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Well, I think considering the circumstances, they did an okay job. Obviously I was dissapointed that all the Non-Combat discplines were translated to effect combat for the most part, but to sit on some kinda high horse and point down at the game makers and say:

"You should have made the range of options of what to do with your discplines as vast and varried as it is in the table top game!"

Would just be tom foolery. When the day comes -I- can program a game that well, then I'll point and snerk at other peoples efforts.

The thing is, in a Pen and Paper game, you aren't limited in your options. If I want to say "I'll use Potence to pluck a bar off the window, slam it up through his jaw and into his brain, twist it, and pull his head right off and show it to his family before I feast on their blood"... Thats my call. If I want to say "I use Potence to push myself against the falling bricks and hold the wall up long enough for the orphans to escape the burning building"... Then go for it. The kind of options afforded you via Discplines is so wide that you just CAN'T be expected to predict peoples choices... For example, lets look at some moments in the game:

When chasing down the Plague bearing vampires, you have to search high and low for them and track them down using word on the street, then when you find them, you confront them. However, you CAN play a Tremere with Blood Turmaturgy... In a Pen And Paper game the most obvious thing to me would be to taste the blood of one of the diseased people and find out what disease they have, then use Auspex to trace back their movments in their own mind to find the source of the disease. I'd then find another person of similar disposition (A hobo lets say) and infect them with a MUCH more deadly disease and dominate them to find these Plague vampires and offer themselves for a quick drink.

Plague vampire drinks, finds that they are suddenly coughing up blood and weak at the knees. Sure, their vampire bodies will heal the disease in an hour or less, but thats more then enough time for me to order three ghouls to walk up, slam a bit of wood into the weak beast and bring it back to the Chantry for experiments... Soon Clan Tremere would have a disease that only effected Vampires and I would be Promoted to the next circle! Proud? I think so!

Lets imagine I'm a Torreador trying to get the book off David Hatter. How easy is this!? Ha! I walk in, use Presence to catch his attention and start a conversation... When he's deeply and madly in love with me, I mention I'm a director looking for movie scripts and I wanted to stay in this hotel because I heard it was close to the center of the action. He, being wildly in love with me, mentions his book... And me, using Auspex, cut him off mid sentance each time he speaks telling him his own idea and saying how cliche and tripe it is. He, of course, is heart broken... His one love has told him all his ideas are worthless, and he burns the book himself in disgust, giving up on it... A little telepathy latter, and he realises it's not HIS fault, but his friends fault who gave him all these lousey ideas. He goes to meet his friend, I follow or use Spirits Touch on something personal of his to find out where he was going, Dread Gaze takes care of the little thin blood, carying him so silly he never speaks again, let alone about vampires... And Auspex lets me know if he's lying about it. Worse comes to wrose, I can use Celerity to beat Hatter to the cab and kill the guy before he even arrives. Boom!

And Mask Of 1000 Faces? Give me a break man, what a game buster!! I mask as Hatters friend and get him to give me the book. I mask as Boris and tell the guys we aren't hitting the night club up for money any more... Or better, I mask as Boris and go and ask for the money I'm owed, then "molest" her (IE: take some blood, make her think it was an attack of the sexual nature) and walk out... Full blood, full wallet... Humanity? Well....

So, yes, I think they prolly did as good a job as they CAN without making the game just broken and worthless. If they tried making things like 1000 Faces, I'd prolly be on this forum complaining because they put it in, and then wouldn't let me use it to trick everyone in the game.

Has anybody read the White Wolf fiction novels?
There's a book called Gehenna by Ari Marmell, and it actually features (or at least refers to) characters and events in VtM: Bloodlines. I won't spoil the book by saying anymore.
If anybody gets the urge to read it - try the Clan Novel Saga first - most of the events in the Gehenna book follow on from these stories.
The ending of VtM Bloodlines wasn't a departure from White Wolf's fiction - it's an almost perfect tie-in, in fact - but I can't comment on the RPG system at all.
D

[QUOTE=stoneagedan]Has anybody read the White Wolf fiction novels?
There's a book called Gehenna by Ari Marmell, and it actually features (or at least refers to) characters and events in VtM: Bloodlines. I won't spoil the book by saying anymore.
If anybody gets the urge to read it - try the Clan Novel Saga first - most of the events in the Gehenna book follow on from these stories.
The ending of VtM Bloodlines wasn't a departure from White Wolf's fiction - it's an almost perfect tie-in, in fact - but I can't comment on the RPG system at all.
D[/QUOTE]

I'm actually a big fan of the novel series; it's good fast paced escapist fiction. However, I haven't actually got around to reading the novel on Gehenna (perhaps, I'm in denial), but I do own it and also have the Gehenna gaming sourcebook.

I wasn't aware that L.A. played much of a role in White Wolf's final chapter. Quite frankly, I was also fairly certain that the only non-original characters in Bloodlines were Jack and Beckett (Smiling Jack being sort of a Brujah legend, famous for his involvement in the Anarch states, and Beckett being the famed historian of Kindred society). Nines seemed liked a conglomeration of the canon characters Jeremy MacNeil and Salvador Garcia, and the others were quite original to the game.

