Jediphile

Or an alternate to the above: Kreia: "Are psychotic urges all that drives you?" [Exile punches her out] Exile: "Does that answer your question?"

Oh yeah - forgot about that one. Strange considering the rest, though... But then maybe it was before Lucas went all noble and cut the Han-shooting-Greedo scene and so... Still, that severed arm is still in the special edition - even on the DVD. Maybe, but I really think that would be a silly argument. I mean, if they don't want violence, then who do they let Mace cut off Jango's head and so? What, it's fine in the movies, but not in the games? Odd...

Ohhh.. Is *that* what this is? All this time I thought I was in the basketweaving forum... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> That's okay - I came to learn how to build a kayak...

Fun, though not RPG - this is the PnP board, remember? But still good fun - thanks for the link.

Well, yes and no. Dual-classing is similar to multi-classes, but it's still not the same - there are advantages and disadvantages to either. The problem with dual class is that you have to decide in advance how far you want to take it, and once you reach that point, you can go no further in that class. And then you basically start over with a new class from scratch... The players I've know really would consider it if they were allowed to build characters with a good number of levels (7+) and much experience, so that they could arrange it so that they would begin play already being higher level in the new class than the old. When I told them that I wouldn't allow them to circumvent the one major disadvantage a dual-classed character must take in order to reap the benefits, they simply chose not to play them at all... Fair enough, but I think the archetypes are still too restrictive, given that the archetypes are just formed by stories that people weave. I think it becomes a circle, where AD&D has no gnomish mages because they don't exist. Yet they can't exist because AD&D has no gnomish mages, so you'd have to bend the rules (at which point I would consider AD&D to no longer be truly used anymore). <{POST_SNAPBACK}> The classes are too restrictive in (A)D&D, yes, but the archetypes cannot be said to be restrictive - archetypes simply are. Whether you adhere to them or not in a story is your own choosing, but it's difficult to deny that they do have signficance in our literary history of fairy tales and fantasy and the culture that emerges from that. Most D&D worlds choose to embrace those archetypes because they are familiar to the audience - rangers seemed to have the ability to use crystal balls in 1e simply because Aragorn could use a palantir in "Return of the King", for example, so that had to go into the rules. Is that a restrictive archetype or is it simply adhering to the literary heritage of fantasy? But as new stories are written, the rules will change. Willow didn't quite become popular enough to allow halflings to be wizards, but it might have been. Besides, I find it much easier to have restrictive rules in these cases and then overrule them as GM than the other way around - it's difficult to argue to players that something is not allowed when the rules say that it is, but giving express permission on a case-by-case basis is simple and easy. You want gnomish wizards in your campaign, then go ahead - lift the ban. Heck, I've thought about having a half-orc paladin in my AD&D campaign simply because it would be such an unusual novelty. The point is, however, that it wouldn't be if half-orcs were permitted in general. A halfling wizard is special because halflings are not supposed to be wizards. Same thing with half-orcish paladins. If you lift that restriction then you also make such unique characters common and boring.

Kreia: "Are psychotic urges all that drives you?" Evil Exile: "Talk to the hand!"

WoD also has three divisions among the traits, though they are physical, mental and social. In the system I was planning I just had two devisions - physical and mental. Somehow it served better to demonstrate the duality of life (as in mind and matter). I had six in each group and they were corresponding to each other, at least to some degree. For example, while Stregth was physical power, Intellect was mental power, while Health was physical stability and Willpower mental stability. Didn't work as a mirror all the way though, but it was pretty close. What are spiritual attributes and what do they do, though?

Statistically something like that is bound to happen on occasion, though half a dozen times is indeed unusual to say the least. I once played a wizard who had just reached 5th level in D&D (Greyhawk) and begun casting fireballs. The second fireball he cast came up with all 6s on all five dice! Our GM was so surprised he asked me to roll again just to see that I hadn't tricked him. Then he accepted the first roll

Not a bad idea, really. If KotOR games are going to enforce the idea of specific lightsaber colors being more or less tied to specific classes (green for consular, blue for guardian, red for Sith, etc.), and I think it's safe to say that it will, then it would be better to establish a reason why a certain group always seems to favor one color lightsaber over another. It makes more sense than the idea that you can always tell a jedi by his lightsaber color, which makes no sense and is just stupid. You'd have to be careful what you choose, though. I cannot assign a bonus to red sabers that jedi migth like, for example, because that would just prompt jedi to use red sabers as well, and we know that they don't. Green crystals should also give bonus to something relevant to Luke Skywalker, since the saber he made himself was green.

