I think there’s also a mechanical problem, unless you purposely want to antagonize her or plan to betray her, disagreing with her inevitably lowers her trust, and people, myself included, have this thing where they want all characters to like them, mostly because there’s really no benefit for doing otherwise (mechanically, not necessarily storywise).
This is a problem games with companions have dealt with for a long time, there’s a reason there are guides about where to take X to do Y or to not bring W to Z to get all companions with max approval, because unless you personally dislike a companion and want them out you get the most benefit keeping them all happy.
Like, earlier on the thread there was talk about how you needed Zheng to trust you so you can “spend” that trust for him to agree he wasn’t the best father, so if you overall like Mandy, or at least don’t hate her, but find some of her stuff annoying you eventually enter this calculation on your head where you go “Can I afford to spend her trust just to call her out? For something relatively insignificant that won’t affect anything? What if I need it for later?”
So ironically only a player that dislikes or opposes her (or made a spreadsheet on excel) will get to express that they see those flaws as flaws.
Maybe if you reach a higher level of trust with them you can disagree without them liking you less? Since they see you as a friend who has a different opinions instead of suddenly feeling betrayed.
Or maybe there are more options to say “I agree with you (lie)” so at least the MC can express to themselves that they disagree but either don’t want to go against them out of friendship, cowardice or to manipulate them.
Overall this is a problem that many games have had to deal with, while still looking for different solutions to it, like Dragon Age 2 with their friendship/rivalry meters or Alpha Protocol giving different bonuses if they like or dislike you, so it’s not something that has a definite solution that I can offer, but maybe something to think about.
I’m confused where this ‘forced’ is coming from? You can tell Jangles you want nothing to do with gang life as soon as you meet him and avoid them completely if you like.
Finished my first playthrough of the game. I won’t rate it yet, as I want to re-play with the aim of exploring paths not yet taken.
In my playthrough, I romanced Fleur-de-Lys, became
Summary
a crime boss
and ended up as Apex Predator. I agree with UItra_In_Something that, in preventing the Downtown Eastside from going worse, my MC having to become a crime boss and allow some bad things to happen, was disappointing. A necessary evil. Also, whilst I was surprised that all my allies survived, the end battle felt…flat. Lydia was
Summary
stupid enough to be caught out by the dawn!
Whilst Roderick was ranting as he slowly died, I wanted my MC to say to him “Tough! You wouldn’t have suffered this dead end, if you had only given up trying to hunt me down and kill me.” But there was no option to rebuke him.
Other disappointments: Too much swearing for my liking (it could’ve been cut down by half). I know that’s down to the characters and their environment, etc. But it’s a pet hate of mine. And there was no option at the end to bed Fleur-de-Lys again. Despite her swearing, she was my favourite character. Wil was just…too difficult for me to engage with, beyond some attempts. And Lydia feels too much of a caricature conniving vampiress.
I would say that the game, overall, was reasonable - going by what I know of it so far.
He comes back later, saying that he’s sick and is going to die and that he chooses our character because the alternative is either three eye or red and choosing one or the other will cause gang infighting.
After that point, you are forced to become the gang leader.
This is actually something I’ve been thinking about as a problem. I think this is a sort of mechanic that works for some characters over others, and this is something I’m looking to explore a bit more going forward.
In particular, I’m doing a lot of thinking about the difference between “opinions” and “values”, and about writing a character who will respect you for disagreeing with them, so long as they do so in a way which still demonstrates they share a value system.
You see some of this in A Time of Monsters, Zheng doesn’t mind if you lose at cards, but he does mind if you cheat. Wil respects an MC who refuses to drink and sticks to that refusal than one who caves. but it’s not as prominent as I might make it in future projects.
This is only supposed to happen if you hit particular trust and reputation thresholds. They were actually a lot higher during playtesting, but I lowered them through the process to make sure that ending was viable for most players trying to reach it.
Actually, Roderick was fucked. The reason he’s so focused on killing you that he brings the rest of the thinbloods it’s because you know there are vampires around and that he’s one and if he doesn’t nip that shit in the bud before you potentially talk to someone the Camarilla is going to nip HIM in the bud, and when the Camarilla nips you in the bud they do their best to reduce the chance of having to nip anyone else by making an EXAMPLE out of you. This is literally the worst possible thing that can happen if you’re a vampire, because the Camarilla get CREATIVE on your ass, and so Rowdy Roddy Biter is extremely keen on ending you.
Basically, the moment he blows the Masquerade trying to kill you at the start, one of you has to die.
So if he doesn’t comes and tells me that I turned into gang leader, what happens at the epilogue? And I assume that I need high trust and reputation tresholds to get him to choose me as leader, right?
