Question for the devs: Do you want to make a game based on your knowledge of VTM(B)?

Hello all, this is my first post.

Let me start with the prologue:

I've been looking for patches to vtmb (I've lent my copy to a friend of mine so she can experience the awesomeness) and found your forums. I've re-played the game like 3 to 4 times since I first played it. It's the last great game I've played since and the only one I come back to. I don't have a fascination with vampires (although I dig werewolves) but the game itself just clicks with me.

I want to play more games like VTMB and I'll install the final nights expansion to check it out.

To get to the point, however, I have a serious proposal/question for the devs. You obviously have experience in a genre (badass story-driven RPG of awesomeness) that I like to play, and would like to work in. You also, practically, have a team of developers already set up, that have experience in the genre. If you were to pick up your team and create a similar game, you could kickstart the genre itself (and ironically, fund it through KICKSTARTER). Nobody is making good RPG's anymore and Skyrim was a fucking drag to finish.

I am a character artist (you can view my work through my profile) and I would like to work with you, either on TFN or an actual game based on the knowledge that you guys have acquired over the years of modding and patching VTM.

Should you decide to do such a thing, and if you like my work enough to include me in your team I pledge to devote a big portion of my free time (which is a lot, at the moment - I work as a teacher at a comics school) to creating graphics for the project to the best of my ability.

With tools such as UDK and the Source engine available for indie devs along with the growing trend of croudsourcing, this is the time to revisit a really promising genre that is not getting the attention it needs.

We'd get our asses sued by CCP (the guys who now own the White Wolf copyrights)...

Claudia wrote:

We'd get our asses sued by CCP (the guys who now own the White Wolf copyrights)...

I completely understand this. That's why I am proposing to do something that is based on the genre (ie Fantasy-Action RPG with vampires) and NOT something based on Vamp: The Masquerade.

Unless Bram Stocker rises from his grave to sue you for using vampires/dracula, no-one can.

Except that it will not be capable of wearing the mere basic concepts of what the world of darkness is. After all, it's "the brand" that made the game so awesome. If we strip down and eliminate clans, disciplines, or organisations, then we end up with what is currently being made in Vampire games around (a few MMO, mainly), and still, CCP will try to sue us because they did so with Underworld (before buying the franchise).

Also we're totally not able to do as awesome work as it's needed to be a viable indie game. Now you need killer graphics for everything... :/

Actually, VTMB itself was considered not-so-awesome in terms of graphics when it first came out.

I think you miscalculate the reasons for a game to be great: If it was all about graphics and engines, people would be still playing Crysis instead of playing a community-patched game that sold so poorly it closed their developing studio down within the year. Same goes for the brand, clan names, disciplines etc.

While storyline and eyecandy counts for a great game, it's not as important as the gameplay itself.

Personally, I didn't even know what The Masquerade was before I played VtMB. The story, the great dialogue, the RPG elements and character development through solving the story (and not killing rats for xp) is the biggest part of this game.

I can produce character and environment graphics which may not be as good, but I can stick to a certain style and make it work. I also have access to a very talented 2d illustrator from the school I work at (I teach digital sculpting and he teaches digital illustration).

As a matter of fact, a lot of projects such as The Silver Lining (I can't use links in my posts yet, so you just have to google it) was created like that. They started as a mod for fun, they got sued, and then they decided to change the names and the franchise and actually sell the game.

Hm, if you want to organize such a project, and can guarantee, it's not interfering with someone's copyrights, I might be interested in scripting for it.
But all I do for CE, I do strictly on the basis of having fun doing it. I do some modding if and when the mood hit´s me. If I'm not in the mood, I don't do anything for a week or longer. That's no basis for developing a completely new game.

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I'd be interested in working on the lore, clans and all the "how the world is" part of the game, however, just like malkav said, on a "i'm feeling like it right now" and not consistently. Also, while right know i have lots of free time, when the university picks up again it might be impossible for me to help it.
Not that i am this extremely busy guy, but rather that the "i'm feeling like it right now" usually doesn't come from me when i find myself with many responsibilities

Childe of Malkav wrote:

Hm, if you want to organize such a project, and can guarantee, it's not interfering with someone's copyrights, I might be interested in scripting for it.
But all I do for CE, I do strictly on the basis of having fun doing it. I do some modding if and when the mood hit´s me. If I'm not in the mood, I don't do anything for a week or longer. That's no basis for developing a completely new game.

