Sarog

Touchy. Again, note that I'm not advocating that those elements you like be removed entirely from the game. Only that they not be the entire focus of it. Yeah sure. That's what you would like. Understand that I'm not bashing your preferences or anything. Just consider the idea that your preferences aren't right, correct, or binding for anyone else just because they are to you. Also understand that taking one thing you don't like, this human/urban emphasis, and arbitrarily grouping it with another thing you don't like, consoles, is fallacious, and doesn't change your opinion from subjective preference into objective truth. You've basically started a thread saying "I like oranges, please cater less to apples and more to oranges". There's really very little for me to say in response other than "ok, you like oranges, but that doesn't mean oranges are as important as you want them to be".

Meh. Subjectivity. I think politics and factional storytelling are vastly more interesting than the alternative, and my aesthetic preference is inclined towards structures, castles, walled cities and things that are architecturally attractive rather than wilderness scenes. I reject the idea that this a console cop out, because your conclusion there doesn't logically follow the premise and I see no reason to relate the two other than associative bias. This is the sort of thing where you need to confront the idea that is one's preference is absolutely subjective. Your preference is your preference, which is not valid in any larger objective sense. As is mine. Obviously I will object to your pretentious assertions that your preference be placed ahead of my preference, unless you can back it up with more than "I like this better".

Not really. They are just Psions reinterpreted through the Soul emphasis. There's nothing new and amazing in that description that isn't already present in the dusty Psionics Handbook and Magic of Incarnum sourcebooks I had in highschool. These classes are so far 100% pure Dungeons and Dragons, and as such Dungeons and Dragons expectations are legitimate. Or in other words, since they have so far followed dungeons and dragons class archetypes exactly, it is sensible that people will expect consistency on that front, in the form of the inclusion of the other core D&D class archetypes. Considering that their class lineup so far is pure D&D tradition, it would be very odd if the paladin, something that is natural and complementary to this sort of high fantasy European setting, is excluded while the whimsical, eastern red-headed-stepchild of D&D (the monk) is kept in the starting lineup.

cRPGs? Not that many. And the ones that do have magocracies in their lore don't deal with them that explicitly. I was talking more from the perspective of fantasy literature, fantasy campaign settings for tabletop games, and the broader genre of high fantasy. In general I find them to be predictable and repetitive, focusing overmuch on the novelty of a ruling class of mages and not really bothering to explore other facets of society which might be changed in a nation where a select group of people with superpowers ruled by virtue of wielding exclusive power. If I encounter one more magocracy where different colleges of magic vie for power and a forbidden school of dark magic plots to seize control of the mage government, my eyes might roll for a solid week. My boredom and familiarity with them is personal though, granted. Not saying they are intrinsically uninteresting, just them I am bored of them.

Boy howdy Passive Aggressive Man, that's a mighty sharp observation. No, not "words". Labels specifically, as in "names" that we give to "concepts" that arise from "traits" that are traditionally associated with each other in a specific contextual grouping. The label brings inevitably brings to mind the traits. If you change the traits but not the label, there creates a sort associative dissonance. If you abandon the label, you can abandon the traits, or not, without automatically inviting such dissonance. Not that I'm trying to convince you, as your opinions and justifications for them are a good case in point for some of my arguments.

Exactly. You think "elf" and you think "lives in forests, loves nature". If you hear "elf", and you are presented with something that doesn't match your preconceived idea of what an elf is, you can already declare that you have absolutely no interest in it because it deviates from what you were expecting. You subscribe to the platonic idea of the elf, and therefore if the name is attached to something that doesn't reflect the platonic idea of the elf, it is wrong. That's a common trend. It is exactly why BSN gets so many furious debates about what, exactly, the shape of an elf's ear should be. It is therefore reasonable that if a franchise was going to present you with something that doesn't fit your preconceived idea of an elf, if it doesn't want to alienate you it should not use that label. Then you might be able to judge what you saw on its merits, rather than being disappointed that it wasn't what an elf is supposed to be.

I'd quite thoroughly bored of magocracies. The ideology behind them is just so tired, and the combination of political power with magical power results in a predictable series of conflicts and politics. A well detailed theocracy would be nice... except as far as I'm aware P:E is going to have Greek-style active, meddling interloper gods, so any theocratic state in a world where the gods are common stage personalities isn't really going to be a true theocracy, but rather just a divine monarchy. I'd like to see monarchies that use atypical succession laws. A kingdom that uses seniority succession - wherein a king's brothers come before his sons in the line of succession - has room for intrigue and politics that would be simultaneously familiar yet also refreshingly unconventional. I'd also like to see a monastic state, like the one rules by the Teutonic Knights. A kingdom where the monarchy was overthrown in a revolution could lead to an interesting military dictatorship if power fell into the hands of a knightly order. Sort of a medieval one-party state, with elements of Roman stratocracy but with knights replacing the role of the legions and the praetorian guard in roman politics.

