Elerond

Fair enough about the typical human. That simply makes the point about adventurers taking less time by virtue of being exceptional more relevant. How many of those skills would you reasonably expect to find as separate skills in a crpg? Design? Measuring? Balancing? Forging? Those can all be lumped under a general classification of metal working. You're correct that a master smith would have to have knowledge of all those, but they are also part and parcel of the fabrication process. Knowing how much steel you need to make a long sword, how to shape it, fold it, etc. can all be lumped under metal working. Hardening, tempering, sharpening are all metallurgical considerations. So I'll give you two skills total and possibly a third for leather working. The 10K model allowed for two skills to be mastered at 4 hours a day for a normal human. Make that human truly exceptional or use an exotic race with special learning talents and we could easily imagine a 5K requirement which lets our exceptional person learn 4 skills instead of 2. Now you've got metal working, metallurgy, leatherworking and room left for one more. Consider what it takes to master a second language. There are actually four separate macro-skills associated with learning a language: reading, writing, speaking and listening (comprehension). And those 4 skills require additional micro skills such as vocabulary, grammar, tenses, pronunciation and spelling. That's a total of 9 individual skills (and I probably missed some) yet we lump them all into one base skill and call it language knowledge. Unless you want to apply the same sort of detailed breakdown for all skills that you do for smithing, you need to be able to combine sub-skills and abstract them. Otherwise you are going to end up with a massively complex and unwieldly skill system. It is true that in rpgs you need abstract things behind skills that are quite all-round in their particular aspect, because otherwise most of the game play would consist going rough skill list that mostly don't effect character or game session (I look you Rolemaster). If I would choose crafting skills in fantasy rpg they probably would be design (to determine your ability to create new or improve old things), metal craft, leather craft, wood craft, alchemy/chemistry and depending on what kind product you try to make, skill needs for master class level item would vary, like for example master level sword could need max/near max metal craft skill, but only minor knowledge of other skills. And determine how long to it takes to pc to learn his/her skills to master level is of course complicate question, which I would leave for GM to determine, but of course in computer games you can't do that, where you need to beforehand decide all factors that can occur during the game. So I would drop idea to try determine how long things take in our world and decide what pcs should be able to do in the game. Personally I would avoid Leonardo syndrome (meaning that player can masters all skill in the game) and zero to hero syndrome (meaning that in the beginning of the game pc knows little or nothing about skill and end of game s/he is best in the world in that skill), especially if your story arc takes under a year to reach it conclusion.

Only if you believe Malcolm Gladwell, or more accurately Ander Ericsson (now at Florida State) on whose work the 10K rule in Gladwell's Outliers was based. For starters, Ericsson's work stated that 10K was an average time required which meant that exceptionally gifted people could achieve master status in far less time. Ericsson himself has said that "there is nothing magical about the 10K figure". So 10K hours isn't a rigid measure. It could just as easily take half that time for a truly exceptional individual. 10K hours works out to 3.4 years of extended practice or study at 8 hours a day, 7 days a week. Cut the practice time per day to 4 hours that's slightly less than 7 years total and you can still achieve master status before you've exited your teens if you start at ages 10 to 12, which by the way is not that different from the time required to achieve master status for apprentices in the middle ages. That's achievable prior to the start of an adventuring career. You can't claim multiple skills are necessary without delineating what those skills are. I claim Smithing is a single skill, but if you want to argue that becoming a master smith involves mastering both metal working and metallurgy, you could still achieve that in 7 years by spending 4 hours a day working a forge and 4 hours a day studying metallurgical tomes. Again that's doable before you start adventuring. Remember that the 10K rule isn't rigid. It's not a huge stretch to argue that my adventurers, being the exceptional people that they are, could have achieved master status in half that time. My rogue was one of Fagin's kids when he started out: learned his pickpocket, open locks etc skills starting at a very early age. We don't have any trouble accepting that premise do we? Or a young mage with a proclivity for magic? Again that doesn't cause us a moments pause. We are talking about abstracted skill progressions in a fantasy rpg and you're trying to impose a rigid standard which actually isn't that rigid in the first place. How pray tell would you justify becoming a master of persuasion then? Do you practice your glibness in front of a mirror 4 hours a day? Talk to your dog? Or how about bartering. Did you spend 4 hours a day running thru the bazaars chating up merchants in order to practice negotiating lower prices? Of course not. If you are willing to set aside a certain amount of realism (for lack of a better word) in those instances, why can't we do it for everything? I put there typical human, as there is exceptions and in fantasy game there is races and species that we don't have in earth and one can't say any thing about them. Skill that I though that master smith needs are forging, etching, drilling, metal lore (knowing how different metal react, melt, bend, oxidize, harden, etc.), hardening, leather works (cutting, stitching, etc.), designing, measuring and balancing products for use (because hammer, sword, etc. is quite useless if it is balanced wrongly). And there is probably much more skills that master smith needs to learn. Many of this skills have common elements, which is why I estimated that it would probably take 20k-40k hours to master them all, but that is only uneducated guess.

