I wish LASOMBRA clan. Play Antitribu as a lasombra was an unique experience. Other thing that can be interesting is be able to play as an Kuei Jin(Eastern Vampire, not limited by Generation with his own rulebooks and using a lot of eastern concepts like dharma instead of humanity)
I never cared much for the KoE and only played one once. But it was just as hard to get your Dharma and age up enough to be able to have abilities over 5 points. The generational limits are just ways to keep the power level gated to an acceptable level, just like Dharma/age. The default chronicle was supposed to be for neonate characters that were at the bottom of the totem pole, where they're still understandable by humans. Ancient powerful beings that have lived through centuries of change, are extremely difficult to role play as. There were add on books for storytellers that wanted to run elders games, but they weren't the default experience.
I do really hope the put Lasombra in as DLC, especially since they're supposed to join the Camarilla in the near future.
Well, with generation rules, technically an 3rd gen vampire can walk from topor, mass sire because he is bored an go sleep again. Instead of vampires being tied to age, what he drinks, his experiences, etc he is hard caped by his sire. In fact, older vampires just stopping siring from centuries is something that doesn't makes much sense, but honestly the idea of caine itself doesn't makes much sense, i mean "i got cursed by god and due this, i got superpowers, immortality, godlike powers, and will sire few ones and then do nothing until the end of times" , myths about flood IMO makes me very hard to fell connected to the metaplot that i know that a lot of people like. but for me is very immersion breaking due the lack of logic and consistency.
Anyway, i believe that an lasombra ancient vampire appears briefly on the first game (spoilers obviously)
On ending depending the alliance, this scene
And play the first game with one(Antitribu) was an amazing experience. I clearly recommend. Shadow tentacles and dark metamorphosis with firearms is a insane deadly combo.
Ya, technically it was possible for a 3rd gen to just embrace a bunch of new vampires and go to sleep again. Those would definitely be storyteller characters, though. In the lore when anything like that happened, it was implied they were pretty powerful, despite being newly embraced, just by strength of blood. Look at how powerful Tremere and Giovanni got at such relatively young ages. The default character creation rules capped generation at 8th. Level 6 and higher disciplines weren't really supposed to be generally accessible. If the storyteller wanted their players to get to lower gen and access those abilities, they could provide opportunities for amaranth. Blood hunts were enticing, because they basically legalized Diablerie on the target.
I wish LASOMBRA clan. Play Antitribu as a lasombra was an unique experience. Other thing that can be interesting is be able to play as an Kuei Jin(Eastern Vampire, not limited by Generation with his own rulebooks and using a lot of eastern concepts like dharma instead of humanity)
I never cared much for the KoE and only played one once. But it was just as hard to get your Dharma and age up enough to be able to have abilities over 5 points. The generational limits are just ways to keep the power level gated to an acceptable level, just like Dharma/age. The default chronicle was supposed to be for neonate characters that were at the bottom of the totem pole, where they're still understandable by humans. Ancient powerful beings that have lived through centuries of change, are extremely difficult to role play as. There were add on books for storytellers that wanted to run elders games, but they weren't the default experience.
I do really hope the put Lasombra in as DLC, especially since they're supposed to join the Camarilla in the near future.
Well, with generation rules, technically an 3rd gen vampire can walk from topor, mass sire because he is bored an go sleep again. Instead of vampires being tied to age, what he drinks, his experiences, etc he is hard caped by his sire. In fact, older vampires just stopping siring from centuries is something that doesn't makes much sense, but honestly the idea of caine itself doesn't makes much sense, i mean "i got cursed by god and due this, i got superpowers, immortality, godlike powers, and will sire few ones and then do nothing until the end of times" , myths about flood IMO makes me very hard to fell connected to the metaplot that i know that a lot of people like. but for me is very immersion breaking due the lack of logic and consistency.
Anyway, i believe that an lasombra ancient vampire appears briefly on the first game (spoilers obviously)
On ending depending the alliance, this scene
And play the first game with one(Antitribu) was an amazing experience. I clearly recommend. Shadow tentacles and dark metamorphosis with firearms is a insane deadly combo.
