Jediphile

No, not really. NWN2 is d20 3e. KotOR is d20 Star Wars. I like the d20 Star Wars rules much better than I do d20 D&D, though I do think WEG Star Wars was better. Besides, KotOR is - as I see it - plot first and rules second. I can live with that. NWN was just senseless monster slashing with an incredibly FR-typical plot. You have to look at the setting too. I like some non-3e D&D, like Mystara (especially Mystara) or Planescape, but not some others. I distinctly dislike the Forgotten Realms setting. Of all the (A)D&D settings, I find that to be the worst. I do like the Star Wars setting, however, and both KotOR games have been interesting to me in spite of being d20-based (certainly not because of it!). I might change my stand on NWN2, but having tried and hated NWN1, I'll have to hear some really positive things on the points that I think makes for a good game before I change my mind.

Welcome. Lots of people seem to want somthing like, but I must say that I really don't care so much either way. If they want to include it, fine, but if not, I'm not going to miss it. And if programming it takes away from the rest of the game, then I'm against, since it's a low priority for me - a fluid game with a deep plot is much more important. Yes, but you can't blame Obsidian for that. It was Lucasarts that pushed the deadline heard, and so they should carry the blame for the sad state K2 ended up in. As a consequence I cannot see K2 as a true representation of what Obsidian is able to deliver. That they did so much in a year is quite a feat, so I'll wait until they publish other games that interest me (NWN2 is 3e and so not an option for me- yuck!) before I pass judgment on the company itself. Lucasarts didn't give Obsidian a choice in the matter, and since they are the publisher and license-holder, there really wan't anything Obsidian could do about it. Obsidian has also been rather quiet on the whole matter, which is somewhat understandable. On the one had, there are probably sore memories over being forced into this and getting the fans miffed, but on the other hand they can't voice anger at Lucasarts if they want to do K3. Quite a dilemma. However, we have heard people from Obsidian say that they were not responsible for this situation, and I think someone from here asked if they would do an expansion pack for K2 if Lucasarts allowed it, and apparently Obsidian said yes to that. If that's true - and I'm not sure - then it speaks volumes about Lucasarts that we haven't seem something like that. As a pc-owner, I feel particularly shafted, because the pc-version came out after the christmas-sale that K2 was pushed for, and we still got a cut-content pc-version and yet no downloadable expansion, apparently because that was impossible to do for the x-box version, and the pc-version was not permitted to have more content. But that's all speculation. If someone can confirm or deny this, please speak up. Well, I actually though Sion was interesting to fight exactly because it didn't rely on raw power alone. I'd agree that Nihilus is a disappointment. Nihilus should wipe the floor with the party in the initial fight, and only after he tries to drain the Exile should victory be possible, which does not mean easy. Nihilus was a push-over. Though he is greatly weaked by his attempt to drain the Exile, that's should be a reason for us to be able to defeat him, not for him to become a baby with a lightsaber Actually never played Jedi Outcast, since I never could get it to work right on my system. But yes, I would like to see something along those lines, and a lot of us here seem to like the idea of K3 showcasing the master/padawan relationship more than we have in the previous games. As for plot, the one thing I really don't want to see is the "chosen one"-device that we've seen in the previous two games. I don't want to discover some great, big secret about my past or that only my character has the power to do something specific for a third time. I also don't want to play yet another amnesic jedi, semi-amnesic or otherwise - it was damn frustrating having to play as the Exile while not knowing half his background. How am I supposed to put myself in his position, if I don't know his past and will be told about it only through vague clues by Kreia? I want my character in K3 to be just another young jedi at the wrong place at the wrong time. No special uber-powers and no background that makes me destined for something whether I want it or not.

The real quesiton is whether it's okay to question or criticise any sort of religion. Is it okay to criticise Christinity for the Spanish Inquisition or the Crusades? Is it okay to say that it was wrong to not openly condemn Hilter's regime? Can we, as a society, overrule the word of the bible and accept abortion in the christian countries? Are we allowed to voice criticism of how the current pope has, in the past, given advice on how victims of sexual abuse by protestant priests and their families can be intimidated into silence thruogh threat of lawsuits? Since we have already done this for years if not decades in the west, you already have your answer. Anything else is saying that Islam should have preferential treatment, in case I would ask why.

And really useful when you go up against Nilathak (sp?) in the expansion. I really missed the necromancer's ability to do corpse explosions just so he couldn't do it against me when I played something else... Yeah. Except I always thought the golem should have been more of a sorceress thing...

