AGX-17

Dracula. http://www.formspring.me/JESawyer/q/382586308746306996

Josh Sawyer put it best on formspring: do wheelies around the office and say you know a lot about D&D.

I like the compositions, but Tri-Ace has always used weird synth choices.

*ctrl+f* "metabolism" zero results. Here's why potions suck. Metabolism. Even if it were fast acting, something ingested through the mouth would still take 15-20 minutes to take effect at the minimum. If it's some magic wound healer, you slap it on the wound, you don't drink it. Tourniquets and bandages stop bleeding, stitches bind cuts and the body's natural healing process mends the wound. It's fine if soul powers accelerate the natural healing process, but remedies shouldn't be ingested and instantaneously effective.

Races are overdone. Use heredity like in reality, abandon the sorts of racial stereotyping that has plagued RPGs since D&D. You know how many kids in elementary school bragged about being 1/16th cherokee? A lot. Let's have people running around saying stuff like that, true or not.

It was fun the first month. Tried playing once every month since. Still boring even with a few dozen mods. At least Fallout 3 had interesting areas (might be a matter of personal taste.) DISCLAIMER: Every time I mention Fallout 3, I will note that it was terribly written.

Mass Effect is a poor model because it railroads you into either a good or evil (half the renegade options are just evil, and ME2 just backs that up by giving Shepard a "sith" look to go with Renegade play,) path without allowing for any gray area. You MUST take all Paragon options to maximize paragon points to get Paragon options in later missions, if you don't have enough points those options are locked out. It's a terrible system and should never be emulated. It was a poor system in ME1, and they kept it despite all the complaints in both 2 and 3. No subtlety and no appreciation for context or dynamism of personality there. You could be a lawfully good guy who's dealing with someone so abhorrent that you know it's for the greater good to just kill them without trial or reading their rights, you can't do that sort of thing in ME unless you take a certain number of Renegade options (many of which are full-blown evil, which flies in the face of roleplaying a good character.) If you alternate between them, you can't choose either when the time comes that they ultimately matter in big decisions. There's no purple zone on the dialogue wheel in ME. This. SO this. min/maxing and dump stats are a sin that must be cleansed. The worst part is guys like Bethesda who promote or build min/maxing into their systems (and deliberately inject it into existing systems like SPECIAL, a greater crime.) It destroys the experience, it attracts the wrong kinds of players and it's just ludicrous to suggest one man/woman can be the best at everything under the sun. Or over. One of the things I love about Obsidian is their dedication to nonviolent solutions to conflicts. There are always chickenhawks who use the hyperbolic argument that "oh but what if the enemy is a mindless zombie horde where's your precious diplomacy?" but if your antagonists are a mindless zombie horde your game isn't worth playing in the first place.

Kinuyo Yamasita. She's composer of the original Castlevania and current resident of the US. (God I hope you see this post J.E. Sawyer.) It's just such a crazy idea it might actually work. For reference, her showing her range by playing what was a fast-paced metal-inspired composition on piano: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3PJyiKxQhY

Which is what I meant by slang. Given the right context, and enough time of spreading within that context, a Word, thus a name, can change meaning - in that context. Which Monk obviously has, in the context of RPGs. Your example of Farmer, in the right context, given enough time, could change meaning in certain circumstances - if it couldn't then what you see with a fictional Monk in an RPG, versus a real Monk somewhere in actual time . . . wouldn't be possible. And it is. If it weren't you wouldn't have all the classes named Monk throughout various RPGs that have nothing to do with the actual role of various real Monks in various cultures throughout actual history. Accept it for what it is, not just in this RPG, but in many - many - RPGs? Maybe? No? Then . . . Do you want it renamed? Would it change anything? If yes . . . Okay, sure, but, again, what has really changed? The name doesn't change in any of the other RPGs that already use said name (which are quite many, out of curiosity I went digging for information, it's a very popular name for this sort of class apparently). The function of what was once the Monk in this setting won't have changed for the name change either. Like I said earlier, I'd just apply random nonsense words to each class to avoid these very sorts of, "but that actually names mean this" discussions, but not because the name Monkis inappropriate but because the name, in the context of a fantasy series, doesn't mean a thing. The writer can take any given name and apply any given meaning to it, no matter how widly out of place. Developers that use terms like Monk, Warrior, Priest and so on tend to stick with them for very practical reasons - familiarity with how they've been used in past RPGs. For example let's take the Paladin as Obsidian have presented it . . . you could apply the same issue with the name of the Monk to the name of the Paladin. Want the Paladin's name changed? It wouldn't change the intended function it it were, and it'd just irk all the people that wanted something called "Paladin" in the game. I'm not sure changing the Monk's name would really do anything positive, and the few people in this thread that might support such a change? I'm not sure they're a good measure of a community wide reaction . . . In the end I think it's better to just stop thinking of a fictional Monk in a fantasy RPG in any real world terms, as they have had a meaning in the RPG community, for a very long time now, that is obviously not realistic. It's neat to note what real world Monks do, they come in all the shapes mentioned here and more, but, it's obvious, these fictional Monks are not them. Paladin comes from the Holy Roman Empire, a semi-mythical group similar to King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table, whose stories are those of their defense of Christianity against the Muslims. Ergo, Paladin is used in an acceptable way in RPGs. The real Paladins were defenders of their faith and crusaders against opposing faiths. That fits with the archetype of the Paladin in pretty much every RPG. Changing the monk's name would do something positive: show originality. P:E doesn't have to be Dungeons & Dragons. It doesn't have to be bound by any stereotype, and that's a large part of what they had intended, was it not?