Ya, technically it was possible for a 3rd gen to just embrace a bunch of new vampires and go to sleep again. Those would definitely be storyteller characters, though. In the lore when anything like that happened, it was implied they were pretty powerful, despite being newly embraced, just by strength of blood. Look at how powerful Tremere and Giovanni got at such relatively young ages. The default character creation rules capped generation at 8th. Level 6 and higher disciplines weren't really supposed to be generally accessible. If the storyteller wanted their players to get to lower gen and access those abilities, they could provide opportunities for amaranth. Blood hunts were enticing, because they basically legalized Diablerie on the target.
Even if your charname is 4th gen. IMO will take at least some decades to learn advanced disciplines and raise attributes to 6+ dots.
But i think that i already made my point. IMO Kindred of the East is better mechanic wise and story wise rsrs. Just my preference.
edit : pick an tremere for eg, they will not teach the secrets that only elders/ancients know to an neonate, until you spend so much time in the clan and prove your loyalty.
It sounds like a much more realistic approach is being taken with real symptoms being depicted. I also like the idea that the writing for Malkavian will try to make it difficult to determine what's real sometimes.
More excitingly to me, my table top Vampire: Dark Ages game is finally happening! I actually managed to round up a group of 4 players. I'm planning on starting them off in Lundenwic (The Saxon trading town near the ruins of Londinium) 730AD. After a little while, I plan on running them out of town, with the choice to head to France and get embroiled in the intrigues there, or go a Viking and conducting raids and building a small kingdom in the North. I even bought one of those pretty copies of the V20 Vampire Dark Ages books.
It mainly talks about how they're handling the adaptation of PnP to a video game. They stress that they're not going for 1:1 translation, but trying more to capture the feel and intent.
It mainly talks about how they're handling the adaptation of PnP to a video game. They stress that they're not going for 1:1 translation, but trying more to capture the feel and intent.
I already knew it. I mean, the first game was not very pnp like in many aspects. But i have a lot of fear when devs say "capture the feel" and change pnp rules. Pale masters become an useless class on nwn1 due not following rules and SCL did it...
It mainly talks about how they're handling the adaptation of PnP to a video game. They stress that they're not going for 1:1 translation, but trying more to capture the feel and intent.
I already knew it. I mean, the first game was not very pnp like in many aspects. But i have a lot of fear when devs say "capture the feel" and change pnp rules. Pale masters become an useless class on nwn1 due not following rules and SCL did it...
in all fairness, SCL was 4th ed, a system most people don't like in the first place. I do agree that was some BS how Pale Master and Dragon Disciple worked in nwn 1 and 2, but overall those games were pretty good. I remain hopeful. They also had a link in that post to a playtest done in PnP, with the changes they'd made. I haven't bothered to watch it yet.
It mainly talks about how they're handling the adaptation of PnP to a video game. They stress that they're not going for 1:1 translation, but trying more to capture the feel and intent.
I already knew it. I mean, the first game was not very pnp like in many aspects. But i have a lot of fear when devs say "capture the feel" and change pnp rules. Pale masters become an useless class on nwn1 due not following rules and SCL did it...
in all fairness, SCL was 4th ed, a system most people don't like in the first place. I do agree that was some BS how Pale Master and Dragon Disciple worked in nwn 1 and 2, but overall those games were pretty good. I remain hopeful. They also had a link in that post to a playtest done in PnP, with the changes they'd made. I haven't bothered to watch it yet.
Yes, Thaumaturgy is completely different than pnp on the first game, but considering the insane effort that would require only to badly implement some few paths, i think that they did an relative good job.
It mainly talks about how they're handling the adaptation of PnP to a video game. They stress that they're not going for 1:1 translation, but trying more to capture the feel and intent.
