Thread derail.
I have been a d&d player since 198..2?
When vampire came out, we were all pretty upset that it ate that market, to the point where dnd was about to die.
(In a way, im glad 3rd ed was made)
But also vampire was just so superior to dnd as a game.
Combat (which is 90% of dnd) was something only a couple of clans could do. But subterfuge was now something very real that you could win scenarios with.
Storytelling went from "here is why you need to kill this many hobgoblins" to "here is a political structure, you may influence it as you want".
The dept of choice in a player's arsenal was beyond anything any other game had, because in dnd that evil wizard is evil and he needs to die, in vampire you might cut off a vampire from his herd; you can discredit someone, you can frame them; you can access dangerous information through invisibility, dominate a vampire into acting for you, move the interests of masses of humans, control government bodies, burn down a hideout, awaken an antedeluvian, steal artifacts, and all these have POLITICAL importance, rather than just give you +2 save vs poison.
The genius is to have the players always under more or less scrutiny from the NPCs, which in vampire are STRONGER than the players; by necessity, you will always be surviving by your wits, and by what the NPCs think of you.
In dnd, the evil wizard doesnt care if you discover he has committed some horrible sin .. he's an evil wizard. Thats what evil wizards do. The only way he can be defeated is to bring his hitpoints to zero.
Now, i have found both VTM games to be disappointing. That was to be expected.
I dont like Bloodlines, because it doesnt have diablerie (stealing generations by draining vampires), and the combat is generic, where a brujah or a gangrel are pretty much in the same league as a toreador, while in reality the toreador would be butchered.
The map is small and repetitive, and the disciplines dont really have a chance to show what they can do, due to the limited engine and the instancing of most fights.
And the controls are horrid.
Plus some generic writing lameness that im ok if nobody else is annoyed by.
Redemption sticks more to the source material for what concerns combat and disciplines too, again, with limitations, it's limited and combat heavy, mostly a dungeon crawler, but the easier controls dont suck as hard, and the writing is just better. The change of epochs is also a plus.
I understand why people like Bloodlines, but most of them i will guess have never played VTM, because the writing is just a caricature of the pnp game.