Merin

Well, there's the big case of the Vampire Diaries author who, after a couple decades of writing the books, got sacked by her publisher who kept the rights to the property. http://thewertzone.blogspot.com/2011/02/vampire-diaries-author-fired.html And you have anyone not savvy enough to realize that "work-for-hire" means that you don't own anything you create. Even outside of that, you have publishers dictating to authors that they have to include or delete stuff, that they have to go on book tours, and so on. I'd rather not have the extra publicity and marketing and instead have more control over my work and my life.

Well, speaking as an indie author, I'd be extremely wary of any publishing deal. It would have to be for one project, leaving me more rights than the publisher is probably willing to leave me, and then I'd consider it. Anything more restrictive than that (them getting all the rights to the property, me being contractually obligated to write more for them, etc.) and it's a no go. I'm happy with Amazon and CreateSpace.

I voted yes on all three. I really like romance in cRPGs, just like I like combat, dialog choices, deep stories, making my own party, having companions, being able to craft my own spells and items... the list is long. I don't NEED any one particular item in that list. If one gets sacrificed (or many, usually) for the game's sake, I'm good with that if the game ends up better overall. Romance isn't a must in an RPG for me, but so isn't combat or magic or loot or stats or... you get my point. I'd like it, but if it doesn't fit the game's focus, don't shoe-horn it in.

Hey! I like bards. No being mean to them (I particularly loved bards in IWD...that regen song was one of my favorite abilities ever.) And I love the Bard's Tale series, so... yeah, I'm just playing with how there's a sizable sub-set of D&D'ers out there who love to mock bards.

Well, it was back in February when I posted this - http://ingenre.com/2012/02/a-look-at-kickstarter-is-it-too-early-to-say-revolution/ and in March I added to the thoughts with this - http://ingenre.com/2012/03/a-look-at-fully-funded-whats-next-for-wasteland-2-and-games-in-general/ and a last one of some note on this would be here, where I'm quoting Brian Fargo talking about how this IS a revolution - http://ingenre.com/2012/03/news-round-up-all-kickstarter/ Kickstarter is a higher point in what I've been thinking about a change in direct to consumer marketing from creators to fans since, oh, like 1996-7 when I started to get a feel for what the world wide web was going to make possible. Obsidian and Project Eternity are not the start of a revolution, but one more symptom of an already ongoing one.

Well, I did say this earlier -

Lots of others from me. I'd like to see Obsidian come up with a unique magic system. I'd like magic to not necessarily prelude a "caster" class. So how effective magic is in combat would be more of a class to class balancing system than an overall rule. And no spell combos. It's gimmicky and I never felt like it really offered anything but "limitations" on what spells I should choose for characters.

This isn't a la carte.

I don't know about your clerics, but mine call lots of lightning and cast lots of glyphs, not even mentioning druids, or the evil necromancer ones... I think if you have clerics, their spell selections should reflect their deity. The point is over there. I think you missed it. I'm saying that I, personally, don't think PE will be (nor should be) based on the D&D model. As in "clerics" having "divine" spells. They have said that this is all based on soul, and you draw power from your soul. The magic system of this world is almost certainly coming from internal energies, not external (i.e. gods)... and don't we have enough clues that "gods" have disappeared (sorta like Dragonlance)? But, again, the point is D&D is the game that set the trope of "clerics gain power from their gods, wizards from arcane energies" and, yes, D&D also established that Divine heals and Arcane doesn't. If you ignore 4E and how even non-magic (i.e. Warlords) could heal. And bards, I suppose. But bards are fruity.

I don't know about the others, but IIRC Wasteland 2 is supposed to be on par with Wasteland in length, and that wasn't a short game. The whole idea with these retro projects is that the devs are supposed to be saving money by not targeting "AAA" level production values when it comes to things like 3d environments and full voice for every character. As I said, I don't expect the game to be on par with the truly monster length games in the IE series, but the shorter length games were in the 40-50 hour range as I recall, so that's where my expectations are coming from. Some of the budget tiers should add to that. I just played Wasteland again maybe three-four months ago. I think I clocked eight to ten hours. No, I didn't wander around places, I kinda stuck to exploring set piece locations and following my missions, I could have killed time forever truly - but the game's end came about ten hours of play after I started, at most. Wasteland 2 will also be open world, so you could waste as much time as you want - just like a Bethesda game! If you think because you clock fifty hours gathering ingredients and making potions in Oblivion added 50 hours to the game play, that's your call. But I think most people here are talking neither rushing nor delving, but a "normal" or median playthrough. People finished DA:O in twenty-five hours, others took well over a hundred. The consensus for it came down to being about 40-50. How Project Eternity is built will decide how much wandering and screwing around you can do, but as for story content? You aren't going to see (until we reach higher tiers) more than 20 hours. You just aren't.