I already knew it. I mean, the first game was not very pnp like in many aspects. But i have a lot of fear when devs say "capture the feel" and change pnp rules. Pale masters become an useless class on nwn1 due not following rules and SCL did it...
in all fairness, SCL was 4th ed, a system most people don't like in the first place. I do agree that was some BS how Pale Master and Dragon Disciple worked in nwn 1 and 2, but overall those games were pretty good. I remain hopeful. They also had a link in that post to a playtest done in PnP, with the changes they'd made. I haven't bothered to watch it yet.
Yes, Thaumaturgy is completely different than pnp on the first game, but considering the insane effort that would require only to badly implement some few paths, i think that they did an relative good job.
Well they do have some of the people who worked on the original. It wasn't just Thaumaturgy that worked differently, almost all the disciplines were altered. It's probably for the best, I mean how useful would Protean 3 Earth Meld be in that game. Obfuscate 3, Mask of a Thousand Faces would have been nigh impossible to implement. Potence definitely got the biggest nerf, since in PnP it gave you one automatic success per dot on all strength rolls. It didn't just add to the dice pool, they were automatic successes, so it was better than strength, and required no blood to activate and was always on. Presence had different powers for every level as did Auspex with it's third and higher levels being hard to implement. So I think there's a decent amount of precedence for making changes to better adapt the system for a video game where a story teller can't just intervene or resolve how something works out. It also means they can make sure the powers are at least useful in the game world.
I mean, VtMB 2 is an amazing game, BUT imo would be much better if had mast of a thousand faces for eg, even if is in a very limited way, allowing you to choose in a very limited NPC list and not affecting any dialog. Sure, will be insanely hard to implement an fraction of what you can do with the discipline, but if they did it, the game would be better imho.
Fun fact, looks like modders like antitribu maker implemented disciplines more consistent to pnp. At least obtenebration, i mean, Nightshades(4 dot) and shadow play(1 dot) are near impossible to implement in a computer game, but Arms of the Abyss, Black Metamorphosis and even Tenebrous Form are implemented on the mod in a very consistent way.
I mean, VtMB 2 is an amazing game, BUT imo would be much better if had mast of a thousand faces for eg, even if is in a very limited way, allowing you to choose in a very limited NPC list and not affecting any dialog. Sure, will be insanely hard to implement an fraction of what you can do with the discipline, but if they did it, the game would be better imho.
Fun fact, looks like modders like antitribu maker implemented disciplines more consistent to pnp. At least obtenebration, i mean, Nightshades(4 dot) and shadow play(1 dot) are near impossible to implement in a computer game, but Arms of the Abyss, Black Metamorphosis and even Tenebrous Form are implemented on the mod in a very consistent way.
Ya, it'd be a million times better with mask of a thousand faces, but the first game barely made it out the door and was still a mess after 2 patches. It's still a hot mess with the fan patches, but in much better shape. There's really no point in implementing something if it doesn't have an impact in the game. Just having it in the game creates tons of problems, what if they make themselves look like someone else and go on a rampage downtown? Something like that gets really complex fast, what if you spoofed someone else and told another character a bunch of lies? The complexity snowballs fast when you start to consider the impact one a character and how they'd affect other characters.
They're the big money backers of the tech industry. Now I think I'm going Brujah for my first run.
RPS also posted a video of them playing the same mission that's already been teased. They do talk about some interesting stuff and make some different choices to get through it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UyhmpZ5nPI
It's a Nosferatu only faction, so not likely you'll be able to join unless they add some DLC for playing a Nosferatu. They're mainly integrated with the homeless, destitute and loners, which Seattle's had since it's founding, but the amount of people living in poverty has sky rocketed over the last 10 years.
Is truth that the good part of vampriism come from lilith, not from caine's curse? Because it makes much more sense than "you killed your brother, now enjoy superpowers"
That's a can of worms. So, ya there are some vampires, particularly Bahari https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Bahari that would probably say something like that. Although Bahari are hated and sometimes even killed in Camarilla cities, so most other Vampires do not share that opinion. The thing is, the whole Caine thing isn't necessarily set in stone. It's the generally accepted origin myth for vampires in the West, but not all of them believe that. Some even believe the different clans have completely unrelated origins. Some Gangrel, particularly during the dark ages, didn't see themselves as being directly related to most other clans, but just shared a similar curse. Indian vampires don't buy into the Judeo-Christian origin at all, either. There are vampires who were Catholic in life that believe the whole Caine thing is a metaphor and not to be taken literally, like how a lot of Catholics view the bible.
