Interview RPGDot talks with Leon Boyarsky about Bloodlines

[Spazmo]

Tags: Troika Games; Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines

<a href="http://www.rpgdot.com">RPGDot</a> have a <a href=http://www.rpgdot.com/index.php?hsaction=10053&ID=971&sid=1184ad9ee8d98f8b93c8f104f49d63d7>preview/interview</a> of Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines.
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<blockquote>RPGDot: Can you talk about some of the aspects of the pen-and-paper game that did not make it into Bloodlines?
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Leonard: We don’t have diablerie; we have often talked about including that in a sequel or add on pack. Also, the players can’t play the Sabbat. They can only play the Camarilla clans in Bloodlines. Plus, we’ve tweaked a lot of the disciplines in order to make them more appealing in a real time game. I think that is one of the biggest changes, making the disciplines work in a real time computer setting. But, we still have all the depth and complexity in the dialogue. You can still seduce people and you can still use persuasion, dementate, or dominate on people during dialogue. It’s been a real balancing act. We want to keep the game fun in the new setting without loosing the spirit of the pen-and-paper RPG.</blockquote>
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Never thought I'd hear Troika saying they had to fudge rules a bit to make it work in real-time.

 

[Anonymous]

I hope if they do an expansion or whatever that they add the Sabbat as playable. The flesh-crafter guys are cool beans.

 

[StraitLacedDeviant]

Troika fudge probably means they tweaked it so subtly only hardliners will notice. Not like bioware fudge where they render the rules down to jelly and pour them into whatever mould they want

 

[Country_Gravy]

Are you accusing Bioware of fudge-packing?

 

[StraitLacedDeviant]

Packing, pounding.... anything that can be done in a violent manner to fudge including penetrating.

 

[MrBrown]

Hopefully all that stuff they're implementing is actually usefull. "You can still seduce people and you can still use persuasion, dementate, or dominate on people during dialogue" starts to sound awfully like in reality it'd have "... every 10 hours" in the end.

 

[StraitLacedDeviant]

Not with troika.... they wouldn't do that... would they....

 

[MrBrown]

Not with troika.... they wouldn't do that... would they....

As in how every skill in ToEE was extremely useful...

 

[Spazmo]

Well, if you look at the actual dialogs in ToEE, you'll find lots of sense motive, intimidate or diplomacy checks. It's just that there aren't that many dialogs.

 

[StraitLacedDeviant]

replace ToEe with DnD and I agree fully.

 

[Voss]

I'm not sure why you're so surprised, Spazmo. The fudging has been mentioned several times before... stretching back quite a ways.

I'm really curious about some of the changes to the disciplines. What they are and why real time made them necessary. (Or rather why the way they implemented real time made them necessary)

 

[Spazmo]

He mentions later on that in order to make the disciplines an interesting choice for players as opposed to just guns, they had to beef them up somewhat.

 

[Voss]

Thats disturbing. Of course, if they hadn't assigned blood costs to all the disciplines (though I don't know if they kept this) in the first place, it may not have been an issue to begin with.
... competition with guns, now I'm all uncertain about the game again.

 

[S4ur0n27]

Hopefully all that stuff they're implementing is actually usefull. "You can still seduce people and you can still use persuasion, dementate, or dominate on people during dialogue" starts to sound awfully like in reality it'd have "... every 10 hours" in the end.

KOTOR had persuasion too.

Anyway what's the deal with the disciples? I'm not too familiar with Vampire.

 

[MrBrown]

KOTOR had persuasion too.

I don't mind dialogue skills at all, rather I'd prefer to have them... However adding several of them stinks alot more like going by PnP is priority rather than making them useful. I'd much rather have the system totally different from PnP and have useful skills rather than by PnP and skills only marginally useful. And I haven't seen an RPG with enough dialogue to have 2 (or more) _useful_ dialogue skills.

Though, I'll have to add that I don't know much about Vampire so I might be overlooking something.

 

[Voss]

You are.

 

[Sol Invictus]

You are definitely overlooking the usefulness of those skills, MrBrown. Most disciplines aren't only used in dialogue but also help the player to lure a person into a dark alley (to get her blood sucked) or to psychically dominate a thug into doing your bidding better than someone without a high dominate skill would.

They are, after all, combat modifiers.

 

[Sol Invictus]

Try reading the whole interview next time, MrBrown.

RPGDot: From the demo, we can see that the thaumaturgic paths (sub-disciplines within thaumaturgy) have not been included. You mentioned in other interviews that you would have liked to include them. What influenced your decision not to include the paths in the game?

