Monte Carlo

My understanding is that the virus was introduced as an in-game disease effect by the developers. I might well be wrong, but I don't think it was sabotage. If it were then the person who did it is, to put it bluntly, an idiot. Cheers MC

No, we make good villains because we ruled the world for several hundred years with a rod of iron. Mwuhaahahahaaaa!!! (etc, in a very deep resonant British accent) I think Ray Winstone (i.e. King Arthur & Sexy Beast) who has a gravelly London accent can do a good villain. Americans seem to prefer upper-class British villains, though. I digress. Please, back on topic. Why are NWN2 modules, so far, so meh? Cheers MC

So, like, some d00d releases a virus into WoW and all of a sudden Ivy League boffins are using it to model the theoretical spread of real-life diseases! This sounds like the lamest excuse ever to play 'puter games at work, but whatever. Enjoy: BBC audio story

It has taken Monte Carlo many, many levels to achieve twenty ranks in Build Conservatory with the Attach blinds! and Completely level decked exterior! feats. To craft this item costs about twenty grand in his own money, which is a hell of a lot of sub-prime soiled dollars, btw. Ignoring the chaos around him he finally begins to build and rolls a '1'. He pulls out his +2 Browning and shoots himself.

Thanks. It's not that I'm a total philistine. Quality writing over quantity is good enough for me, and I know that brevity is challenging and takes good writing skills, a bit like playing the piano badly.

It's interesting, because of course (as Gromnir points out) D&D is indeed a squad-level combat game. Albeit a not very realistic one, it's actually more like a superhero game. Nothing wrong with that, I like it lots (for example, The Temple of Elemental Evil might have been dreck in lots of ways, but the combat engine was beautiful and shows what fun a pen & paper ruleset can be on the 'puter if shown a bit of love). OTOH, the RPGs that were more "realistic" were never as popular but the games mechanic actually forced less combat-intensive gameplay that could be just as interesting. I still remember a game of Traveller I played over twenty years ago that was fantastic, just like a console stealth game as our characters infiltrated a computer-controlled space station. If you've never played it, Traveller combat was very "You get shot with a plasma rifle. (rolls dice) You are dead." So when combat did happen, you just did everything in your power to ensure that when it did it was on your terms and you had the best chance of winning. Just like in the R/W. RuneQuest was also a bit like that, where even a powerful character could routinely lose body parts in melee and die. It made people think, plan and (yes) run away. None of these games survived or prospered, really. Certainly not on the PC. D&D did. The success of a brand only takes it so far. As for Visceris suggesting he never fudges dices rolls. Ha ha ha. Cheers MC

Given that I now have to wear bionic eyes specially grown in a lab after reading all that text in Planescape, can somebody guarantee me that I'm not going to wear these ones out on this game. I know it's heresy on this forum (PST fanbois are as passionate as the Fallout variety, but ridiculously mellow), but the text in Planescape made my eyes bleed. It was too much of an interactive novel for me, TBH. So, bigger text size options please. And if the text takes up 50% of the GUI that's a clue that you've written too much. Cheers MC

It's strange how I keep coming back to the same old games. NWN2 and Medieval TW2 are the newest games I own and I'm down to buying one or two games a year. The XPs for Medieval and NWN2 will be my 2007/8 buys I'll imagine. Currently playing (very) evil BG2 party "IWD" style (i.e. a multiplayer game of five custom-built characters cut-and-pasted into my SP file), core rules but strictly take-the-first roll for stats (even with borderline min/maxing my character's main stat is 17) I think I've got just about every mod EVAR installed, including the cheesy one that automatically adds the BG1 Tome bonuses by default and the sub-races mod. Trying to get my reputation into the minuses. The party, in case anybody cares, is Tiefling fighter (yes, a vanilla fighter), Dwarven Barbarian, Human Cleric of Talos, Elven Ftr/Thf and a Human Sorceror (who I've allowed to use a crossbow as per 3E roolz). Mostly chaotic evil. They all have gimpy weapon profs, i.e. spears, clubs, slings for some reason, except for the Tiefling who I've allowed to go down the 2H sword and halberd route. Not strong enough for a longbow (yet!). The dwarf I've envisaged as sort of tribesman thus clubs, spears and slings. The fighter/thief is all about crossbows, darts and daggers.

^ By the way, as I hit enter I remembered the farrago that was running 1st Edition AD&D in tandem with the "New" Basic / Expert boxed sets and modules. What was that all about? Those had races as classes (I'm a third level elf) and only three alignments (neutral, chaotic and lawful) etc. If there had been the internet back then we'd have been having exactly the same argument again, except in the early to mid eighties! Cheers MC

When 2nd Edition went to 3rd Edition there was, IIRC, completely free conversion material available if that was your thing. The sky didn't fall in. Anyway, D&D has always been for collector / obsessive multi-classers. That's how WoTC and TSR before them made a buck. I've not got the spare time for pen & paper gaming anymore, but when I was we all played home-brewed house rule variants that looked very little like the core rules anyway. I suspect I'm far from alone there. Last game I played was part 3E with a percentile-based combat system like RuneQuest. We used the sourcebooks for ideas rather than rules. Again, I suspect I'm far from alone there, either. Just out of interest, what does this mean for the OGL? Is 4E identifiably D20 enough for the old rules to apply or will all the D20 / OGL RPGs have to go 4E too? Will OGL material now be licenced for 'puter games? Cheers, MC

So who's making what mod then? What do I have to look forward to? Personally, I wonder if you could make a Forgotten Realms version of Jagged Alliance with the NWN2 engine. That would be rather cool, I like knocking the 4th wall down. Cheers MC

I think that the IWD2 backstory idea was underrated. I liked the reverse ethnic-cleansing parable, it was original for a fantasy CRPG and worked as a generic back-drop for a game not centred on a single player character. The efficacy of the writing / story to what the game seeks to achieve is the point. Oh, and of course, most of the dialogue of JA2. Priceless.

