Merin

I see it's tempest in a teapot time again. If the lack of vancian and the inclusion of any kind of cool down is the breaking point for you... awesome You want to let everyone know it's a "bad decision?" righteous Threatening to not pledge, or to pull your pledge? Take your ball and go home, then. Plenty of us here to fill the void. You won't be missed.

Not just that part. Every part of the rant that ignores what the interlocutor is saying. Completely misrepresenting not only the opponents arguments, but their own as well. If mikayel can't admit error in using you as an example, can't admit that misquoting me is wrong, there's no point in engaging.

This might help a little to see where Josh's mind is at... if only a little - http://ingenre.com/2012/09/an-interview-with-josh-sawyer/

I never said he was, go back and read my original post if you are incapable of recalling what I said. Okay - Tuco isn't using Bard's and Sorcerers to refute D&D style casting. For one, he's only talking about the "low flexibility on the memorization system in D&D" which isn't all of D&D casting. For two, he was contrasting that (Vancian) against a different game system entirely. Your wrong statement is wrong. People are discussing Vancian and cool downs. Not Bards vs. Wizards. And I think, as Tuco himself says to you later, the people who dislike "fire and forget" know that sorcerers and bards didn't use that system. What the hell does this have to do with anything? "D&D style casting" It's clear he doesn't understand the nature of the argument he's in because he doesn't even know the origin, common use-of, or name of the system he's proposing. Aside from that, my biggest complaint wasn't that it was an argument out of ignorance, but that it was an argument out of ignorance THAT KEPT GETTING REPEATED for over a dozen pages. Tuco is one example, there are plenty of other examples in this thread alone -- I'm not going to reread a 20 page thread to pick out two names to give to you. Get over yourself. First off - wow. The italicized part is just... Wow. Secondly, it's not repeated over a dozen pages. He tells you himself that he knows what he didn't like - because he didn't know the Vancian term has zero bearing on the validity of his opinion or taste. He clearly stated he doesn't like "fire and forget" "Vancian" "low flexibility on the memorization system in D&D." It's clear. You are digging a deeper hole, and now you've gone so far as to start saying that your one example didn't mean what he, himself, says he meant, and that he doesn't know what he says he does know. You can't admit you were wrong. He says he knows of the things you said he didn't know. And then you have to try and pretzel twist your argument into... well... the Wow part. As for plenty of examples and trusting you - I trust you have your proof you won't show me as much as I trust Mitt Romney about his tax returns. Both of you have said one thing is true and have been proven false about it already, so trust is gone. Hard proof, not your word. And - I've had far better people than you tell me to "get over myself." Straw man. What I said was - So, yeah, straw man is full of straw. ------------------------- On a lighter note MIng Ming is right!

And way to zone in on something unimportant and misinterpret it. Yes, you caught me. The crux of my whole argument was on BG2 not being in that picture. The entirety of my post is now wrong! The entirety of your post, which is what? That we shouldn't expect a game inspired by D&D games to share their mechanics because those mechanics aren't specifically mentioned in a one-paragraph introductory pitch? Not precisely, but I'm going to hazard a guess that this is as close as I'm going to get with you... so yeah, sure. Context is important. So is language. They didn't say Dungeons & Dragons, nor mention rules mechanics. All they said was - "Project Eternity is an isometric, party-based computer RPG set in a new fantasy world developed by Obsidian Entertainment" (yep, no D&D mentioned in there) and "Project Eternity will take the central hero, memorable companions and the epic exploration of Baldur’s Gate, add in the fun, intense combat and dungeon diving of Icewind Dale, and tie it all together with the emotional writing and mature thematic exploration of Planescape: Torment." Nothing bolded implies D&D - and that's the context of what they were offering. "Combat uses a tactical real-time with pause system - positioning your party and coordinating attacks and abilities is one of the keys to success. The world map is dotted with unique locations and wilderness ripe for exploration and questing. You’ll create your own character and collect companions along the way – taking him or her not just through this story, but, with your continued support, through future adventures. You will engage in dialogues that are deep, and offer many choices to determine the fate of you and your party. …and you'll experience a story that explores mature themes and presents you with complex, difficult choices to shape how your story plays out." Which, again, doesn't say D&D anywhere. "We are excited at this chance to create something new, yet reminiscent of those great games and we want you to be a part of it as well." Original but with the feel of. No mention of D&D. This is like "spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate" giving you DA:O, or "spiritual successor to Wasteland" giving your Fallout. Different mechanics, similar feels in game design theory. If you insist on reading "D&D" into the project, that is your prerogative. But I promise you - you are going to be very disappointed.

