Vampire: Bloodlines Interview
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Q: In several interviews and weekly updates you told us that you had to change some of the game rules because of the real-time combat system. Can you tell us what changes were necessary and why?
A: Well, for instance, we needed to change how firearms worked. In the P&P system, it was a contest of rolls between your ranged combat and your enemies' defense. In a game like ours, this was very difficult to convey it made the guns feel broken and unreliable, even with a fairly decent skill level. We actually did start with a firearms system that was pretty faithful to the P&P, and it felt broken. So what we did was enable the player to hit whatever they successfully aim at, then we factored in the numbers governing your skill and your opponents' defense/soak to determine the amount of damage you do when you hit your target. Your Ranged Combat feat also determines how long you have to hold your gun still before you'll get an accurate shot. In addition, it also determines how well you handle guns in terms of things like the kick the less your skill, the harder the gun kicks. Automatic weapons are virtually useless without a high enough skill level.
I can go down the list of quite a number of changes we've made, but they're all basically the same story we started with a very faithful adaptation of the rules, and made changes where necessary to make sure we were delivering a fun-playing experience that stayed true to the essence of the game, if not the specifics.
