Watchman Gaming

Bloodlust - The Cyberpunk Alternate Reality Sourcebook

Hey! I have some additional thoughts about Cyberpunk Vampires.

In my recent video on the World of Future Darkness crossover for Vampire the Masquerade and Cyberpunk, I briefly discussed the Night's Edge alternate reality sourcebook for cyberpunk.

What I didn't realize was that Night's Edge has another sourcebook called Bloodlust that expands on its ideas for adding vampires to Cyberpunk. I've taken a look at it, and wanted to add some more ideas for what it might add to the Masquerade crossover. Maybe I’ll make a dedicated Night’s Edge-Bloodlust video at some point, but for now I’m putting my thoughts in this post.

First, the fake vampires, mostly the same sort of stuff I mentioned in the video, the things that muddy the waters for those trying to hunt for vampires. MedVamps, CyberVamps & Posers

- Vampire Posers are poser gangs that adopt "vampire" as an aesthetic: could be classic Dracula types with capes or more of a Lost Boys look, or any vampire aesthetic really. May include biosculpting for a pallid complexion and gaunt look, could have implanted fangs.

- CyberVamps are those that keep modifying themselves to resemble vampires until their already unstable psyche shatters and they fall into cyberpsychosis. May have started as a vampire poser, but gone full in for bodily and sensory enhancements, and yes the fangs. Usually homicidal, often delusional enough to believe they are a real vampire and try to drink blood

- MedVamps are essentially just clinically unwell people that believe they are vampires or are otherwise pathologically driven to acts of murder and cannibalism. Social and psychological services are in short supply in Cyberpunk, so there's a nonzero chance of encountering one or two in a major city.

There are also "Goth Gangs", usually composed of teens and young adults, which Bloodlust basically frames as vampire groupies. They get together, give themselves names like "Dredd Bloodkin", spill some blood in a cup around a fire, chant a bit, and then the "Master" drops by to have a drink. Maybe he'll rile them up to attack another Goth Gang working for a rival vampire for some petty vendetta, or throw in the way of some hunters. Gotta get cannon fodder somehow I guess, pickings are slim for fledglings and neonates.

But then there are some interesting additions for how vampires have adapted to the Cyberpunk world: GlamVamps, RadVamps and CorpoVamps:

- GlamVamps are vampires that flaunt their nature almost in the open and make a show of it. If asked directly by the press, they deny it, but they all but openly show off their abilities and thirst for blood. It's always deniable yet blatant, most of the public are convinced its an eccentric act but others find them fascinating. Most GlamVamps can be found in Europe, among the jet set and living the high life, drinking from the decadent rich that pay for the novelty of the experience. They are mostly young vampires that survive by virtue of wealth and connections. Their strange quasi-celebrity status is the major reason why there are so many Goth Gangs, and more than one such groupie has found themselves an abandoned vampire childe after being kissed by a GlamVamp "on tour" as it were.

It's difficult imagining a GlamVamp having a long life in the Masquerade context. The Camarilla would come down pretty hard on such antics, connections be damned. Then again, maybe their proliferation has vampire backing and protection. The Children of Carthagos are dedicated to making the world a place vampires can live in openly. Maybe GlamVamps are part of a strategy to get the kine used to the idea of vampires living among them. Maybe there’s a game of cat and mouse going on with the Children helping them avoid vampire assassins.

V5 has an upcoming sourcebook called “Live from the Succubus Club” about vampire entertainers balancing fame and the Masquerade, so there might actually be some synergy there with the GlamVamp concept.

- Radvamps are vampires that have had too much radiation exposure. Night’s Edge vampires can take more radiation than a human, but eventually they will start to mutate as it damages their bodies and the healing goes wrong. This is how the game justifies having Nosferatu type vampires in this world. RadVamps are generally insane and filled with hatred for humanity, whom they blame for their current deformed state. There are many such vampires in areas that have been subject to nuclear disasters, especially the Middle East in the Cyberpunk timeline.

RadVamps obviously don’t fit well within the Masquerade context. Kindred are reanimated dead bodies that mystically revert to their embraced state to heal. They don’t have the cellular activity to develop cancer or mutation, only a supernatural semblance of life. However, there might be some ideas worth using here. I don’t actually know if there’s any official lore for radiation in Masquerade, so feel free to correct me. Maybe prolonged intense radiation exposure (far beyond the human limit) has deleterious effects on a kindred’s mental state despite the physical damage healing (we don’t want to steal the Nosferatu’s thunder), causing them to lose their minds until they become Wights at the extremity. A Wight is a vampire that has lost themselves entirely to the Beast, being reduced to bloodlust and feral instincts. Maybe the constant damage from the radiation creates a feedback loop of constantly needing to feed that spirals out of control. So if you want a reason for there to be a bunch of Wights in the Middle East, there you go.

