Vampyr

[ShelBeast]

So, there's a new game out where you play a doctor in Victorian London, returning from World War I, who is promptly turned into a freshly minted vampire. He gets embroiled in supernatural skullduggery, and has to establish connections with his neighbors and such during the course of the game. It has a really very unique mechanic that pits gameplay directly against story in an antagonistic relationship. Essentially, in order to gain "XP" type stuff, you'll need to feed on your fellow Londoners, thus killing them. This allows you to get points to purchase skills and grow stronger. You can avoid doing this altogether, and play the game, but you will progressively find it harder and harder to advance because you're just woefully underpowered.

The other side of this is that the characters are all very human. They have dreams and hopes and foibles and nuances. They all have their own lives and issues and essentially sidequests for you that allows you to discover who they are, and through that, make London better, and try to stave off the chaos and the plague that's sweeping the city. The trick is that... the more you progress with a character, the more XP you get for killing them, basically. But this also cuts their storyline short.

So you have to choose. Do you end a storyline short for quick burst of XP? And if so, then... deviously, the game has been designed in such a way that you have to humanize your meal to get the most out of it. It truly brings to the forefront the dichotomy of the Man versus The Beast struggle that is supposed to be at the forefront of themes in regards to WoD/coD vamp.

I highly recommend this.

You can read a much more literate review here: Vampyr Review: The Story in Blood

[magee101]

It does look super good and makes me want to play a vamp in wod/cod if I could get this kind of experience

[ShelBeast]

@magee101 Yeah. I wish I could think of a way to really simulate that experience, mechanically. I mentioned in another post somewhere about my previous attempt at something similar, with a sliding scale Humanity versus Blood Potency mechanic, but that still doesn't make players directly have to personally invest in their victims in any way. Which is, I think, the core of what makes it work so well.

[magee101]

@shelbeast i think it would be pretty much the same system really. Just set up a cloud of npcs. It is mainly something one would find in a 1on1 1on2 sort of environment though probably not a mush

[ShelBeast]

@magee101 Yeah. It's something easy to do at a table. I'd like to find a way to simulate it for a MU*, though.

[Misadventure]

Simulate it, or replicate it?

Simulate is easy, you just say it happens. You can even let some rolls happen. Its vaguely similar to a feeding technique from my Chronicle called Ardentia.

However, I think its really too close to passive consumption, which tends to fill players ideas of what they imagine RP is like: being fed cool moments and cool visuals. Players burn through that stuff really fast on MU*s, precisely because it isn't a lingering experience with continuity and time to invest in any of it. This consumption approach is the biggest problem in creating an otherwise collaborative product.

[ShelBeast]

@misadventure Replicate may be a bit much, as I think it would be impossible to do, really. It is a system that is uniquely based on scripted NPCs in a limited environment.

Simulate is a better word, I think. The idea being to create a mechanical system where, essentially, you get more for A) interacting with your food (through playing feeding scenes), and B) establishing relationships with said food, so that your character actually has to consider the fact that they are snuffing out a real life, and that there are real consequences for that. To make the player feel remorse for what is normally just a thoughtless dice roll mechanic.

[Coin]

The problem I see is that for this sort of thing to work on a MU, you need a constant ST presence developing the NPCs for the vampires in the game.

You can easily set up an "Investment" stat in Vampire where the more a vampire gets to know someone the more Vitae each point of blood from that person gives, for example, or the closer killing someone you're Invested in brings you to higher Blood Potency (but also the further it takes you from Humanity, since killing someone you have a high Investment in is worse than killing a random stranger).

But the issue is: how do you build that Investment and make it impactful in the Vampire's narrative on a MU, where there's so many fucking vampires to begin with? You need a heavy ST presence or, perhaps, you could build a buddy-ST-system like with Wraiths and their Shadows (and Kuei-Jin and their P'o, among other systems) where a second player NPCs the character's Investments. That might work. (This is, incidentally, what I would love for Geist: for another player at the table to be the person's Geist and whisper shit in their ear, etc., you can do the same with a Vampire's Beast, even).

The point is, you can do it. It just would require a lot of effort that isn't really in the player's hands.

[ShelBeast]

@coin

I was thinking of just having STs to run it, but honestly, the buddy-ST system (Which I've seen, albeit rarely used, in FC for Possessed characters) would be a great way to handle it, I think. It would likely only be good for a smaller, Vamp only game, most likely, but I do think it would be fun way to handle it, for sure.

[Jaded]

That is a well written review. And it fits along the same thoughts I had of the game now that I have had a chance to play with it.

[Coin]

Both some of the videos I saw and the reivew make me really want to play this game, so I think I will be putting it on my wishlist for Steam and checking on it whenever there's sales.

[ZekeTheG33k]

I mean code wise all you would need would be a static npc obj or attribute. Then make various rolls to interact with it. Limiting it to say 1 roll per day. The more investment you cultivate the more blood or whatever your goal is that you get.. For example...

