I read on a couple of forums you can rotate your camera while in 3rd person view so you can see the front of your character, but I'm not sure how to do it. It indicated to use num lock but that isn't working for me. Does anyone know how to do it?

Thanks!

IIRC, there's a button that does that. I don't remember which key it is, so look through the keyboard input settings.

If you're using the patch you can also use the numbers on the keypad to change the camera angle. You can also zoom in and out.

I assume that works on the GOG version, but I don't know positively because I have a different version.

The camera rotation was activated by the patch, so in vanilla bloodlines there is no option unless you use the console. With the patch you can also set the keys for camera rotation to your liking. Just open ...bloodlines/unofficial_patch/cfg/user.cfg with any text ediror and look for entries bind *key* cam_yaw #.
cam_yaw 0 is the view from behind, and then it goes counter clockwise.

Something like this is possible in the plus version of the Unofficial Patch which you can get from The Patches Scrolls, I think it is not included in the GOG version as it was not part of the original game.

I don't use my arrow keys for movement, so I changed the keybindings in the config.cfg file to the four cardinal directions and it worked like a charm. I also tried it in user.cfg and that worked as well. So is user.cfg an override file for config.cfg (i..e. any change I want to make in config.cfg I should add to user.cfg instead)?

The solution is not a fluid panning around like many games, but at least I can get different views of my character and the scene if I want them.

Thanks guys!

Thanks I downloaded the patch but never installed it as I didn't know what was in it. I just found a list of changes over on PlanetVampire so I'll take a look. Do you have to start your game over after installing the patch?

Yes.

Yes, user.cfg ovewrites config.cfg when you start the game, so either make changes to user.cfg or make sure your changes to config.cfg are not overwritten.

Pressing the Z key will get you to third person. Rotating mouse, just moving it in a circle fashion, will give you the result! Rotates camera but with player centered.

i always use third person; the camera has terrible peripheral vision.