- CorpVamps are vampires that live as creatures of the corporations, regarded by other vampires as pathetic. In Japan they’re called the Yorozaibatsu, the corporate family of the night. They’re integrated into the corporate hierarchy and generally act as hitmen for the boss, turning those selected for their loyalty to the corp to maintain their stable of corporate vampire assets. American CorpVamps are a lot more backstabby, viewing their condition as a way to better climb the corporate ladder and stay there for a long time.

Now to apply the Masquerade filter: Imagine this, you’re a young Militech Corpo recently embraced to a clan like the Ventrue or Lasombra, and suddenly a Militech rep from a division you’ve never heard of shows up offering you an alternative to diving headfirst into the world of vampire politics you don’t understand. You’ll get money, a steady supply of blood, the shiniest toys, and career prospects as long as you come into the fold and use your powers for the corps benefit. If anything can protect you from weird vampire sect politics, it would be the corp you know and whose ladder you’ve been trying to climb your whole life, right? Or maybe you’re a Caitiff on the street that got sloppy with the Masquerade and Biotechnica offered to take care of it for you if you work for them now. Vampires of all sects probably find the idea of kindred working for kine in such a way demeaning, and probably hunt them on principle for the Masquerade breach at least. Maybe the Children of Carthagos have their hands in such arrangements though, another way to integrate kindred and kine. Or maybe the elders don’t actually care too much, they own the corp after all.

2 days ago (edited) | [YT] | 16

Watchman Gaming

So, to anyone wondering what I’ve been up to.

I had big plans this summer for how I would use my free time to make headway on various projects. Well, it turns out my legal internship didn’t leave me with nearly as much free time as I had hoped, and my ADHD tended to have me jumping between various scripts and ideas instead of making much headway.

If you’ve wondered why I haven’t been covering much Dragon Age with the new Veilguard information releases, I started my second year of law school this week so I’m plenty busy and will be for the foreseeable future.

At the moment, I don’t think I’m going to have time to cover much. I will definitely make an impressions video when Veilguard comes out. I listened to the first episode of the audio drama podcast and found it pretty cool.

As to Cyberpunk, I had it on the back burner because of other things, but I have made the NUSA video script one of my priorities when I don’t have other things to do. It’s been in the works most of the year, but I’ve made more progress on it in the bast two weeks than in the previous four months.

I also have a Warframe script about the VOID storyline left deliberately incomplete since I’m waiting for the 1999 content drop, so that’s knocking around somewhere.

I hope you all had a great summer :) (or winter, depending on the hemisphere)

1 year ago | [YT] | 38

Watchman Gaming

A brief channel update

I know it’s been awhile since I put out any videos, so I thought I would give an update on what’s in the works and what my plans are.

I’m currently a graduate school student so the time I have for working on videos is extremely curtailed. This semester has been even busier than the fall on top of looking for a summer internship. Frankly, I have a lot of stresses on my mind and I don’t want to add an upload schedule on top of the rest of it. While I have found time to work on scripts occasionally (which I find relaxing), I just don’t have much time to devote to them overall and the process of creating long detailed lore videos is a long one to start with.

The hope is that I’ll have fewer sources of stress going into the summer after my exams in May, and that I will have mostly finished my current script projects by then, so I can transform them into videos quickly.

Status of script projects I’m working on now (I tend to switch between working on several to keep myself writing):

- Cyberpunk: New United States (very long video, script is still in fairly early stages)

- Dragon Age Absolution Review (long video, script is about half done

- Warframe Lore 2 (sequel to my Warframe lore video, on the shorter side, script a little less than half done)

- Cyberpunk-Mass Effect speculation video (a video bundling my speculation about future mass effect and cyberpunk games, script is almost finished)

- Full story explanation video for a franchise I’ve never cover before (very long, don’t want to say what it is yet, unlikely to see the light of day before late summer or early fall)

I thank you for your patience and understanding.

1 year ago | [YT] | 46

Watchman Gaming

Happy Holidays!

