Dadalama

If they called them exactly like DnD and others call them then you would get people complaining that they are not the same as they are in those other games. I've already seen it with people asking why they don't need fire to kill trolls anymore and that they aren't real trolls as a result. Fampyrs are quite different from vampires too, they are not blood-drinking immortals who turn into bats but rather zombies that can still think and pass for human, I find that significantly different enough to warrant a different name to avoid false association. That's even more sad because folklore where trolls came from, had nothing to do with fire or wolverine style regeneration. It had to do with sunlight turning them to stone afaik. What's even sadder is that many "fantasy fans" struggle with imagination. They can't imagine a troll that is not big, green, weak to fire and regenerates wounds. I like fantasy because it lets writers get away from limitations and create something otherwise impossible. They like fantasy because it's a familiar where everything is predictable. Like Volourn said I think you mean D&D fans. But it is quite sad. And it keeps people from branching out into other fantasy rpgs. Yeah, it's the reason why people are so resistant to guns: they aren't 'fantasy' apparently. They complain that it isn't 'medieval' despite the fact they accept full plate armour which didn't even appear until the very end of the medieval period, when guns were also taking off. The "Standard Fantasy World" actually has a lot more Renaissance in it than people realise without being either Renaissance or Medieval but some weird mish mash that loses the flavour and benefits of both, instead becoming rather bland and yet people somewhere along the line decided that it would be the 'default' setting for fantasy. Tis strange.... Yeah their "Medieval Fantasy" has them fighting vampires in victorian mansions and visiting old west style "Taverns" and everyone is dressed in the brown and black leather you'd find in a BDSM spoof of Sons of Anarchy. Instead of the usual colorful medieval clothing when the only thing off limits to peasants was deep crimson and certain dark blues.

Not all watchers, just the one's that awaken their own past lives.

If they called them exactly like DnD and others call them then you would get people complaining that they are not the same as they are in those other games. I've already seen it with people asking why they don't need fire to kill trolls anymore and that they aren't real trolls as a result. Fampyrs are quite different from vampires too, they are not blood-drinking immortals who turn into bats but rather zombies that can still think and pass for human, I find that significantly different enough to warrant a different name to avoid false association. That's even more sad because folklore where trolls came from, had nothing to do with fire or wolverine style regeneration. It had to do with sunlight turning them to stone afaik. What's even sadder is that many "fantasy fans" struggle with imagination. They can't imagine a troll that is not big, green, weak to fire and regenerates wounds. I like fantasy because it lets writers get away from limitations and create something otherwise impossible. They like fantasy because it's a familiar where everything is predictable. Like Volourn said I think you mean D&D fans. But it is quite sad. And it keeps people from branching out into other fantasy rpgs.

that's not exactly true. While they are far from making a killing, Wadjet Eye studios use an open source engine for most of their games and they've been around since 2006. And I got that from a quick google search. A company that doesn't generate profit wouldn't be around for 9 years. I assume the company at least makes a lower middle class living. Though not a lot of commercial projects are made with open source engines so we don't have that much data to work with anyways. Back to POE, there's no way it can go open source until the sequel, and then they've already licensed unity. It would be a better idea if they worked with unity to create a things like area and npc builders and other modding tools that let you change the way the game works. Edit: Torchlight uses Ogre3D which is an open source engine.

Erm... well... this is not an actual looking-for-group thread. I understand if it seems counter-productive, but, well, topic drift happens sometimes. If you are looking for a - presumably online - group, I advise you to open a separate thread because pretty much nobody is reading this one aside from the four of us. Oh I was really just throwing my hat in, didn't read the whole thread. I'm not really looking just offering.