Also, L.A. - by the end of the VtM literature - is under the control of the "New Promise Mandarinate" which is an alliance between two groups of the most prominent Anarchs (Salvador Garcia's "El Hermandad" and those controlled by Louis Fortier, the prominent French Ventrue Anarch baron) and the Kuei-Jin. The Kuei-Jin used the alliance to help gain control of L.A., forcing Jeremy MacNeil (the former unofficial head of the Anarch States) and Mohammed al-Muthlim (the presumed Lasombra anarch and head of "Crypt's Sons") out of the city. So, most of the Anarchs either were slain, joined with the Madarinate, or fled the city. According to "Nights of Prophecy", MacNeil's last stand was in an attempt at a takeover of San Francisco. Ultimately, the literature suggests he fails, but as that was an adventure, its up to the player's imaginations.

Was there some development in the Gehenna novel (because there wasn't in the game book which focused on New York and some international locales) beyond this state of things? Are the Bloodlines characters more appropriately represented in the final chapter?

That said, I do think the Bloodlines storyline fits well into the White Wolf literature pre-Gehenna. It does, however, call for a new chapter being added onto White Wolf literature about L.A. The existence of certain pivotal characters who have supposedly been in L.A. for a long time (i.e. Gary, Strauss, Isaac, Nines) but have never been mentioned before, certainly complicates matter. But these characters are, for the most part, consistent with the general ethos of the vampire denizons of L.A. mentioned elsewhere.

Possible Spoliers of the Spoilers

Much of the history Faust mentioned in his post is new to me - I'm presuming this is mostly from the PnP sourcebooks?

I don't want to talk too much about the content of the Gehenna book - that would be a spolier in a thread of spoilers - but only a few of the characters appear. There's a time gap between the events of the game and the actual story, and some events are alluded to that would explain the absence of major characters. Unfortunately, the talking stop sign does not appear

LA does feature heavily; New York events are only mentioned in passing in Gehenna (having been covered in the Clan Novel Saga).

From what I've heard, there's quite a bit of contradiction between the plethora of literature and fiction that White Wolf have produced, and that was one of the main reasons for them unleashing Gehenna just as some poor fool (me) fell in love with VtM. They tied up some loose ends (via the Final Death!!) and released Requiem instead. I hope they produce another VtM game for us computer users, or at least do as good a job with VtR!!

[QUOTE=stoneagedan]Much of the history Faust mentioned in his post is new to me - I'm presuming this is mostly from the PnP sourcebooks?

I don't want to talk too much about the content of the Gehenna book - that would be a spolier in a thread of spoilers - but only a few of the characters appear. There's a time gap between the events of the game and the actual story, and some events are alluded to that would explain the absence of major characters. Unfortunately, the talking stop sign does not appear

LA does feature heavily; New York events are only mentioned in passing in Gehenna (having been covered in the Clan Novel Saga).

From what I've heard, there's quite a bit of contradiction between the plethora of literature and fiction that White Wolf have produced, and that was one of the main reasons for them unleashing Gehenna just as some poor fool (me) fell in love with VtM. They tied up some loose ends (via the Final Death!!) and released Requiem instead. I hope they produce another VtM game for us computer users, or at least do as good a job with VtR!![/QUOTE]

The information I mentioned is mainly what I've pieced together from various gaming books - "Nights of Prophecy", "Children of the Night," a couple of the KoE books, and "L.A. by Night." None of the items really make an appearance in the Gehenna sourcebook, or any of the fiction I've read. I've been running -well it's been on hiatus, but we're looking to restart soon - an L.A. by Night online campaign, where I sort of went through all the WoD information on the subject.

I'm going to have to check out the Gehenna novel soon. I had no idea that L.A. made an appearance in it. Since Ari did the gaming book as well, I'd assume they were essentially the same in that respect.

Well, there is still a lot of interest in VtM material out there. My inclination was that the major reason they wanted to bring the world to an end was simply to pump some new life into the sales. The VtM world was aging, the convulted rule system had chased many players away, and the more recent books had mostly been subpar. By "starting over" it allowed a new slant (which removes some of the gothic subtext from VtM, grounding it instead in more of an X-Files-esque type of worldview), the implementation of a new rules system (which is much easier, in my opinion), and a means of bringing in a new batch of players and novel readers who could start at the ground level.

With Troika's demise and Bloodlines mediocre sales, we'll probably not see a sequal in terms of gaming. However, if VtR continues to be successful, we may eventually see a gaming title for it. VtR has its detractors, but its a decent reenvisioning that has some potential.

Someone on this thread said caine cared only about himself, but they forgot to mention that he cared for Zillah enough to marry her

I thought Caine formed a Blood Bond with Zillah (thus enslaving her, which is a little less romantic than marriage). Also he subjected her to his curse by Embracing her; he damned her becuase she was a hottie, and that's selfish in my books.
Or maybe I'm just too nice?

Vampire "Love" is always a little twisted...

Re:Zillah

OK, that was a bad example of Caine's compassion. Caine used the process of ghoul making from the Hag and effectivley made zillah his Hag. However in the Book of Nod he is described as weeping when he slaughtered his brother, implying he was compassionate.

Yes, he was upset that (in his eyes) God hand commanded him to kill his own brother... Then he refused to appologise for ALL OF ETERNITY, embraced dozens of humans into damnation so he wouldn't be lonley, attacked Lillith out of spite, made a city and ruled it like a blood god, left his children to bicker and fight when he got sick of them and came back and cursed them all a second time when he found out they disobeyd him, chose only the most beautiful and gifted people to spend all eternity with, made laws that were fickle and designed to keep his base of power in operation, killed people for slights... So on so forth. I don't think his compassion for having beaten his brother to death when he was a mortal has any bearing on his arrogance and stubborness as a vampire.