Well my tests are done, so I can give a little bit of focus to content creation now. The Dragon Age Absolution script is in the works and more Cyberpunk content is on the way, but I wanted to get something out before I traveled for the holidays.

Exodus was the only new thing at the game awards that caught my interest somewhat, and I got more interested as I learned who was behind it and dug into the lore presented on the game's official website. This is the result of my digging and my expectations for the game!

1 year ago | [YT] | 1

Watchman Gaming

Happy Dragon Age Day!

I'm in the middle of graduate school exams, so I haven't been able to work on any videos for you all, I can offer a 20% off discount code for the Bioware Gear Store ( gear.bioware.com/ ): BWHD4DAY

I'm working on a Dragon Age Absolution review in what little spare time I have and I'll be trying to make a roundup video on any news we get this month at the end of the month or early January.

1 year ago (edited) | [YT] | 18

Watchman Gaming

10K subs! I hit a big milestone today. I was barely at 1k a little more than a year ago. Thank you all so much!

Just to update on what I’m working on right now:

I’d doing a video on the Danger Gal Dossier, the latest source book for Cyberpunk Red. It has a lot of cool new information about gangs and other factions for 2045 that I think would complement my Night City video.

Next big deep dive will be the Home of the Brave sourcebook. I figure people will be more generally interested in the state of America once Phantom Liberty comes out.

As for my promise to return to some Dragon Age Content, I’ve started working on a review for Dragon Age: Absolution.

2 years ago | [YT] | 39

Watchman Gaming

I'm back! After months, I've finally put together my deep dive into East Asia and Australasia in the Cyberpunk Universe: namely a close look at the Pacific Rim Sourcebook for Cyberpunk 2020. It took longer than I wanted, but it came together in the end.

The Pacific Rim Sourcebook provides significant coverage for most countries in East Asia and Australasia, describing what has happened in those country's in the alternate Cyberpunk year of 2020. We have a lot less information about what these places are supposed to be like post 4th corporate war and in 2077, but I included what I could.

*There are a lot of foreign names in this video and I did my best.


I want to try some shorter content, so please leave me your ideas of what you would like to see.

I still want to do some Dragon Age content, but the lack of news this year has dampened my enthusiasm and this project ended up monopolizing my efforts.

2 years ago | [YT] | 7

Watchman Gaming

It's finally done!

The deep dive into the history of Night City I promised 3 months ago is finally done and it grew beyond my expectations to become by far the largest project I've ever undertaken on this channel. When I did a poll most people seemed to prefer the single long video format so that's what I went with. I had hoped to have this out a month ago but I got COVID and couldn't record for a few weeks because my voice sounded like I was gargling mucus. You may notice the transition from pre-COVID recording to post-COVID recording in my voice

The video covers the history of Night City from its inception in the early 1990s and includes particular deep dives into what the city was like during three eras of its history (2020, 2045, 2077). Night City might be the most fleshed out fictional location I've ever encountered and there's a lot to talk about. I'll talk about further content plans in another post...

2 years ago | [YT] | 9

Watchman Gaming

Hey everyone, I'm looking for input on my Night City video

I've become concerned while working on my current video. I am currently working on a long lore video for Dragon Age Day. I hope it will be ready by then, but we'll see. The length got a bit away from me and the script ended up being 13 pages long. My voiceover came out to over 40 minutes. It will be the longest lore video I have ever done... until the Night City one.

I realized that my Night City video script has ballooned to almost 40 pages. I haven't even quite finished the 2077 portion yet. Using my recent video as a model (page count to length), that should come out to about 2 hours. It might be a bit shorter than that do to some differences in formatting, but still. I go pretty deep into describing the city at each era, giving an overview of each district, describing the gangs, not to mention all the known Night City specific history between these eras. The 2020 setting alone is about 10 pages of that since there's an entire sourcebook dedicated to it.

I know some people in my comments have been all onboard with longer form lore videos, but 2 hours is a long time. So please give me your thoughts on how you'd like to Night City broken down.

2 years ago | [YT] | 13

Watchman Gaming

I'm very excited by the Dragon Age Absolution trailer that came out just recently (different from the teaser that was released last month)!

We got a lot of new information about the cast and plot as well. The series will be dropping on Netflix on December 9th.

Unfortunately I'm too busy at the moment to make a breakdown, so please check out Jackdaw's video on the subject!

2 years ago | [YT] | 12