A little over two weeks into the planning, my friend. They do not have exact details to give you yet. Nor, would I argue, should they give out fine details... especially not until they have gotten a lot of work under their belts and know what is going to work and what is going to stay in the game. Why have drama over something that might end up getting replaced by something else... just to cause more drama.

And way to zone in on something unimportant and misinterpret it. Yes, you caught me. The crux of my whole argument was on BG2 not being in that picture. The entirety of my post is now wrong! Or...

i don't want to support this game based on nostalgia, I want to support it because I expect it to be good. Because the games they are taking as inspiration were good. Hell, they still are good today, in fact. I donated based on this - "Project Eternity will take the central hero, memorable companions and the epic exploration of Baldur’s Gate, add in the fun, intense combat and dungeon diving of Icewind Dale, and tie it all together with the emotional writing and mature thematic exploration of Planescape: Torment. Combat uses a tactical real-time with pause system - positioning your party and coordinating attacks and abilities is one of the keys to success. The world map is dotted with unique locations and wilderness ripe for exploration and questing. You’ll create your own character and collect companions along the way – taking him or her not just through this story, but, with your continued support, through future adventures. You will engage in dialogues that are deep, and offer many choices to determine the fate of you and your party. …and you'll experience a story that explores mature themes and presents you with complex, difficult choices to shape how your story plays out." When that ceases to be true I might reconsider my donation. Nowhere in there, however, did I see "Vancian" or "no cool downs" mentioned. You read into that what you wanted to read into that. If you saw "Vancian" or "D&D", well, that's your interpretation but it's not stated as such. Just like BG2 and IWD2 are never mentioned on that front page as inspiration. Maybe you can see them as being implied, but they aren't mentioned specifically. What is: Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Planescape: Torment. And they aren't in this picture on the front page - Now, later, they DO mention all the stuff they've worked on in the "who is Obsidian" section, but if you are looking there for what PE will be like, couldn't we expect 2D cut-outs (South Park), newspapers and steamworks (Arcanum), and FPS mechanics (New Vegas) as well? Me, for example - I want to be able to create my whole party myself. They mention IWD specifically, should I be expecting that? Or pull my donation because "it was implied" even though (I'd argue) it actually seems to imply the opposite? No. If that's the breaking point for me, I shouldn't have donated to start. ---- If you like the part I quoted and donated based on that, and you feel that it was a lie in there... fine, pull your pledge. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

I didn’t mis-speak, you just didn’t understand. I already gave you two examples, if you want an obvious one then check page 15 of this thread where Tuco Benedicto refers to Chaos Chronicles’ system of casting (Chaos Chronicles uses 3.5 rules and the magic is basically Sorcerer or Favored Soul spell-points-per-level). Here, I'll even give you a direct link: http://forums.obsidi...80#entry1217563 Well, it seems to me he knows exactly what he doesn't want - He's describing Vancian vs. non-Vancian. He doesn't say "I fiercely dislike all magic in D&D." He said "I fiercely dislike the low flexibility on the memorization system in D&D." Is he talking about 4E? Is he talking about D&D Next? Are you? The are two points being debated - Vancian ("fire and forget") and cool downs. You gave me one example that is exactly what I've been saying, and none showing using D&D against D&D. I see another game system's magic mechanics being contrasted to Vancian style mechanics. It's clear what he wants and doesn't want. The fact that Sorcerers in BG2, IWD2, a couple other classes in 3E, and ALL OF 4E, isn't Vancian is irrelevant.

The Endless Paths of Od Nua That's how you do it. Well played.

Awesome update is awesome. Now that's how you do it!