Hot chick.
+hunt hot chick
+hunt/act seduce --> You gain 0.1 investment

Rinse and repeat.

[Coin]

@seamus said in Vampyr:

I mean code wise all you would need would be a static npc obj or attribute. Then make various rolls to interact with it. Limiting it to say 1 roll per day. The more investment you cultivate the more blood or whatever your goal is that you get.. For example...

Hot chick.
+hunt hot chick
+hunt/act seduce --> You gain 0.1 investment

Rinse and repeat.

Yes, but the idea is to generate an investment that is also story-level. Make the character (and the player) reticent to do the bad thing. That it can be coded a million different ways was, I think, always just implicit and assumed; the problem is a practical one in terms of depth of characterization and investment of time.

[ZekeTheG33k]

Well there are a couple of ways. Make the Npc static to a room. Thus multiple people could woo it. That means actually taking the time to care.

Nuku wrote a quest scripting code. So it wouldnt be hard to generate a random set of poses as the investment gets higher...

There would be a lot of data entry, but you could encourage players to submit stories for npcs.

This is just off the top of my head.

[Tinuviel]

Two issues with this game on PC.

Keyboard and mouse controls can be janky at times, especially in combat against more than one opponent.

Chrome plus Nvidia graphics cards can sometimes cause the game to crash. So ensure Chrome is closed and not running in the background.

[Coin]

@tinuviel said in Vampyr:

Two issues with this game on PC.

Keyboard and mouse controls can be janky at times, especially in combat against more than one opponent.

Chrome plus Nvidia graphics cards can sometimes cause the game to crash. So ensure Chrome is closed and not running in the background.

Can it be played with the Steam controller?

[Auspice]

@coin said in Vampyr:

@tinuviel said in Vampyr:

Two issues with this game on PC.

Keyboard and mouse controls can be janky at times, especially in combat against more than one opponent.

Chrome plus Nvidia graphics cards can sometimes cause the game to crash. So ensure Chrome is closed and not running in the background.

Can it be played with the Steam controller?

I've been playing with good success on an XBox controller, so I assume yes.

[Insomnia]

@shelbeast said in Vampyr:

So, there's a new game out where you play a doctor in Victorian London, returning from World War I, who is promptly turned into a freshly minted vampire. He gets embroiled in supernatural skullduggery, and has to establish connections with his neighbors and such during the course of the game. It has a really very unique mechanic that pits gameplay directly against story in an antagonistic relationship. Essentially, in order to gain "XP" type stuff, you'll need to feed on your fellow Londoners, thus killing them. This allows you to get points to purchase skills and grow stronger. You can avoid doing this altogether, and play the game, but you will progressively find it harder and harder to advance because you're just woefully underpowered.

The other side of this is that the characters are all very human. They have dreams and hopes and foibles and nuances. They all have their own lives and issues and essentially sidequests for you that allows you to discover who they are, and through that, make London better, and try to stave off the chaos and the plague that's sweeping the city. The trick is that... the more you progress with a character, the more XP you get for killing them, basically. But this also cuts their storyline short.

So you have to choose. Do you end a storyline short for quick burst of XP? And if so, then... deviously, the game has been designed in such a way that you have to humanize your meal to get the most out of it. It truly brings to the forefront the dichotomy of the Man versus The Beast struggle that is supposed to be at the forefront of themes in regards to WoD/coD vamp.

I highly recommend this.

You can read a much more literate review here: Vampyr Review: The Story in Blood

One thing you forgot to mention, aside from the humanity of it all, is the health of the area you are in; the more people you eat, the less healthy an area is, and if you let it get too bad people will be openly hostile towards you. It also destabilizes the economy so merchants will charge you more, and give you less money. So if you do go the eating everyone route you make things a little more difficult on that end.

Also you get xp from doing story stuff, even just talking to people. And if you are really desperate for xp you know how rats give away that there is a hideout around? The hunters around your hideout also respawn each time you sleep. It's slow, but it is xp.

Peeve, my eyes are all red and evil why does no one notice this or care?

[Tinuviel]

@insomnia said in Vampyr:

my eyes are all red and evil why does no one notice this or care

London smog. Everyone's eyes are irritated.

[Insomnia]

@tinuviel But they aren't though. The whites are white. My eyes are red like the guy who go his eyeball tattooed, except instead of blue ink, they are red.

And I can't really complain because the mortician knows I'm a vampire... but I never told him, and I don't think anyone told him so maybe someone did notice my eyes and knows?

But he also talks to dead people, like he goes behind a locked door and apologizes to the bodies he keeps back there, and one of the patients thinks he's a vampire... so maybe he has an extra thing for the dead? Or thinks everyone is dead?

But other vampires don't have these weird red eyes.

So I found a mission but failed it right away but I already killed the guy so no mission for me. So uh... kill people after you do their missions?

I'm having a blast playing, but I really think the writers played a lot of Vampire when they were younger.