Merlkir

Except people (like ARMA and others) have tried it and blocking edge on edge causes the sword edges to bite into each other, leaving chips and rather huge nicks. It's not entirely a dichotomy of "edge on edge" vs. "blocking with the flat" either, there's cutting into the flat (and thus deflecting), slding on the flat etc. Eeeee, not using very properly, I'd say. That edge on edge contact is hurting my soul. I'm not really convinced blocking with the flat was how they did it, but I'm not going to argue the point here. I assume that that one was perhaps an exhibition shot by a photographer who thought edge-on-edge looked better, and insisted they do it like that. I mainly chose it because it looked good and illustrated the arming sword's size rather well. I've found that all across the internet intelligent people will insist repeatedly that blocking edge-on-edge is an absolutely terrible idea, but then they also say

Yep. It's been suggested that the more swords were starting to be used without shields (and the more throwing and locking techniques have been used), the more swords developed some kind of protection against blades sliding into the fingers. The early ones might've been made of leather. In fact, what's often referred to as "rainguard" might've been exactly that - a guard to protect your fingers. (perhaps protecting the blade against rain. But frankly, sword scabbards seem to have managed to do this quite fine before, so I'm not entirely sold on rainguards) http://www.myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=6000&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0 (The Hammaborg video is marked as "private" for some reason. :/)

Eeeee, not using very properly, I'd say. That edge on edge contact is hurting my soul.

\o/ PLUMES! edit: on the other hand, the hide "armour" is less impressive. It's just a bit goofy and cliched barbarian looking - with the midriff bare and stuff. When I was working on my MA thesis about archaeological reconstruction, I came across an interesting quote about an artist. Zdeněk Burian was a Czech painter who specialized in prehistoric stuff, but also did illustration for adventure books and westerns and so on. The article highlighted that as much as he strived for accuracy, he still used the stereotypical image of a savage ape man - in their clothing. His cavemen were pretty well done overall, but for some reason they weren't able to make their clothing in a functional way with neatly trimmed edges and without holes. We know they were capable of doing exactly that, we've reconstructed hide clothing with stone and bone tools. Yet this image of barbarism persisted. http://zburian.blogspot.cz/ Here's a couple of nice examples of clothing made from hide/fur: Mostly Siberian, Inuit and the last one is obviously Wildlings from GoT.

Oh, this is something that really bothered me in the Shadowrun Returns video recently. Immersion breaker indeed.

I sure as **** hope not. There should be an alternative with no furries or MSPaint sonic the hedgehog versions of X character from Y intellectual property, or MSPaint sonic the hedgehog Mary Sue versions of the "artist." There's a now classic "game" in which you search for your own name, or the name of a favored fictional character or even real person of note with the suffix "the hedgehog." If you don't get any results, you win the game. If you do, you just get mad. There are plenty of genuinely good artists on DA, like the woman who did those TF2 comics and having her fanart design of the Announcer become the official design, but for every one of those there are eight under-age/machild Sonic the Hedgehog fanatics/furry fetishists. Yes, the sonic freaks/furries are definitively deviants, but they're what makes the site a cesspit rather than a showcase for aspiring artists. I don't think any animation studios are really going to be impressed by a given individual's intimate knowledge of animal phalli and their ability to depict them in cartoon form. If I were aspiring to a career as a professional artist (as in working for companies, not as in a professional artist who makes art which may be exhibited in galleries or museums and derive their income from sales of that artwork,) I wouldn't want to be linked to that site in any way. Just imagine the job interview. If I were easily offended, I'd be offended right now. Instead I'm amused. I am a professional artist and I have a profile on DA, have had one for 9 years. I don't do Sonic porn. Thanks to DA, I actually didn't have to have a website made, they offer minimalistic functional portfolios for free and so far I have not had a problem with any of my clients. In fact, they seem to prefer my normal DA gallery over the portfolio for some reason. Anyway, the community on DA is mostly very nice. Porn has its place just as "normal" art does, people are generally pretty civil and helpful.

The Hussites eh? There's a bunch of battle clips from old Czechoslovakian films on Youtube, some with subtitles. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpaeyIbk8N8&list=FLPuxRj7J86ye6DLGqdOzJwg&index=6

What?

And shamelessly double posting my own FA Maybe we can try and design more of the ancient elves?

Heya people, let's do more of this! Where's Staples? His Cadegund was the bomb:

