septembervirgin

What typical fantasy world tropes would you like to see appear, as long as they're uniquely wrought.

Get Salman Rushdie to write a short story for this!

I don't like being called a bastard so much, but I share your hopes in that the project is funded. I'll probably need a bit of entertainment in 2014.

I remember in playing through Lionheart, a game I rather liked, and at the time I would also occasion to play Civilization 3. I wondered if the lore in Lionheart might be indexed and hypertext linked, like the internet and like Civilization 3. I realized that an interesting idea would be a role-playing game where the lore utilized hypertext and one could click on a link to yield more information one had already gathered. Hyperlinks in itself would be useful, especially in the wealth of names and places and items an immersive game tends to yield to the player. I tried my hand at a NWN campaign world (and failed due to hardware limits) but I had a morass of data on a world and history and personages and artifacts. I know Obsidian will have a small library about their game world before the third expansion for Project Eternity is due (and might even now have such a thing). What helps in developing lore is to have an internal corporate wiki. Even small, jocular facts written as a lark can be refined and used. Now, this can come in handy if you have family trees (as in Rome: Total War), something most CRPG don't have a need for because they lack depth in lore and passage of long periods of time isn't an important issue. Descendants and ancestors can be an important gameplay element and in fantasy game worlds family is often a link to ancient power. It's also an interesting assistance to immersion, makes the fans happy, and inspires loads of fanfic (what doesn't?). At the very least it can be useful if you plan to permit wide variety in choice in your game and permit marriages, children, old age, and death. And what if a suit of armor was worn by a person centuries ago and only the record of a name and the armor remains. The soul of that person has incarnated and the person remembers their armor. All of this could be done with linear quest-solving, but if the clues exist in the game journal, the perspicuous player can discover some very interesting and hidden facts.

Thankyou Obsidian for listening to my suggestions!

It's not that printed books are old fashioned, it's just that the cost is larger. And there's got to be dangled incentive for us to pay hundreds of dollars. Don't worry, we can probably buy a book like the collector's book sometime later. It might be published, you know.

There should be a mega-dungeon. I think it's a delightful idea -- perhaps one that spans under the entire region represented in the game. I didn't like the way the "Deep Roads" don't let one travel throughout Ferelden. Try hiring someone who can draw extensive maps and who is familiar with the concept that monsters are a biosphere. The one problem is I'm not sure how much time they'll have to get monsters. Sure, this might be a retro-style game but there should be variety in a labyrinth as sizable as we'd like, variety in monsters, variety in architecture. And it shouldn't be the central focus of the game. They can afford to hire a bunch of people with the millions they'll be getting, but millions doesn't mean they get the Dalai Lama to help with graphics. Also they'd need a really cool idea for how the dungeons got there. It can't be the Deep Roads although a devastated subterranean civilization is an idea at least as old as the real-world Garamantes of the Sahara. It can't be a mob of souls that think they're a dungeon; Final Fantasy XII fans would laugh at us. And if it's a mad wizard, we're all going to spit up our milk. Ancient sewers? Couldn't be. Train tunnels is one idea. Another idea might be that it's the land of the gods, which might be more unique than most dungeon concepts, albeit mythology holds chthonic deities aplenty and there's some evidence (nay, rumors) of ancient TIbetan temples dug into the mountains themselves (and I'm not describing Aghartha nor Shambhala). The Beijing Anomaly is suggestive at underground oceans teeming with strange life and perhaps islands. I don't think I've ever seen an intrinsically overland computer game with an impressive dungeon system ever. I have hope there would be need for ropes, as the OP stated, lanterns, water, food, pet mice on twine leashes, dolls, iron spikes and heavy mallets, adhesive locks (to affix to a door for aesthetic reasons), tents, etc. Of course, all of this could be portrayed as it being assumed the players have the basic materials for survival. Yes, it wouldn't be as fun as a tabletop game when no one remembers to bring a ten foot pole with them. We must remember that many players won't *want* to laden themselves with nifty survival gear. Also, what's the use when there's walkthroughs and play guides? We must remember that if a puzzle or test is to remain interesting it must also be fun. So maybe we won't have numerous creative solutions for crossing a deep ravine or fording an underground river (or sailing down it). My hope is for a massive, fascinating game that all will adore. Let's hope for the best for Obsidian and ourselves!

I suggested that we get trophies in our home to represent our victories. I didn't say we should decorate.

I am curious now about the soulless or those whose souls are in obfuscation but not fractured. What if someone is born with no discernible soul? They would probably be as prone to manipulation by magic as an inanimate object. Also, what about a soul that somehow solidifies as a material and animate substance? Is that a "god"? Can a soul transmigrate into an inanimate object or plant or cadaver by mistake? What about a soul that manages to entrap other souls and form a one winged angel form -- does it have blue on blue eyes? Know any good recipes for making curries? Is there an annual cook-off or sporting event between adventuring companies?

The PnP game Call of Cthulhu by Chaosium and the PnP game World of Darkness (the new one) by White Wolf provide the best examples of RPG rules for madness anywhere. That a sanity meter exists in a game at all is because Chaosium trail blazed the idea to begin with (in the early eighties). World of Darkness connects cruelty and criminality with loss of sanity -- quite a horror trope, actually. I don't think there's reason to include sanity rules just yet. Wait til a later expansion?