Typical human needs to practice skill about 10k hours to master it. And as become a master smith person needs master several skills, so it would probably take 20k-40k hours work to become a master smith. So 5-10 years work if you do about 12 hours days around year and keep some holidays once in a while.

There is two major ways how multicultural environments are build. first is segregated way, where different cultures live in same area, but they try keep themselves segregated from other cultures and live as other cultures don't exist, which usually causes conformations between different culture groups and usually this also cause different groups to create their own set of rules how people should live. second is blending way, where people from different culture backgrounds live together and they start to take things from others cultures as part of their culture, this way usually cause much less conformations and people usually live with one set of rules. This is usually the way that pro multicultural people want as it helps society to advance, where segregation usually causes rise of protectionism, where different cultures try protect their ways from influences from other cultures. Usually multiculturalism show in both ways in every country, and areas that live by first way are usually those areas that cause most of typical problems that are associated with multiculturalism (own set of rules, no mutual language, protectionism, etc.). Many people that say that multiculturalism is bad still enjoy many benefits of multiculturalism like different foods, new stories, increased knowledge, etc., because they associate most of those things to be part of their own culture because of cultural blending.

I have such apprehension that they have already several constructed languages already made at least in some sense.

You are getting cheeky with me, you and I both know that there is a difference betwen gaming a flaw in the system (that can be patched out) and wrong game design at the core of the game. So it is good practice to encourage the player to take the easiest route and reward him the same as for the hard route. Then what is the point of the hard route? From the 6 characters you have one will most likely have the skill set for the easiest solution in any quest. As for you killing Firkraag on your first try, well you either went to him with end game character levels or you got lucky, 99% of the people didn't get lucky. 99% people didn't even find him . With spells and abilities that have chance to instakill you need to be bit lucky, but as game has resistance drop spells that which add you killing change to near 100% they don't actually need that much luck. Flawed game system is bad game design, giving option for player in RPG is not, especially if those options effect how story and world reacts towards pc.

Combat solution is tactical challenge for player Persuading dwarf to explode the dragons cavern is puzzle solving challenge There could be third option that is sneaky option where player plants poison in dragons food, which would also be puzzle solving challenge And there could be also forth option where you persuade dragon to leave from the lands, and this could be hybrid of puzzle solving and tactical challenges as it would need player collect information which s/he can use to convince the dragon that leaving would be better to him or that leaving is his (dragon's) idea. And to do that player needs to present information what s/he has in right light and right order and so on. So there is challenge in every option which justifies xp gain. And every option will have their own variety in how it effects in story and world and do player get loot or some other rewards like dragon will help him/her later on game etc.. So it isn't like you can fight with dragon or skip fight and get same outcome (reward, story and world wise), but instead there is multiple ways to play game which each has their own challenges and rewards that make your play through different from others, which is just the thing what RPGs should have in them.

And what did you prove with that video? That you can game the system, you could also type in cheat codes and do it like that. Anyones first playthrough of that fight was hard as balls (of course if you didn't google how to beat him before hand). You said that getting same amount xp from alternative solution that don't include direct fight confrontation with monster is bad game design as it gives player "easier" way to deal with the problem, but that is actually absolutely false accusation as it is actually good game design in RPGs as it gives players options and ability to play game in way they want to play it and that video show you how bad game design actually looks like (meaning game features that don't work as they are intended to work ). And first time I fight against Firkraag my sorceress killed him with one hit from finger of death and second time my monk killed him with one hit of quivering palm. It wasn't until my third time when I was playing with assassin that he actually was any sort of difficult woe to fight with.

Or Gecko's Nuclear reactor problem. Killing all ghouls is for most characters much easier option than any of the peaceful solutions that there are, which are quite difficult to accomplish especially "best one" and Modoc is full of difficult peaceful solutions and especially when some of them are actually "worse" than killing people would be.

