The Let's Play Archive

Vampire: the Masquerade - Redemption

by gatz

Part 26: Let's show off the basics of multiplayer

Let's show off the basics of multiplayer



Internet sounds good.



Too bad WON.NET doesn't even exist anymore.

OAquinas posted:

Just for anecdotal purposes, the service they used for multiplayer make EA's launch day services look like polished gold. Buggy as hell for matchmaking/launching, and if you went over 30 minutes without crashing that was a rousing success of a session.

Lan it is, then.



When you don't have a created character, the game will drop you right into character creation. We've got a bunch of models to choose from.

pre:
              
                             
1. Dark Ages Christof                11. Modern Lily
2. Modern Christof                   12. Modern Pink
3. Dark Ages Erik                    13. Modern Samuel
4. Modern Erik                       14. Dark Ages Samuel
5. Modern Goth Girl                  15. Dark Ages Serena
6. Modern Goth Guy                   16. Dark Ages Tremere
7. Dark Ages HeavyG                  17. Dark Ages Wilhem
8. Modern HeavyG                     18. Modern Wilhem
9. Dark Ages Kazi                    19. Modern Zil
10. Modern Kazi                     
We've got Modern Erik and Dark Ages Samuel, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense given that Erik died before the modern nights and Samuel never mentions being alive during the dark ages.



There are 9 of the 13 clans to choose from. The Caitiff are considered clanless. Here's what the manual says separates the clans.



Wait..



Really?

Well, no. The manual got it mostly right -- you think the manual should have gotten it all right -- but the Caitiff don't actually have access to every discipline. They don't have any of the Thaumaturgy disciplines. Also, the manual hates oxford commas. I'd like to thank my parents, Ayn Rand and God. Anyway, the Caitiff have access to any of the other disciplines, but they've got to pay more experience to put dots in powers.



Does that mean the Tremere have access to all the paths of Thurmaturgy?

Don't be silly! That would actually make them fun to play as. They've only got access to the Blood Magic path from the single player game. These powers:





You never showed the Dementation discipline off in single player! I'm rating this thread 1!

It's a multiplayer-only discipline. It sounds like it'd be cool, but it actually sucks.



That's nice rhetoric and all, but here's what they actually do. Passion increases frenzy and lowers wits. It's moderately useful. The Haunting causes fear - meaning you've then got to chase down whatever you used it on to kill it. Eyes of Chaos is the Malkavian version of Aura Perception. Seriously, it's the exact same fucking thing. Voice of Madness causes fear and has a chance of causing frenzy. Passion is the only power worth spending dots in, but even then you should first spend your experience elsewhere.

What about Clan Ravnos? They were never mentioned in Redemption.

That's right. The manual affirms it, as well.



Back to character creation.



You can play as a ghoul for any clan, which just means you're not able to feed. What doesn't make any sense is that you still start with one dot in feed and are allowed to put more dots into it. Notice that the generation is still 13 even though we've selected Ghoul, but when you hit create, the generation changes to 'Ghoul'. There's no way to increase or decrease generation during character creation.



You can also play as a human, as we briefly did in the beginning of Redemption's single player. If you remember, humans can't frenzy, and instead have a measure of faith. Faith impacts how powerful the human's Heal, True Faith, and Prayer powers are. It's also a requirement for some weapons and armor.



Humans have regenerating mana, instead of blood. They've also got access to powers under Numina, which is "umbrella term for the supernatural powers possessed by mortals in the Classic World of Darkness."





Time to advance.



Every vampire and ghoul starts with one dot in both feed and blood healing, and has access to powers under 'Common'. That portrait is pretty creepy, and so is the HeavyG one.





Now that that's done, we can get into the lan lobby.



There's a text chat function in the lower left. On rare occasions I've actually brought up the internet lobby when I clicked 'Ok' instead of the lan lobby, and, thankfully, I was recording when it happened.



It's the same thing, but we've got a 'change room' function.



The create room and join room links didn't work. Download updates brought me to the dead WON.net webpage. The button on the right open whatever browser you have set to default, and have a chance of crashing the game.



Anyway, back in the lan room, let's create a game. We could join one if one existed.



Here's an explanation of those toggle options on the left.

quote:

The Co-op/Combative toggle sets whether the players in your game will be able to attack one another or not. Thedefault “on” setting is cooperative.
The Track Humanity toggle sets whether you want the players in your game to suffer Humanity loss for evil actions or not. The default “on” setting means that Humanity will be lost for evil acts.
The ST Moderation setting allows whether or not the host can switch to ST mode during the course of the game. Thus, the host can choose to either play as one of the players or as the ST/Player. The default setting of “on” allows the host to become the ST at any time.
Finally, the Automatic Storyteller option will enable java scripts that are built into the chronicle. The host can choose to either have complete control of all story events in the game or allow java scripts to play out and sit back and watch the game events transpire. With the default setting of “on,” all scripts will be enabled.

'To Curse the Darkness' and 'Leaves of Three' are the two built-in chronicles that function like an actual game. All of the (Empty) chronicles are giant empty levels. For example. London by Night (Empty) contains all of East & West London, including all of the dungeons inside of them, like the Society of Leopold. They're used for creating custom chronicles, but only for populating the levels with actors, items, and objects using Story Teller mode. If you want to actually make quests and shit, you've got to use programs Nihilistic released outside of the game.

The (Empty Salon) chronicles are one-room areas that acted like graphical chat rooms.



Prince's Mansion (Empty Salon) is Ori's Mansion in Vienna.



Rave Club (Empty Salon) is the club from London where we met Pink.



Dark Ages Inn (Empty Salon) is the inn from Prague.

Next time, we'll be going through To Curse the Darkness.