Is there a way to implement the Belgrade-athens anarch coalition the albanian talks about? I agreed with him/disagreed with gor and the story just does nothing with that, it just says mc went back to sofia and she becomes prince
20 posts were merged into an existing topic: COG’s Vampire the Masquerade Games Overall Discussion Thread
I’ve shuffled the DLC chat into the big VTM discussion thread. Obviously there’s overlap when talking about these titles as they’re a group of related games, but it looked like more of a general discussion and therefore better suited to that one. Let me know if anything needs moving back here and please keep this thread for Sins of the Sires chat!
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April 6th patch!
- Further development of interactions with Neoptolemos
- More Malkavianisms
- Another route for interaction with Francesca
- A few transitions polished
- Smoothing out of some interactions with Isidoros
- Some work on Hunger
EDIT: If you haven’t played since the first few days, I’d encourage you to give it another playthrough; Natalia has done a lot of work on bugfixes.
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Sorry about that!
My main issue is more that the game seems unfinished - it honestly feels like a third of a game plus some extra notes on what should happen later. For example, the big reveal about who your sire is is literally a single sentence. Moreover, I had no idea what was going on in the latter half of the book or why anyone acted the way they did and most of the initial plot threads were never addressed again.
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#Grab Gor and flee. → stealth greater than 40 or celerity greater than 1, athletics greater than 60
This is the kind of thing that drives me nuts. Having maxed-out obfuscate seems to never matter in this game. The same thing happened in the hospital when I hid from the vampires looking for me and they immediately found me.
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A post was merged into an existing topic: COG’s Vampire the Masquerade Games Overall Discussion Thread
Please remember to keep the DLC discussion in the big VTM discussion thread, as asked before.
I agree with basically what everyone said here already, (stats are weird, in the last half of the book it feels like everything is rushed and I have no agency in what happens… also it was weird of Sophie to threaten me with Elias, (a man I had met once and was pleasant to, but wasn’t thirsting over him or anything) instead of yknow… my sister, whom I had gone back to multiple times and had made it obvious she was important to me…)
I think my main gripe is that this book could REALLY benefit from a better glossary. I had no idea who ANY of the characters were, aside from Markos and Persa, and it really ruins a lot of the story beats when characters are shocked by a revelation and I’m sitting here scrolling through the “characters” section in vain, trying to piece together who that are and what their relation was to the plot. Seems odd some people in general are just left out of the glossary, which is weird.
Also, a description of what stats are supposed to do what would be a godsend. I had high awareness and etiquette, but did I know what they did in relation to my choices? No.
Overall, a bit of a disappointing game, it really needs a plot overhaul, there’s a lot going on here that makes it a disappointing experience.
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I didn’t see the other topic and posted before looking, my bad 
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I think another issue of “Sins” is that the Prince’s attempts at emulating Ancient Greece feel largely inconsequential.
Sure, it angered Sophia who had been his ally and if you’re playing a woman, you get stuck in what I can only describe as a “chick closet” but, beyond that, we don’t really see his delusional nostalgia negatively affecting the city’s kindred. There’s still a Sheriff and a Seneschal (even if they are called by weird names), there’s still feeding grounds and domain, the rank and file Kindred still seem to be able to get on with their regular unlives despite the Prince’s madness.
I feel like a neonate would need better reasons than this to get involved in a plot to take down an 800 years old Elder (particularly when that plot relies on divine intervention)
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A Malkavian prince whose madness is to emulate the ancient greece including being a sexist, which I personally found it ironic considering that it was an experiment created by the hellenics brujah that ended in failure before moving on to create the so call “utopia” carthage.
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Congratulations @natalia.theodoridou for being a finalist for TWO Nebulas - Sins of the Sires for Game Writing and The Prince of Salt and the Ocean’s Bargain for Novelette! Fantastic news! 
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That’s so awesome! I knew shortly after I started reading Sins of the Sires that it was something truly special, not just another fun game but a powerful work of art. The sordid lyricism and compulsive melancholy captivated me completely. There were philosophical discussions and action scenes, but it all felt viscerally suspenseful and full of meaning. The setting and characters were utterly alive (which is probably the wrong word to use to describe a bunch of vampires, but oh well). I found myself moved to tears many, many times, and there were some turns of phrase that were almost as powerful the tenth or fifteenth time I read them as they were the first. I couldn’t be more thrilled to see it up for such a prestigious honor.
And I just looked up the “Ocean’s Bargain” novelette and bookmarked it for the next time I need something good to read.
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I second everything above. The first half of the game feels like a good painting, and then it kinda… falls apart? Things happen and you have exactly 0 agency, you don’t even understand why, many things have no buildup, and you lack interactions with any relevant characters of the court - or even the characters relevant to you, for that matter.
The atmosphere and tone are good, I’ll give you that. But why was this a finalist for Game Writing? Is this prize given by 100% nepotism in a circle of writers that are all friends with each other? The world does not make any sense to me. Then Night Road and Parliament of Knives were winners earlier on, I imagine?
Besides, I stand by my earlier criticism: a truckload of character-defining questions is not the best way to start a game for me.
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Here’s a summary of how it works from someone who’s a member of the SFWA.
The world makes little sense to me either, for unrelated reasons, but at least “people disagree about nominees and winners of industry awards” is a comforting constant. (A small personal gripe of mine was Bandersnatch’s win in the first Game Writing Nebula, but I can’t now really remember why.)
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I will point out, I found the author’s non-interactive fiction works to be quite enjoyable, he’s a good author. It just feels like their interactive works don’t know how to execute the interactive portion.
The author also wrote Rent-a-Vice and An Odyssey: Echoes of War which also had their… issues. Rent-a-Vice was also a fairly controversial Nebula nominee in 2018 iirc.
A lot of authors tend to be writers first and seem to struggle with the interactive portion tbh, I think its just more noticeable since Sin of Sires uses a popular IP and at least 2/3 of the previous VtM games were absolute bangers while Out for Blood was less popular, but generally well regarded.
I feel like a number of authors tend to gloss over the “Games” portion of Choice of Games and Hosted Games and don’t even think to consider things like game balance, leading to a number of games with near impossible stat checks or trap stats that are entirely useless. Its not a problem solely with Sin of Sires, SoS has had the most attention (and has had award nominations) so its become the face of the problem.
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Because “Game Writing” is the category into which interactive fiction falls under the definitions used by SFWA. Other CoG games have been nominated for a Nebula in this category in previous years. None has won.
But why bring this up at all, after five months? That’s not just beating a dead horse, that’s beating a horse that’s bloated with decay, burst open from the gas buildup, and leaking purge fluid from every orifice.
For many HG authors that may be a fair assessment, but CoG (and HC) authors are required to consider “game balance” as part of the guidelines they’re given when they sign a contract with CoG. Even if the authors might still gloss over it to some degree, the editorial team, who are all experts in the unique demands of interactive fiction, wouldn’t. And as a beta tester who has worked on over a dozen published games, I can testify that a certain amount of tinkering to make sure stats checks aren’t too hard to pass is nearly always part of the process.
Of course, none of this is to say that they get the balance right every time, or that published work should stand beyond criticism. But I hope it will at least be taken into consideration that any flaws are a perhaps inevitable consequence of a difficult and semi-subjective process.
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Why in the world is it so difficult to achieve various endings in this game? I have high enough fight stats to win every altercation up until Pyros, then can’t stop someone from offing themselves in the sun?! The stat checks have to be weird.
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