J.E. Sawyer

Speech as a skill is the thing that I think produces the most quasi-/metagaming. Attribute/ability score checks tend to not produce the same problem since you can often be more egalitarian about what attributes are checked and how often. With a Speech skill (or equivalent), its whole raison d'être is to gain advantage in conversation. That's not true even for stats like Charisma or Intelligence in D&D.

I want to say something about my high-level approach to design, whether the systems being described are dialogue, rest mechanics, or how you gain experience: the bottom line for any mechanic is how it affects the ways in which players play the game. I.e., after all of the theorizing, all of the speculation, and all of the strong statements of feeling on a mechanic, what matters is how people play the game. So when I write that what Tim and I want to do is use quest/objective/challenge XP as the primary (if not only) methods of achieving XP, that means "want" will give way to "reality" if they are in conflict -- conflict in practice, not conflict in a forum discussion. When changing the system requires relatively little effort, there's not a ton of benefit to being absolutist over a year in advance. Moving from a class-based to classless system -- that's a big deal. That's something you decide and pretty much stick with. Deciding whether to give XP for monsters or not give XP for monsters -- that's not a big deal. That's easy to address, even late in development. Deciding whether people can rest at certain locations or they can rest anywhere is also pretty easy to address. These things exist on a sliding scale of difficulty, implementation/adjustment-wise. We plan things so we can make the simple changes easily later on. Generally that means creating simple base layers of mechanics and adding in "adjustment" or tuning mechanics when the metrics/gameplay we see demands it.

We actually had a meeting about this yesterday. PE's weapons will be close to historical weapons in proportions with slight exaggeration to help distinguish them. E.g. a "proper" cut and thrust sword blade will be toward the thicker side to distinguish it from a rapier. War hammers will be similar to historical war hammers though their heads might be enlarged just a bit to help you see what the heck they are. We will not have melon-sized mace heads.

I believe the most skillfully executed designs in any medium appear effortless and natural. In reality, it typically takes an enormous amount of time, effort, and iteration to reach that point. It is extraordinarily uncommon for good design to arrive from a single, artful stroke of the pen, though the best designs will appear to have been made in that way.

We have to walk a fine line with how much detail you can see in the face. In the IE games, you could reasonably project anything you imagined onto your "paper doll" because the face was a tinted mass of pixels. We want to allow you to use any portraits you want in PE, but if the paper doll detail clashes significantly with the portrait, there's trouble. We'll have to see what that means in practical terms, but it is certainly in our thoughts.

Thanks. Glad you like it. The model in the scene is the same model in the image above (with different textures and a different weapon, obviously). We want the level of detail in the game models to be high enough that we can use the same model for the inventory screen "paper dolls" with a slightly magnified view.

I think it's safe to say that we all (on the PE team) believe that we want some measure of humor in the game. It's probably not going to be a rollicking knee-slapper, but we don't want it to be The Road: The Game.

I'm pretty interested to see how it will play on the iPad with a stylus.

Why does an X gain an ability when a Y does not? We're using a class-based system in part because every IE game also used class-based systems. One of the things that class-based systems do to differentiate classes is give them exclusive capabilities. It just so happens that prior to 3E (including most 2nd Ed. thief kits), thieves were generally terrible in combat. Source: playing and DMing literally dozens of thieves in 1st and 2nd Ed. AD&D. The one thing in their favor once combat started (or before combat started) was backstab. It was unreliable, but it's been kept in one form or another over the years. It seems like an obvious thing for them to retain. We're not going to make rogues pure utility characters and we've stated this from the start. For us, the question is not, "Should rogues be able to hold their own in combat?" For us, the question is, "What are the different ways in which rogues should be able to hold their own in combat?" There are many potential answers to that question, but if ideas get shot down because fighters have to consistently smash everyone else to pieces in melee without exception, it's going to be difficult to answer.

Their weakness is their rate of fire, but that weakness is exacerbated in a setting where magic folks and crazy beasts sometimes wind up on battlefields. An opponent (or group of opponents) that is extremely swift, magically hidden, or incapable of being felled by a single volley from a/many firearms can take advantage of firearms' long reload times. On Earth, Renaissance-era arquebusiers had to deal with human beings and horses, creatures that could only move so fast, be so durable and quiet, and could only traverse by foot. So firearms are used by military forces in PE, but they are not on a clear course to render bows and crossbows obsolete.

Yes, wizards will also be able to use melee weapons, though you would have to spend character resources to not be horribly outclassed by a character of equivalent level that is more focused on melee combat.

