Gangrel Misplaced in Bloodlines

i haven't yet played gangrel in bloodlines.

but i get this impression, that they are more fit for rural or semi wild locations, where there are lots of domestic and semi wild animals
i always felt that bloodlines, with its almost exclusive urban environment and rats as the only animals (save for the crows that fly over you at the cemetery and for that matter the owl that is only heard hooting), were not an adequate environment for gangrel.

i am not dissing the people that prefer the martial aspect of bloodlines, combat, and get a kick out of brawiling over any other kind of combat. i mean i am not like them but i accept there might be such people. and i agree gangrel is ideally suited for that kind of thing.

but i still think gangrel is underused.

i would like a game with more locations like griffith park
and animals like cats and dogs wandering the streets
and why not even the odd coyote
and even deer or moose
this is not unrealistic.
every city has plenty of stray cats and dogs
and as cities encroach upon the surrounding wilderness
so wild animals often stray into urban environments

new locations might be hard to add to the game (impossible?)
animals i'm not so sure

Gangrel of the Camarilla do live in the cities, even if they are not that well suited to this environment as City Gangrel Bloodline of the Sabbat. Their rustic natures make them interesting to play too. To bad you don't get animalistic features when you frenzy, it would add so much RP immersion to the game. Would force you to hide, like the Nossies. And it might be linked with more difficoulty resisting Frenzy and interacting with humans due to accumulating pieces of an animalistic mindset. It would be too hard to python script I think, unfortunetaly.
Adding cats and dogs is fully possible, check srle's topic. Adding new locations though is nearly impossible so far as I know.

Gangrels totally have their place in Bloodlines, they're not all about survival and living in the wild. You got the wrong impression of Gangrels. Think of them a Brujah with less swearwords and more direct and rustic personnas.
Beckett is a good example of Gangrel, even if he is very talkative and likes to turn around the subjects.

Yes, animalism is not a very suited discipline to an urban places, but it's about "survival in case of need", not "living in teh woods to be friends with the birds and beating my chest like Tarzan".

Velvet, I think you got your ideas wrong and you're only going for basic stereotypes and what you can think about the clans...


Nossies, as a Clan and without thinking about the weakness of the clan -teh uglyness-, are WAY less suited to live in a social environment.

Claudia, you might be right about me having only a stereotyped idea of gangrel.

i did play gangrel once, Pen & Paper, but vampire: Dark Ages, and in the middle ages there sure were more rural environments and more wilderness than there are today, and i have the vague memory, i got the impressions at the time, that gangrel as conceived for the Dark Ages setting were suited to take full advantage of that.
i have no idea how the concept of gangrel evolved to the modern times of The Masquerade.

but Childe of Malkav if i do remember correctly it does state in the game hint in the load screen where it describes Gangrel that they like to comune with animals.

all aspects aside, Feral got the gist of my argument:
why not add other animals, like domestic animals, like cats and dogs, and urban living animals sparrows and pigeons, and wild wanderers like coyotes and deer?
it is realistic for ANYONE to come accross such animals while wandering the city streets at night, and they sure would make bloodlines' LA more Gangrel-friendly.
if as Feral says it is possible (while maybe not easy) then why not?

even never having played gangrel i have always felt the lack of any animal other than rats as unrealistic and somehow claustrophobic.

You can't compare Vampires in 1200 A.C. in Europe to other younger Vampires in 2004 A.C. in LA.
Even if it's the same clan and some Gangrels are quite old, they keep growing up as well as us do (even if we are not totally up to date when we age, it doesn't mean we are still living like the Middle Ages). Beckett can wear a hat and Jack does take baths...

It does, in the tips, say that Gangrels are more about nature and have a certain bond with animals, but they command them as much as Toreador make ghouls and Ventrue manipulate the finances of the countries and companies... Many of them don't care much about nature per se. Animalism serves them to survive, to spy and to calm (or not) the Beast (either their own or another vampire's).

Gangrels are not Elves.


Cats and dogs yes, that's a good idea, but I do not think we could ever find a deer or a coyote in 2004 LA. Or maybe in those Werewolvves' Hills.. Maybe. Even there, with the observatory and all, it probably isn't wild/accessable enough to have those wild animals. Insects and birds yes, but a coyote would never make it there, nor a deer. It's a manmade forest with, probably, fence and stuff to avoid incidents (it's not an observatory in the Andes or the Himalaya..).

Anyway, most animals react with fear of aggressiveness in front of vampires, except for the ones having a special merit so they act "normal" (as long as you have Animal ken, which is the basic skill needed to use animalism in the pen and paper game).

Claudia wrote:

Gangrels are not Elves.

Don't ask me why, but this line is

Some Gangrels are quite simillar to Dark Elves perheps. Those after a few frenzies especialy

there are dogs in bloodlines
in brother's salvage
it might be feasible to spawn them elsewhere
and to change their skin into other animals

but claudia, on the subject of coyotes in LA, i disagree
the media are rife with wildlife straying into cities, big and small, remote or otherwise
(does not the movie, is Collateral the name, Jamie Foxx as cabbie and Tom Cruise a hird gun, take place in LA? there is a scene of a coyote wandering the streets, and i am betting it was a candid camera scene edited into the movie.)

as for "gangrels are not elves" i stand corrected

I live in a very suburbanized part of Southern California (not Los Angeles), very close to a large urban center. Coastal Southern California is riddled with canyons and ravines and hillsides where it is impractical to build. This leaves much of the region with spots of totally undeveloped land. There are loads of skunks, opossums, rabbits, squirrels and coyotes. And you don't have to go too far from the major urban centers to find deer.

so it would be adequate and i am guessing feasible to populate the streets of LA with other animals, amongst several reasons to give more things to do for gangrel with animalism, no?

