotional connection to. So they can enjoy it, it's just a vastly different kind of enjoyment for them that's alien to an actual human being.
nWoD has more novel anthologies coming with the change-over to 2nd edition.
I wouldn't call it a disappointment. It's vastly different from what came before it. The only thing I can levy against it is that they leaned TOO hard on the idea of it being a metaplot-less game to the point where it seems to have no direction. Without the Covenants, the game would be bone-fucking-dry.
Werewolf: the Forsaken, on the other hand? Now THAT was a disappointment, they just couldn't seem to define what the point was there and is just all over the damn place.
The rest was pretty on-point, however, if you exclude Geist. Seriously, what a bullshit game that was. The only reason for it to exist was to flesh out the shape of the Underworld, which was really well-done, but the characters that you can play within it were just awful.
Since you're pretty much the defined WoD expert on GAF, I'm interested on your take regarding Demon: the Descent.
cj_iwakura
Member
Geist is really fun if you have the right mindset. I ran a game with the PCs investigating a supernatural serial killer where they had to interrogate ghosts for clues.
I'm not familiar with Demon(Old or New), but I've heard very good things.
I've read the new Demon game, and it's not at all what you might think. The PCs are fallen angels either rebelling against the 'God Machine', or trying to find a way back into God's grace.
Yeah, the "techgnostic espionage" theme of the game really caught me off guard, and the book (when I read it) gave me a really strange impression. It gives a unique twist on why demons do what they do. The technological visual themes to their existence still rub me the wrong way in some sense and were played up a bit too much in the literature, but I'm willing to look past it.
And I'm shocked with me being more knowledgable on a WoD subject than you are!!
Demon: the Fallen was good in its own way, playing on the idea that the angels who made humanity loved them dearly but were banned from being seen by man, and angered God when they appeared before man in defiance, starting the wars in heaven with Lucifer as their general that led to their fall into a jail near the epicentre of the Abyss, where their minds were broken from Torment into bitter hatred and a need to subjugate God's dominion. No splat in oWoD hated their opposition quite like Demons did with the exception of Werewolves and their hatred of the Wyrm.
The reliance on the Judeo-Christian concepts of heaven and such were unfortunate but not unprecedented (VtM mythos, anyone?), but I think some of the writings in Demon were what precipitated the concept of the Supernal Realms in Mage: the Awakening when trying to write their way past the Christian God being the true centre of it all.
Demon described that before the fall of angels, things were less rigid, where Adam and Eve could be seen as both humans created as they are in the Bible, beautiful and innocent, to the first bipedal mammal evolution, to hundreds of myths and truths in between, making every myth of creation both true and yet a half-truth.
So going from that to Descent, and where it fits cosmologically into nWoD being as murky as it is (heck, the God-Machine itself doesn't seem to fit, at this point) was a bit jarring, in my perspective, but in spite of that, I think it's their best-crafted game line in a while.
Out of curiosity, how much do you think out of print pdfs should be sold for?
For me 10 dollars with some sort of package deals for multi book sets. I'd pay 30 bucks for the four book package. Do these go on sale?
XiaNaphryz
LATIN, MATRIPEDICABUS, DO YOU SPEAK IT
Of all the oWoD back stories and settings, Demon was my absolute favorite. I realliy like the Earthbound supplement in how it explained how human history had been altered in the fight between Lucifer and his ex-lieutenants.
I really wish they did a standalone end book for Demon instead of lumping it with a bunch of others in Time of Judgement.
If we're talking about DrivethruRPG then yes, there are Steam-style sales.
Demon: the Fallen really had some great literature, despite being so Judeo-Christian about it. Scourge 4 LAIPH!! And some of the systems for how Demons could pull one over each other were genius. Maybe I didn't read hard enough, but didn't find anything equivalent to that in Descent.
Time of Judgment was a bit of a mess all round, in my opinion. Although I always laughed that what finally caused the end of days was a group of mages successfully removing the Curse of Caine from a vampire by invoking Anthelios (the Wyrm) and the Antediluvians were all like "OH NO YOU FUCKING DON'T, THEY'RE MINE!!!", which caused everything in reality to start trembling and basically unleashed total hell. Or at least, that's how I read it.
It's really great. I think, when it comes to understanding Demon: the Descent's more wicked and interesting nature, you should read their section in the Hunter: the Vigil supplement Mortal Remains first, before reading the core book. It really paints the picture of them as creatures who perfectly deceive, steal souls (and identities with them) and sometimes even torment humanity mostly out of necessity only, for the specific purpose of avoiding the scrutiny of their former near-omniscient master, to hide from death (or re-assimilation with the God-Machine, but some would consider that a distinction without a difference). Seeing Descent from "the outside" as it were helps to frame the actual game itself.
Scion is fully owned by Onyx Path Publishing, as is the Trinity universe. It was not a part of this acquisition.
NoblesseOblige
Banned
This is one of the, if not the, most exciting piece of gaming related news for me in quite awhile. I've been a fan of White Wolf's World Of Darkness for almost twenty years now, and have always wanted more entries into the video gaming arena. Bloodlines is among my top 5 CRPG of all time, and I even enjoyed some of the lesser titles to an extent. Other than the obvious RPGs, I'd like to see a more story driven political toned 'graphic adventure game' a la telltale (though probably not made by them specifically).