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Heh, I'm not much of an organizer myself, to be honest! I've sent an email to Zer0morph, thinking he is the organizer around here, if he finds the idea interesting perhaps he'd be up for it.

For now, I was just putting the idea out there. What engines have you experience scripting for? Don't worry about having the mood for it, if such a project takes off it has the potential of being fun to do, so you maybe it'll keep you interested

ThePhilosopher wrote:

I'd be interested in working on the lore, clans and all the "how the world is" part of the game, however, just like malkav said, on a "i'm feeling like it right now" and not consistently. Also, while right know i have lots of free time, when the university picks up again it might be impossible for me to help it.
Not that i am this extremely busy guy, but rather that the "i'm feeling like it right now" usually doesn't come from me when i find myself with many responsibilities

I get that, that's fine. Truth be told I am a lot like this myself. Maybe if something turns out to be interesting enough, things change though.

BTW are you watching the news lately, around the world? I loved VTM because it so perfectly depicted that time of great changes being in the air, with all the post 9/11 stuff and everything. It was the feel of it, rather than direct references. In a way, it took the vampire angle to present the early 2000's, that feeling of dreadful things to come.

I was thinking of some lore along the lines of anarchist vampires vs neo-nazi werewolves and highborn bilderberg-type vamps pulling the strings and clamping down on Occupy wall street type civil revolts. Would something like that be of any interest to produce lore for? Deus Ex III sort of tried to do that, but it was very obvious and boring in the way they tried to pull it off, imo.

In my honest opinion, the best period to make a vampire game would be 1950-2000 or the middle ages.

No matter what we do, we would never be able to keep up with current events as quickly. This occupy wall street thing might not last long. Then again, it can be the start of a communist revolution on US, who the hell knows how history will turn out?. Besides, most people want to play games to give a break to reality for some time, not to live it again with fangs.

Also, if we focus too much on trying to make the supernatural linked with the natural, it will be boring. Frankly, what would you rather read/play/see a fiction of vampires who own banks or vampires who attempt to find out the sarcophagus of an ancient one, that can bring the destruction of the world?

Definitely keep the sarcophagus! I mean in an allegorical sense, as in: the world is changing sort of mood. In VTM it was about to end, now is what happens next.

It doesn't need (shouldn't) be political; it should be the mood. Global turmoil, poverty, how in a trickle-down manner it affects vampire society etc.

Then you have technology. In VTM there was a line sort of like this "you don't attack people in the age of mobile phones with cameras", now there's a lot of surveillance. How, for example, does this affect vampires when they try to stay "underground"? Do people speak about vampires on facebook and put videos of them on youtube?

Is the truth leaking out bit by bit and people are finding out? Are all vampires the same? I always liked storylines embedding social and philosophical elements like Battlestar Galactica. Not in a political sense, I promise xD

If you intend to do something on the political background you have depicted, count me out. I'll certainly never be in the mood to work on the kind of bloody bullshit that happens now. If I had to concentrate on a modern day political background, it would only turn up the Brujah part of me. And I rather let that slumber under the cover of the Malk.

As the philosopher said, perhaps a medieval setting...

For the technical part:
Bloodlines is the only game I have ever touched for serious modding. And never below the level of python scripting, or dialog editing. I had to learn a bit about other things like sound files, graphics, and map editing along the way.
All I know about the engine is the fact that bloolines is built on an early version of the halflife engine. But what that means exactly, apart from the fact that it's rather limited because it is only alpha.

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What exactly do you have in mind for this game?
A half-assed game should be possible but not very appealing and that isn't what you want is it?
A complex game on the other hand with lots and lots of political and historical background demands a lot of research.

Besides the WoD Vampires covers 90% of the Vampire Mythos, which makes it difficult to create something new and I think
we all don't want some vague bullshit vampires like in "priest"

Childe of Malkav wrote:

If you intend to do something on the political background you have depicted, count me out. I'll certainly never be in the mood to work on the kind of bloody bullshit that happens now. If I had to concentrate on a modern day political background, it would only turn up the Brujah part of me. And I rather let that slumber under the cover of the Malk.

As the philosopher said, perhaps a medieval setting...