The thing about Lilith is she's actually barely mentioned in the Torah. Most of the stuff about her in real life is apocryphal writings that are not generally accepted as orthodox. So everything about her should be taken with a grain of salt. She was kind of a stand in to deal with the two conflicting versions of genesis that exist in the bible and torah and was tacked on later to try and reconcile the differences.
So, stuff like this, Caine, Lilith and the Antedeluvians is meant to be ambiguous. Things are best when the players don't know and there's a layer of mystery. It's up to the story teller to decide what's really true. Asides from some of the Gehenna scenarios, they're not really intended for use. They're more plot devices, like characters looking for a scrap of writing on Caine or Lilith. The In game Book of Nod does mention Caine learned his powers from Lilith, though. The Book of Nod could just be wholly mythological or metaphor, though.
Last year I had tried to run a game set in 402BC based on Xenophon's Anabasis, but only got a few sessions before the group broke up. When the players asked NPCs about where vampires came from, they got completely conflicting stories from different characters, none of which involved Caine, because Judaism wasn't widespread outside the Levant. That's my personal take on it for my game canon. Somebody else might be fully in on the Caine myth and that he exists and is the origin of vampires in their game, in fact most story tellers are probably all in on it.
Huh... looks like we are getting another game prior to Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2 next year. Yet I have no idea why Vampire: The Masquerade - Coteries of New York wasn't on my radar until now, given that it will also be available on the Nintendo Switch.
I thought I mentioned Coteries of New York at some point here. I'm pretty meh, about the whole thing, though. It seems like a choose your own adventure visual novel, and "visual novel" is one of my ignore categories on steam.
That's a can of worms. So, ya there are some vampires, particularly Bahari https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Bahari that would probably say something like that. Although Bahari are hated and sometimes even killed in Camarilla cities, so most other Vampires do not share that opinion. The thing is, the whole Caine thing isn't necessarily set in stone. It's the generally accepted origin myth for vampires in the West, but not all of them believe that. Some even believe the different clans have completely unrelated origins. Some Gangrel, particularly during the dark ages, didn't see themselves as being directly related to most other clans, but just shared a similar curse. Indian vampires don't buy into the Judeo-Christian origin at all, either. There are vampires who were Catholic in life that believe the whole Caine thing is a metaphor and not to be taken literally, like how a lot of Catholics view the bible.
The thing about Lilith is she's actually barely mentioned in the Torah. Most of the stuff about her in real life is apocryphal writings that are not generally accepted as orthodox. So everything about her should be taken with a grain of salt. She was kind of a stand in to deal with the two conflicting versions of genesis that exist in the bible and torah and was tacked on later to try and reconcile the differences.
So, stuff like this, Caine, Lilith and the Antedeluvians is meant to be ambiguous. Things are best when the players don't know and there's a layer of mystery. It's up to the story teller to decide what's really true. Asides from some of the Gehenna scenarios, they're not really intended for use. They're more plot devices, like characters looking for a scrap of writing on Caine or Lilith. The In game Book of Nod does mention Caine learned his powers from Lilith, though. The Book of Nod could just be wholly mythological or metaphor, though.
Last year I had tried to run a game set in 402BC based on Xenophon's Anabasis, but only got a few sessions before the group broke up. When the players asked NPCs about where vampires came from, they got completely conflicting stories from different characters, none of which involved Caine, because Judaism wasn't widespread outside the Levant. That's my personal take on it for my game canon. Somebody else might be fully in on the Caine myth and that he exists and is the origin of vampires in their game, in fact most story tellers are probably all in on it.
I would definitely like to play that. Ever considered making it an online game?
I would definitely like to play that. Ever considered making it an online game?
