So Vampire: the Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 appears to be actually a real game? Like, it is going to be released? That strikes me as a bit insane and definitely not a thing I had ever expected to happen, and yet it is going to happen. And of course, it makes me think of the time when CCP Games was trying to make a World of Darkness MMORPG happen before it fell victim to the same thing that kills every project that studio tries to do that isn’t EVE Online. This was the version where that game never even became playable.

I’ve stated before that I don’t think this is exactly the studio to do that project, ownership aside, but it got me thinking about how you would actually do this game even with the avowed plan of just starting at the very least with the vampiric side of things. Because while an open PvP game is not a great idea, the whole point of VtM is that it is a constant state of feuding between a bunch of predatory impulses and selfishness stitched together in a human skin. How can we square that?

Well, I think you can do that by making it a PvP game… but in a roundabout way. Walk with me.

Let’s start by talking about a perfect series of movies about VtM that don’t know that’s what they’re about. I’m talking, of course, about the John Wick films.

My point here is not that the cast of these movies are secretly vampires or anything of the sort; rather, it’s that if someone tried to remake these movies to be about White Wolf’s vampire game, they would be the same films. One of the big elements of these movies, drilled into the audience’s head over and over, is the idea that there is a good reason all of these rules exist. Places where you aren’t allowed to fight exist because of bizarre nonsensical flights of logic; they exist because the people with power don’t want a state of constant open warfare in the streets.

Even though a lot of the plot of these movies is about stretching the rules and even outright breaking them, it’s also clear that these rules exist for a reason. And any theoretical VtM game should keep this in mind. It’s a PvP game in which you cannot, in fact, engage in direct PvP with your foes… because that’s exactly when things become a mess.

Let’s start with a real city. I’m going to go with Chicago. Within the city there are three major elders operating for each of the Camarilla clans to start with. Players are expected to keep track of their factional standing within their clan and other clans, but also to keep track of the overall power level of each elder within the larger city.

The actual mission structure is similar to how missions work in City of Heroes. You get an assignment from one of the elders (or from their people) and go to a location, attempting to accomplish one of your various goals. Not all of them are necessarily combat goals. Players have combat as an option, but they also have a conversational minigame that can be played (and enhanced) or a skill-based game of picking locks, hacking computers, and sneaking through buildings. And some missions are striking against locations not held by any given elders, but some are held by other elders.

All of this is tracked across players, and this then becomes the dynamic and procedural fabric of the game. A Brujah Elder is trying to collect support among the gangs down by the docks and in some of the poorer districts, and part of how he’s doing that involves attacking the holdings of a local Ventrue Elder. But he’s not attacking her directly. You aren’t going up against other players in duels; you’re going after them by proxies, and a whole lot of people get caught in the middle.

Even more importantly, you can start to forge alliances with time. If you want to branch outside of your clan, you can try to do missions for other major forces, hopefully increasing their standing with your own clan. But of course, other players with their own objectives can do the same thing, and over time it can build to a direct weakness of a given individual, possibly leading to them departing the city for a time.

Also, there’s another element to consider: The more you hack at your fellow Camarilla members, the weaker Camarilla defenses get in the region. When they get low enough, the Sabbat start moving in, and that’s a problem that only gets bigger if you don’t deal with it. This means that even as you want to ruin the Tremere chantry that’s causing your favorite boss the most problems, you also need to make sure that you don’t ruin the delicate social web that keeps even worse problems at bay.

Obviously, the environment here being heavily player-driven means that a careful hand would be required to manage the ongoing progress of servers. And I am sure that players would want some additional and optional form of direct PvP to top things off, even if it’s not the majority of the game. The more important part is keeping a constant string of power plays under balance, possibly even offering events that give greater rewards for players who start supporting weakened factions.

The other big potential problem would be that the game couldn’t necessarily have a major overarching story planned in advance, since everything would be player-driven. You could probably work around this by introducing additional cities and also bringing in other clan forces; the Banu Haqim and the Giovanni, for example, both always disrupt the nature of whatever the Camarilla have going on. But to a certain degree you’d have to deal with people who aren’t clear on why they’re doing all of this other than to have something to do during their unlife.

Which, to be fair, is also a problem that already exists in VtM. So that’s at least true to the game.

Also, this wouldn’t really model a game that incorporates all of the various properties in the larger World of Darkness, since most of the other groups are not as caught in internecine power struggles as vampires are. Mages would basically be playing a completely separate game that only happens to intersect with the vampiric one, and while that could still be fun, it doesn’t necessarily imply that things would work well having what amounts to an entirely separate parallel MMORPG on the same servers – even as I want to see how that works.

But I think this at least creates a framework for something that feels like the vampire game it’s supposed to be while also keeping the game from becoming downright unpleasant to take part in. I can’t say with any certainty that it would be a huge success, and it would definitely have some substantial overhead in trying to manage all the plates it sets spinning right out the gate. But it keeps the spirit.

Designing an MMO is hard. But writing about some top level ideas for designing one? That’s… also remarkably hard. But sometimes it’s fun to do just the same. Join Eliot Lefebvre in Design Mockumentas he brainstorms elevator pitches for MMO sequels, spinoffs, and the like for games that haven’t yet happened and most likely never will!