Tale

This seems to have wildly diverged from the topic. What little there was to begin with.

If saying that quests should accord agency is being arbitrary, it's an arbitrary I can live with. I don't think "agency" equates to "I must be able to have every possible situation work out in a way that suits me". There's nothing removing my agency by putting in quests with horrible results no matter what you do after you take the quest--you still have a choice. You can skip the quest. But you can't tell stories like I Have No Mouth But I Must Scream If there must be a possible happy ending. If you're precluding the existence of an entire *category* of storytelling, then you're not talking about bad design or flawed design any longer. You're talking about what you like and don't like. I'm not saying the outcome must be ideal. But the player should be afforded agency to try their playstyle and be rewarded one way or another, whether it's a standard victory or something else. Saying that the only way to win is to avoid a quest entirely, that is pointless metagaming. The character can't know the outcome in advance.

The concept of good and evil should be struck from the lexicon. They can do what they think is right or do what they think helps themselves. The character should be judged by their actions and how those actions affect those around them, not by their moral compass.

If saying that quests should accord agency is being arbitrary, it's an arbitrary I can live with.

Felicia Day should do all sounds in the game with her voice. Like opening a door or chest, walking over pavement, swinging a sword, etc. Off-topic, but Half-Life 2 has a very cool mod where a guy did this, voiced every sound effect. It turns out better than you'd expect.

I'm not really sure I see the problem here. I don't know that they're building a game to be ideal for players looking to start up a shop and being farming. I think it's perfectly reasonable to establish a game with the assumption players will be adventurers doing quests. "time invested vs. reward" really should only be a secondary or tertiary consideration. Players aren't going to be aggressively counting their playtime for the fastest means to level up. Or at least not generally. It's not an MMO. What they want to do is achieve the objective according to their playstyle. Which is the far more important consideration. What you're proposing ultimately boils down to encouraging the player to do every little thing, even those against his desired agency. He'll feel obligated to craft, sneak, talk, and kill. Instead of just picking the ones he likes and moving forward through the game with that. A complaint you seem worried about for quests, but no other activity. This is a flaw in some quest design. An ideally designed quest should never really have a reason for you to want to turn it down. If you find the quest objectionable, then there's room to turn the quest around and make it about stopping the questgiver instead of helping him. That's kind of what player agency is about. A player should be able to assume that even if he takes on a quest, he's still able to affect it in accordance with his desired agency.

Thank you.

I'm not aware of an endorsement. Not to say it isn't so.

Well, if you're not the only one who can do it, how do you create tension around the fact that the player is the only one doing it? Or is the idea that they should assume it's going to get done either way and the PC is just in a race for first place?

I hope not. 3 standard and 1 D&D expy already, how many races are left? Don't need any more from the standard list.

This explains so much, I talk to everyone that way.

It is. Actually, the site itself maintains that it has no affiliation with Obsidian.

Sounds an awful lot like a kit to me.

It might be possible, but not without its own pitfalls. I mean, I can imagine a class that's built to take advantage of whatever you put into it. Pump all your int and you have a spellsword, pump all your dex and you have a swashbuckler, pump your strength, etc. However, this seems like it'd be difficult to do without turning everyone into an auto-attack bore or otherwise making them all play the same. I'll admit I've never played around with the bones of systems to become well informed enough to back that up.

I think the poll just has some granularity unexplored. A person doesn't seem some magical boost of godly selection or lineage to be not a regular joe. He could just be the try-hardiest joe on the planet. As much an everyman as John McClane. The guy with guts.

I'm probably going to have to cut back my PE support due to recent car troubles.

Not nealy as much as I once did. After all, I am back Thank Project Eternity (and that guy Deraldin). Well, thank or blame. Your choice! I'd encourage you to try to get David to come back. But this place would probably force him into an aneurysm. I'm dying to read those criticisms of games Avellone seems to love hearing from him.

I just added the #6 and #7 updates, if anyone's wondering what changed today.

Good and bad surprises, so long as they're interesting. Like the dialogue trees are laced with pinatas and dropbears.

No. Loyalty strikes me as one of those "only one right answer" systems. And I don't really like that. I don't like it when it's explicit, encouraging a reload, and I don't like it when it's hidden, springing up out of nowhere hours in when it's too late for the player to do anything. Just because a character doesn't like the PC doesn't mean he can't be useful to the PC. It's just that his use should change. Like if you're eating babies, the Paladin on the team gets incredibly angry, forsakes his duty just to try to stop you, and this all triggers a quest that replaces his regular character arc, and ends with him changing into a Blackguard. Old door closed (Paladin), new door opened (Blackguard). Or you're against stealing, but this doesn't go over well with the party thief. Maybe the party thief could adjust to being more damage oriented. Or she do ends up leaving the party, but she starts up a ring of informants that feeds you quest leads.

I still think Mass Effect 2 had the best combat design. Stupid single weapon can do everything design of 3. *kicks dirt*

It can look like it, sure, but it shouldn't take a genius to figure out that the sword that vanishes into the planet's core when you drop it point first might be sharper than the other. A group of seasoned adventurers shouldn't have trouble figuring out the general properties of equipment. You think they would develop some sort of testing procedure that enables them to figure it out so long as it falls within common bounds. Now, the ancient artifact with special properties not seen before or since, that one's tricky.

I like this a lot. I had an idea for a game were you play as a wise old mentor character who has to locate and guide a bunch of destined young heroes on their quest. And then when they all die due to various juvenile drama amongst the group, you gather your group of elderly retirees to Cohen style victory.

Ideally, experience should be granted for achieving goals. However, players like to have small experience gains throughout progress to a goal instead of getting it all in one lump at the end. So, would I like XP for combat? Let's just say I have nothing against it. They'll need to do those progress gains somehow. Maybe not necessarily killing each enemy, but for defeating a group to signify that a challenge has been surpassed, bringing the player closer to their goal. This would enable them to give it the same XP as if they'd talked past the enemy, then note that progress has been made so the player can't kill them as well for double XP. No additional progress was made by murdering people after talking them down, after all.

Sure, but that's just, like, dialogue-writing 101? People shouldn't go out of character to give exposition. Or perhaps the exposition is being used to help express and develop the character. Which is what it sounds like Sawyer was promoting. Still, they gave plenty of exposition seemingly for exposition's sake.