page_title: Vampire: The Masquerade (Choice of Games)
section_title: Development
hierarchical_section_title: Vampire: The Masquerade (Choice of Games) / Development
caption_attribution_description: English: The logo for the tabletop game Vampire: The Masquerade as of its 5th edition
context_page_description: Vampire: The Masquerade – Night Road, Out for Blood, and Parliament of Knives are three interactive fiction video games developed and published by Choice of Games, written by Kyle Marquis, Jim Dattilo, and Jeffrey Dean, respectively. The games are planned to be released through 2020–2021 for Android, iOS, Linux, MacOS, Microsoft Windows, and web browsers. They are based on White Wolf Publishing's tabletop role-playing game Vampire: The Masquerade, and are part of the larger World of Darkness series.
  The games are text-based, and involve the player creating and customizing a character, and making choices that affect the direction of the plot. In Night Road, the player takes the role of a courier delivering secrets for vampire elders in the Southwestern United States; in Out for Blood, they take the role of a vampire hunter who protects their town; and in Parliament of Knives, the player takes the role of a vampire navigating vampire politics following a coup in Ottawa, Canada.
context_section_description: The games are developed by Choice of Games in collaboration with Paradox Interactive, the owner of the World of Darkness series, and are based on the fifth edition of the tabletop role-playing game Vampire: The Masquerade. They are edited by Jason Stevan Hill, and are written by Kyle Marquis (Night Road), Jim Dattilo (Out for Blood), and Jeffrey Dean (Parliament of Knives). The project, one of many World of Darkness video game adaptations at the time, began after Paradox Interactive brought management of the series in-house and expressed a desire to license the series, after which Hill reached out to them; he considered the tabletop games and the Storyteller System they are built upon to match up with Choice of Games' design philosophy of stories enhanced by rather than dominated by mechanics, with decisions impacting outcomes and where even failure leads to good stories.
  Producing the games within the given time constraints was a challenge, as the developers had to handle not only game design and writing a story, but also managing World of Darkness lore. In adapting the tabletop game to an interactive fiction game format, the writers took different approaches: Marquis adhered closely to the tabletop game's mechanics, intending to replicate the experience of playing the tabletop game rather than a Choose Your Own Adventure book, including using the tabletop game system of dots on the Night Road character statistics page; Dattilo, meanwhile, used a more loose interpretation of the mechanics for Out for Blood. In either case, some compromises had to be done for game balance, for example with the vampire clan banes, whose effects had to be tweaked while ensuring they still feel substantial; Marquis also noted that he was unable to include two vampire clans from the tabletop game: Nosferatu, as their appearance would make them unable to work as couriers without revealing themselves as vampires, and Malkavian, as it would have required all dialogue in the game to be rewritten for them in "delusion speak", as had been done in the earlier Vampire: The Masquerade game Bloodlines. For Night Road, Marquis cited novels including Jack Kerouac's On the Road, Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and Richard Kadrey's Sandman Slim series, as influences.
  The games were announced in April 2020, and are planned to be published by Choice of Games through 2020–2021 for Android, iOS, Linux, MacOS, Microsoft Windows, and web browsers: Night Road is planned for release on September 24, 2020, Out for Blood in Q1/Q2 2021, and Parliament of Knives in Q3/Q4 2021. In 2020, Hill, said that it was possible that Choice of Game would develop further World of Darkness games after Parliament of Knives. Marquis also mentioned that he would like to release downloadable content for Night Road, to add the option to play as a Tremere or Caitiff vampire.
caption: The games are based on the fifth edition of the tabletop role-playing game Vampire: The Masquerade.
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