I do believe that we should have player housing that's more than a nicely illustrated box to contain items and henchmen. We should be able to decorate the box, lay protections in it, hire people to care for it and stock it with goods, attract villagers. Think of Covenants ala Ars Magica. Think of the palace in the computer game Civilization. Think of keeps and granted land in AD&D -- and the guidebooks and rules for establishing and maintaining these. Think of Havens in Vampire: the Masquerade. Think of the Sims (suppress your shudder of horror while you're at it). Player housing should be no less than a utility box of playtime. In the PnP game Ars Magica, a covenant is a collective of mages. Bear with me here, I do not think that houses are solely for mages, but in Ars Magica immersion and gameplay meet neatly in a set of rules that make these gaming living spaces a true *living* part of the game. We should be able to create it like a character, albeit it has the same architectural and internal appearance game after game. If we select a haunt in our home, it should be haunted. If we indicate that gold is local but is privately owned and mined, that should occur too. Let's select these by points and add some random extras. Game anyone? Does this seem good? In Civilization we were able to decorate our palace with trophies of our victories. I noticed the trophies in Hrothgar's home in Icewind Dale (much like trophies from a Sierra game, but I digress). We should receive trophies for each of our victorious quests where applicable. Placement of these trophies should be automatic. Some quests might permit us a choice of trophies and some trophies might do more than just look pretty (and provide a bonus to a function of our home somehow). Keeps in AD&D were granted to characters of high level, as part of the rules. These keeps attracted not only other powerful characters but also "zero level characters" who just sought sanctuary and protection in the keep in exchange for labor. This is a good idea. We should be able to hire and attract laborers who through the pantomime of animated emoting indicate a full life (and seem to go about their duties). We should be able to hire and attract soldiery, retired adventurers, runaway outcasts from outlaw bands, and any who might help guard. We should be able to assign duties to our companions, tactical (should we be assailed) and domestic administration -- assigned like Star Trek officers to consoles. Succinctly, as I've covered most of the ideas already (covering ideas we might glean from VtM havens and the sims would just be redundant), I suggest that our homes have traits we can assign it, that decor can be added automatically to our homes (but not placed by us), that our homes attract more than just our companions.

I think DLC increase the funds of the company that offers DLC. I believe I'd purchase only a few but I'd also get the expansion should one be forthcoming (and I suspect more than one would be forthcoming).

I think I'll be able to wait past April 2014 for this game. After all, I'll be getting a Beta key.

Of course, the possibility of an entirely gay and lesbian knighthood rocks the house.

Enjoy my $140 soon as October comes. You've got an average of 40 dollars from each contributor, most of whom are geriatric. Please to include a magnifying glass with the boxed set?

I love Sense Motive and Innuendo as skills. These hearken back to the game Wizard's Realm (by Mystic Swamp), the first role-playing game that had casual usage social skills (except perhaps Arduin Grimoire which had just about everything). I think that maybe there will be a skill like Empathy, Sense Motive, Innuendo -- a generalized language/psychology/chatting skill.

Speaking from experience (I've been struck with several weapons in my life), crushing weapons aren't much good against metal armor despite what people claim. Long, narrow pointy weapons were good against metal armor: just stick the point through the face opening really hard. Chopping weapons aren't very good against shields, what's better is a splash weapon; you can't chop a well-made shield with an axe, warriors think long and hard about weapons and armor. If you think it's rock, paper, scissors it really isn't. If you see a weapon that was for use on the battlefield it's likely only good at killing lightly armored and non-armored targets. Really, it's not going to help you to try a cutting sword against a guy entirely clad in steel. What you do is you knock the guy in steel over, restrain the guy, and drown him or pour boiling wax into his helmet or remove the helmet then remove the head. We're looking at role-playing game tropes where it's easy to kill an armored enemy. We're working with that system of ideation. If we want a rock-scissors-paper concept of weapons and armor, try: Crushing versus unarmored Slashing versus light armor Piercing versus heavy armor Splashing versus shields Wrestling versus complete heavy armor

I'd love to see *fat* people as playable characters. My lord, don't these characters eat at all?

I'd like to see a text window where we can scroll back over important messages about the characters and their situation in the gaming world. There should be tabs for NPC chatter and dialogue, battle information, treasure information, quest information.

I think it's going to be huge and the time played might vary between thirty to forty hours outside time spent messing around to get interesting wandering monsters.

Narration can be well used but I didn't like it's use in that dream sequence from Baldur's Gate. They should have cut some of the text as superfluous and given the reader of the text a few breaks while reading it. He sounded rushed in places and at other times a bit unsure of what he was reading.

I think they should use icons of painted miniature figures set on a hexagon map with drawings on the hexagons.

What I'd want isn't what I'll likely see. What I'd like to see is that the NPC faction leaders react to eachother and how they perceive the situations with mild random variation. It's like a chess game to them, they manuever given the board they believe is there. If you could imagine they're like nations in Europa Universalis, they don't always make the same opening move from game to game. The player character(s) begin at a level where the game to them is like The Sims 3 or The Guild 2 except they're adventurers. The player characters struggle to establish some order (or chaos) and the world they know is pretty much structured by these NPC faction leaders. With their growing power, the faction leaders must begin to see them as important factors. There might be a number of ways this can be reacted to. However, the adventuring party (and any adventuring party) that becomes powerful must be seen as a faction in itself. Or if the party is still affiliated with a faction at this point, that faction is seen as having a powerful resource in an adventuring party.

Actually, what I'd select is not given as an option, I fear. I think there should be a type of map like a modified Arcanum, where a point could be selected on the world map and the characters would journey to it, or they could walk through the wilderness in an open world. There would be random encounters regardless of which method of travel chosen.

I'm not sure. I'd like to be able to continue playing after the end of the story. I think players should be permitted to see the land they've changed and saved. I think they should be able to refine situations, to alter relationships, to fight wandering monsters. If it's enjoyable enough, players will buy new expansions just to see the new crisis and new characters.