Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines is an action role-playing video game developed by Troika Games (founders pictured) and first released on November 16, 2004, by Activision for Microsoft Windows. Based on White Wolf Publishing's role-playing game Vampire: The Masquerade, it follows a male or female character who is killed and revived as a fledgling vampire in 21st-century Los Angeles. Bloodlines is presented from first- and third-person perspectives. Characters may use violent and nonviolent methods to achieve their goals while moving freely between the available hubs: Santa Monica, Hollywood, downtown Los Angeles, and Chinatown. Troika's 32-member team began development in 2001, using Valve Corporation's brand-new Source game engine, also used for Valve's own Half-Life 2. Bloodlines was incomplete at its first release, with disappointing sales of fewer than 80,000 copies initially. It divided critics at the time, who faulted it for technical flaws. It now has a cult following as a rarely replicated example of a game that succeeds in both gameplay and narrative; critical opinion now styles it as a flawed masterpiece.

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire:_The_Masquerade_%E2%80%93_Bloodlines

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1384:

Jadwiga was officially crowned as "King of Poland" instead of "Queen" to reflect the fact that she was a sovereign in her own right and not merely a royal consort. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jadwiga_of_Poland

1491:

Several Jews and conversos were executed in Toledo, Spain, for the alleged ritual murder of an infant, who was later revered as the Holy Child of La Guardia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Child_of_La_Guardia

1855:

Explorer David Livingstone became the first European to see Victoria Falls, one of the largest waterfalls in the world, on what is now the Zambia–Zimbabwe border. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Falls

1938:

Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann first synthesized the psychedelic drug LSD at the Sandoz Laboratories in Basel, Switzerland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Hofmann

1992:

In Suffolk, England, an amateur metal detectorist found the largest hoard of Roman gold, silver and bronze coins from the late fourth and early fifth centuries ever discovered within the former Roman Empire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoxne_Hoard

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

machine elf: A kind of otherworldly humanoid figure sometimes seen during dimethyltryptamine (DMT) hallucinations. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/machine_elf

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

Wittgenstein, Elizabeth Taylor, Bertrand Russell, Thomas Merton, Yogi Berra, Allen Ginsberg, Harry Wolfson, Thoreau, Casey Stengel, The Lubavitcher Rebbe, Picasso, Moses, Einstein, Hugh Hefner, Socrates, Henry Ford, Lenny Bruce, Baba Ram Dass, Gandhi, Sir Edmund Hillary, Raymond Lubitz, Buddha, Frank Sinatra, Columbus, Freud, Norman Mailer, Ayn Rand, Baron Rothschild, Ted Williams, Thomas Edison, H.L. Mencken, Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Ellison, Bobby Fischer, Emma Goldman, Peter Kropotkin, you, and your parents. Is there really one kind of life which is best for each of these people?   --Robert Nozick https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_Nozick