Velvet wrote:

so it would be adequate and i am guessing feasible to populate the streets of LA with other animals, amongst several reasons to give more things to do for gangrel with animalism, no?

From a real-world standpoint, skunks and opossums everywhere. No coyotes right in the heart of the urban centers, though.

Well, as far as big cities are concerned, I lived in London (England, not USA or SA). And among the sights we got every morning were foxes and underage gangstas. Sweet old England, and Neasden especialy. Not that far from the City, too. So coyotes may be valid for LA. Thugs are not a problem in Bloodlines, there is enough of them.

I have a den of Red foxes living not more then about 80 yards from my current house, and saw a coyote run in front of my car coming home down our street, not more than 2 weeks ago. That will change once we move south to FLA, we currently live in the sticks with woods all around

I don't think Gangrel are misplaced in Bloodlines. Gangrel like to hunt... but they'll hunt gang members and pedestrians, too.

I just don't like playing Gangrel, because I don't like turning into 'Rat-Bat-Boy' every time I use Protean 5. Those warforms are okay for NPCs and villains, but too goofy-looking for PCs.

I don't suppose it's possible to make a separate skin for the PC Gangrel, that looks more like a beasty version of their normal form? Less batty, perhaps? Or is the Protean ability hard-coded to that stupid warform?

I agree with you on the Warform issue, PGM. It's really ugly. It should be more wolf-ish to me, maybe sort of thing like YamiRaziel's avatar. And of course shifting into an actual animal, like in orginal White Wolf setting would be much better.
Link http://whitewolf.wikia.com/wiki/Protean_(VTM)
Beaing a wolf like in VTMR. (sigh)

Beckett has the white wolf form ... I wonder if that could be switched to the player. Recoloring it if this switching is possible would be a minor problem then, I guess. But I don't know if this is a ridiculous idea. I'm not one for programing. Makes my head hurt. Right there, y'see.

Beckett is Gangrel, right?
and HE changes into a wolf.
why can't the character?

Yup, Beckett is a Gangrel. (Look at those red spooky-gleaming, Masquerade-violating eyes behind those sunglasses ... give a mortal definitely chills, they do.)
Well, maybe the developers wanted to be extra nasty to players by giving the Gangrel PC a ridiculous Protean form ... or they wanted to be extra creative by developing a realistic form which resembles the player's weight and heighth (and simply failed epicly at this ) ... or they thought that a wolf wouldn't be the optimal warform (so true; may be great for travelling, but attacking ... er. There's better out there.) and just couldn't think of anything else than twisting this thingie beyond recognition. Well, okay, I doubt latter, but ... I really cannot think of anything that would make this Protean form even remotely plausible. Nope. Seriously. Can anyone enlighten me?

a little off topic, i sometimes try to guess the clans of the vampire villains.
and the serial killer of carnival of death is a gangrel with a low level protean, right? with elongated claws and fangs?

Alright, here are the original Protean powers !
Level 1 gives the Gangrel bright red eyes for him to see in total darkness.
Level 2 gives the Gangrel longer nails, very sharp, that doest aggravated dammage.
Level 3 allows the Gangrel to merge with the earth, for him to sleep in the forest without fear of the sun. In this form, the Gangrel cannot move.
Level 4 allows the Gangrel to transform himself into two different predators, one small and flying, one powerfull but on the ground (most of the time, it's a Raven and a Wolf, but sometimes it's a rapace and a feline.. but no turtles !). This is NOT a werewolf crinos transformation (the wolf and the raven are normal, except they have the physical attributes of the Gangrel plus some modifiers -the wolf runs quicker, the raven flies).
Level 5 is called mist form. The Gangrel becomes, as the name of the discipline says, mist. Untangible, almost unnoticable.. a gaz, so to speak.


So, Level 4 is the one Beckett uses to transform into a wolf. His red eyes are there because of the flaw of the clan (in pen and paper, if a gangrel enters into frenzy, it gains an animal-like physical caracteristic.. red eyes, spooky ears, a tail, fangs, hair, whiskles..)

Bloodlines being a combat game, except for Level 1 and 2, all others are useless for the game. Therefore they invented this warform...

Serial Killer changes into Warform in the Brothers Salvage, when you finally fight him. So his clan is really not much of a mistery... Ah, as a sidenote: you could reason with him too, especially if you are a Gangrel. So not only violent way here.

actually i don't remember fighting the serial killer, all i had to go for was his contorted distorted face, with proeminent teeth, and the nails that to me appear very extended, claw-like.

So those spooky goblins during the bloodhunt and roof top battle are gangrel? *shudders*

Depends how and if you resolved the quest, Velvet. You need to:
SPOILERS!!!! SPOILERS!!!! SPOILERS!!!!

-go to the pier in Santa Monica
-listen to tapes in Muddy's friend's apartment
-go to the abandoned house across the streat from The Last Round (and find the key upstairs)
-go to Luckey Starr (with the key)
-go to Brothers Salvage and fight/reason
END OF SPOILERS
Then you see him in Warform, but only if you choose to fight.

@agui: Yes, those sweet, furry little boys are Gangrel. I always feel bad giving them Final Deaths.

feral, i always remember solving the quest by dialogue.

i have no idea what aqui is going on about, though.