If they called them exactly like DnD and others call them then you would get people complaining that they are not the same as they are in those other games. I've already seen it with people asking why they don't need fire to kill trolls anymore and that they aren't real trolls as a result. Fampyrs are quite different from vampires too, they are not blood-drinking immortals who turn into bats but rather zombies that can still think and pass for human, I find that significantly different enough to warrant a different name to avoid false association. That's even more sad because folklore where trolls came from, had nothing to do with fire or wolverine style regeneration. It had to do with sunlight turning them to stone afaik.

it's always 3 turns (usually quests, but sometimes milestones in larger quests) from when you send them out. Also, a word of advice, hire a bunch of people as soon as you can afford them when you start a new game. You don't have to use them (they get experience jerking off at the inn) just make sure to level them up when you get back to Caed Nua with another level. That way you'll have 2-8 people ready to show every troublesome guest around and do every quest that comes along.

I mean there's no reason to leave downed pillars and broken things all over the place. I understand it might be a lot of work to keep you from tearing down a building and replacing it, but you could make even the old buildings presentable? Maybe even get a couple prestige points for not making the whole place look like crap? Ultimately though, I'd have really liked to make it my own. The ability to tear a building down and using the space to build something new. Maybe even build a northern courtyard to expand the grounds some. Or add little touches like cobblestone walkways.

there's other ways to subtly point to important NPCs, the town crier for instance, could slip some info. The idle chit chat between npcs could drop hints. Ask the tavern owner "got any work?". The ability to ask people "I heard such and such had a problem, you know where to find them?". However if you're the town hero they may approach you.

I already have games going on Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday night, but during the day I'm free. The thursday game is in jeopardy too and may be cancelled.

It's shorter than saying "repulsive to the vast majority of observers". I'm not going to list the things I find disgusting. But, you know there's few that would say being a racist, sexist, hyper religious murder hobo is someone you'd have tea with. Not someone I'd have tea with anyways.

I think he's just saying you shouldn't automatically know someone's name from pressing the tab key or hovering over their avatar. I would say the same thing about portraits, you really shouldn't see them until you know they are important (or possible companions).

I hope with the tabletop game they focus on world building more than anything. That's what's really important. I have got half a million rulesets I can use but I don't even know the most famous Old Vallians. Or the biggest port town in the Living Lands.

Look I agree good and evil are just social constructs. But some people have this thing called empathy, it gives us bad feelings when hurtful things happen in general. It gives us good feelings when nice things happen in general. Because I have this mysterious thing called empathy it's in my personal interest to keep things nice. And I tend to roleplay that aspect in my characters. Even the one's that I find abhorrent. Morality may very well be a fixed idea but your conception of egoism doesn't seems to be very fluid either.

I wouldn't class the opening dungeon of Baldur's Gate II a tutorial though. Actually, it's pretty hardcore and fairly long with some tough encounters, especially if you're not familiar with the mechanics. TES has opened with a dungeon ever since Arena (Morrowind is the only exception in the entire series, if you don't count the spin-offs) -- going back to my first one, Daggerfall, I think this is intentionally done. I think it took me hours to find the exit on my first run, and then you get out and get some breath of air after being locked into endless caves for days and nights depending on which, and the world really opens up. It is that key moment when you get to realize you're free to explore and go wherever you wish. Probably BG II was aiming for the same thing, considering that you'll immediately get to a big city in bright day-light. But yeah, the flipside of design like this is that you have to repeat this each and every time you start a new game and character (and the TES design has become a lot more tutorial-ish in recent titles... which naturally goes along to streamlining the mechanics and making them ever more accessible for just about anyone. I think Pillars did pretty good in avoiding that kind of feel overall). It's not the "Tutorial" aspect that bothers me. I create a lot of characters and much prefer to just "start in town" like in the first baldur's gate. Being forced to go through the same first dungeon each time I make another character I really find tedious. I know you'd have to recrawl certain dungeons every time anyways but it's not as big of a deal if I choose when I do that.

I thought The Leaden Key itself was, for now, a necessary evil but the plot was pretty screwed up and needed to be stopped. I was more motivated by the hollowborn epidemic then the main story wanted to let me be it seems.