I'm fairly sure barbarian berserker isn't . . . quite what they're getting at with the Monk anyways. Maybe I'm wrong. We'll see. Regardless Monk is a pretty common term in fantasy RPGs of many types, to the extent that Monk, in reference to RPGs has taken on a bit of its own meaning. Anyone familiar with the D&D based IE games, I'm fairly sure, already have an idea of what they're getting at. An exact idea? Nah. Enough to make an educated guess, even if the turn out is diifferent that the estimation? Maybe. I just think it's a mistake to think, "Monk" in any terms but game terms, because, as I said, a Monk, in game terms, though there is variance, has some fairly consistent themes quite apart from reality. Words have meanings, but in certain contexts those meanings can be quite different. Does it have to make sense? Meh. I think of it as a brand of slang, and some words that are slang for one thing, while sharing a quite different academic presence, are fairly common place. My point is the incongruity between the name and actual role. A medieval farmer in reality isn't a scholar and a fat slovenly noble with no succession ambition isn't a barbarian berserker any more than a monk is a ripped martial artist who channels his chi into a spirit bomb Kamehameha hadouken wave to blast people into tiny bits. I'm saying that pretty much every other class has a realistic basis but the monk. In an Eastern setting, it would be fine, but even then it would be a rarity to have a warrior monk of some kind. When the Vikings invaded the British Isles, the local Christian monasteries were burned, the monks were killed and that was that. No hadoukens or judo throws. I think I'm repeating myself here, but I'm trying to grasp why it makes sense to most people that in a western-based fantasy world, a warrior is a warrior like a real warrior, a wizard is a wizard like the real-world mythology of a wizard, but a monk isn't a monk but a kung-fu master. The thing is, in the far East, martial arts and religion were seperate things for most of Chinese history. The Shaolin Temple is the exception to the rule. Wushu outside of that facility has no religious basis. They still aren't congruous, most martial artists were trained by professional martial artists running professional martial arts schools. That's why there are different "schools" of martial arts, most of which were not limited to unarmed combat. Unarmed combat has typically been either a last resort or a formalized competitive form of combat, not the preferred method of battle for the ancient Chinese. They went to war in the time of Christ wearing armor, carrying semi-automatic crossbows, iron swords, and siege weapons comparable to those of the Roman Empire (before the Roman Empire even existed,) not flowing robes and their bare hands. Most of what we think of as martial arts today were developed recently, within the past 200 years, as ways of subduing attackers non-lethally in a non-war situation. The Chinese are human just as the rest of the world, and despite the anti-western romanticism of kung fu movies, they were just as practical and pragmatic in combat as any European or Middle Eastern civilization.

The people who say "tasteful sex" in video game contexts are usually the modders who make explicit pornographic mods for bethesda games. Hmm, here's a zinger then: what would happen if the PC has a relationship with one of the companions, then a couple of levels later it is discovered the companion (or the PC) is pregnant? Deny everything and move to a new continent? Edit: On a more serious note, it is a situation that *could* be put to good use by a good writer. How it plays out and if you actually end up having to support somebody is not a given. Peter Molyneux = not a good writer. Incidentially, that is basically the theme of the game Tokyo Jungle, a sandbox game in which you play as an animal in post-apocalyptic Tokyo and the gameplay revolves around eating and mating. If you die, control shifts to one of your offspring, ad infinitum as long as you have them. Game over if you fail to reproduce.