It seemed like a headache having some people remote and most physically there. I forget the name of the site, but the one that one person wanted to use had had some major security issues. So I'm not that interested in trying to run a table top game over the internet. That Anabasis game fell apart anyways, and my current game with a new group is in Lundenwic 730AD (Anglo-Saxon trading town by the ruins of Londinium). I actually have been posting about that game here https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/76430/the-finally-getting-that-table-top-game-happening-thread. So the 730AD game has been taking up the time I have for creating content, as well as my Saturday nights.
Better they spend time getting right than release it in a mess. Sounds like their funding is more stable than with Troika, so at least they can put this off.
Better they spend time getting right than release it in a mess. Sounds like their funding is more stable than with Troika, so at least they can put this off.
Yeah. Not to mention, it was going to be directly competing with Cyberpunk 2077, and that seems like a really bad idea.
If I am not mistaken, the first Bloodlines was released up against Halflife 2, and that contributed a great deal to its failure.
Better they spend time getting right than release it in a mess. Sounds like their funding is more stable than with Troika, so at least they can put this off.
Yeah. Not to mention, it was going to be directly competing with Cyberpunk 2077, and that seems like a really bad idea.
If I am not mistaken, the first Bloodlines was released up against Halflife 2, and that contributed a great deal to its failure.
A lot of people say HL2 affected sales, but I think the games were different enough it wouldn't have made as much of an impact. HL2 was taking up a lot of the news, but there weren't that many RPGs coming out around then. I think Troika was already doomed even if no other games came out at the same time. Cyberpunk's more similar and competing in the same genre, so I can see more people that are into one wanting to play the other.
I'm more excited for Bloodlines than cyberpunk. To be honest, I never played the witcher 3, so I'm less enthused about a game from them than a new vampire game. That's not to say I won't play cyberpunk, just that I'm not looking forward to it nearly as much.
Better they spend time getting right than release it in a mess. Sounds like their funding is more stable than with Troika, so at least they can put this off.
Yeah. Not to mention, it was going to be directly competing with Cyberpunk 2077, and that seems like a really bad idea.
If I am not mistaken, the first Bloodlines was released up against Halflife 2, and that contributed a great deal to its failure.
A lot of people say HL2 affected sales, but I think the games were different enough it wouldn't have made as much of an impact. HL2 was taking up a lot of the news, but there weren't that many RPGs coming out around then. I think Troika was already doomed even if no other games came out at the same time. Cyberpunk's more similar and competing in the same genre, so I can see more people that are into one wanting to play the other.
I'm more excited for Bloodlines than cyberpunk. To be honest, I never played the witcher 3, so I'm less enthused about a game from them than a new vampire game. That's not to say I won't play cyberpunk, just that I'm not looking forward to it nearly as much.
Earlier 00s are awful for small devs. Activision would pressure then to launch a game in the "pre alfa" state with or without HL2. HL2 is only one of the many bullets that killed then... If they had time to deliver a MP project, maybe they could have been saved but i an not sure.
I think HL2 played a very small part, if any in their demise. The company seemed doomed no matter what at that point. But I completely agree the early 2000s were terrible for small studios. It's surprising Obsidian made it through that period.
Comments
Ya, technically it was possible for a 3rd gen to just embrace a bunch of new vampires and go to sleep again. Those would definitely be storyteller characters, though. In the lore when anything like that happened, it was implied they were pretty powerful, despite being newly embraced, just by strength of blood. Look at how powerful Tremere and Giovanni got at such relatively young ages. The default character creation rules capped generation at 8th. Level 6 and higher disciplines weren't really supposed to be generally accessible. If the storyteller wanted their players to get to lower gen and access those abilities, they could provide opportunities for amaranth. Blood hunts were enticing, because they basically legalized Diablerie on the target.
Even if your charname is 4th gen. IMO will take at least some decades to learn advanced disciplines and raise attributes to 6+ dots.