Taking the bait only so much as taking a second to point it out. Ah, bait. Uhm... we as in "the whole thread" or we as in "you and me?" Because I wasn't talking about "how to make a system that works" - I was talking about past experiences. Follow - Ah, yes, Josh starts on about thieves in IE games based on AD&D 2nd ED... and me relating my experiences. I only need the one case - the case that exists. Infinity Engine games. And pretty much any other RPG game with rogues short of, I think, Bard's Tale. (snipped out many more personal anecdotes) You relating some of your experiences with thieves, and then saying what I did in those IE games can only work in certain cases. And I respond that I only need one case - the fact that it happened when I did it. It is like saying "what are the odds that a giraffe would evolve?" and answering "100% - because they did." And then I share more stories of my experiences playing D&D (or D&D clones, like Pathfinder) and the lack of thieves, and then I branch on a tangent about munchkins.... Anyway... Wrong - you need a case where it is enabled. Because if you can't heal, you can't use that tactic. If the trap immediately kill a cahracte,r oyu can't send them in either (unless you can spam ressurection, whihc you generally can't) But... I could use that tactic. I'm not quite sure what you are telling me I'm wrong on. I did it all the time. All. The. Time. So it worked in 100% of my experiences. Here you told me that I was wrong, that my saying that it could happen because it did happen is not correct because of.... you know, I really don't know what you are trying to tell me I am wrong about. I think we are holding two separate conversations at this point. That's probably the problem. And mind you there were a few insta-kill traps in BG. I specificly remember one in spellhold. The walls turned anyone passing trough into chunky bits. Huh. I can't say I remember that... but if I did pass through a wall that exploded me in ways I couldn't rez, I probably did exactly what I did everytime the game insta-killed me with spells and magic that you couldn't rez from... reloaded. And, I'm sure everyone agrees, there were far more "insta-kill and no rez" spells than there were traps. But there was healing in BG2. And if I really wanted to take the time, I could have cast "Find Traps" and probably made my "trap-springer" as immune to potential trap damage as possible then sprung it. Or avoided it - I'm sure whatever was behind the insta-kill trap wasn't "win the game / finish the story" necessary. But BG2 was quite popular, I'll give you that one easily. --- In any case, I think I'm comprehending you just fine - but I think you ignored what my point was for your own. And it is absolutely fine to make your own point, conversations shouldn't be one-sided... but this kind of all started when you said I was "wrong" on my point. Which, empiraclly, I cannot be. My tactics worked for me in the instances where they worked for me, and my evidence of such is that they worked for me. That is true regardless of what tweaks or fixes you propose to fix my ability to have those tactics work. Again, I think we splintered into separate conversations. To try and clear that up - YES, you can fix the system. And, YES, the parameters needed to be as they were for me to have succeeded with no rogue as I did. But also - the giraffe exists as it does.

But this is a matter of opinion, and one we can easily disagree on. Is that a bug or a feature of AD&D? You say feature, I say bug.

When I said "Project Eternity speaks about Infinity Engine games, refering back to specifically Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and Planescape: Torment." I clearly meant what they keep saying, as on the KS front page here - I read that to say Baldur's Gate 1, Icewind Dale 1 and Planescape: Torment. Not Baldur's Gate the series, Icewind Dale the series, etc. BG 2 still used 2nd ED rules, regardless of Sorcerer in there ... IWD 2 did use a hybrid that moved most of the way into 3.0, sure. But this is a digression. The thread is about Vancian and cool downs (or alternatives to such). And this "debate" on what you said is going to long. I've said my part. You, at best, misspoke. Unless you can point to the "confusion" you are speaking of, I think it rests solely with you. Anyway, I'll stop derailing on this.