For the technical part:
Bloodlines is the only game I have ever touched for serious modding. And never below the level of python scripting, or dialog editing. I had to learn a bit about other things like sound files, graphics, and map editing along the way.
All I know about the engine is the fact that bloolines is built on an early version of the halflife engine. But what that means exactly, apart from the fact that it's rather limited because it is only alpha.

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Well, I am open to ideas, but to be honest I find purely medieval stuff a bit boring. I do think that presenting modern reality in some form is important, because what are games if not an idealized expression of our own boring realities? If you take Game of Thrones for example, it is a world that in essence applies to our own society and the way it's structured - it is class based and explores class interaction very closely. I really don't want to be political, but I do believe it's important to reference and present the time in which you live in. VTM did this perfectly in an allegorical sense, like I said. They presented the beginning of the end of an era, I would love to explore what comes after.

For example, if you were to present VTMB with a single phrase, that would be "The End is Near", like those hobos with the "end is nigh" signs in the late nineties. We can pick it up from there and make it "The world is changing" if we were to undertake this project.

Anyway, as far as the engine is concerned, I read on Valve's site that the Source Engine SDK is only available for mods and not stand-alone games. You have to really license the engine in order to be able to sell (or crowdsource) something. Do you have any experience with the Unreal Engine (UDK)?

Alichino wrote:

What exactly do you have in mind for this game?
A half-assed game should be possible but not very appealing and that isn't what you want is it?
A complex game on the other hand with lots and lots of political and historical background demands a lot of research.

Besides the WoD Vampires covers 90% of the Vampire Mythos, which makes it difficult to create something new and I think
we all don't want some vague bullshit vampires like in "priest"

The first and most important thing on my mind is to talk about it with people who would be interested in pitching ideas!

If we get talking about it and get on some common ground we would then definitely need to research the subjects we'll try to tackle. I am personally interested in the modern world that is changing day to day and the landmarks that brought us here, the depression in the 30s, the mobs, the banksters, the people. It's a personal and limited perspective, but it could be enhanced and/or co-exist with someone else's perspective on history, modern or not.

Fuck "priest" that was a shitty movie like I am Legend - the original book however (Legend, not priest), on the other hand was very interesting and its main premise was so too.

For example I would love to have a semi-major NPC like George Orwell, to have turned and lived as a vampire, watching his writings come true in a sense. I like a little bit of conspiracy and corporatocracy with my videogames. Think like Deus Ex only with less technology and more Vampires. And techno-goth nightclubs. Definitely keep the whole technogoth scene.

I'm a tshirt-wearing dweeb, but I love me some technogoth vampire conspiracies

Well, good luck finding people for it. I'm definitely out for good. I was more or less even before my last post. I have stopped reading after my eyes fell on that old Werewolf = Nazi junk.

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Childe of Malkav wrote:

Well, good luck finding people for it. I'm definitely out for good. I was more or less even before my last post. I have stopped reading after my eyes fell on that old Werewolf = Nazi junk.

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Fair enough. Just so that I know, were you against werewolves being nazis in particular or against having traditional roles (such as bad guys who just kill and eat people for food) replaced with modern ones such as a neonazi gang.

Cause like I said in my first post, I do like werewolves and rather have them be the good guys anyway. It was just an example fyi (obviously not a good one).

There's a huge abyss from George R. Martin works of fiction and our supposed game. And still, GoT is a thousand miles away from a "conspiracy - corporations/banks plot".

If we're heading in that direction, count me out too. I can't get interested in these type of stories.

Well, suggest something! What sort of plot would you like to see in a vampire game?

I love political games, and political conspiracies. I love using current and past events and explain them.
But it can get quite flaming as we don't have all researchers about everyone and every party, and saying, for instance, Tremre are nazis, was quite.. dangerous. (it does exist as they embraced Himmler)

Well it really depends on what type of game we would be making.

Will it be a browser, online game?
If so, will it be a walking 2D game, like adventure quest? Or a semi-visual game, like Ikariam or Ogame? Or maybe a completly numerical game like Dark Throne?

Will it be offline, single player game?
If so, will it be a sprite animated 2D game like Symphony of the Night?

If it is online, we can almost scrap any type of lore.
If it is offline, we can focus on backgrounds n stuff.