Slightly tangential from this but I personally really enjoy systems where there’s opportunities for deceit, be it as simple as refusing to disagree with someone for the sake of not wanting to antagonise them, or as complex as genuine scheming. I also enjoy it when these systems get extrapolated to how people perceive the character and how the character perceives the world; a good example of a system that incorporates some of this is Choice of Rebels, with the [stat] and [statreal] system - for example, you might be a sceptic, but feign religiosity to convince people you’re a devout worshipper because for whatever reason you believe that that will further your own causes (such as convincing people that you are a holy messiah). Tracking your carefully cultivated public image and also tracking your genuine internal beliefs opens up extremely interesting narrative opportunities imo, especially when they come into conflict.
Something I might want to consider adding if I ever go back and seriously expand the epilogues (it’d be FreeLC or something, I’d imagine).
I’ve done some of that before, like with Lady Katarina’s romance in Guns of Infinity. I’ve always found it really difficult to keep track of, but then again, Guns of Infinity was planned out on a single sheet of sketchbook paper, so maybe that was just a skill issue on my part.
One thing I’d also like to make clear is that I’m perfectly fine with people disliking or finding one of the characters annoying or unbearable. I only really have a problem when everyone finds the same character unpleasant despite their differing perspectives - which means I’m not really concerned if everyone here has different “least favourite” characters.
The only characters I think I really dropped the ball on are Roderick and his coterie, who were meant to be portrayed as something like how a “normal” human would see a high humanity group of PCs who still end up making a lot of bad decisions out of either inexperience or misunderstanding. (I can kinda expand on what I mean by that, if anyone’s interested.)
Its me I’m interested. I do think Rod and co are interesting, but honestly I think their class overrides what might otherwise be a sympathetic angle. They come off whiny, for lack of a better word.
The entire community falls into chaos and people start dying left and right in a brutal succession war. The hunters break up and flee the Downtown Eastside.
The MC seeks refuge with either the Taishanhui + Zheng or St George + Mandy (depending on the faction met in Act 2), but it requires a trust check of over 65 for the corresponding character and for them to be reconciled with their family.
If the MC fails the refuge check, they are cornered and killed by the gangs just before they enact their plan of escape. If they have 4 willpower they spot a “ray of light between the packed bodies of the onrushing horde,” but it’s heavily implied that they’re screwed anyways.
Long story short, the contradiction between their class and their position was supposed to be what drove the narrative conflict you had with them.
Roderick, Cory, Morgan, and Sam exist at the bottom of the Kindred hierarchy, to the degree that they’re only really considered “affiliated” with the Camarilla because of the crisis decisions the then-Prince made in response to the Second Inquisition and the fact that they’re kept on a leash by the Court of Vancouver’s most junior member. From where they stand, their grievances are well founded. They exist in a frame of reference where almost everyone they see as “people” considers them lesser.
But that’s the thing - because despite his earnest attempt to act otherwise, Roderick Leung really does not see mortals as people anymore. Arguably, given his background and the background of his coterie (raised as the pampered children of post-colonial oligarchs) they never really did, and they just transferred their selective unpersoning of their socioeconomic inferiors into a framework which allows for their state of quasi-undeath.
And this is something he actively tries to fight. His aspiration is to be a revolutionary, and as a result, he tries to build coalitions, tries to build alliances, and do all the things which “noble” Kindred do in the context of something like Vampire the Masquerade. But at the same time, he cannot truly escape the worldview that he and his peers possess a level of agency and perspective that his “lessers” (like the MC) do not.
This is mirrored in a lot of the other aspects of Roderick’s coterie, how they (for example) all bear grudges against the colonial elites which they see themselves as marginalised by, whilst also coming from mortal backgrounds of tremendous privilege within the context of their home societies (for example, Roderick mentions offhandedly that Cory is directly descended from both the MarcosandAquino families).
So ultimately, Roderick’s entire theme is that of Kyriarchy - of those who see themselves as oppressed while literally drinking the blood of those below them because it’s convenient to the grand heroic narrative they (or at least Roderick) have in their heads. They see themselves as the heroes, and believe that this gives them a certain immunity to consequences. Roderick thinks he’s a different kind of Kindred, one which can break free of all the strictures and regulations (including the ones in place for his own safety) which the Camarilla have placed on him. He thinks that he can simply make reality bend to his sense of right and wrong through sheer force of will (and what he would consider) good heartedness.
That’s why he crashes out so hard if you manage to get him on his knees. He doesn’t understand why you, a person he sees as a supporting character at best, keeps refusing to acknowledge how right he is, how pure his motives are, how obviously black-and-white the moral context is.
Because to him, he and his coterie are the plucky heroes. Lydia is the villain.
And you? You’re just some minor NPC who decided to come along for the ride.
To be fair I’d be pissed off too if the main antagonist and all my fellow PCs died to a background character that’s only alive because I rolled a crit fail in the first session
Honestly, that’s kind of the vibe I wanted to go for, to put the player in the role of the poor NPC a “normal” vampire game would use as a feeding tutorial - if they had the will and the support to do something about it.