Sorry. It's a pet peeve with me and I got carried away. My bad :"> No wait - AD&D made me do it! :cool: I think the reason is that gnomes are typically seen as tricksters and deceivers in fantasy and not so much as powerful wizards like Gandalf or Merlin. So it wouldn't quite fit the archetype, and D&D is all about archetypes. Well, if your point is that the multi/dual-class system in 2e is flawed, then I'm scarcely about to disagree. This is one area where I actually think that 3e is better. But it's still in the 2e rules that humans cannot multi-class, so the AD&D 'racism' does go both ways, at least.

One note about dismemberment by lightsaber in Star Wars is that it does seem to be completely bloodless. Did we see blood when Luke lost his hand? Did Qui-Gon bleed from his fatal wound? Did blood burst from Darth Maul, when he was carved in two? Did Anakin bleed when Dooku cut off his arm? Did Jango Fett bleed when Mace cut his head off, or did Mace bleed when his hand was cut? The answer to all of the above is no. The only time we might argue it is for Darth Maul, since there was sort of a red flash when he was struck, but we saw no actual blood when he fell and was separated in two. I seem to recall that one player in a Star Wars RPG I played argued that this was because lightsabers cauterize the wounds that they leave behind automatically - they are so energetic that they simply burn the wound shut instantaneously. I think that's in the rules for lightsabers somewhere, though I haven't seen it myself.

Agreed. After all, aren't sequels mandatory? :D Still, in this case there must be a sequel, or it would be like doing ESB without ROTJ...

While you're perfectly entitled to your opinion, no, you're not right in general. I have written extensive house rules for my AD&D campaign and revised them endless times. And my conclusion is that it is an exercise in futility, since the game will never have the options and variety that it should. It's simply easier to throw the whole thing out and try something else. That's not as easy as it may sound like, though. After all, writing extensive house rules of many, many pages and revising them several times means that I have a lot of time invested in the game. To abandon it is to let all my hard work to *make* the system work regardless of how flawed it was go to waste. That makes it hard to turn over a new page and start from scratch. I'm there now, though. I'm determined to drop AD&D totally and completely when the current campaign ends, which may be sooner than planned. Trouble is, what will I play instead... GURPS has some promise, but also some problems, and a new set of house rules is something I want to avoid like the plague... Maybe I'll try some Ars Magica for a while. That has an excellent magic system (instead of all those annoying AD&D spell descriptions)...

Agreed. I hate that in AD&D. I want to *make* characters. But in AD&D there is a tendency for players to roll and then see what they can get away with... Now, play fair - it's somehow just too easy to accuse D&D of roll-playing with its heavy focus on monster-slashing (hack'n slash) and dungeon-crawl, but it's still a role-playing game, and even the original. And some of the adventures are just good RPG. Take Mystara's "B10: Night's Dark Terror" or Greyhawk's "Fate of Istus", for example

Well, I've been an AD&D GM (or DM, if you prefer) for 15+ years, and I agree with him. Your mileage may vary...

I'd agree with you for OD&D, but not AD&D, since there are still lots of options to choose between in AD&D. Which spell should the wizard take (I *hate* all the D&D spells - has anybody ever read them all?), which spheres should the priest take, and which god allows them? Where should the thief focus his percentages, and which weapons should the warrior take specialization/mastery with? And once you're through that, you get to choose proficiencies... That can easily take an hour or more. The options can seem overwhelming in skill-based games, but then that's why you have templates that you can modify from. Try taking a look, if you don't believe me. But there is a big difference between a template and a fixed class. A template is just an example, and you can change things around pretty much as you like. You cannot do that with a class, since all the major choices are made for you when you commit to one - the warrior will not be learning wizard spells, the wizard cannot heal wounds, etc.

If it gets off the ground, I think it could become the new market standard. The main problem of games is that the price tag looks really daunting, even if it's actually low for the hours of entertainment it provides. Spread out over the month or more it would take most KotOR players (not us fanatics) to play through, it's really quite cheap compared to four tickets to the cinema or a few books... True, though I'm not quite sure that the comparison will seem relevant to most people - computer games are still viewed by many as throwaway entertainment that cannot be compared to books or movies, I think. After decades, comic books still struggle with that sort of stigma, too. "Sin City" comic books are really dark and brilliant (IMHO), but there still comic books, so they're not taken seriously as literature Online gaming is definitely the next step. I feel that we'll see online RPGs with professional GMs online within the next five years or so. Not quite sure how it would work out, though. Story plots are difficult to handle, since you want to give the individual player a genuine sense of true influence on the plot, and that's a pretty big order to fill... I mean, KotOR games have deep and strong plots, but they have them at the cost of diversity, since the plot unfolds in an extremely linear fashion, and the NPCs are fixed. Without that Atton couldn't have a dark background or Kreia become the villain in the end. Sure, a PC could have a history like Atton's, but it's very difficult to allow for that in a generic plot, so that looks like a very difficult task for both storywriters and GMs from where I sit...