I never mentioned Vancian casting in that post -- I mentioned people railing against D&D style casting by using D&D rules, unknowingly, as a refuting point. For one - you said "if you don't know what the systems are or if you are only familiar with 2-3 games' style of magic systems" I think they know what they are talking about, and you might not. Project Eternity speaks about Infinity Engine games, refering back to specifically Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and Planescape: Torment. All use 2nd ED D&D - no Sorcerers nor Bards with non-Vancian casting, as you refer to. It is possible a lot of these people haven't played D&D outside of Infinity Engine games... but, regardless, when you brought up "bards and sorcerers" as being non-Vancian (yes, you didn't use the word Vancian, but you did say - "people keep using D&D Sorcerer and Bard casting rules in an effort to refute "D&D style casting"", and that's using non-Vancian against Vancian (memorization, "fire and forget")) you are referring to only 1 of 4 versions of D&D. 25 % of all versions of D&D. 1st, 2nd and most of 3rd had Vancian as the Arcane magic system. They get what they are arguing against... you maybe don't? Just from the first five pages of the thread, below, are quotes with "Vancian" being what they don't like, sometimes with relevant extra stuff left in the quote to show they are against "fire and forget" as I'm short-handing it. -- ------ To be even clearer, here's me and Enclave discussing this very thing earlier... I can't speak exactly on 3rd ED, but in general... yes. Sorcerers don't memorize - they have fewer spells, but they have "spell points" - or so many spells of each level they can cast per day. So if they have Magic Missile, Burning Hands and Sleep for 1st level spells and they can cast 4 1st level spells per day (4 level 1 spell points, as far as I'm concerned), they can cast 4 Magic Missiles or 4 Burning Hands or any combination of those 3 spells. Better. Not great, but better. I won't. You are mocking people for attacking D&D style casting with D&D style casting... which I'm not going to quite call a straw man here, I just think you might be confused. Hence the "pot, meet kettle" comment about "not knowing what systems" are being discussed. People aren't for or against D&D magic specifically... they are for or against Vancian magic. Or cooldowns. That's what the poll and thread discussion are almost entirely about. Not "all D&D magic." But I'll concede the point if you prove me wrong on it. Find me, oh, three... find me three people on here who say a version of the paraphrase - "I hate D&D magic, they should use (description of 3E sorcerer and bard magic) instead of what D&D does!" Three will convince me that you had actual people and not a straw man you were arguing against. Three quotes and I apologize. Heck, two and I'll concede you may have just exaggerated the problem.

Absolutely.

But game gives player an option to go solo. Then if your main character is caster, then you get bored. If it is as bad as you are somewhat hinting at, you won't be bored... you'll be dead.

I'm hoping for a big surprise as opposed to more of the same. But I'm fairly confident that whatever it is will be good.

They are against Vancian memorization "fire and forget" spell systems... which D&D 3E's Bard and Sorcerer are NOT Vancian. Pot, meet kettle.

Wrong - you need a case where it is enabled. Because if you can't heal, you can't use that tactic. If the trap immediately kill a cahracte,r oyu can't send them in either (unless you can spam ressurection, whihc you generally can't) But... I could use that tactic. I'm not quite sure what you are telling me I'm wrong on. I did it all the time. All. The. Time. So it worked in 100% of my experiences. Giving me hypotheticals on how it could have NOT worked is irrelevant to my point - in Infinity Engine games, rogues were excessively unnecessary. You took them because you WANTED them, not because you at all needed them. ---- Even, for a second, ignoring the fact that you are telling me that my example was wrong even though it happened... ... and going with your argument about insta-kill traps and no healing ... What game is that? How popular is it?

And this is the biggest problem with every edition of D&D save the much maligned 4E (and, hopefully, Next - which, while nothing like 4E, has the devs constantly talking about this very point) - every class should stand alone as fun, competent, competitive and playable in it's own right... especially in a game as combat-heavy as D&D... and D&D never really managed to get this right, save one time (almost - not perfectly) and that's when they get slapped silly by a loud minority of their "fans." IF (big if here) a game is going to have combat be, at most, 33% of the content... then lack of balance in the classes is not really that big an issue. Or if you can avoid 67% of the combat fairly easily with a combat-poor build. But if combat is going to be the second biggest thing that a player is going to do in the cRPG (the biggest is almost always WALKING from place to place... grrr) then that is where the rules have to be focused. If Obsidian comes out and says that combat will always be a minority of the player's actions in the game (discounting travel time!) then I say screw class balance for Project Eternity. Who wants to take bets that they are going to say that? I'll give you good odds.