I'd be interested in working for 2 ideas:
1) The game happens on the real world, in 1950-2000 era. The focus here would be less combat and more politics, intrigue and deception, like VTM is. Vampires would be unknow to the common humans.

2) The game happens on some fictional place, or maybe Trannsylvania, in the medieval ages. Vampires roam free, rule over the peasants and the church is organized and fighting against it. The focus here would be on the Vampire x Hunter War, and the player could be a hunter too.

In either, the focus would be really far off from corporatocracy and banking schemes. And the neonazi werewolves would have to go, sorry.

I would love to get in on this. My love affair of vampires and other nocturnal species was long before any masquerade game. I use to have a book on vampire lore and it was incredible. You'd be surprised how much inspirational stuff could be sucked out of a book like that and nothing from it would infringe on white wolf's territory. I loaned that book to a professor who was teaching vampire lore and she never gave it back. Can probably find another copy somewhere. The politics of being the undead are generic at their core so having it stated that vampires pretend to be human when they can to not draw attention to themselves is a popular concept that I've never heard anyone claiming to be their specific idea. FYI My favorite piece of vampire lore is the Asian vampire. Folk tales of Asian vampires tell of a ghoul by day that at night detaches it's head from it's body with nothing more than it's stomach attached just flying around trying to attack people. That's what they believed were vampires. One story I read was an old woman who heard rustling coming from her bush outside next to her house and when she came out, she found this vampire tangled up in her bush. I guess it had got it's hanging stomach caught and she got her broom and beat the shit out of it. Of course it burned to ash in the morning sun cause it couldn't get loose. LOL COULD YOU IMAGINE? That was suppose to be a "true account." That's just one of thousands of little pieces of information I have filed away in the vampire section of my Brain Library. I really don't know that much about the lore from the Masquerade Games but I know vampires have been around much longer than the games. LOL

Another question: does it have to be vampires? How about werewolves? I think a game based on werewolves would be awesome. You don't need to build clan lore to generate a certain number of characters to choose from. What character you chose to play will decide if you're intentions are honorable and you're trying to help in damage control to keep humans from realizing werewolves exists or you're a vicious animal who uses their powers to get what they want and basically even hire yourself to do criminal acts. You might even get caught in your animal form and have to break into places to steal evidence so it doesn't fall into the wrong hands. Sounds interesting and on occasion you even run into vampires who need your assistance or you may have to put down for their bad behavior. If you have to kill a vampire, that just may start a bloody feud between the two races that will have to be battled out in the end. It's a rough concept but interesting I think?

Hey guys, I'm glad to see people are interested in this.

@ThePhilosopher: Option 1) sounds better to me. Vamp-society politics, intrigue and deception are all words I love to hear when describing a game! I was thinking offline, single player oldskewl RPG, hardcore stuff. 3D, probably using UDK ( can't post links, please google unreal development kit ). Don't worry about the nazi werewolves, we can make them bikers. Just kidding, suggest any background you wish to use for the werewolves. BTW, like in VTM, vampires should own at least a couple of fortune 500 corporations, I have to insist on that.

Would anyone be interested in infusing a bit of cyberpunk lore/storylines in the game? I loved how VTMB used computers, Mitnick the hacker etc, this is an aspect I would like to explore a bit more.

@aneumann01: Like I said before, I love werewolves myself. I like the direction of your last post, would anyone care to chip in? I hope no-one is interested in recreating Underworld, it was far too cheesy. But I'd love to integrate werewolves into the mix, perhaps you can choose either race (werewolf-vamp) and there's a semi-truce between them?

Also, can anyone interested in the project make a post about their relevant skillsets? eg writer, designer, programmer/coder, artist, musicians etc. Like I said, I'm a 3d artist and my work can be viewed through my WWW icon on the bottom of this post.

After VtM, Underwolrd, and that sparkly abomination that shall not be named the whole vampires & werewolves thing is getting a little old. So unless you find an interesting new take on it I would suggest you to pick a single supernatural creature and stick with it.

Dragatus wrote:

After VtM, Underwolrd, and that sparkly abomination that shall not be named the whole vampires & werewolves thing is getting a little old. So unless you find an interesting new take on it I would suggest you to pick a single supernatural creature and stick with it.

This. Oh this so much.