^ That all makes sense, thanks for answering my question and good luck with your modding. Cheers MC

I like NWN2 as much as I disliked NWN. One of the thing that, for me, redeemed NWN a bit was of course the mods. Blessed are the modders as I am too technically inept and busy to make one myself (although I did successfully use the toolset to make a quick-and-dirty version of Monte Cookes famous "The Orc and the Pie"). So why, when NWN2 looks so nice and is all tidied-up, are there so few decent mods? I'm comparing this to NWN, remember. Has the novelty worn off? There are some pretty fun trainers / character editors, The Keep on The Borderlands (huzzah!) and the pretty cool PoR mod (only problem is that it is so dark, I'm having to turn the contrast up and it looks odd). I know nothing about D&D online, I'm assuming it's just another MMORPG, has this made an impact on the NWN modding community? Cheers, MC

^ In which case I take it back.

I can't understand why someone gets called a jerk for writing an analysis of role-playing games as a genre on a website that is so famously serious about, er, role-playing games? It's like bashing someone for trying to make friends on MySpace. Role-Player is a nice guy who cares about the subject. Play the ball, not the man. Personally I like character sheets and journals and micromanaging, but that's because I'm the Wargamer on the Wrong Forum . Cheers, MC

Will probably reinstall Fallout: Tactics this weekend. It's my favourite FO game. I know, I'm going to hell Only problem I'm finding with BGTuTu is that I've got a too hi-powered party. Am slashing my way through the game very easily (in Baldur's Gate, already 8th level). Might have to solo it instead.

I wrote a short D20 RPG using the popular Seattle-based situation comedy "Frasier" as a campaign setting. It was, even if I say so myself, rather good. The mores of the urban haute borgouisie are oft-neglected in computer gaming and I would happily hand over the material so that Obsidian could crack on and convert it to the PC. Without sounding too much like Niles, I suspect that console gamers might find the setting a tad dry for their twitchy, giant-fighting robots tastes. Toodle pip, MC

If TOEE actually worked, that would be a brilliant idea!

JA2 is just ingeniously designed. You have a not-too-taxing and fun resource / npc management overlay and a really good T/B tactical combat game. You can send your enemies wreaths in anticipation of their violent death. You have a bickering cast of amusing npcs. With the right add-on you can have a Barratt Light Fifty AM rifle and headshot bad guys with it. You can marry off an annoying female NPC to a tribe straight out of "deliverance." If you feel like it, you can check an option called "Sci Fi" which makes some really wacky things happen. And, yes, there is an ice cream van. Lastly, the whole game feels like a tongue-in-cheek homage to straight-to-video Dolph Lundgren action movies. It's all too cool. Which is why, despite it being eight years old, I'm still playing it. Cheers MC

No, is it any good?

Hello. Does anybody else remember a time when developers were always making the next "RTS with RPG elements" game? It was for some reason the holy grail for a bit, which was a shame because it always ended up with a below par Warcraft / Starcraft clone with lame "hero units" (yawn). Having cogitated on this matter for, um, years and being totally out of touch with the realities of cross-platform development I would like to see the following game (excuse my inchoate pitch): A tactical-level game with the elegance of the Total War series married with a RPG overlay / team management model a la Jagged Alliance (i.e. you use resources to build teams to achieve objectives, the RPG element coming from managing NPC groups who may or may not be antipathetic to one another). The tactical level outcomes informs the strategic / resource overlay on a number of levels (amount of money / access to units / storylines / objectives). This is all set in a low-magic, crunchy fantasy setting that manages not to take itself too seriously. So, one minute you are playing a fun Fallout Tactics style combat game with multiple teams taking on different missions then zooming in and out of the strategic map and managing the big picture too. This would be sheer gaming bliss for this grognard. Am still playing modded JA:2 for this very reason Cheers, MC

^ Hello mate, the boy looks well! Cheers, MC

* Medieval Total War 2 (with the Deus Lo Vult mod) * Jagged Alliance 2 * NWN2 (Keep on the Borderlands mod) * Close Combat: Cross of Iron (re-packaged, mod-friendly CC3, basically) Sadly, the NWN2 modding scene is far less prodigious than NWN. Why is this? I am no longer a busy forum-goer, R/W reduces me to lurking nowadays. Cheers, MC

Would just like to thank Taks for the V-Synch advice. I'm running a Radeon card, was getting some lag on the highest resolution with high quality textures. By switching off my V-Synch and lowering the shadow quality the game is now running beautifully on these highest settings, and I'm currently in a dungeon fighting hordes of baddies with loads of effects going off. Cheers!