nikolokolus

The way faith, the gods and divine magic are handled in D&D and its derivatives has always been one of its weakest aspects; that there's basically no room for disbelief or even faith when it comes to the gods. Through a few mechanics and a lot of lore, it's made explicit that the gods are real, with no ifs ands or buts - and proof denies faith. I'm pleased to note that PoE's gods are no longer the supernatural, Pez dispensers that handed out resurrection and healing candies that you got with the immensely puerile Forgotten Realms cosmology. I'm not 100% certain how Obsidian plans to handle divine spell-casting, but I'd love to see them make divine sorcery just a series of revealed, Kabbalic mysteries one is initiated into, instead of having power explicitly granted through prayer and devotion. Decoupling granted powers from beliefs injects an essential condition of uncertainty, which allows the question to be asked: Are the gods even real? It also opens up intriguing story related hooks. For instance, who's to say that "good Bishop" Wellorand is all that "good?" Maybe he's a corrupt deviant who's been skimming the coffers for years to pay for that country villa, where he has despoiled the virtue of scores of Vestal virgins, but he's still powerful and in full command of all the sorcerous knowledge he's accumulated.

All I'm saying is that I'm an elitist wanker.

What do I think? Read Dunsany,'s Sword of Welleran, Howard's Kull, Conan and Solomon Kane stories, Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique, Jack Vance's Lyonesse, Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, Fritz Lieber' Lankhmar books, E.R. Eddison's Worm Ouroboros and Michael Moorc.ock's Corum Novels instead. You're life will be better for it.

It was about 1986 or 87 and it was the Mentzer Basic set. My buddy had that boxed set, but he and 3 other guys were already playing AD&D 1st ed. and before I could join in the fun he gave me that little red book and the solo dungeon to run through a few times so I could get the hang of it before being exposed to the "grown-up" version of the game. I'm pretty sure my first character was a dwarf that got killed three times in that solo adventure. As for my first "real" AD&D character, he was most definitely a Chaotic Good, wood-elf ranger named Tinglaf with 18/54 Strength. Those glorious 2d8 starting hit points and the weapon specialization rules in Unearthed Arcana made him an unholy 1st level terror with a bow and a two-handed sword. First fight was with an Ogre in a clearing. One glorious natural twenty with the 2-hander and I one-shot that bastard; one of the best adrenaline fueled moments of my life up to that point ... although when you're eleven or twelve, second place is probably climbing really high up a pine tree and getting a "tingly" feeling in your special place. Pretty sure his second fight was with 4 goblins armed with poison tipped arrows. RIP Tinglaf.

Those megamen characters rolled on our own didn't last very long. The DM would just kill them off at his earliest convenience or we quickly learned that our survival (and enjoyment of the game) had very little to do with those stats. It was always far more important to stock up on caltrops, flaming oil, holy water and get yourself a couple of vicious guard dogs.

As a cartographer and GIS analyst, I love me some clicky-clicky-interactive maps. This kind of thing would be pretty cool and a great way to spatially orient yourself with lore and history.

Barrowmaze Complete http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/barrowmaze-complete-official-miniatures-by-otherworld

Sounds like a colossal wank. EDIT: P.S. Hey aspiring GM's if you want to tell a specific story, don't run it as a game, write a novel or a short-story.

One more thought: In sandbox style play it's always up to the players. I lay lots of bread crumbs and I let them decide which ones they'd like to follow. I give plenty of hints about what kind of dangers might lay ahead and retreat is usually an option. I don't run railroad adventures, I build the world, set the factions and then my players tell the story in play. If they're really clever and really lucky they get to tell a long story instead of a short one.

No you didn't need to bring up Neeshka ... Thanks for that.

The Amazing Adventures of Oswald Bastable ... make it so.

To the OP: You do realize that 4 million pazoors for a game like this, from a studio like this, is a paltry sum right? As to paying for "beta access" I know it is/was a common practice for "Mmorperger" developers to give beta access to games because they needed to stress test systems and balance their games with live players, but single player games like this are slightly different beast. It might be more appropriate to call it "early access." in this case and if you don't think it's worth the money then you don't pay for it. Personally, I backed at the level I did because I want a game like this to be made and it wasn't going to happen under the traditional publisher model. Early access doesn't matter that much to me, but I don't see at as a voracious money grab, since any extra funds are going to the game's development, whereas a game published by a company like EA was going to get made with the features it has no matter if I pre-order or not ... except that frequently, they cull content from a game and hold it out as something to be purchased as day-one DLC unless you play the pre-order game. Maybe these are subtle distinctions, but they're real enough for me to change my purchasing/backing habits.

Rulings not rules the majority of the time. Every now and again it's left to the whims of the dice.

I roll all attacks and other such stuffies out in the open. If player's are stupid foolhardy enough to put their character's fate in the "hands" of a dice roll, then so be it.

"Hither came Conan the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed ..." You get the picture I'm sure.