I hope there is some form of arrogant, unsportsmanlike bragging at Tim Schafer, despite his setting the standard and making this possible in the first place.

Because the Monks are not real Monks, they're fictional, with little to no basis in reality, and meant only to fit into the lore and story of the world (which Obsidian have yet to present us) not into any reality or other setting. They're fictional, meant to fit into this fictional. Real Monks, real plate armor and reality really aren't supposed to ever come into it. The Monks in this setting pull upon their Soul, their inner energy, to enhance themselves. The lore supports the idea of effects of the superhuman variety, shown in the concept art of the Monk's fists glowing with magical energies. In the end it's not any different than the idea of a touch ranged spell in D&D, or self/party enhancing spells in D&D. If anything the D&D Wizard walking up to you and touching you to apply a spell is the more difficult sell because he doesn't have the martial training to get up close and avoid being hit, typically, as the Monk. In the sense of the superhuman enhancements, complaining about a fictional Monk punching through plate in a fictional, not at all reality based, Fantasy game is akin to complaining about Superman punching through a tank in a comic book setting. Personally I don't really like superman, but my reaction isn't to demand superman be changed. I just go read something else I do like. With the Monk the same remains true . . . I just won't play as a Monk, I'll play as a Wizard or Cipher. - I said it in another thread, and I'll repeat it now, if I ever make a fantasy game I'm just going to use randomly made up words for the names of classes, abilities and races to avoid the, "real world definition" sitgma. I realize they're fictional, but the issue for me is the choice of nomenclature. They don't say "farmer" when they want an intellectual, scholarly class or "shiftless, fat 3rd son of an Earl" when they want a barbarian berserker from remote, untamed lands. I guess it's a matter of consistency.

It's one of the most vicious ironies that the monk in fantasy games is stereotyped as a martial artist who involves himself in conflicts and deals with problems through violence. A monk is an ascetic who devotes his (the female equivalent is a nun,) humble life to prayer/meditation, scholastic pursuits like transcribing/copying old texts and doing good works (caring for the sick, poor and orphans.) Even the Shaolin monks that I'm sure inspired this stereotype are an exception to the rule. I still don't understand why they have to be magically transplanted from a far East they never left in reality to a Western-styled world to punch guys in steel plate armor.

Wait, so would this be like if you fought your way 4 floors into a 5 floor dungeon, you would get zero experience because the objective is on the 5th floor? No matter how tough the challenge? Even if your party was all martially-inclined?

RPing isn't about reward economy, it's about doing what the character would. If you know ahead of time that the vile path you're making your character take will result in an invincible goddess of judgement appearing at the end to send you to 100 hells of eternal torment, RPing is staying on that path of evil, because that's who the character is.

Well, I identify myself mostly as a Libertarian and don't think that this statement is true in the slightest. Then you're apparently an exception to the rule, because the gospel of Ayn Rand is the most-cited platform of Libertarians. To her credit, Ayn Rand hated politicians, especially the ones who drew inspiration from her. That's the only good thing I can ever say about Ayn Rand.

Sure, I could be apply some strict self-control and not reload saves when I get a bad roll, but that's missing the point. The point is that the mechanic isn't well suited for computer games, and could be replaced with something better. It was originally designed back when all you had were a handful of dice, and in some cases a deck of cards in place of random events. Yeah, I would prefer some other checks which tie in to something more tangible, like past conversations, your reputation, knowledge (visibility of map), etc... Not saying that OE will somehow write a situation where you fail a check and have to start over (that's just bad design), but the mechanic often introduces randomness in situation where there should be none. As an example, randomness on persuasion checks. What exactly does the randomness represent here? A sudden memory of something funny which breaks your pokerface? It would be more natural if your choice of words made a difference. Having a low int. or charisma could restrict you to a subset of replies, or make some options less viable (charm may not be very effective if you just soiled yourself), but I don't see why the *success* of a given option should be determined by chance. Picking locks? Yeah, randomness could definitely represent the quality of the lockpicks, making some more likely to break than others. I think Skyrim implemented it for durability, while making stats affect difficulty, which tied in to your own skills. Not saying that PE should use that mechanic, but it's something to consider. tl:dr; I want to be punished for making bad choices, not because the random number generator decided to stay on the low end of the pool. Speech and persuasion shouldn't have much, if any, randomness involved. It's a little absurd that you can be given the "correct" line but fail because of the vicissitudes of the random number generator. I'd like to see persuasion more about watching and understanding the character you're trying to persuade. Maybe chat them up occasionally without bringing up "THAT" to get a feel, and as you talk to them and exhaust other options your persuasion line gets more refined and more successful as a result. Rather than a binary succeed/fail there could be varying degrees of success or failure. Sure, I could be apply some strict self-control and not reload saves when I get a bad roll, but that's missing the point. The point is that the mechanic isn't well suited for computer games, and could be replaced with something better. It was originally designed back when all you had were a handful of dice, and in some cases a deck of cards in place of random events. The alternative is what? Player-skill-based minigames? Always succeeding when you pick some option in a dialogue? If you're at skill rank X you fail, at X+1 you succeed? Life is a crap shoot and you usually don't always know all the variables. Random seems fine to me. By that standard, you just have to hit on that hot girl at the bar repeatedly over and over and eventually she'll marry you. And there are no such things as stalkers or restraining orders. The real world is not simple "luck," genetics, context and any other number of variables are involved. Did you get enough sleep last night? Did you take a shower this morning? Are you overweight? Are you athletic? Does her biology cause her to find your facial structure attractive or ugly? Are you assertive, aggressive, shy or fidgety? Are you a good conversationalist? Are you drunk? Is she drunk? Do you have an ugly wingman to make you look better in comparison? The list goes on...