Some magazines report that Skyrim sales on all platforms have reached 20m. Even assuming PoE should reach 1m after a few years, which I feel is optimistic... something about that ratio is terribly depressing . It often seems that the worse the game, the better the sales. probably 20 m across all consoles. also skyrim have alot more budget than PoE and it is watered down, simplified RPG that cater to the less intelligent mass, of course it sells more Such a shame, what the genre has degenerated into, that games like Skyrim sell that high, and the insult that they are consindered rpgames. I would be fine with a gaming industry where ES games appealed to a minority of the gamers, but such games being the trend... If I could describe it with 1 word, that would be 'disappointment'. I wish I could see it as a good thing for the future, that Bethesda would use the money to return to their roots and make another great game like Morrowind... but I doubt it. They liked the oversimplification of Skyrim, and I don't think they will stray from it. A pity. I never actually played Morrowind, I'd like to see the next game more like Daggerfall, except maybe not have the world quite so big. Perhaps just three or four times bigger than Skyrim. One thing I really want them to stop is the tutorial dungeon. I mean, I'm not hardcore or anything but I can read a manual. I don't need to have to go through a slogfest of a dungeon every time I want to create a new character just to relearn how to aim a magic spell. I've hated the "opening dungeon" design philosophy since BG II.

I thought it mentioned she sailed off... so wherever pirates go?

:3 The whole world is so much more interesting than the "Standard fantasy with a twist" world you keep seeing.

It's moot, Unity isn't there's to give away. If you're a coder, it might take a while but look at GemRB, it can be used to make a new game. There's a lot more work to it than, say, gamemaker but it's functional now and it's (I think) still updating. http://www.gemrb.org/wiki/doku.php?id=newgame:newgame If you run linux, it's in the Arch and ubuntu repositories but not in debian stable (at least since the freeze). But it's also for windows and mac.

http://idle-ideas.weebly.com/ MOTE is a good Maptool fork I quite like.

I like what I read of Palladium fantasy. Never got a chance to play it and iirc, it was an 80s/90s game. I also like Talislanta, but my favorite edition is 4th which I think was early 2k. First and second edition were pretty similar though. Other than that, I rank D&D editions, best to worse, 5e, Basic (preferably Rules Cyclopedia/Dark Dungeons), Pathfinder, AD&D (1st/OSRIC), 3.5, 4th, OD&D. But I'm not a big D&D fan.

Actually GemRB is supposedly on it's way to becoming it's own engine.

I don't know that I'd call the DnD Forgotten Realms and thus Baldur's Gate setting "bland", though as you rightly point out, different strokes for different folks. Whether one actually liked the FR setting, one thing it had going for it was a massive amount of pre-existing depth going for it that the creators of BG didn't have to create when they were designing BG1/2. All they had to do was create their game within that pre-existing toybox, which perhaps might have meant that its developers could spend more time on the story and less on creating the environment where the story would take place. Just a thought. I wouldn't call a huge catalog of fantasy cliches "pre-existing depth". I actually kind of find it amusing that in one go a game design company made a more interesting world than the most popular D&D world of all time. You can choose to not accept it as depth, but it is. There's no denying that it exists, whether you like the content or not. And I'm not entirely sure that I'd call PoE's world more interesting. Matter of taste. Yeah if you like cliches stacked on top of each other miles deep Forgotten Realms is probably grand... Well I like Athkatla and Calimport and Maztica (does Maztica count? it's not in Faerun but it's on Toril) But yeah, cliches as far as the eyes can see. @Luckmann, funny thing is it would be fairly easy to shrug off the "going crazy" thing and learning of Thaos directly through working with the animancers (or even the dozen) to stop Waidwen's legacy. It's a bit late to change that, and it's not the wonkiest story I seen in a game I loved. But it's a bit odd.

The developers of the enhanced editions of BG1&2 and IWD are working to get the license to create a third instalment in the BG games. Not good news as I see it. Although I am grateful to them for the enh. ed., any new content they added was almost trash and did not fit well at all with the original. So I question how good that new BG will be. Probably better than the main quest of NWN. Not saying much though. I much preferred 1 (mostly because the editor came with more content) but NWN 2 had far better main quests.