Speaking about BG2 and Firkraag and how hard that fight was. I would say any diplomatic or sneaking options would have needed much more effort than that battle when you prepared right and use cheese tactic same goes for most fight in BG2

That is not what the developers said. Actually Josh mentioned that there could be objectives that are purely combat based.

There is no need to them give you any other way to deal object than killing the difficult monster. Dragon(like Firkraag) could easily be secret optional objective in the game where you get tons of xp and good loot if you kill and only if you kill it, but anything in the game don't actually tell you that there is such objective. Objective based xp don't force them to make several options for all the objectives, but it makes it easier to implement them if they want to give you such options.

Looking at successful "reboots", we have.... Deus Ex? At least I can't think of anything else. I guess YMMV even on that, but I found it to be a good game that was faithful to the original. Mortal Kombat "9" can be named as another successful reboot Also Tomb Raider and XCOM: Enemy Unknown where quite succesful reboots.

It should be noted that G.W. Bush was president on during economic boom, when budget deficit should be in minimun levels and target is surplus budget. Of course there was economical downfall just before Bush time which impacted his first term and 9/11 terrorist strike and USA's countermeasures caused big increase in pending and there was also Hurricane Katrina wasn't helpful in start of his second term. And pile of other things give at least some explanation why budgets during Bush were so heavily deficient. And Obamas presidency started under deep depression, when high budget defecits are normal occurance as goverment helps (at least tries to) it economy to recover from depression. And such recovery activities usually cause budget to be deficient quite long time as heavy budget cuts after depression usually cause great risk to fall back in depression, which is reason why budget is usually balanced periodically during several years (which those ditto charts show that is happening or at least was happening before current crisis).

Sad that there is no update today, but excited about upcoming big update.

Dragon Age 2 description from ESBR rating page.

Stamina-heath system is somewhat copied from Darklands same as their event images I never played Darklands. Is the health/stamina system similar to what I described or different? It is bit different. You take damage to your stamina (endurance in Darklands) and then you also take 0-90% of that damage to your health (strenght in Darklands) depending on how well wepon penetrated your armour (if armor penetration fails then damage is 0%, 10% or 20% of endurance damage truncated, if armour is penetrated then strength loss is 40-90% of endurance loss).

Stamina-heath system is somewhat copied from Darklands same as their event images

Game has to health stats that are health and stamina. Stamina is quickly regenerating stat and most of damage is reduced from it. Party takes lot less health damage than what is typical to D&D, but health only regenerates by resting. But if you compare it to D&D games you probaly can do as much adventuring in PE than you can do in D&D, as you take much less health damage which gives you ability continue your journey to that point where you would have used all you healing spell in D&D and would also be forced to sleep. Biggest difference is that you don't need healers in your party to survive in that point. So with out playing game with PE's system it is impossble to say if it's approach is better or worse than D&D. Sawyer said that they choose this approach because healing magic and instaneous healing herbs/salves/potions cause problems from story and world point of view, like why people outside of party don't use them or how you write world intresting where people don't die from diseases, accidents, etc.. Like in BG why PC character didn't bring Gorion to Candelkeep, Beregost or Friendly Arm's Inn to be resurrected, but instead left his corpse to rotten in woods.

There is no healing magic in PE's world, meaning that your party get their health back only by resting. Death is permanent and currently there is no way to bring members of your party back to life, although in normal and lower difficult settings party members don't die but are only maimed, which means that they get heavy penalties to their stats and skills until you rest. Current plan is dropped all "cool down" abilities from game, instead of those there is per rest abilities, per battle abilities and abilities that use resouces like wounds (Monk's abilities) or Focus (cipher's abilities), that are renewed by different mechanics like getting damage (monk's wounds) or doing damage (cipher's focus). Unlimited inventory referes to stash, which is limited use invetario, where which player can access on save zones like cities and camp areas. No kill xp, is because of that game use objective xp system where you get xp by solving encounter, which can be by killing monsters in that encounter, sneak past them by using secret path, by diplomancy or some other way, and nevertheless which option you choose you get xp from that encounter. And depending on which option you chose you may or may not get bonus rewards like loot from corpses. Current plans are to limit resting in camp areas and save zones. Which may or may not be good idea.

