Created 257 days ago
by
HfxTenor
Gamer, Singer, Trainer, Storyteller, and all-around swell cat.
Been playing WoD since the original VtM came out back in 1991, though I've been into RPG's since the D&D red-box in Grade 6.
First book I ever read: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe (I have the hots for sinister female leads thanks to this novel)
Favourite Movie: The Sound of Music
Favourite Computer Game: Any adventure game by Sierra On-Line, particularly the Gabriel Knight series.
Merit: 4 Flaw: 0
- Currently 4.00/5 Stars.
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Blood Bond
Gameplay
mechanics
Roleplay
RP
Categories:
World of Darkness Blog
Views: 1781
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As with most of my blogs, I’m concerned more about how the MMO will facilitate the RP experience than I am with end game raid bosses and PvP gankz0rz. To be honest, I take severe umbrage with the very notions of “end-game” content and “boss fights” in general. I mean, it’s an MMO...isn’t the idea for it NOT to end? And the stale notion of arbitrary “boss” encounters is so dull and run into the ground that I think I’ll save my rant for its own blog.
This week I’d like to blab about the Blood Bond. For the uninitiated, a Blood Bond is a supernaturally-enforced feeling of friendship, family, and eventually love between two vampires or between a vampire and its ghoul(s). It’s achieved when one drinks the blood of a vampire, grows stronger if drunk repeatedly on three separate occasions (three separate nights), and can last for years before needing to be reinforced.
The first time Kindred blood is consumed, it forces the person drinking the blood to have a feeling of camaraderie toward the Kindred. Even if such feelings did not exist before.
With the second imbibing of vitae, the imbiber’s feelings of camaraderie become stronger – more akin to the feelings one would have toward their own family or a best friend.
Round 3 of sanguine guzzlage causes the guzzler to fall in love with the blood donor. They will literally do anything to make the donor happy.
In many cases, the sharing of blood and creation of a blood is mutual between two individuals who honestly care for each other. However, it can also have a disturbing non-consensual connotation (not just physical violation, but mental/spiritual) if the blood is forced or snuck somehow into the drinker’s system – a very dark theme that should be explored very carefully.
From a game mechanics perspective, it is left up to the Storyteller on how to enforce such a bond. Mostly it’s meant to be nothing more than an RP cue. I normally implement a lower difficulty target on the Kindred’s rolls to affect the bonded individual or curry their aid, depending on the level of the Blood Bond. Everything from Disciplines such as Presence, Dementation, Dominate, etc. to standard rolls such as diplomacy, empathy, subterfuge and so on.
How much coding would be involved in implementing similar mechanics in the MMO is beyond me, but I suspect it might be tricky – having the game spot the “Blood Bond – 2
nd Stage (One-Way or Two-Way)” character status between two individuals, and then render effects accordingly for skill and Discipline checks. Still, I think that might be the best way to implement the Blood Bond in the WoD MMO. Then again, they may just say “roleplay it.”
2 Comments
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-1 Merits
Xenith
255 days ago
The could make the "blood bond" mechanic tie into being invited into "guilds" or another example would be, like you mention, in a RP fashion accept with this, if CCP/WW implements a biography field for player to put in bio's like in SWG, it could be, in there, a field that says "blood bond" and it could have another players name next to it if you were say "married", etc. Just an example or two of how it could be implemented into the game.
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3 Merits
257 days ago
"Round 3 of sanguine guzzlage causes the guzzler to fall in love" - Saved for posterity. ---- I think we'll be seeing the Blood Bond in the WODMMO, especially if we're also going to be seeing mechanical rules for social play. It would be silly not to enable vampire player-charcaters to feed off one another, and there should be definite dangers to the process. I would like it if it got to the level where you don't want to drink any blood that you didn't fix or obtain yourself. To make this a danger, though, they'll need to put in lots of feeding rules and mixing blood rules and tracking whose blood has ended up where. ---- If it is put in, I suspect it'll be much like you describe: the donor can more easily influence the receiver, and perhaps even making it so that the receiver has trouble influencing the donor (at least where the intention is to harm, like intimidation or attacking). In tabletop terms, I typically decree that for every level of a Blood Bond a character is suffering under, they receive a +1 difficulty to influence the donor, while the donor gets a -1 difficulty to influence them - it's not something you want to have happen to your character under any circumstances. ---- I'd be very, very interested to see how they might handle mutual Blood Bonds...
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