The dirty little secret of "Auld Skewl" games back in the day was that the way you stayed alive was to keep the dice from rolling. Tapping the floor ahead of you with a ten-foot pole vs. making a "search" check is a prime example. It all comes down to the style of play that a group wants to engage in. If it's an OD&D-esque game with 3d6 in order, part of the fun is taking this random character with obvious flaws and seeing if you can overcome them and achieve something special against the odds. On the other hand, there are a lot of gamers that enjoy playing D&D 3.x, etc. where you carefully construct characters level by level and test your build-making skills against the GM's challenges. There's no right or wrong way to do it, but I definitely get more enjoyment from the former style rather than the latter. Matt Finch's "Quick Primer for Old School Gaming" is a nice, short, little essay that's been floating around on the interwebz for awhile now and is worth a read, even if just to get an idea of how games were played at the dawn of the hobby. http://www.lulu.com/shop/matthew-finch/quick-primer-for-old-school-gaming/ebook/product-3159558.html

Next intrigues me and I've spent a little bit of time reading the playtest packets, but until I get to sit down and play it I'm reluctant to pan it or endorse it. At the very least it looks a whole lot more like D&D than 4th does.

I've played it a off and on and I have some gaming friends who swear by it, but it's never been my cup o' tea. For one thing no matter if it's trying to emulate WoW or not, it's unbearably slow in combat - it's not unheard of to have a single fight drag on literally for hours at higher levels because of hit points bloat and it's apparent design goal of taking the "swingy-ness" out of the game. Every character does indeed occupy a very MMO-like combat role (striker, tank, healer, controller) but because everything is so "balanced" they all mostly feel the same in actual play; no matter what textual descriptions they have for their daily, encounter and at-will powers, every character is basically a lot like a magic-user with buckets of hit points. For better or worse, all of the quirkiness and character of the older game was pulverized and banished; replaced with a well made, highly polished, turd ... IMHO.

My tendency lately is more towards games like DCC RPG and Swords & Wizardry. In a nutshell, high or low attributes don't matter too much, because A) mortality rates are implicitly higher no matter your starting scores (plus gruesome, spectacular deaths are half the fun in DCC) B) the amount of penalties or bonuses - particularly in S&W - are really narrow and C) levels and equipment seem to have a lot more to do with character power in those older style games than anything innate in their rolled up attributes. No matter, there's a ton of ways to run an RPG, and as long as people keep showing up every week you must be doing it right.

Harp is nice, but I'm holding out hope for the kazoo. So much evocative, great sounds, emotions!

The funny thing is that it's always within the power of the GM to inflate or shave statistics to "tune" the game to a certain level of difficulty no matter what the character generation scheme is for attributes. Where a game like 3.x or Pathfinder breaks down in terms of building encounters is when players realize they can game the system with feats and create a very optimized character from a mechanics standpoint, effectively starting an arms race with their Keeper as he or she is forced to devise creatures and encounters that work around those munchkin builds. Not knocking d20, because I currently really like DCC RPG and it wouldn't exist without the OGL and 3.x (unified mechanics and ascending AC aint bad either) but from a game mastering perspective I do not enjoy running Pathfinder or 3.x because of the way they can be so easily "broken." by enterprising players with a gamist bent. As to GURPS, I played a game or two about 20 years ago, but I'm in no position to debate its merits or drawbacks.

Hur, hur. Even if PoE did get multi-player support, I have to honestly ask did any person ever actually enjoy the multi-player in Baldur's Gate or any of the Infinity Engine games? I always thought it was unbearable.

Either a subtle trolling attempt (nicely done) or just about exactly the kind of game that would make me rip my monitor off the wall and hurl it from my office's second floor window. The only thing that could make it worse would be switch gears and make this game a tablet exclusive, make it Free2Play and install multiple paywalls to "unlock" content.

Kind of reminds of those characters we "rolled" up when I was about 13 and first discovered the AD&D game and got to take home my buddy's copy of the PHB and practice creating some characters. "Well sure I rolled up this paladin with 18/00 Str, 17 Dex, 18 Con, 12 Int, 14 Wis and 17 Cha, with 4d6 drop lowest. Why would I lie about something like that?"

I was always partial to the Greyhawk setting and it seemed to mesh well with the 1st ed. AD&D games I typically played in my junior high and high school years, but a lot of that could just be nostalgia goggles and the fact that when you're a kid you'll usually just consume whatever is put before you without much of a second thought. It's too bad that TSR took Gary's creation (Greyhawk) and then did their level best to banish it to the void. When it comes to setting-edition relationships that felt particularly symbiotic or inseparable, I've always been more of a home-brew guy that borrows and steals bits I like rather than running anything out of the box, so I'm probably not the best authority to be answering this question. But for a recent example of a rule-set reinforcing a setting, I got the Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea boxed set for Christmas and can say unequivocally that the rules and setting are almost inextricably linked. You don't have to run the setting, but all of the races, spells, the classes and the tone really beg to be used in a classic "Weird Tales" swords and sorcery campaign.