Vampire: The Masquerade — Out for Blood

Different from the other VTM interactive novels in that you play as a human instead of a vampire. It would have probably been better to be labelled as a hunter the reckoning book but regardless it was fun and for myself compared to the other hunter the reckoning style books that have a similar premise, this one built up the mystery of vampires and what it is haunting the town better. Endings and choice seemed good and I never felt like my choices where being forgotten. Decent length as well and replayability.

Great game! I normally just do a single playthrough for these interactive novels but im on my third one for this one! Highly recommend!!

Maybe I've just been spoiled by the quality of some of the other, superb World of Darkness-based interactive fiction from Choice of Games, but [b]Out for Blood[/b] is hard to recommend. The initial hook is interesting enough: as the protagonist, you're compelled to return to a small town to take over your late grandfather's store and in the process discover there's something supernatural preying on the town. As you might expect you can approach that threat with a militant commitment to destroying it or curiosity and a desire to learn more. Approaching Vampire: the Masquerade from a human—but not a Hunter's—perspective seems ripe for storytelling opportunities. There are multiple characters, mysteries to investigate, a store to run, different factions to consider, but all that ends up feeling like far too much ambition for a surprisingly short narrative. Take the store management aspect as one example: if you've played [b]Night Road[/b] or [b]The Book of Hungry Names[/b], you might expect a similar, cyclical format where your store is your home base from which you balance managing your finances with following leads and developing relationships with the narrative's characters. In [b…

I don't understand why this is labelled Vampire the Masquerade when it's clearly a Hunter the Reckoning game?

Overall, I'd certainly put [i]Out for Blood[/i] in my top five of Choice of Games' [i]World of Darkness[/i] gamebooks, though not without caveats. The caveats aren't "for me," though, so much as they are "for other folks, maybe." It's very much a slow-burn sort of story; slow enough that the ending seems rather abrupt, as if there should be more buildup for it, but that's less a function of the story being terse (I'd hardly call 450k+ words a short CoG story) and more a function of everything else being as detailed as it is. And goodness, there's a lot to cram in there! Sure, there's an antagonist, and sure, having to deal with them is ultimately the story's main thread, but there's so much to do in the interim that it's easy to get lost in the "everything else." Jericho Heights lives and breathes, with plenty of cast members to talk to (many of whom have quite significant roles in the story) and plenty of things to do outside of worry about the whole "vampires" business. In particular, being a store-owner is quite a fun little thing that crops up just often enough for me to wish there was more (and low-key hoping for more Store Management stories from CoG in general.) So what'…

Casually dealing with my headache while this E girl throws a fit on my front porch. (Her domination didn't work on me)