These are from a book called Disorder in the Courts and are things people actually said in court, word for word, taken down and published by court reporters that had the torment of staying calm while the exchanges were taking place. ATTORNEY: What was the first thing your husband said to you that morning? WITNESS: He said, ‘Where am I, Cathy?’ ATTORNEY: And why did that upset you? WITNESS: My name is Susan! _______________________________ ATTORNEY: What gear were you in at the moment of the impact? WITNESS: Gucci sweats and Reeboks. ____________________________________________ ATTORNEY: Are you sexually active? WITNESS: No, I just lie there. ____________________________________________ ATTORNEY: What is your date of birth? WITNESS: July 18th. ATTORNEY: What year? WITNESS: Every year. _____________________________________ ATTORNEY: How old is your son, the one living with you? WITNESS: Thirty-eight or thirty-five, I can’t remember which. ATTORNEY: How long has he lived with you? WITNESS: Forty-five years. _________________________________ ATTORNEY: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all? WITNESS: Yes. ATTORNEY: And in what ways does it affect your memory? WITNESS: I forget.. ATTORNEY: You forget? Can you give us an example of something you forgot? ___________________________________________ ATTORNEY: Now doctor, isn’t it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he doesn’t know about it until the next morning? WITNESS: Did you actually pass the bar exam? ____________________________________ ATTORNEY: The youngest son, the 20-year-old, how old is he? WITNESS: He’s 20, much like your IQ. ___________________________________________ ATTORNEY: Were you present when your picture was taken? WITNESS: Are you ****ting me? _________________________________________ ATTORNEY: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th? WITNESS: Yes. ATTORNEY: And what were you doing at that time? WITNESS: Getting laid ____________________________________________ ATTORNEY: She had three children , right? WITNESS: Yes. ATTORNEY: How many were boys? WITNESS: None. ATTORNEY: Were there any girls? WITNESS: Your Honor, I think I need a different attorney. Can I get a new attorney? ____________________________________________ ATTORNEY: How was your first marriage terminated? WITNESS: By death.. ATTORNEY: And by whose death was it terminated? WITNESS: Take a guess. ___________________________________________ ATTORNEY: Can you describe the individual? WITNESS: He was about medium height and had a beard ATTORNEY: Was this a male or a female? WITNESS: Unless the Circus was in town I’m going with male. _____________________________________ ATTORNEY: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice which I sent to your attorney? WITNESS: No, this is how I dress when I go to work. ______________________________________ ATTORNEY: Doctor , how many of your autopsies have you performed on dead people? WITNESS: All of them. The live ones put up too much of a fight. _________________________________________ ATTORNEY: ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you go to? WITNESS: Oral… _________________________________________ ATTORNEY: Do you recall the time that you examined the body? WITNESS: The autopsy started around 8:30 PM ATTORNEY: And Mr. Denton was dead at the time? WITNESS: If not, he was by the time I finished. ____________________________________________ ATTORNEY: Are you qualified to give a urine sample? WITNESS: Are you qualified to ask that question? ______________________________________ And last: ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse? WITNESS: No. ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure? WITNESS: No. ATTORNEY: Did you check for breathing? WITNESS: No.. ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy? WITNESS: No. ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor? WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar. ATTORNEY: I see, but could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless? WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law.

Gameplay. It was promise of IE style of gameplay that made me to gave it gazzillion (several hundred) dollars , so that is part that I am most excited to see. Although I also am quite excited to see what kind world, characters and story they will make.

Last I checked war in Syria is still ongoing. Putin was one of the visible people, but he was not sole instigator or even first (although he was vocal and has lot of influence), in worlds political circles that persuade US and some other countries not to intervene with force in it after chemical weapon attack by making Syria to promise that they destroy their chemical weapons. One of the most major operator in this deal and carrying it out was and is OPCW, which recived the prize for doing that.

Aren't taxes tied in income, so you need pay them even after dead if you still have income and usually it is also so that all your income and proberty belongs to your heirs (of course usually there isn't living deads to be considered).

Malala Yousafzai or maybe it would better say that her father is currently multi millionare, so they aren't in any dire need of money either. Malala was good canditate for peace prize, because she speaks for education, diplomacy and peaceful solutions and even after she was shot by Taliban she still speaks that it's better to negotiate with them than try to overthrow them with violence. And she is also girl and muslim and her ordeal is publicly known, which are all resons why she would have been quite inspiring recipient. But I think that Nobel comitee didn't give her price because she is quite young to carry burdens that comes with the prize and reciving the price could have made her even higher priority target for fundementalist fanatics that shot her in the first place. Some could also argue that her life time achivements are still quite slow and other nominees are actually done more for world peace, but some would also argue that this is aslo true when one looks some previous recipients. I personally think that OPCW is one of those organizations that acctually do such work that I don't see that Nobel prize is wasted on them, but I can't say that they where this year's best nominee, but world is much better place because of its work.