I suppose this could go into the fanart thread, but technically it IS a magical item, so here goes! ---------------------------------- (Background: During the last hours of the Kickstarter video stream, Chris Avellone expressed a certain opinion on swords. To quote (from memory), it was "Swords are boring!". When I protested in the chat, he continued to say that "If you like swords, there's something seriously wrong with you." I should probably mention that I absolutely love swords. Swords, to me, are super interesting, I could read about their evolution, design, decoration and other aspects for hours and hours. And not only are they very cool as tools with a certain purpose, their role throughout history (other than "you poke people with the pointy end") is fascinating as well. I decided I would attempt to prove Chris Avellone wrong. The next day after the stream, I was sitting on an early morning bus, heading to the city where I went to school at the time. It was dark, the engine's humming made me sleepy, but all of a sudden, an idea for a sword struck me. I kept thinking about it the whole time and quickly typed it all in my phone, so that I didn't forget any of the brilliant ideas. (:D) Then I got really busy with school and illustration work, so the sword didn't get painted until today. I found myself with a free evening and having backed the Torment Kickstarter, it reminded me of the sword design in my desk's drawer.) Last note: I had NOT yet played Planescape: Torment when I came up with the idea, I was actually bringing my old CD of PT with me on the bus! I played it about a month later and when I got to Dak'kon and read the description of his sword, I thought: "Oh." I have to wonder, it seems like the only sword there is in that game. Did Avellone write it? That'd make me SO mad. :D Wailing Sword of Eír Glanfath Lore: This ancient elven short sword is made of obsidian, inlaid with copper, the copper handle decorated with opal. Powerful yet unknown magic has been used for its making - the obsidian blade does not shatter on impact, if it's wielded by a warrior of strong will. Mages speculate that the copper inlay transfers the impact and vibrations into the handle, where the opal heads with tongues stuck out connect it to the soul of the user. This puts the mind under pressure, similarly to how ciphers use their gift sometimes. The stronger the warrior's soul and will are, the more powerful the sword becomes. However, one moment of weakness, one break in concentration and the user may end up blank eyed and babbling, wiggling on the floor in a pool of urine. As a reflected wave, this energy flows back into sword and comes out of the opal heads on the pommel, transformed into sound. It's form and intensity range from subtle humming to blood-curdling wailing. It is rumored that if an especially weak minded person draws the sword, it'll break in the slightest breeze. Or it may even shatter and kill its bearer with an explosion of burning obsidian shards. Design ideas: As far as I know, the ancient elves of Eír Glanfath are described as quite primitive, technology-wise, yet with impressive knowledge of astronomy and so on. I went with a very simple, yet ellegant bronze age design - a short leaf blade and a cone pommel. The sword is vaguely reminiscent of celtic weapons, but I didn't stick too close to any historical style. It's magical after all, so it's longer than any obsidian weapon we could reasonably imagine. Beside obsidian I chose the most primitive metal I could think of - copper. No idea if the elves actually used metal or not, this one has that ancient look for sure. Opal is just cool, I really liked the idea of it being a magical transformer for soul energy. Obsidian I chose for obvious reasons, but also because it's supposed to (perhaps as an urban legend) hold an edge one molecule wide and thus able to cut anything. (if only it wasn't fragile! hey, magic solves that problem! ) The copper inlay all revolves around sound. The blade decoration looks a bit like a signal, a sine wave and a snake (Ouroboros? I know they got rid of that, it's an old idea). The guard ended up looking a lot like pointy elven ears, but that was NOT intentional. Maybe it was subconscious. The arms holding the "signal" symbolize the user's soul grip on things being the only thing keeping the sword intact. The opal faces are pretty self explanatory - the handle ones dig into your palm, make it slightly uncomfortable to use, reminding you of the responsibility you have when you draw the sword. Possible system uses: - obviously more damage or armour piercing if the user's willpower or soul power (uh, whatever stat you choose :D) is higher - regular roll checks if the sword breaks and hurts you? - maybe there's a chance the wailing (if you do a critical?) scares some of your opponents and breaks their morale? - maybe you can do sonic attacks by waving it wildly? Or if you hit the ground? - penalties to sneaking or diplomacy if the sword is drawn? :D So, that's. It'd be kind of cool if I could mod it into the game one day, but who knows how that turns out. Let me know what you guys think.

This sounds rather good. I mean, if they do have a mocap studio, it'd be a bit silly not to do it.

Have you by any chance wandered off the Dark Souls forums?

Right, hey dude, you who some time ago suggested the Roguelike minigame for Endless Paths. You were wondering how tiles would work. Like that.

Would you please read the rest of the thread? We dealt with this nonsense rather thoroughly.

At this scale and view I think the best way to differentiate is by, well, scaling. The MASSIVE software developed for the LOTR movies had this funny utility called Orc Builder, where you could change and randomize the appearance of the orc avatars. It's quite amazing how much a creature seems different if you give it slightly different proportions (limb length, height, perhaps posture..), especially from distance.

That is exactly the dreaded "class system vs. skill system" dispute which has been going on for ever and ever on every RPG forum. Ever. Rather unlikely to be cracked here, I reckon.

The right arrows for the job, that's just common sense. Hunters wouldn't carry many heavy bodkins around, but rangers expecting to hunt orcs might.

Well, we agree there then. I'm curious to see how it ends up in PE, because I have some faith in OBS's experience and design skill. I hope they surprise us with something very playable. I do prefer other class systems though, yes. Hmmm, kind of. Gandalf is definitely a paladin-like character, a representative of a divine power wielding a shiny sword. Funny how that works, eh? It'd be quite fun to stat him up in our system. Something like Conjurer (not of cheap tricks!) - 4, Fighter - 2, Medicus - 3... And yet he represents the visual image of a wizard archetype. Heh.