Quite. I freely admit that my own sorceress couldn't have survived more than three seconds inside one of her own firewalls... But a paladin that spams the zeal + fanaticism skills is also pretty lethal, especially if you're also using life- and mana-stealing equipment. I really hadn't taken the hammer-thing much by the time I confronted Baal, so there was little choice but getting in there in melee while keeping a finger on my rejuvenation potions. I took blows, but with a bit of hit and run, Baal eventually went down... A lot less finesse than the sorceress, though I found dealing with Duriel is quite a pain with the sorceress - I was constantly running for my life! Not to mention the councilmembers... "

I want it just the other way - I want less visible equippable items. Lots of them look really silly when the characters wear them. I also think their boosts should observe what the stats they affect already are. A +2 Con item is great, but if your Con is already, say, 16, then it should add only +1, and if your Con is 18, then the item shouldn't have any effect at all. And I think all weapons should be holstered or put away when not actively used. That would also get rid of those ghastly clipping errors, when the Exile randomly moves his vibrosword through the chair as well as Atton's chest during a cutscene...

Well, it would be the player more than the character who sets the gender/alignment for the previous protagonists. I that causes less trouble than fixing these things according to some canon rulings that will put off a lot of people. Lots of people like to play Revan as DS and/or female, so setting him to LS male will alienate some people. Though I'll definitely set Revan to LS male, I still prefer this scenario. Exactly. And it's not that I want them to die, I just want them to end up in positions, where their fates are resolved. If either or both of them settle down in positions that they will stay in, then that's fine. Agreed, though I'd like to go to the outer regions about half-way through the game. My suggested planets are Coruscant, Alderaan, Sleheyron, Myrkr, then Khar Shian/Khar Delba, and finally Ziost before an ultimate confrontation over Coruscant. Agreed, though I would like them to switch a bit from the "my turn, your turn" concept and more to a "I take my first attack now, the you take two of yours, and then I have my second" according to who acted when in the initiative sequence. Such a system is lengthy to deal with in the PnP d20 system (which KotOR is based on), but it can work without trouble in a CRPG. Yes, though I don't see why there should be a limit at 4 instead of 3. It never made much sense that you could only take so many characters with you. There was no logic to it, it was just a rule arbitrarily imposed by the game. If they would at least give us a reason, even a very convenient and opportunistic one, it would be a lot easier to accept. For example, you could say that someone has to stay behind to watch Ebon Hawk so that it isn't stolen, then that's a good point for at least one crewmember being tied to the ship at all times. For example, there didn't seem to be much reason why Atton had to stay and fix the Hawk on Dxun - especially since I always had Bao-Dur in the crew at that point - but I was still fine with that. Yes, HK and T3 must definitely be in K3. Excellent first post btw. Welcome to the boards.

Hehe - "Exclamation: My parts are showing?!?" :D I can hear HK say it now...

I wouldn't call Qui Gon quite grey. He may not follow the code strictly (which, as Obi-Wan said, is why he is not on the council), but he still remains a member of the order. Jolee is a grey jedi. He follows neither the code, nor is he a member of the order itself. Instead he adopted a "think for yourself"-philosophy, though that didn't mean he discarded the code entirely - he just denied the parts he found to be too strict. And yet, if Revan decides to follow Bastila to the dark side, Jolee will stand firmly with Juhani to prevent it, even fighting to the death.

The plot must be solid, yes. I agree with that. I just don't agree that having Revan and the Exile in it would ruin the plot. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I don't think it would ruin the plot, im just saying it might have to work overtime to accomodate DS/LS Revan , female/male Revan. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I think of Revan and the Exile more as story devices that drive the plot forward, so they wouldn't be obstacles that story needs to strain itself to accomodate - they would be elements that help it forward and expand the plot.

Bastila has years of experience by now. She was young in K1, but K2 is five years later and K3 likely a few years after that.

