J.E. Sawyer

I make pretty different characters/sets of characters for all the RPGs I play. I sometimes re-create an old pen and paper character from college, but not very often.

You wrote that it allowed me to play exactly like I play pen and paper with a DM. If you weren't trying to make a statement about the reader, I don't think you should have phrased things in a way that addressed the reader. If you didn't mean that it was exactly the same, I don't think you should have used the word "exactly". NWN is neither exactly like my pen and paper rules experiences nor exactly like my pen and paper experiences with DMs. This isn't my board, Volourn. I develop games, but I don't develop PC games and I don't even develop RPGs anymore. I'm here as a user, and I happen to disagree with a lot of the things you write.

My playing experience with NWN and live DMs was not similar enough to pen and paper playing D&D experiences that I would equate them or call one a good analogue for the other.

So, did you mean it's the only D&D game to allow ME to play exactly like in pen and paper with a DM or the only D&D game to allow YOU to play exactly like in pen and paper with a DM? Because you wrote, "to allow you", and that's what I was responding to.

Admitting that AoOs don't work in NWN like they do in your pen and paper games would probably be a good way to make me not look down on you. Alternately, thoroughly explaining how AoOs work in NWN and how they work identically in your pen and paper games would also make me not look down on you and would, in fact, humble me.

Actually I was talking about my own experiences with pen and paper D&D, since you used the phrase "to allow you". Can you explain to me exactly how AoOs work in NWN and how you resolve them in your pen and paper games?

Strangely, when I play pen and paper D&D, attacks of opportunity seemed to be handled in a much different way. A lot of things are handled differently.

BioWare's success as a company is logically dependent on their working relationship with Interplay. Interplay's ability to survive for the years following BG were logically dependent on the income they received from the work that BioWare did. Without Interplay, BioWare could not have made BG. Without BG, BioWare would not have had the money it used to build a solid foundation for its company. It's a very straightforward reliance. "Did you see how she was dressed? She was asking for it!" Well, if there's no clear causal link, it would be pretty strange to discuss something like that. But if Interplay withheld money from them that was owed to BioWare and BioWare fell apart due to short funds, I think it would be even more absurd to say that BioWare was to blame. Clearly multiple parties are culpable. The decline of Interplay took place over such a long span of time that it would be very difficult to blame it on any single company or any individual. Even if we were to look at the heads of Interplay, it would be silly. I'm not a big fan of Herve Caen, but Herve didn't start the huge debt that Interplay accrued. Ignoring the role that Brian Fargo played in that would be pretty dumb. Ignoring the role that BioWare played in the survival of the company would also be pretty dumb, both in the BG days and in the NW nights (lol). Wait, they're responsible for themselves, for what happens to them, or for their own actions? BioWare didn't make people buy the game they made. I didn't accuse you of anything. I asked you a question because I believe it's logical that the success of BG contributes to the success of BioWare. Do you disagree with this? This should be obvious, but Black Isle had their own games to develop internally at the time. It's not like Interplay said, "Well, we could give it to all of those guys sitting around doing nothing, but these BioWare guys are tops!" And it wasn't a fluke that Interplay had the license. They bought it using money they earned with other successful titles. This is reminding me of Judd Nelson's conversation with Anthony Michael Hall in Breakfast Club. "Without trigonometry, there'd be no lamps!" "Without lamps, there'd be no light!"

I played the demo and did not like the combat at all. It's more direct and involved than KotOR, but it's still too abstracted for my tastes. I like combat to either be highly abstracted or very direct. This in-between style doesn't appeal to me. It feels sluggish and unresponsive.

So if Interplay contributed some of the code that BioWare used in the making of Baldur's Gate, Interplay is responsible for that code, right? And if that code is part of the finished product, how is Interplay not partially responsible for the success of the game? You can't really reduce every contribution down to "well duh, that's their job." You could say it was just BioWare's job to code the engine, but that's pretty silly, too. There are a number of factors that contribute to the success of any given title. And even success can be measured in a variety of ways by different people. Even if you base it simply off of units sold, it's not as simple as saying, "The game was coded well" or "The art was good" or "The marketing was positioned very well". Responsibility in complex social interactions is often very difficult to convincingly pinpoint. Who can know why every single person bought a game or liked it? You know why I played BG? Because it was an AD&D game. It had nothing to do with what I had seen of the writing, the art, or really anything that BioWare had put forward. I heard, "2nd Ed. AD&D game" and I was sold. I didn't like the resulting game very much, but even those who dislike a game can contribute to its "success" through their purchase. Interplay was the company that bought the license and TSR was the company that built the license. I wouldn't pinpoint any single person or group as being responsible for my desire to play the game in that case.

I know this is harder to do than lumping everything together under one label, but your should recognize that responsibility for group endeavors factually involves different levels of participation and contribution from all members of the group.

Do you know how much it costs to develop a console game today? It's a hell of a lot more than it was five years ago.

Maybe you should re-think your use of the word "geared", because it doesn't really match with the way that most of the English-speaking world uses it.

How is the tech "geared for" shooters?

There are a lot of games where this really is not true. One of the best examples is the original Pool of Radiance. The enemies in that game tend to increase in power at a much slower rate than the PCs. Even when the PCs are in the Wilderness, there are still major quests where the PCs are fighting kobolds. Sweeping eight kobolds at a time feels a lot more satisfying than whiffing once a round against them in the slums of Phlan.

I actually like the Atari 2600 joysticks with the black rubber removed. I liked them so much that I used them with my C=128.

Correlation, causation, etc.

What does that have to do with the purpose of leveling?

Reward the player for successful play by making his or her character feel more capable.

What didn't work?

Enter a time machine and return to 1992. Play Darklands. Wait, return to 1993. Install patches. Play Darklands.

Because of the combat style, a gamepad would be the weapon of choice for playing Gauntlet on any platform.

I do not want EA to take control of Ubisoft because I would like the Splinter Cell games to continue being not sucky. Also, the OXM demo of Chaos Theory is rad.