You dislike the fact there is a fighter class. But it is and has to be, if there is to be any design in our hypothetical game at all. What is a class? Usually, a class is a package of skills and spells grouped under an archetype. That archetype is based on both common sense (and design convenience) and fluff specific to the setting. what do characters usually do? They fight. They cast spells. This is why the "fighter" and "caster" are the two most basic archetypes ever. You can add "thief" for sneaking, traps and all that as well. In a game I've been on the design team of, we approached it like this: - classes are packages of skills. Most of the actions grouped as typical under each class can be attempted and performed by anyone. But characters with levels in the class do generally better than everyone else, they don't have to be so lucky to succeed. Plus they get certain special skills that nobody else has. - fighter is one of those classes/packages, naturally. And this does exactly what you're saying - everyone can fight. In this system, everyone can fight as well as any other without levels in Fighter. If they take levels in Fighter, they're better at it, it's what they do. - It's what they do, among other things. We don't have a paladin class. If you want, you can create a paladin character, but he won't be defined by having a paladin class. He'd be a dude with some levels in Fighter, some levels in Medicus and some levels in Conjurer. Thus he has fighting, healing and magic, voila - a Paladin. Now PE and the IE games don't have this flexibility. They have multiclass, but it's slightly different and doesn't allow for this type of roleplaying. If you did what you're proposing - "everyone can fight, so why a fighter class? Let's make ALL unique classes which have some fighting and other stuff!", you're limiting my options. What if I want to play a fighting dude, but don't want any magic? What if I don't want to be a high born warlord? These are more suited for backgrounds, personality traits and so on, that's roleplaying closely tied with every individual character and fluff of the setting. I can do this on my own, I don't need a class to do it for me. If you create unique classes with this little difference, you have to make many to satisfy the wide variety of players. Some prefer a more general class like "fighter" or "mage". And there's nothing that makes "mage" an abnormal class which is more validated to be in game than a "normal" fighter. A mage is just as broad a concept as a fighter, yet you see it somehow as more specialized, just because you come across fighters more often in the world. Well, why have specialized magical classes then? As far as I understand you, you'd like everyone to be a wonderfully unique butterfly and remove the boring basic warrior class just...because it seems pointless to you. Gee, how nice of you to limit my options by inventing nonsensical replacement classes such as "pretorian". The basic classes have been a constant in RPGs for a reason. You're not starting the game with a demigod, you have to start somewhere you can progress from. That's why in many games paladins and other magical warriors are an evolution class of the fighter. However, in a rigid system like the IE games and what PE will presumably have, it's a challenge to the designers to create a fighter class with reasonable and real progression from lvl 1 to the top. Yes, some games give fighters abilities which end up seeming pretty magical. Well, that's why it's a challenge.

Let's see, a warlord is a lord (title) who presumably commands groups of men in war. How does one choose this class on lvl 1? Sword master? Oh yeah, I'm a lvl 1 sword master! Check out my mastery. I can't use an axe though, I am a SWORD master. Oh hai, I'm the Chosen One, lvl 1. My skills are... wait, almost got it... Each player is the Chosen One, ding ding. Not a class. Pretorian? Oh sure, let's have a lvl1 pretorian. Yes, I am the bodyguard of the Roman emperor! In this fantasy land, without and emperor. Or Romans. And my skills are...wearing helmets with feather crests? A warrior/fighter is a very basic, yet almost perfect class. It describes a wide enough range of possibilities while still keeping it real in one aspect of play - fighting. I can choose a weapon style which I prefer, but whatever I choose, I'm going to be doing the close up fighting, that's what I do. The paladin as you describe is the poorly designed class, not the fighter. Paladin is the douchebag who comes to the party late, is pretty much a fighter already, but ALSO has some magical powers. Like, wow, dude fighter, why can't you heal yourself? I guess you haven't been crusading nearly enough, eh? Like, whatever, man, you suck. If anything, this kind of paladin should be a subclass of Fighter, or a fighter/priest multiclass, whatever. Nooo, you feel the need to complain about the basic functional class being too similar to parts of your nonsensical made up class. Classy. That's because it IS an accurate description of a class. Of course everyone can fight, but that's not their specialization. And if they fight a lot, but have other powers and traits, they usually aren't as good in fighting alone as the pure fighters, or their class is a subclass/multiclass of the fighter. It's an abstraction of what characters do and how they develop their skills. Your suggestions are empty words with real world meaning which you think sound cool, but which don't really work as game classes if you think about it for a moment.

Urrhmm...why were you attracted to PE again? Not saying you can't, but...dang, if such a simple concept seems too much of a bother to you, dang..

*I have this idea of what a paladin is and that is what it always should be because I feel entitled to it* There, summed it up for a bunch of you good people.

Lloyd's new video actually shows all kinds of interesting arrow types, a heavy bodkin for plate (apparently) among them. It also discusses a very interesting effect of cutting vs. piercing type damage on quilted/layered cloth armour like gambesons! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWCN7HId-b8