Good call - more power to you I'll be following soon.

Atton: "Finally the TSF let us go - I thought Lt. Grenn would never let us leave. Come on - I want to get off Citadel station..." [They rush the hanger to find the Ebon Hawk gone. Exile and Atton look at each other] Exile: "Dude, where's my ship?"

And we don't matter? No, but what is practical to them? Besides, it doesn't matter - they will go where the market flows or go out of business. Precisely. I think some of that is that people don't like expansion packs in general - they feel like they're being 'suckered' in by them, since they must have the governing game, and since they feel the pack contains material willfully withheld for more money. Sometimes it even feels that way. But I hear far less complaining in that vein, when the subject comes to sequels - then it's usually about how the graphics aren't improved enough or how the story isn't satisfying.

Actually I recall an FR story that had the dwarven inability to learn wizardry as a central focus... But I guess the campaign must bow to the core rules even if its internal reality becomes undone Oh well, I neither like nor play FR anyway... Besides, I know as a GM that's it's much easier for me to tell the players that, "yes, you can play dwarven paladins. I know the book says you can't, but I'll allow" than it is to say, "No, there are no dwarven paladins - I don't care what the book says!" The latter can and will be met cries of foul and frustration, since the player cannot pursue something that is in the rules, even if it makes no sense whatsoever. I can't even blame them, since things that should so obviously be optional as is the case here shouldn't be put in the core books in the first place. Didn't know I needed an excuse - I don't allow them. Period! Besides, for dwarves to be paladins, they would at least have to have deities that fit the archetype of the heroic warrior seeking to banish evil from the world, and they don't... Most dwarven deities are craftsmen or some variety thereof. Besides, dwarves tend to isolate themselves as race, which doesn't exactly fit will with the idea of seeking out and smiting evil in the world. Nonsense. Paladins are rare in the extreme in AD&D - try looking at the ability requirements, and you'll see being human was the least requirement to qualify - so I fail to see how that makes humans "reign supreme". Indeed, level limits were introduced because humans would otherwise never be able to stand against the might of dwarves and, particularly, elves - they live for long times, and they could take multiclasses, which humans could not. And like it or not, D&D fantasy is based on archetypes - that's why there are forced classes. Oh please, illusionists always sucked, and they still do - all the wizard specialists do. They're just watered-down imitations of the wizard to make the game seem a little more diverse. In 3e they've added that fireball-dispenser on top called the sorceror - no role-playing potential whatsoever, but he can toss fireballs left and right... It took less than a day upon the release of 3e for the sorceror to earn the 'fireball-dispenser' title on the various D&D forums - completely munchkin and proof positive that WotC did the rules by the lowest common denominator among the gamers. Yeah, there's a fun basis for a class - it actually promotes *less* diversity in the use of magic. Fun... At least until WotC release a book, where the Sorceror restriction on few spells is waived, or is that already out? AD&D racist? Like it's racist that AD&D humans can't be fighter/mages or other multi-classes? If AD&D is racist, it's at least racist across the board...

At the risk of sounding like a complete imbecile, where do I unzip the various folders to - should I put them in the game folder? Normally I'd do that without asking, but there is already a Modules directory there, and I don't want to overwrite any of my files, so... Besides, the ReadMe doesn't mention this.

Maybe not, but the idea of having a steady flow of games is rather appealing, I think.

Yes, I'd agree with that. It might work better if they produced shorter and cheaper games, but then released them more often. Take KotOR2 - people waited for, what, a year and a half to play it, and it was still unfinished, and now they must wait at least the same amount of time again (and probably more given KotOR2's rushed state...) before the next chapter is. Instead they could sell the games cheaper, but also make them shorter, then put out a game at least one a year. This would keep the last game 'fresh' in the customers' minds. It would *have* to be plotted out as a series from the beginning, though, so that plot can be consistent from beginning to end. Sort of like an electronic and interactive novel, where you get the chapters one at a time. It would have to be scheduled carefully, though, or you'll overflood the market and lose your customer base, but if it works you'd have a steady stream of customers. I think price tags are a big problem today, but if you cut the game in two and cut the price by half or even 60%, it might seem like far less of an investment.

And that's precisely why it does matter - if people play 40 hours in two hour sessions every day, that's three weeks, and they're still not even half way through. Then most people tend to stop, since they feel no sense of accomplishment or progress in the plot, and they'll play something else where they do get that feeling and never play KotOR again. As I said before, I don't mind playing long games or watching long movies - I sat down and watched the extended edtion of Return of the King twice without pause the day it was released - but I know very few people who are willing to do that, even if they do have the time.