Hunters

I was thinking about the appearance of hunters on the hubs. It always annoyed me, that you can suck any number of people dry without consequences, if you do it without witnesses. The game states that the society of Leopold is looking for vampires in LA (Bach's journal, VV dialog, hunters in Asp Hole...).
So if you leave a trail of sucked dry corpses, that should alarm the police and the hospitals. And if the society watches the town, they sure as hell will have a look into police and hospital records for anything unusual. So even if we assume that your character deals with the corpses, an increasing number of missing people reports will also draw the inquisitors' attention.
So I thought about a percentage chance for hunters turning up on transition to a new hub.
Perhaps starting at 5%, increasing by one percent with every forced feeding, two if you drain the victim, and ten for a masquerade violation. On the other hand, a redemption could reduce the chance by 5 or 10%. This way, there is a risk in force feeding, but you can get advantages out of redemptions, even if you don't have a violation hanging over your head.
And if certain thresholds are crossed, the hunters will be more dangerous (more than one, better armed, elite hunter with true seeing and/or shield of faith...)
Perhaps some of them would even pose as cops or bums, so you don't recognize them until they attack you.
Some of them could even hide and try to snipe the character. It seems weird, imo, that a hunter can attack the character, and if the character strikes back, the pc gets the criminal violation on her head, not the hunter.

I don't know if all of these ideas are possible to script, but I'd like to get some comments or further ideas on this matter.

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Sounds like a lot of work for little gain to me.

First off, IIRC, as long as you don't kill the victim, they don't remember you feeding (but that could just be Requiem or even some other game I'm thinking about). Killing them does make sense, there's a corpse in the morgue computer listed as having only a few pints of blood with no obvious cause - not sure if that was vanilla or Wesp's mod though. That sort of thing is likely what brought the hunters into town in the first place.

Second, you make it too high of a chance and you come up against the reload monster, just like late game masquerade violations.

If you want random hunters, then just put them in. Have a small chance every time you change a map that hunters will spawn (even one or two percent will likely spawn a few before the game is out). This way you won't know they're there until they find you. That makes them just part of the game you have to deal with, which ironically, makes them easier for people to accept. Put in a splash screen, or slightly change Skelter's warning about vampire hunters (take about the part about "doing stupid shit" and "breaking the masquerade" so it sounds like hunters can always find you.

What this change will do though, especially if you put them on the Santa Monica Hub early on, is make the game more ranged combat focused then it already is, since unarmed isn't exactly a great matchup against flaming crossbows.

I really like this idea honestly, it adds a new dimension of randomness to the game. The only change I would make is the forced feeding part, I wouldn't increase the % from forced feeding but only because victims typically don't even remember it happening to them, they don't have a mark, and are weakened but not dead. For each killing however sounds like a great idea.

Possible flaw -- in the Los Angeles hub, when a gang member kills another, the chance for hunters would go up even though we're not responsible, right? Unless you stopped the gang violence.

Even if you don't kill them, still, regular anemia on a whole part of town is.. suspicious

Stopping the gang violence is very hard because you have criminal offenses if you try and do it
(I would love if it would trigger a timer to find a policeman, telling him to come with you, then going to show him the gang members fighting, and you'd gain.. I don't know, a few bucks for "selling information" as an anonymus good citizen and all that )

Duncan.Oliver wrote:

Possible flaw -- in the Los Angeles hub, when a gang member kills another, the chance for hunters would go up even though we're not responsible, right? Unless you stopped the gang violence.

This is what I ran into when I made Humanity drop below 4 in TFN. I had to ask the Sharks and the Jets to stop fighting for the sake of everyone's Humanity!

Zer0Morph wrote:

Duncan.Oliver wrote:

Possible flaw -- in the Los Angeles hub, when a gang member kills another, the chance for hunters would go up even though we're not responsible, right? Unless you stopped the gang violence.

This is what I ran into when I made Humanity drop below 4 in TFN. I had to ask the Sharks and the Jets to stop fighting for the sake of everyone's Humanity!

And? Did they agree? Or was their hatred of each other beyond any reason?

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Duncan.Oliver wrote:

...Unless you stopped the gang violence.

This potential problem could spawn an "Attempt to End Gang Violence In Down Town" change-the-interactive-climate quest. Also a headache to bring to coding fruition, I'm sure.

But I'd like to see a quest like that be made with a hopelessly microscopic success statistic involved, and see the quest crop up some time if enough good karma and police "informing" is done, so that the white knights that play this game would actually attempt it in the name of continuing good deeds, only to realize the horror that being undead and inhuman and over-involved with the mortal world causes.

Again, too complicated, but it'd make me giddy to see a bunch of Ask A Question topics spring up complaining about the impossibility of the quest, and how hard being a vampire working for world peace turns out to be.

Really? Slipping into the darkness that is being inhuman turns out to be depressingly futile to fight against? Who'd have thunk it! O:

A side statement: I acknowledge coding this would involve, at some point, writing the conditions for a literal war, and that this game can in no way support it- I just like thinking about the hypothetical squirming of good and naive people having their hopes crushed in a horror game, but I digress.


I'm all for trying to figure out how to fit in more senseless violence, danger and challenge into a game; I think you have a good idea going as it stands, Malkav.

And if you're tired of the eternal fruitless negotiation rounds, you can always find a more "direct" approach to end the gang war...

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I really love the idea of more hunters. It adds a bit more spice to the game.

Like it does in TFN VVs quest in the Sin Bin.

Childe of Malkav wrote:

And if you're tired of the eternal fruitless negotiation rounds, you can always find a more "direct" approach to end the gang war...

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i love to make people make up, preferably with a knife

Voraxith wrote:

Usually when there's a bunch of murders, despite whether they were actually committed by a Kindred or not, Hunters tend to start nosing around, looking for anything "not right" -- so it makes a little sense that if gang members kill each other, the Society might start showing up a little more. Besides, let's face it: the vast majority of the recent homicides in L.A. county are our fault -- no one else's. Hell, we make that Gangrel serial killer look like a frakking pussy cat!

But we do it with Prince's approval, so everything is OK. No Traditions or Cammy law infringements

Claudia wrote:

Even if you don't kill them, still, regular anemia on a whole part of town is.. suspicious

Stopping the gang violence is very hard because you have criminal offenses if you try and do it
(I would love if it would trigger a timer to find a policeman, telling him to come with you, then going to show him the gang members fighting, and you'd gain.. I don't know, a few bucks for "selling information" as an anonymus good citizen and all that )

I want this quest! I want this... quest. *tries Sebastian's suit*

And the suprised police officer: "Ummm... Mister, don't be offended, dut you are strangely cold..."
Not to mention low pulse

Probably the dialog would go like this:
"Officer, there is a gangfight down the street!"
"Yep, I know..."
"So, why don't you do anything about it?"
"Are you mad!? Let them sort it out themselves. It's less dangerous, and saves papewrwork. Do you have any idea how much paperwork even one bullet can cause?"

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Burocracy uber Alles Yep, nowedaysyou can't even help a man hit by a car and avoid beaing on the reciving end of criminal charges and/or compensation civil lawsuit... Europe is great...