not so fast, don't forget Revan is from the unknown regions (he may, just may because it is just rumors Kreia speaks of, know more that anyone the magnitude of the sith treath) and the Star Forge was the key of Revan's triumph, a quick utter and cautios victory (till Malak of course, then back again). many dialogs reveal that Revan never intended to use the SF for long, what made you think he fell all of a sudden? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> No, Revan is from Deralia. It's a remote system, but the fact that he can mention it to Bastila in K1 without Bastila raising an eyebrow certainly suggests that it is not in the unknown regions. It is likely in the outer rim close to the unknown regions, though. And if Revan's plan was to fight the true Sith, then why did he attack the republic? He started out to save the republic first against the Mandalorians and then against the true Sith, so in between he had to defeat the republic and bomb its worlds... Hold on, that doesn't add up! I might think that Revan did start out with good intentions, but he thought he could wear the mask of the dark lord without losing sight of his eventual goal and his soul. He was bitterly mistaken on both points. Once he accepted the dark side in his heart, it corrupted him and he was filled with ambition to rule the galaxy for himself. He might have started out planning to use the StarForge as a weapon against the true Sith, but that's not what happened. Instead he thought he should rule everything, and with the republic weaker than the true Sith, he decided to attack the republic first, then conquer the true Sith and rule them as well once he had conquered the republic and taken control of its resources. He may have started out wanting to save the republic, but we all know what the road to Hell is paved with... Or to make an analogy, he made the same mistake that Boromir did in "Lord of the Rings" - he thought he could use evil to defeat evil, and he couldn't, because evil twists you - instead of controlling the dark side, the dark side ended up controlling him.

You mean like taking an enemy prisoner, reprogramming his mind, and then using him against his own? " They wouldn't see as a weakness if it served their own purposes. Palpatine served as a loyal senator for years in order to slip into a position from which to manipulate events. Does that make him a weakling or a sly manipulator? On the contrary - the grey jedi have more limitations than both the regular jedi or the sith - that's the price they pay for not adhering to either philosophy. And I fail to see how they have greater knowledge than characters like Yoda or Palpatine just because they choose to stay fairly neutral on the jedi/sith conflict. Few characters indeed have more knowledge or wisdom than Yoda or a few select other jedi masters. Also there is no "grey side". There is the jedi side and the sith side - the grey are just somewhere on the jedi side close to the middle. The grey are no better off there than the other jedi. In fact, they're probably worse off since they have abandoned the very code that should guide them to stay in the light. Therefore they are in even greater peril from the dark side. That makes no sense at all. Some of the masters did refuse to acknowledge their failings, but most of them had died at that point, and some - like Zez-Kai Ell and Vash - were quite open toward accepting their failings. Also, pay attention to G0T0. I know we all hate him, but as he points out, the republic is doomed without the jedi. To wipe them out is there to destroy the republic.

The plot must be solid, yes. I agree with that. I just don't agree that having Revan and the Exile in it would ruin the plot.

I'd be all for that in a K4, but not in K3. K2 ended openly. We need resolution to that story, and not just in the sense of a few statements that tell us what became of Revan and the Exile during the opening crawl text. Those characters did not get closure. We need that, and we want to play it too.

Why? I mean, this is a full four thousand years before the movies, so anything that happens is going to be completely inconsequential by the time of the movies era. I would have speculated that the only thing they couldn't do is let the republic or the jedi order fall, but actually I believe there is mention in the movies that goes back only about a thousand years - didn't Palpatine say something about "this republic that has stood for a thousand years" or so, and Windu that the order had stood for hundreds of generations? If that is correctly remembered, they can even bring down the republic and the jedi order, so long as it's rebuilt again at some point. So about the only thing that cannot happen is the destruction of the worlds we know (Korriban, Tatooine, Onderon, Coruscant, etc.) True enough... I'm still grumpy that you basically save the world in Ultima III, and then who do they elect as king? The guy why asked you to do it, but who stayed at home in the castle himself, while you were out there battling demons... :angry: I know. I'm just saying that we already know what Revan's voice sounds like, not that he should be restricted to that. In fact, if that were the case, I'd rather he just shut up :D

had he/she not, the galaxy would have fallen, there was no real choice, Revan just did what needed to be done to save it, or at least to hope. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> No, Revan fell. Pure and simple. Even if we accept that he did what he did to prevent the greater evil that the true Sith presented (and that's a big if, since we still don't know how much he knew of them at the time), Revan still fell to the dark side, corrupted or killed the jedi under him, then forgot all about the true Sith and instead sought the StarForge so he could invade the republic. With saviors like that, who needs the true Sith, anyway? " That his initial intentions were good does not excuse it - at best it is merely an extenuating circumstance.

exactly, they realize that good and evil depend strongly on our point of view, <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I don't agree with that, because that basically supports a relative view on morality. That would be the same as saying that whether murder or other violent crimes are good or bad depend on how the society they are committed in thinks of it. In Kreia's case I would say you should consider the source... Really, as I've said before, Kreia is the sort of person, where I say that if she told me water was wet, I'd check to see for myself before I believed her... Or to quote Faramir from Lord of the Rings, "I am wise enough to know that there are some perils from which a man must flee" (this is the *real* Faramir from the books, not the pale shadow of himself that they turned him into the movies). The arrogance of thinking that you can confront and overcome any temptation is precisely the fatal mistake that both Ulic and Revan made, and they paid a high price for their arrogance. It eventually cost Ulic everything, and Revan still has to atone for his sins, as Darth Blivion pointed out.