On the "healing is for clerics, damage is for mages", that's a D&D trope that some other games copied from D&D. It doesn't have any real precedence in fantasy fiction prior to D&D, and it certainly isn't a staple of fantasy. I'd rather have "removed gods" - deities that aren't proven to exist - so faith has meaning. I have no problem with different types or sources of "magic" but I do think the "arcane vs. divine" should stay with D&D and, since Obsidian isn't making Project Eternity a D&D game, Project Eternity shouldn't use that dynamic. My two cents on that.

Well, I don't think I'm very disillusioned (about BioWare, sure, but that's a different kettle of fish)... and I'm fairly certain I've played every Infinity Engine game, most multiple times (I never finished BG1 nor Planescape: Torment, mind you, but BG2, IWD 1 & 2 all got multiple playthroughs.) You aren't really taking money, scale, or resources into consideration. I can't speak to The Witcher - haven't finished it, but I know it used the Aurora Engine from BioWare and, outside of (yes, I'm sure this took effort) doing the backgrounds themselves instead of using tiles, they basically made a heavily-modified module for Neverwinter Nights, based on a novel. I've not clear concept of what that took, so I can't speak to the specific example. But this won't be some AAA release. This is a small project for a niche market. Lower your expectations about the scope, at least until Obsidian tells us otherwise. DFA, Wasteland 2, Shadowrun Returns, Banner Saga - these are all going to be "short" games compared to AAA, publisher backed releases. I'm fairly certain each one of those have said as much.

I'm an extremely slow player (I waste huge amounts of time fiddling with my inventory, amongst other things), so 50 hours for someone like me would be probably 25 for a normal gamer. The game will satisfy me (in terms of length) if at the end I'm not like "Seriously, that was it? I barely just started!". I tend to take longer, myself, so I see a "10 hour game" taking me like 20 minimum. I know a lot of people who finished DA:O in like 40 hours. I took 128 hours my first play. *shrug* Let me also add, however, for those 10 hours I also see like an easily enjoyable two replays for most (probably like five for me.)

Not this. Again. Double Fine didn't have it's first update until a week after it made it's goal. We haven't hit a week on this project and they've given 4 updates and have been making the rounds on game sites and twitter and... You know what?

I realize I never answer the hours part. For the money they are getting and from what they are saying, I expect they initially planned on a game that would probably take (understanding that different players play games faster and slower) about ten hours for a playthrough. Depending on where stretch goals go, they may go higher. Since we hit the 1.6 goal, I'm thinking about 15 hours of gameplay. And if they hit 2.2 I think suddenly it expands a bunch and you might see a 30 or even 40 hour game at that point. But to think that they were shooting for a 50 hour game (again, average run times) with 1.1 million is dreaming. If you need 50 hours, pull your donation.

Donations are not on a "value of the return in gifts to the donator" sense. The tiers of rewards are thank-you's and incentives to get you to donate, not a marketplace where you are picking what you want to buy and are getting your money's value in goods. You could donate and not pick any reward tier, or one well below how much you donate. Everytime someone says something like "thirty dollars more and all I get is a t-shirt" I think "there's another person who doesn't understand Kickstarter, donations, or pledge drives." It's like giving $50 to NPR and getting a mug. No mug is worth $50... and you aren't paying for the mug. Any physical rewards they give you have to be covered by the donation - not just the item itself, but the design of the item, the shipping, and the logisitics of managing all the different tiers to get all those items to people - not to mention Kickstarter and Amazon's cuts... and, you know, the game you are giving money to because you believe in it and want it to succeed. If you think "I'm donating $140 so I want a game twice as long as Dragon Age: Origins" then you are absolutely missing the point. Even at the $25 tier, you aren't paying for your copy of the game - you are giving Obsidian $25 (minus taxes, others cuts, etc.) so they can make the game. Because you choose the gift of "here's a digital copy to thank you for the donation" still doesn't mean you are pre-ordering the game. For you it is almost effectively the same as a very early pre-order that you can't get the money back from, sure... but it isn't a pre-order.

I like this idea, but I also like the idea of having to prepare spells in advance. So, imagine a crafting system where spells need to be mixed before use (by combining magical components), and you can only cast the spells you've previously made. But you can invent new spells by mixing together different components in new ways. I'm not talking about discovering pre-designed spells (like Ultima Underworld), but by having each component and means of preparation impart different abilities - like how alchemy works in Skyrim. Then, as the mage grows more powerful, he might learn new methods of preparation, or might become more effective at preparation, or might gain the ability to use more different ingredients in combination at a time. You know, I really like this idea. You could build a whole game around this. I like it, too. We should start a Kickstarter for a new RPG.

