Monte Carlo

Different artists, that's all. They've gone for sinuous, inuit-looking dwarves, which is cool.

With respect, you fall into the trap that many of us fall into here. That's the trap of viewing your personal POV of what constitutes 'high fantasy' as fact. I am as guilty as the next guy of doing this, so I can spot it when another person does it. To me, for example, a classic Kung-Fu monk doesn't feel remotely out of place --- the fantasy I like is eclectic, eccentric, odd, even gonzo. Well, that depends. Does it mean that you want something that fits a different monk archetype? Or maybe it doesn't actually need addressing. I like the idea of a beer-brewing, bee-keeping class too. But OTOH the warrior-monk you describe is, really, a sort of paladin. Hmmm. You've couched the debate in deliberately perogative terms there. Am I in favour of a melee class that has a suite of powers based on extraordinary willpower and self-discipline? Yes I am. Does that automatically mean that I want a Bruce Lee style character? Not really. I direct you towards Diablo 3 and Icewind Dale 2. Both games had cool monk archetypes that showed how you could play around with the class (the Tibetan-Germanic mountain monks of IWD2 were really cool). Personally, I'd like to see a weapons-monk as much as an unarmed combat monk. With some unique, setting specific weapons. I'm also cool with the notion that the monks are wanderers from a faraway land, or live in combat academy / monasteries in the core game world. Cheers MC

Awwww. Diddums. LOL Really happy, thanks for asking.

Right I'm off to bed. Am looking forward to seeing if any devs have piled in overnight, but Update Fifteen really is going to take some beating.

Can I just say that atheist priests are a great idea, basically they have no powers and hang about shouting about how the gods don't exist.

Cthulu is summoning some sort of portal at the base of his tentacles... see it?

The guy is covered in TNO style tattoos and he's an old geezer to boot. I suspect much spiritual... stuff in amongst the ass-kicking. Do you see that black vapour swirling around the undead.... are those their vile, diseased souls.....

Yeah gentle bump is in order perhaps.

^ Hats off to Diablo 3, the monks are Russian for some reason.

Devs... I love the monk class but is there any chance we could have a weapon-orientated monk as well as the vanilla fist-of-fury variety? It's just that being a twink I feel like I'm missing out on all the cool items when I play a monk.

Monks are in.

They should read Update 15 and get their credit cards out.

Unleashing these folks without crappy publishers is great --- look at all the diverse content. Hall of Heroes is like IWD, Ciphers remind me of weird planescape funkiness, the NPCs are already evocative of BG and there are giant bloody dungeons. Could we *really* be seeing something for everyone?

The D is silent. And the 'Y' has a slight 'b' sound in front of it. So it sounds like 'Beerwood.' (I also do bah-mitzvahs and weddings)

Most games allow for 'melee wizard' and 'arcane howitzer' One uses combat magic to allow him to go toe to toe, the other stays at a distance and unleashes hell. The drawback for melee wizard is usually that (a) he has to develop combat skills that might be used to get more magic (b) he's never really as good an all-rounder as a pure fighter.... i.e. his strength is situational (maybe configured for crowd control over powerful single monsters for example). Of course, this system is new, but I'd imagine I'm not that far off the mark.

I think Cadegun is a priestess --- she's turning those undead with an amulet. I've commented on this stuff on the other general discussion forum but will reiterate how great all of this content is. Congratulations.

That picture of the adventuring party is really quite brilliant. It's old-skool with a twist (guns, fur-clad dwarves, wizards in leather armour). Do you think the musket-wielding character is a priest? am looking at the paladin-like feel to her armour and she's clutching some sort of symbol or pendant. A gun-toting heavily armoured priestess is cool. They are also locked in mortal combat with an undead legion, in a dungeon, whilst threatened by a mauve tentacled beastie. Seriously, forgive my fanboy tendencies but it really doesn't get much better than this. Indeed, I am pleased Obsidian. You may proceed.

I am obliged.

Would you be so kind as provide a link to what you are referring to please? Thanks.

I'm not a lawyer, but Hasbro / WotC have traditionally been very cute around their IP (and with good reason). For example, the OGL (Open Gaming Licence) always specifically excluded computer games. And the older iterations of D&D are still active IP. So if I were a Hasbro lawyer and sniffed blood in the water, I might want to do a bit of a litmus test and see how close this product sailed to the wind with regards to being a D&D-esque product to the point where there were copyright infringements. I am sure Obz has a lawyer (traditionally these issues would be managed by the publisher I suspect). Am willing to be corrected, but saying "this is just like an IE AD&D game" is like a red flag to a bull. I'd steer well clear.

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and tell you where I am: My politics are unambiguously right-of-centre, but I am a trenchant social liberal (in a classical liberal sense, i.e. libertarian). I see no contradiction in being strongly Gay-rights, while at the same time despising Cultural Marxists who feel the need to shepherd everyone into the blind alley that is identity politics. Many Gay people I know broadly share this view, and the ones that don't still respect it. So for me this is an issue of tolerance. You might not approve of another person's lifestyle. In fact, you might find it repugnant. I'd defend your right to feel that way as long as it doesn't adversely impact on others. As for freedom of speech? This forum isn't private property. If you opened Troller.com you could say what you liked and I'd take up arms to defend your right to say it. But not here. This is someone else's house. In this house they are an inclusive, tolerant bunch. I daresay my politics would get short shrift at the Obsidian Christmas party. No matter, I am allowed in their house and while I'm here I will respect their inclusivity and what they want to achieve with their work. And I think this forum would be better if we all did broadly the same, whilst engaging in the time-honored snarky banter that is de rigeur on gaming fora. Peace

I hope they don't make arbitrary judgements on what is evil or not How about pouring flaming oil onto an old people's home, just for a giggle? Call me a boring, anti-relativist authoritarian but I'd call that fairly evil.

You call yourself Troller and every post seems carefully designed to fan the flames of the kulturkampf.

Newsflash. I love D&D. I played pen and paper 3E and thought it the best version of the game. In other news, I like red wine and white wine.

The answer to that is everything. The IE was designed specifically to turn the pen & paper D&D game into a computer game iteration. Implicitly and unambiguously. Everything you see in the Infinity Engine game mechanics was shaped around the requirement to emulated 2nd Ed. AD&D. For example, are you telling me that the Planescape Fans here, who are many, give a fig for THACO and six-second combat rounds and specialist mages? No. No, that's true. Many role-playing games use tropes like strength and hit points (hardly any, interestingly, use Vancian magic). Project Eternity, I suspect, will use many of these tropes. But having read the same material you have, and the same comments from developers I'm seeing something different - that is to say a commitment to making a game with mechanics more elegantly calibrated for the computer, not shoe-horned into AD&D. So the insistence that this game be a D&D clone is strange. Not to mention possibly legally hazardous from an IP perspective. Metiman is being irrational in how he frames his argument and interprets views at variance with his own. He has fixed his interpretation on a very narrow perception of what is known. So I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that if he feels so strongly about it that he doesn't waste his time.