In developing our wizard spell lists, I'm trying to have a fair number of melee-range (or close to it) single target or small AoE spells with serious punch. As someone else mentioned, there's not much motivation to use spells like Shocking Grasp when the damage is so-so and you're at serious risk when casting them. Spells can be interrupted in PE, so wizards who want to cast spells at close range are more likely to wear heavier armor (but cast spells more slowly). The "traditional" mage in light armor sticks to long range spells and stays off of the front line. Personally, I also really want wizards to be able to slam enemies across the face with their grimoires.

We're still working on concepts for the aumaua and orlans. They are less bestial than the images here. Orlan ears aren't quite as big as Mogwai's, but they're pretty big.

Very cool.

I mostly studied the history of witch-hunting, focused heavily on the Holy Roman Empire (much of contemporary Germany). There was some spillover into other heresies and hagiographies (e.g. Saint Dominic, who, prior to sainthood, unsuccessfully attempted to debate/convert Albigensian Cathars).

Contemporary, yes, but working in Heisterbach Abbey, near Westphalia, some distance from Occitània. His work is the only known extant source of that quote. Regardless of the authenticity of the quote, the crusaders made no distinction between Catholic and Cathar in Béziers.

I like giving players options to play a range of character ages. Some of that can be reflected in portraits or in dialogue. I would rather not place mechanical modifications on character age. If you think an older character should be weaker and wiser, you can arrange your ability scores to reflect that. As far as the story goes, we do not currently plan to have any restrictions on the PC's starting age (other than being an adult).

I think it's important to consider the perceived value of each individual skill/ability/talent/spell. I try to think from the player's perspective, "Why do I want to take this?" If I can't find a compelling answer compared to the other options, it needs to be improved and distinguished from the other options.

The term "paladin" has an interesting etymological background that was sort of backed into La Chanson de Roland. Hopefully people are aware that La Chanson de Roland is a mythical account written centuries after the events it describes. The soldiers at Béziers and Carcassonne were "real" knights and ribauds. Though the quote given by Caesarius of Heisterbach ("Neca eos omnes. Deus suos agnoscet." or "Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.") is almost certainly apocryphal, the massacre at Béziers was almost certainly not.

Both will be available!

The rivers have been fixed for the map, but we haven't been able to update it on the KS site (or elsewhere) yet. Also, the Dyrwood (and surrounding areas) are in the southern hemisphere of this world, so regions tend to be colder to the south and warmer to the north.

I approach the design of mechanics with a desire to create an interesting choice for the player. Standard pass/fail checks (randomized or threshold) don't typically involve any element of choice; the choice you made was part of a character building process that took place far removed from the challenge currently in front of you. In most circumstances, this means that once you're at the challenge, you either can make the check or you can't. There's not any choice to make. If you have a consumable resource that can cover a marginal shortfall, then you do have a choice. Realism is important to me, but it is of secondary importance to producing good gameplay and choices within gameplay. Realism is valuable because it can a) provide an intuitive basis for how a mechanic works and b) it can prevent the player from being distracted/annoyed by something that doesn't make sense. I keep verisimilitude in mind when designing mechanics, but I generally try to "back" the realism into the gameplay rather than trying to make good gameplay out of a realistic simulation.

Why?

That's unlikely. I would rather not tie stamina to other actions. The purpose of having the statistic separate from health is to allow short-term damage to have a dramatic impact in a single fight without causing the full weight of that impact to carry over into subsequent battles. D&D addresses this through healing resources (cure x wounds spells/potions and, in 4E, healing surges) which must be spent to buoy party members from one fight to the next. But that does mean that you either have "healer" characters or a lot of healing items/healing resources that any character can use (healing surges). Using stamina as a common, rapidly recovered resource for all characters (that is separate from health) is another way to handle it. Such a system reduces reliance on frequent use of healing resources.

Yes. In most cases, stamina lost to health lost will likely be a variable ratio, but a ratio, nonetheless. Stamina is not a "shield" for health. The simplest analogue for how such a system works is the 1992 game Darklands. In this example, watch Hans' (first) blue and red (?) bars. The thicker bars are the PCs' stamina (blue) and health (red?) and the thin ones are the stamina and health of the enemies they currently are targeting. Hans goes down with 7 health and the others take lesser amounts of stamina damage throughout the battle. At the end of the fight, Hans pops back up with 20 stamina and other party members regain portions of their stamina as well. Their health values are not recovered, so Hans and Ebhard are in precarious states.