Vampire: The Masquerade Swansong

This hasn't come up very often in my time with GameOn, but I am an avid player of tabletop RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, or even homebrewed campaigns cut out of whole cloth.

- Erin McAllister

There are many reasons to enjoy these types of games, such as getting into the nitty-gritty of their combat systems, building powerful characters, or crafting a world together with a group of friends and spending time with them in that world. While I certainly enjoy all of these elements, the main aspect of tabletop RPGs that I get excited by is the roleplaying and character work. Now, because I can't just ask my friends to drop everything to play these games with me all the time, I'm always on the lookout for videogames that can scratch this particular itch. However, even some of my favourite roleplaying titles, like Mass Effect, lean more into combat than what I'm looking for. A lot of the Telltale-style games come pretty close, but there's not usually the same sense of building a character in those titles.

One game that really scratched that itch for me was The Council, from developer Big Bad Wolf Studio. While it wasn't perfect by any means, it was almost exactly the sort of thing I was looking for, with various stats and skills that could open up a variety of options in exploration and dialogue. The plot and characters were interesting, though it suffered at times from its episodic structure necessitating less divergences from the plot as time went on. So when I heard that Big Bad Wolf had another title in the making, I knew I had to try it, particularly seeing as I was already a burgeoning fan of the franchise it would be set in.