While I'd agree with you that those cliches should be avoided, I must ask; if, say, your elves were a desert dwelling military dictatorship with a religion based on gnosticism (rejecting the physical world as being created by an evil god, as the opposite of nature worship), and dwarves were a Dutch-accented seafaring mercantile republic who lived on a series of islands... what would be gained, exactly, by slapping the Tolkien labels on them rather than letting them stand on their own as new races particular to their franchise? If you intend to break the mold that everyone else is already breaking, what point is there in going back to the mold to begin with? What would be gained would be a different and perhaps even surprising and refreshing premise, rather than something you can predict without even starting the game. It doesn't really matter (to me) if the game labels them elves and dwarves or Kud al'Abin and Moosooks (or what have you). I'm more interested in how they are presented what new do they bring to the table (if anything). Anyways, I'm just throwing some random **** out here since afaik elves and dwarves are said to be in. But the premise is there regardless of how you label it, and some labels just come with so much baggage that they aren't worth keeping. Elves and dwarves are confirmed though, so we can hope that they do go with a refreshing premise rather than rehashing the Tolkien cliches. That isn't the exception anymore, though. Every successive franchise is making their elves and dwarves different, and I wonder when this trend of novelty leapfrog will stop. World builders should use their own labels so that their work isn't forever in the shadow of preconceived ideas that are floating about in the collective consciousness of fantasy fans like so much useless junk data.

I suggest that we form a team... nay, a fellowship!... to go on a grand quest to find the sacred text of elvishness, which will answer all questions of elven representation in fantasy and put an end to decades of sectarian strife between different denominations of elven fandom.

Quanri? Big humans with horns. Meh. How very "original". Peoepl didnt' complain abotu them because there was nothing really about them...and because they were too busy complaing about elves. So originality to you is a matter of appearance, not of substance? But you help prove what I was getting at. While people bitch until their fingernails fail out over elves being this much shorter or their ears being shaped like X when they should be shaped like Y, no one was bitching that qunari were poor copies of draenei or tieflings, or that they should have tailes or tentacle beards just because they were "big humans with horns". You could make a fantasy race of lithe, pointy eared, fair skinned humans, and so long as they were culturally alien enough to Tolkienism, they could stand entirely on their own merits so long as you don't slap the "elf" label on them. But once that label is there, elf fandom will follow them with all their baggage and haughty expectations and demands for change for the rest of your franchise's lifespan.

While I'd agree with you that those cliches should be avoided, I must ask; if, say, your elves were a desert dwelling military dictatorship with a religion based on gnosticism (rejecting the physical world as being created by an evil god, as the opposite of nature worship), and dwarves were a Dutch-accented seafaring mercantile republic who lived on a series of islands... what would be gained, exactly, by slapping the Tolkien labels on them rather than letting them stand on their own as new races particular to their franchise? If you intend to break the mold that everyone else is already breaking, what point is there in going back to the mold to begin with?

Yes, but an original race is going to be critiqued on its own merits. People complain their keyboards into a fine paste on BSN about their elves not being FR elves, but none of the people who dislike qunari are starting thread after thread of "your qunari aren't orcish/ogrish/hobgoblinish enough!" There was no preexisting platonic idea of a Qunari floating around in the minds of the embittered mass of fantasy fans prior to Dragon Age, and therefore, while people can complain all they like about how they don't like qunari, no one can complain that Bioware are doing the qunari "wrong" and that the qunari should look this or sound like that (that is, until Bioware changed how they looked between games and invited the appearance controversy). By using Tolkien's stuff, you limit the independence of your IP and people's ability to judge your work on your own merits. People will always complain about everything, but by using someone else's creative leftovers, you give legitimacy to all the baggage that comes with it.