In IE games rogues were so unnecessary that I almost never had one. Locked doors? Knock spell. Traps? Run through them and heal the damage. That's how I played all my D&D cRPGs. Magic really made rogues absolutely unnecessary. That's because you didn't have Nakia Nightshadow. You was fantastic. Could sneak under things normal folk couldn't. Had high charisma so was good for talking. Scouted. Lead enemies into ambushes. Did a lot more than locks and traps. Never became a pickpocket either. She was and is my favorite character ever. Played forum PbP RPGs with her. You just never had the right build. I'm also ridiculously biased. I don't like playing bad guys or evil guys or even criminal guys. So games like GTA or Assassin's Creed are a lost cause on me. I've only ever played a "rogue" in 4E for tabletop, and that was a swashbuckling charismatic rake - no stealing, no lock picking, no stealthing, no back stabbing (unless, you know, it was flanking an opponent in combat)... so Rogue was something of a misnomer. So everyone should take my "rogues are useless" with a grain of salt. Again, this is even more why DA:O deserves praise from me for getting me to play a rogue (and an elf to boot) for my first time through the game!

I only need the one case - the case that exists. Infinity Engine games. And pretty much any other RPG game with rogues short of, I think, Bard's Tale. Traps have been boring to me until DA:O, where I played the rogue for other reasons and suddenly I saw I was getting XP for disarming all the traps in my way. Was that in other games? Sure. But the rogue was being played for story reasons, so I had the rogue as my MC, and suddenly I paid attention to the traps in my way. After that, replays of DA:O? I ran through traps. It's quicker and more fun for me. Now the Bard's Tale series... there having a rogue was worthwhile to me. It was turn-based, and when you found a chest the options popped up in front of you and it took no more time or effort to hit the D button than the O button. Also - Thief of Fate. (ancient spoiler) You kinda needed that thief to win. --- In over twenty years of table-top role-playing, I've rarely seen rogues and rarely seen traps. I guess somehow the groups I played in just dodge the issue. And then I joined a group playing Pathfinder, people I hadn't played with before. And I finally saw the group who did that sort of stuff... well, strike that - I had played with most of them once before, my last attempt to enjoy 3E. The 6 hour session of the game consisted almost entirely of setting up camp, rotating through the watches and dealing with random encounters on our journey, and then rolling on random tables for treasure after the encounters. I had NEVER played D&D like that before, and that was my only session of that game. Back to the Pathfinder game - the guy running the game was great, so I enjoyed it despite the rules overall. But there was a guy playing the traditional rogue... and man did moving through locations become a slog with everyroom, every door, being checked for traps. SLOOOOOOOOW. As an aside - the group was full of munchkin gamers, the kind who spend a good portion of the game explaining to you why their character could kill your character? Well, I played a fun RP build that was NOT combat effective (I had poisons and fire bombs, and half the stuff we faced was immune to poison and fire so...) but, after nearly a year of playing, I was the only player who's character hadn't died. I learned something new about munchkin'ers - they have deathwishes. Whether that was due to wanting to make EvEn MoRe pOwErFuL characters or what, I don't know... but the rogue player? He was on his third rogue before I moved.

An example of another successful KS game campaign - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/355932838/crowdsourced-hardcore-tactical-shooter Wait, that one was poorly managed at the start, and barely crossed it's goal-line. Plus is was only raising enough money to start the project and they were then going to find traditional backing. But, well, they raised their goal. So, yeah, successful. This next campaign isn't over yet, but even if they lose nearly half their pledges between now and then (I don't think anything like that has happened on KS) it will be successful - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity. Successful because, yes, they've out-raised their goal and only needed to make their goal. .... Why is this thread still going?

Early development, yep. But I'd be careful about that "majority of their target audience" claim. It's really hard to know that kind of thing. It may be true, it may not. Vancian wasn't universally loved by role-players in the past, let alone today. And cool downs are not universally hated. All we have with a thread like this are the vocal people speaking on their preferences. You can't take around 300 votes and treat it as a scientific sampling of the 50k backers... not how these polls are done, especially. Besides, if you WERE to use this poll for anything along those lines - the majority voted against Vancian. But, again, it really doesn't mean much at all either way.