First of all, I've never played a game using the Vancian system where you NEEDED any spell at all. Have you? Second, half the fun of any game is discovery. You're trying to tie the 'meta gaming argument" to the vancian system, which is a bit dishonest. You don't have to *know* precisely which spells to memorize ahead of time, since in a worst case scenario if you happened to not have the absolute best spell for the situation, you can make do some other way, or take your lumps like a true adventurer and accept the fact that you won't be 100% prepared for every single encounter. I never said you needed as in actually needed specific spells. What I mean is that spells that have little use outside of specific circumstances and conditions rarely get used at all because nobody bothers memorising them in the Vancian system unless they know ahead of time that said situation will be coming up. Sure you can get by without said spell but that doesn't change the fact that said spell won't get used and rarely if ever will get used on a first play through. It's not so much about not being totally prepared that bothers me, it's that I get spells that I will never use on a first play through, they just sit in my spell book until the end of the game. What I suggest is that the spell uses per day is the same as the Vancian system, just you are not limited by what spells you have memorised. Now, I never played 3rd edition D&D but isn't this very similar to how the Sorcerer class played? 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. - Another idea - spell levels are a bad idea. There are many better ideas out there, but one I'd like is picking fields or schools or some such, and you get the abilitiy to do certain things and as you get more powerful (level up) those abilities become more powerful and more diverse. 1st level mage choose fire affinitiy, for example, and therefore can create small gouts of flame. These gouts can be used to light torches, set flammable materials on fire, or cause damage to enemies a short distance away. At level 2 they do more damage, can shoot farther, and maybe some new trick. Depending on how elaborate you want to go, you might even have options as to what aspects increase as you level (damage, range, etc.) and what extra tricks you can now do. Being wedded to how D&D did (and with Next now, does things again) is not necessary. There are many ways to do it. Many ways that, IMO, are much better than studying your spell book every morning so you get exactly 3 uses of rope trick but, even though you know swim as a fish, you can't cast it as you didn't focus on it this morning.

I'll just add this in - if you can swing a sword forever without ever needing to sleep, or fire a bow endless without ever needing to rest your arm, or climb trees and swim and all the other physical activies that games almost never track long-term fatigue for... then you should be able to cast spells about as effortlessly. "One problem doesn't get fixed by adding another!" True! Which is why the short rest and encounter spells made so much sense in 4E. (not to mention some of the martial attacks that were encounters to) It's not a perfect system, but a way to track "exhaustion" (mental or physical) is to only let you use certain abilities so many times in a given fight. You can put only so much OOMPH before you need to take a breather, whether that be the will to cast a spell or the muscle to cleave with an axe. As for attrition and resource management, there were the daily powers (spells or exhausting attack routines.) Again, not perfect, but as viable as studying spell books - and it at least addressed that if spell casting needing balancing as you shouldn't be able to drop the most powerful spells endlessly, you also shouldn't be able to pull off the most exhausting physical attacks endlessly, either. Long post short - there should be a system in place (fatique, preferrably mental and physical) that gets used up in a given fight that you can recover after the fight is over. That's tactics in a fight. Long term strategy, at least daily stragegy, could also be represented by needing to get real rest to build up a reserve of energy to pull off bigger stunts - maybe a different pool or stat to track big spells and attacks. Regardless... whether you like vancian or not, mana pools or not, they are equal answer to the question of combat balance and resource management. Both have their pluses and minuses - and I think both could be replaced by something at least as good if not better.

Oh, I played it. And hated it. We immediately did away with spell components as unnecessarily fun-killing. I've never played a role-playing game, in fact, where I've need spell components - unless you talk about the ones where you own a "components pouch" and it counts as what you need. Explanations or no of what happens, they are just explanations for a codified game mechanic - they needed to balance magic spells against other classes, and they needed to give advancing wizards something to look forward to. Instead of just gaining new spells, you gained the ability to cast spells more often. I'm about to commit heresy here, but I greatly preferred 4E's magic system.

Thanks, Obsidian!

I don't hate "Vancian" magic (never heard this term, either, until 4E came out and people were complaining up a storm) but I'm not a fan. I remember playing 1st and 2nd ED, me and my friends would lament there not being a spell point system until we finally invented out own. So I'll not be upset with memorized spells, but personally I feel it is such an artificial construct that, narratively, makes so little sense to me. "I have to re-read the same words every day, and the second I cast the spell - POOF - it's erased from my memory." Whatever.