No, gray jedi don't "control" the dark side. If they try, they are just as likely to fall to the dark side as anyone else. The non-jedi (I assume you mean force adepts) are not as likely to fall, because their connection to the force is not as strong as it is for jedi or sith. I don't recall ever hearing of a force adept that fell to the dark side in the manner that Ulic or Revan did. In fact, Mara Jade was a force adept serving as the "Emperor's Hand" for years, and yet she was never corrupted by the dark side. You almost make it sound as if the old jedi order was corrupting and subverting the republic, but as Bastila points out, the order was aware of the greater danger and would have aided the republic in time. They didn't get involved with the Mandalorian Wars, because they thought the risk of jedi fighting early in that war would have far worse consequences. What Revan and Malak then did can be seen to support their fears more than anything, since Revan and Malak and their followers all became evil and turned into a threat to the republic that was even more dangerous to the republic. The jedi order was being cautious. They were still wrong and limited themselves out of concern, but you cannot question their intent. It's far more ethically questionable how they later used Revan as a tool to serve their own interests. You seem to forget that the republic remained unaware of the threat the true Sith poses. In fact, the republic is *still* blissfully unaware because Revan decided to leave without telling them, and the Exile never had the chance. And the masters were all killed, before they could reveal anything. So the republic 'preparing itself' for the war is a non-issue, because the republic still doesn't know that there is yet another threat waiting to be unleashed...

I don't see the gray jedi that way. And there is no "gray order", since gray jedi have no formalized order - they are simply jedi who don't submit to a life of struggling the dark side of the force and instead refuse to take a final and eternal stance in the continuing struggle between LS and DS.

I don't think the problem is that everybody loves Revan so much that we won't let anything bad happen to him. It's probably more that we don't want to play an amnesic jedi who lost his power a third time. That's my take on it, but I do get the impression that while most KotOR-fans want different things in K3, there does seem to be consensus that another jedi with lost powers is not acceptable. Revan did have a voice in K1, so he at least is not a problem. Some people may not have liked it, but it was there. And while I can speak only for myself, I'm not really going to worry about the voice of the Exile. As long it isn't completely laughable (in the sense of JarJar-ish or similar), it'll be fine by me.

I once gave the players some magical items that were really powerful and with no negative side-effects... They were really worried for a while... And me being such a nice GM <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Yes, this happened to me too...and then, the owner of the artifacts showed up after 3-4 games <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I just gave out a few hints that the souls of demons were trapped in the artifacts... The players were so scared that I could just lean back and enjoy their paranoia for a few hours... Ah, it's good to be a GM...

An eye for an eye. Burn down their embassies, burn their flags, hold demostrations. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Burning foreign flags is illegal in Denmark, though burning the danish flag isn't. Go figure.

Sad but true. What do you guys think about that quote? Do you think it is imprudent for those press groups to publish material that is clearly offensive to muslims? Is it necessary to do? I appreciate freedom of speech, but if it will offend somebody else, then I won't say something just because it is my freedom. It really seems unnecessary and brazenly impertinent. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> You only have freedom of speech if you are allowed to express your opinion, no matter what it is. To say things like "I think we should all be friends" is not an example, because that pretty much everyone can agree on that. The right only has meaning when the content is controversial or even offensive. To quote Thomas Payne: "He who dares not offend, cannot be honest" That is exactly that this is about - can we have a serious debate and approach a compromise or is dialogue pointless? Everybody is saying that dialogue is essential right now, but at the same time they call for people to restraint themselves in how they express themselves. That's hypocrisy of the highest degree. If we are to talk, then we should say what we think. Otherwise there is no point. SD-Kuriren don't sound like people I would ever associate with, but I do support their *right* to expres their extreme opinions - we need it in the public debate if it is to remain open and honest, since otherwise not all opinions are spoken. I'll reserve the right not to listen to them, though. Besides, censuring people doesn't mean that they change their opinions. Quite the contrary. And frequently the then find other and sometimes more violent ways by which to express themselves. For that reason alone, I would find that letting them speak to be the lesser evil.