Too true. We're seeing a trend in fantasy now that new franchises continue to hold onto Tolkien races, but each new franchise tries to outdo the last in terms of "our races are different!". These new spins on the old Tolkien races are doomed to be juxtaposed and judged against each other as to which is the most original, the most interesting, the most innovative take on the old. To which I must eternally ask; if every franchise is going to try to be different and break the old mold in their own way, what is the point of eternally going back to that mold just to deviate from it? You mentioned DA and how the same story could have been told if the elves weren't elves. Including elves does give the familiarity bonus, sure. if I'm a guy who considers "I like elves!" to be an integral part of my gaming preferences, I can immediately recognize that Dragon Age has elves and tell myself "I like elves, this has elves, therefore I will play as an elf because that is what I like". That familiarity is a double edged sword though, because the people who appreciate that familiarity will hold your elves up to the standard of their platonic idea of an elf that they refined from playing every other game with elves in them. Which leads to the situation Bioware landed itself in, with the sheer enormity of the complaints; "these elves aren't elvish enough!", "elves aren't supposed to be like this!", "make your elves more like these other elves that i like!" So while DA elves do have an automatic fanbase within DA fans, the people who like them and play as them seem to overwhelmingly wish that they were Forgotten Realms elves instead, which rather makes me think that the DA elf is a failed venture. Likewise I could on for some length about dwarves, but the reality is that Tolkien races come with so much baggage in terms of 1) people's preconceptions about what the race is supposed to be like (if you don't satisfy these, they will say you got it wrong), 2) other people's expectations that you do something new and unique with them rather than the same old, shallow, unoriginal copy-paste (likewise, if you don't satisfy these, they will say you got it wrong), and 3) the things that other franchises are doing with these races (which will rob your changes of much their novelty and bring about a sort of novelty-inflation). I don't think it is worth the baggage. If you use an original race or a human cultural group instead, people will like and dislike these things based on the merits of what you yourself have created, rather than bringing all sort of pre-loaded expectations to the table for you to deal with as a world builder.

What if they listen to your feedback and so decide not to make changes that they otherwise would have made?

Don't tempt the japanophiles, they can smell katana denial from across the black void of the internet.

So.... is listening to people bad now? I mean, what exactly are we doing on these forums then? Not a fan of irony?

You tell em buddy. Stick it to that loudmouth, entitled mob of random dudes on the internet by speaking up and insisting that Obsidian go a different direction.

Excellent bait.

That is an MMO feature to help make a static, shared world seem alive and changing when it really isn't, and to provide distraction to a stream of different users. I don't think I'd like that sort of thing to be a part of a single player narrative, nor do I see what purpose it would serve. If a village is attacked, I want it to be tied to a storyline rather than just a randomly generated event, and if a village is destroyed I definitely want it to stay that way. Settlements shouldn't have respawn timers.

Mass Effect didn't have good and evil, but Renegade and Paragon. And that wans't clearly good nad evil. Soem renegade choices were clearly more "good" or better than paragon ones. That said, I dont' want the choice system to be formulaic. If you do that it feels just as a fake as the good/evil one. I want chocies to be whatever it makes sense for them to be. Sometimes clear good and evil, sometimes not, sometimes a mix of everything. I doubt that any of the Renegade choices were intended to be "more good" than paragon choices. I don't recall any paragon choices that were anything other than WWJD responses. I think the problem comes in that there are no consequences to playing 100% paragon, you just miss out on some shortcuts. So instead of lightside/darkside, you have to choose between playing by the book, or breaking the rules to get the job done... but you get the job done just as well, if not better, by playing by the rules, so more often than not Renegade ends up being reckless, pointless douchebaggery. If you only ever played as renegade, you might not realize this and therefore have an awesome narrative about someone who took the tough decisions to get the job done... but that bubble gets burst as soon as you play a perfect paragon game where you accomplish just as much without doing the same controversial things. These morality mechanics always end up as being shallow, gamey, frustrating, polarizing nonsense. Which is why I'm glad that P:E is to use reputation mechanics rather than morality mechanics. I prefer that writers simply write intelligent dilemmas and complicated choices, and leave it up to the player to pass moral judgment on their own actions. The world should react to you, praise and condemn you appropriately based on the cultural mores of the setting, but the task of determining the right thing to do should not be done for you as though the narrative is cutting the crust off your bread so that you don't have to. There's been some points raised that the presence of moral extremes is necessary to validate the middle ground. I think there's some validity there but I'm not entirely in agreement. In my experience, as soon as the extremes are defined and catered to, the middle starts to erode. The presence of clear "evil" choices does do well to contrast the other choices you get to make, sure. But the presence of the "irredeemable" option goes a long way to whitewash all the other choices by virtue of its inclusion. At the same time, the presence of the clear good choice steals the legitimacy of all the choices in the middle ground, such as DA:O's Redcliff cop out. If there's an obviously good option without real, unpleasant consequences, then every option that isn't obviously good and that does have consequences is therefore "the wrong choice". If there's an obviously evil option to contrast that, then you still have a polarized narrative, just with extra wishy-wash stuff in the middle to obfuscate the fact. The problem with using objective morality is that certain good and certain evil have to be defined, and they will end up being defined by the person who is writing the narrative. Which works for novels, films, media in which the consumer is a passive participant. But for my part, when I'm playing a game and being an active participant in the narrative, there are few things I find less appealing than championing someone else's moral values. Don't lead me by the nose to the conclusion you want me to take, don't outright tell me what is good and what is evil as if I'm supposed to agree with you because I'm playing through your creation, and above all don't construct your narrative in such a way that I have to buy into your particular pretentious values in order to enjoy the story I'm being told. Preachy narratives that bludgeon me over the head with some other guy's value system and present the things he hates as villainous strawmen have put me off of so many franchises that I used to enjoy that now I just have no patience for it. The instant I feel like I'm participating in someone else's political statement, I disconnect. So I love the Witcher games because when I play them I never feel like I "meet" the psyche of the lead writer and am being led by the nose down his interpretations of what is good and what is not, whereas some other games sometimes make me feel like I've been dragged into a therapist's office to listen someone air his baggage. And Obsidian hasn't done that either, to their credit, so I'm expecting intelligent writing and authentic dilemmas, not a preachy morality cartoon that I could get from early afternoon TV.