But i think that i already made my point. IMO Kindred of the East is better mechanic wise and story wise rsrs. Just my preference.
edit : pick an tremere for eg, they will not teach the secrets that only elders/ancients know to an neonate, until you spend so much time in the clan and prove your loyalty.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-07-31-improving-the-depiction-of-mental-illness-in-vampire-the-masquerade
It sounds like a much more realistic approach is being taken with real symptoms being depicted. I also like the idea that the writing for Malkavian will try to make it difficult to determine what's real sometimes.
More excitingly to me, my table top Vampire: Dark Ages game is finally happening! I actually managed to round up a group of 4 players. I'm planning on starting them off in Lundenwic (The Saxon trading town near the ruins of Londinium) 730AD. After a little while, I plan on running them out of town, with the choice to head to France and get embroiled in the intrigues there, or go a Viking and conducting raids and building a small kingdom in the North. I even bought one of those pretty copies of the V20 Vampire Dark Ages books.
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/dev-diary-3-tabletop-to-desktop-vampire-the-masquerade-v5-and-bloodlines-2.1231919/
It mainly talks about how they're handling the adaptation of PnP to a video game. They stress that they're not going for 1:1 translation, but trying more to capture the feel and intent.
I already knew it. I mean, the first game was not very pnp like in many aspects. But i have a lot of fear when devs say "capture the feel" and change pnp rules. Pale masters become an useless class on nwn1 due not following rules and SCL did it...
in all fairness, SCL was 4th ed, a system most people don't like in the first place. I do agree that was some BS how Pale Master and Dragon Disciple worked in nwn 1 and 2, but overall those games were pretty good. I remain hopeful. They also had a link in that post to a playtest done in PnP, with the changes they'd made. I haven't bothered to watch it yet.
Yes, Thaumaturgy is completely different than pnp on the first game, but considering the insane effort that would require only to badly implement some few paths, i think that they did an relative good job.
Well they do have some of the people who worked on the original. It wasn't just Thaumaturgy that worked differently, almost all the disciplines were altered. It's probably for the best, I mean how useful would Protean 3 Earth Meld be in that game. Obfuscate 3, Mask of a Thousand Faces would have been nigh impossible to implement. Potence definitely got the biggest nerf, since in PnP it gave you one automatic success per dot on all strength rolls. It didn't just add to the dice pool, they were automatic successes, so it was better than strength, and required no blood to activate and was always on. Presence had different powers for every level as did Auspex with it's third and higher levels being hard to implement. So I think there's a decent amount of precedence for making changes to better adapt the system for a video game where a story teller can't just intervene or resolve how something works out. It also means they can make sure the powers are at least useful in the game world.
Fun fact, looks like modders like antitribu maker implemented disciplines more consistent to pnp. At least obtenebration, i mean, Nightshades(4 dot) and shadow play(1 dot) are near impossible to implement in a computer game, but Arms of the Abyss, Black Metamorphosis and even Tenebrous Form are implemented on the mod in a very consistent way.
Ya, it'd be a million times better with mask of a thousand faces, but the first game barely made it out the door and was still a mess after 2 patches. It's still a hot mess with the fan patches, but in much better shape. There's really no point in implementing something if it doesn't have an impact in the game. Just having it in the game creates tons of problems, what if they make themselves look like someone else and go on a rampage downtown? Something like that gets really complex fast, what if you spoofed someone else and told another character a bunch of lies? The complexity snowballs fast when you start to consider the impact one a character and how they'd affect other characters.
https://www.bloodlines2.com/en/the-pioneers
The old money kindred in the city who founded it are being pushed out by the massive influx of new money.
https://www.bloodlines2.com/en/the-camarilla
They're the big money backers of the tech industry. Now I think I'm going Brujah for my first run.