Leonard: [The decision not to include the paths] was a time issue and it is still on our wish list. We were originally [thinking] about including two to three paths and of course you could choose the path. If we have time, we still have some plans on the drawing board. When we went back to revamp the disciplines we didn’t have time to add additional paths. We wanted to make sure that the path that we did have was fun to play. We have a lot of things for alternate versions of things in the game and we will have to see if we have the time to include them.

 

[Sol Invictus]

On the subject of FO3:

RPGDot: Black Isle is now gone and with it Fallout 3. Would you like to get a hand on the Fallout francise?

Leonard: I would love to [work on Fallout again]. That was the first game that Tim, Jason and I had a hand in creating. That was our baby, and it’s is kinda like someone has adopted our kid. We would love to work on it. We will see what the future brings. On the other hand, it is interesting to see what other people do with it as well. … I guess the short answer is “yes, we would love to work on it again.”

Volourn = teh debunked LOLZ

 

[Petey_the_Skid]

It will be definetley interesting to see how the disciplines are implemented in a real time setting. Vampire, as a PnP game, is designed to be dialogue and plot heavy, as opposed to a purer Hack and Slash like D&D or white-wolf's own Werewolf game. In my mind, this game's inherent goodness would be based on the options available to a player who does not wish to be a combat maestro, but rather a slick talking, strong willed dominator of souls. Basically, without dialogues and the meanigful use of Dominate, Presence, and other disciplines(auspex for example, not only lets you read auras, but also minds at higher levels), the game will not stay true to the PnP version, and fall into the trap that Nihilistic's Redemption did.
As a side note, the implementation of Celerity will also be key, which is the discipline that makes a vampire super fast in combat. In the turnbased pnp game, a person is allowed only one action per turn without splitting dice pools, while a typical vampire with celerity need only spend a single blood point and get from 2 to 6 actions at no penalties, depending on their level of skill with the discipline. This would be hard to implement in a real time system, unless they include, sad to say it, some form of Bullet Time a la max payne or matrix style.

Dice Splitting: If a person wants to take two or more actions during a single turn, anyone can do it, however they suffer penalties. Take Eddie for example, a skilled swordsman (Dexterity 3 and Melee 4). Faced by three opponents, he wishes to swing at each one in a single turn, without celerity he will need to slpit his dice pool. For a single swing, he would ordinarily throw 7 dice[his total pool for Melee combat is equal to his dexterity + melee], for three actions, he would subtract 3 dice from the first action, the number of actions he wishes to take for his turn, and then one more from each succesive action, so if he takes 3 swings, he rolls 4 dice for swing #1, 3 dice for swing#2 and only 2 dice for swing #3. Not such good odds, but hey, maybe worth it if he's in trouble. However, Eddie is also a Toreador vampire, and so spends a blood point to actvate his celerity discipline, in which he has a skill level of 2. This means he can take 3 actions at no dice penalty, one is the action every one gets in a turn, the other 2 are extra actions granted by his supernatural mastery of speed. He makes all 3 swings at a full 7 dice, most likely decimating his opponents if they happen to be mere mortals.

There now, hope that wasn't too complicated. I can't wait to see how they work this all in during real time.

 

[Anonymous]

Heh, reading minds will be interesting. Would be neat if the messages you read are audio clips.

 

[J.E. Sawyer]

Leonard: [The decision not to include the paths] was a time issue and it is still on our wish list. We were originally [thinking] about including two to three paths and of course you could choose the path. If we have time, we still have some plans on the drawing board. When we went back to revamp the disciplines we didn’t have time to add additional paths. We wanted to make sure that the path that we did have was fun to play. We have a lot of things for alternate versions of things in the game and we will have to see if we have the time to include them.

Even though Tremere is my favorite clan/house, I'm kind of glad they only get Path of Blood. I mean, come on, it's not like Theft of Vitae is small potatoes. Do Tremere really need the option of Hand of Freakin' Flame? It's a basic power that allows them to do aggro wounds at touch, IIRC. Whee!

 

[Voss]

Well, yeah but theres also technomancy, elemental mastery, and all sorts of other fun things.
Its not like the thaumaturgical paths break the discipline rules (such as they are) at all. And they'd have those playtesters saying 'Guns? What guns?'

 

[J.E. Sawyer]

My point is that the Path of Blood disciplines are good enough to make Thaumaturgy very valuable. I'd rather have them put more effort into making Auspex useful than implementing Path of Flames or Path of the Mind.

 

[Nightjed]

i wonder how the hell are they going to implement the whole attacks per round thing on real time, bullet time seems useless since the enemies should have the extra attacks as well