"I want the financial system to be run by people who aren't bankers" tops even "we have to tax the rich more" (and "I want an open relationship!") on the list of things that gets infinitely more complicated when you try to execute it in practice instead of just as a populist war cry. The only thing you can really do is try to regulate them and attempt to prevent "too big to fail" in some way. I mean, I know people who work in AIG, they're not worse or better than anybody else (they tend to have a dry sense of humour I appreciate, though), and they also believe that their "financial products" department was a bunch of colossal ****ups. That's the nature of Corporation. Everyone can defer responsibility and say "it wasn't my fault!" Depending on how bad the situation, the offending employees will be given a bigger bonus relative to the scale of the disaster (bigger losses = bigger bonuses,) and the CEO's golden parachute might be replaced with platinum.

I guess a minecraft or modding-kit caliber of castle design is out of the question, so... whatever they feel like giving me.

Check the latest update from JES. I will just sit here with my popcorn and watch the furious reactions.

I think a lot of the troubles about the concept come from the fact that Bioware has shifted narrative focus from story to companions, and especially companion romance, in recent years. If you take a look at the cesspit that is the Bioware forum, you'll see that it's dominated almost entirely by romance discussion, fanboy/girlism threads about a given companion, etc. The most hilarious thing about Mass Effect is that Shepard engaging in sexual relations with crew members is conduct unbecoming an officer and grounds for a court-martial.

Are you that gullible? On the one hand you've got clear evidence to go by that the Republican party really does cause your country immense damage - take a look at how the Bush administration raped your country and caused the GFC, and then take a look at how all the recent Democratic administrations have NOT done that. Seems pretty obvious that one of the parties is telling the truth and the other is lying. And the liars are the Republicans. You think bat**** crazy tea baggers are going to be any GOOD for your country?! The Democrats just are the other side of the political coin. Obama chose Wall Street goons to run the financial system right after those very goons ruined the financial system in 2007. All politicians make promises they can't keep. They're all liars by default. Some do more good than others, but ultimately they're driven by ambition and a desire for power. The people who really want to do good are at the grassroots helping others in their communities, devoting themselves to altruism (a crime unforgivable by Libertarians.) The ruling class is the ruling class, it doesn't matter which faction of the ruling class is which. It was true in ancient Egypt, ancient Rome, medieval (any fiefdom you care to name,) and it is today.

Happened to me, too, but the missed achievements popped up eventually. So the dates are all time-paradoxy.

The implication is that the school is potentially putting students at health risk, and without their prior knowledge or consent. i.e. a junior who has been attending for several years but would not have attended if they'd heard "this is the school where they have fracking on campus." Like I said, hydraulic fracturing is a new technique that needs to be studied, so there's no way to know if it's harmful at this point, but most people have an instinctive "NIMBY" reaction to industrial processes after the past hundred years of industrial/business malfeasance that forced a conservative republican administration (Richard Nixon's,) to form the Environmental Protection Agency. Private industry has a poor track record on external economic costs (giving the surrounding communities cancer, burying toxic waste under school playgrounds, dumping toxins into local waterways, etc.) if left to their own devices without regulation. There are legitimate concerns here, but it's getting a little overheated. Edit: If you think "burying toxic waste under playgrounds" is some hyperbolic Captain Planet fantasy, think again: http://en.wikipedia....wiki/Love_Canal