I think people tend to read the word "grey" and assume "you mean I have to be an anti-hero?" and that's not really the case. It doesn't mean that all choices have to be either equally immoral or amoral to start with, but rather that all choices have to be morally viable. To use the Witcher example, I know people who believe very firmly that taking the Scoia'tael paths in both games is unquestionably the "good" way to play the character, whereas I feel very firmly the opposite and struggle to get through my Scoia'tael games because I find the association with terrorism so unforgivable. Both types of player get a strong moral narrative from the game with them as the clear hero, but because the games allow you to pick the faction that you identify with as being more justified, and because the choice can be difficult and have unpleasant consequences, the moral narrative that emerges is much more satisfying and authentic than "do X for lightside points, do Y for darkside points". Honestly it comes down to intelligent writing. Any heroic narrative has to deal with issues of good and evil, but the problem with dealing with them explicitly is that the writers have to understand both concepts. And they are not easy concepts to define; people haven't been able to reach consensus on it despite thousands of years of academic discussion. So inevitably when some game tries to represent these two moral extremes as being clearly defined and easy to recognize, it comes across as shallow and often preachy. An intelligent writer should be able to construct authentic moral dilemmas, and authentic moral dilemmas are debatable. Which is what makes them satisfying in the roleplaying, because you need to decide what your character believes and take a stand on an issue. If it is as clear and as easy as Good choice versus Evil choice then the only decision you have to make is the shallow and simplistic "do I want to be good or bad?" which I doubt is truly satisfying to anyone over a certain age.

Hi folks, just upped my pledge a little while ago and figured I'd request inclusion in this most esteemed company. Anything required that I might have missed? I declare myself a Cataphract of the Obsidian Order.

Sewers are great. Just the cliche of associating them with smugglers and thieves is a bit too common. A couple of criminal elements in the sewers is fine, but I'm sure that actual criminals would have their headquarters above ground, in a house. The sewers of Athkatla are still my favorite. I remember my first time going down there was legitimately intimidating. I kept thinking "damn how deep does this go?" There was just so much awesome adventuring down there.

I fondly remember how Arcanum included class conflicts. Learning about how the gnomish industrial council staged their secret coup and abolished the human monarchy in a capitalist revolution (and the other deliciously nefarious things they did) was great and memorable. And then there were the orcish factor workers who unionized against the industrial council's exploitation. Done well, these sorts of things are much more interesting than evil cultist A enacting dark ritual B to bring about horrific calamity C.

Meh, when RPGs talk about factions, sometimes they mean "factions you can join" and sometimes they mean "factions you can run errands for". The latter is always underwhelming. I'd like to at least commit to one of the major world factions as an actual card-carrying member and have this change how I progress through the main plot, not just arbitrarily get reputation points for doing chores. I don't like the Elder Scrolls staple of rushing you to the leadership of your organization when you are done with the quests, though. No one should become go from recruit to guildmaster/archmage/grand poobah in a mere matter of months.