RPS also posted a video of them playing the same mission that's already been teased. They do talk about some interesting stuff and make some different choices to get through it.
https://www.bloodlines2.com/en/the-baron
I'm guessing they're based somewhere around here in the real city, based off the artwork.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/N+85th+St+&+Aurora+Ave+N,+Seattle,+WA+98103/@47.6906403,-122.3449883,18z/data=!4m13!1m7!3m6!1s0x5490141965ffed29:0x19030d9418b83378!2sN+85th+St+&+Aurora+Ave+N,+Seattle,+WA+98103!3b1!8m2!3d47.6905603!4d-122.3445854!3m4!1s0x5490141965ffed29:0x19030d9418b83378!8m2!3d47.6905603!4d-122.3445854
That strip along Aurora was traditionally where a lot of prostitutes and dealers hung out in the city. Although these days, drugs are pretty much everywhere in Seattle.
https://www.bloodlines2.com/en/the-newcomers
So The Tremere have recently been given the territory of the U-District. The newcomers are mainly book and computer geeks. My kind of guys.
Funny, the LARP I played in like 20 years ago was in the U-District.
https://www.bloodlines2.com/en/the-unseen
It's a Nosferatu only faction, so not likely you'll be able to join unless they add some DLC for playing a Nosferatu. They're mainly integrated with the homeless, destitute and loners, which Seattle's had since it's founding, but the amount of people living in poverty has sky rocketed over the last 10 years.
The thing about Lilith is she's actually barely mentioned in the Torah. Most of the stuff about her in real life is apocryphal writings that are not generally accepted as orthodox. So everything about her should be taken with a grain of salt. She was kind of a stand in to deal with the two conflicting versions of genesis that exist in the bible and torah and was tacked on later to try and reconcile the differences.
So, stuff like this, Caine, Lilith and the Antedeluvians is meant to be ambiguous. Things are best when the players don't know and there's a layer of mystery. It's up to the story teller to decide what's really true. Asides from some of the Gehenna scenarios, they're not really intended for use. They're more plot devices, like characters looking for a scrap of writing on Caine or Lilith. The In game Book of Nod does mention Caine learned his powers from Lilith, though. The Book of Nod could just be wholly mythological or metaphor, though.
Last year I had tried to run a game set in 402BC based on Xenophon's Anabasis, but only got a few sessions before the group broke up. When the players asked NPCs about where vampires came from, they got completely conflicting stories from different characters, none of which involved Caine, because Judaism wasn't widespread outside the Levant. That's my personal take on it for my game canon. Somebody else might be fully in on the Caine myth and that he exists and is the origin of vampires in their game, in fact most story tellers are probably all in on it.
I would definitely like to play that. Ever considered making it an online game?
It seemed like a headache having some people remote and most physically there. I forget the name of the site, but the one that one person wanted to use had had some major security issues. So I'm not that interested in trying to run a table top game over the internet. That Anabasis game fell apart anyways, and my current game with a new group is in Lundenwic 730AD (Anglo-Saxon trading town by the ruins of Londinium). I actually have been posting about that game here https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/76430/the-finally-getting-that-table-top-game-happening-thread. So the 730AD game has been taking up the time I have for creating content, as well as my Saturday nights.
https://www.pcgamer.com/vampire-the-masquerade-bloodlines-2-has-been-delayed/
Better they spend time getting right than release it in a mess. Sounds like their funding is more stable than with Troika, so at least they can put this off.
Yeah. Not to mention, it was going to be directly competing with Cyberpunk 2077, and that seems like a really bad idea.
If I am not mistaken, the first Bloodlines was released up against Halflife 2, and that contributed a great deal to its failure.
A lot of people say HL2 affected sales, but I think the games were different enough it wouldn't have made as much of an impact. HL2 was taking up a lot of the news, but there weren't that many RPGs coming out around then. I think Troika was already doomed even if no other games came out at the same time. Cyberpunk's more similar and competing in the same genre, so I can see more people that are into one wanting to play the other.
I'm more excited for Bloodlines than cyberpunk. To be honest, I never played the witcher 3, so I'm less enthused about a game from them than a new vampire game. That's not to say I won't play cyberpunk, just that I'm not looking forward to it nearly as much.
Earlier 00s are awful for small devs. Activision would pressure then to launch a game in the "pre alfa" state with or without HL2. HL2 is only one of the many bullets that killed then... If they had time to deliver a MP project, maybe they could have been saved but i an not sure.