Shadenuat

Which is't what WK was about. If it followed that design pattern, all of it's levels would be filled with helmites and maybe a few celestials. Would that be as much fun? There were elementals, mind flayers, dragon, demilich, demons, githyanki, golems, giant, crazy gadget and overly exaggerated meta puzzles (Ghost Warrior maze). You could probably write quite a few lore bits about how all these got inside that completely ridiculous, multi-exit prison, throw some art to make their habitat more plausible, but in the end, it is still an anecdotic dragon, demilich and illithid inside one same dungeon made to hold off a prince of demons.

I can't! I'm allergic! I take pills! And the side effect of them is that I do not make up absolutes out of everyone's opinions! Watcher's Keep had all of that and more. It had baatezu and tanar'ri fighting, it had puzzles, included a card game, backstory for every level and NPC, an overarching plot and even morale choice (sort of) at the end, where you had to choose between munchkin's urge to get on with powerful demon, "do the right thing" or even take an evil path and slay quest givers. I was satisfied with Watcher's Keep. But the OP was not.

Baldur's Gate characters were fun, but also very meta and comedian. Obsidian's characters are a leap ahead of them. Although, I'd probably prefer a mix of both or a writing which is inbetween of those two types. Trying to figure the nature of a man, a bear, and a lesbian while buffing for a fight with Firkraag will be confusing.

Years of CRPGs decline made me immune to fear. I believe it is my gamer's right to demand it. There are times for narrative and times for gamist needs. I would rather not have anyone in my party when I pillage 15's level dungeon who suddenly feels there is no reason to fight anymore because I seem do despise that companion 'cause of ugly scars on the back being left by wings being cut after months in a cage in a circus... ect. Choices and consequences are good, but for all I care, time may as well stop when I roam and loot my mega-dungeon. The existance and purpose of that multi-leveled, unrealistic construct are based around that.

Sometimes dungeon should be just a dungeon. It is good to be unshakled from the narrative to test your group not as a family of troubled NPCs demanding to care about their every need and issue but as a true battle unit. Also, dungeons like that are usually the only way to test player's knowledge of the system and intelligence, because, let's face it, main campaigns in CRPGs today are always downgraded for underleveled, limped PCs, and rarely require any brain exercise by the lack of puzzles, because designers are afraid not everyone can finish their game.

Stuff really made me mad in NWN. Partially because NWN was tiled of course, and one could easely count the number of tiles outside and inside. Taverns and tombs with corridors so huge you'd think they were build with a future use of dump trucks in mind.

These are all good points. I would unify them all in a simple concept - enemies should exist in the world itself together with everything in it, not in the metagaming pocket dimension of scripts, UI and time barriers. There should not be any "waves" of enemies, because that would mean enemies exist somewhere, so player must have an option to deal with them some other way (exept things like a portal to plane of fire which spawns fire elementals... which even then should be possible to close using Lock Portal spell, ect.).

You know there's a lot of themes and ideas to exploit and make a game about besides rape and homos. Like, what can change the nature of a man? But for some reason these two seem to be most demandable.

Ursula K. Le Guin.

They should be otherworldy. So they should either transcend humans in some aspects or be a part of world's myth. Sidhe with their Courts and such would interest me the most. Tolkien elves are great, but to make them inspire awe and be interesting both would not be easy.

Bunch of colorful pixels on 640*480 screen is very abstract, that's why it does't stand out as much as 3D models today. Compared to nowadays, these are pretty mundane. Normal-sized weapons and fully-covered body with armor for warriors. *snort* You are trying too hard.

My favorite Sarevok. Notice the plates on thights and how they are connected to plate skirt. That's the part which bothered me in Cadegund's art the most.

crap, posted in wrong thread. delete this post

Great. In before Forton gets his first fan-base and "I support Forton" stamps, and becomes the most iconic and meme-spawning character from the cast.

Well if there's AOO then probably, else I can see players abusing AI target priority and just using melee wizards like backstabbing rogues. That's... very unlogical. The idea of class is exactly to create and separate roles. And I don't understand why do you need classes at all if they would have almost skill-based like gameplay.

Slow. AD&D. Around 10 levels max.

Melee spells were always kinda lackluster in D&D, which also dragged down whole Necromancy school. However I'd rather make save-or-something spells melee and keep mages lightly-armored, seems it would be more thrilling to play that sort of spellcaster that way than just run around in heavy armor casting melee spells which damage as well if not better than ranged ones.

She is a princess-general wearing insignia on armor, so it's not really "stylized" (look at the drapery). Also, part of it is not an armor. It's prosthetics (at least an arm). So her armor is not very good example because a) it's mostly to show off her status b) it's to hide the fact that she misses some limbs and c) it's not even made of steel, it's sort of lightweight ceramic-... okay I should stop re-telling the whole setting now. When people say "stylized" I instantly think of some lame atitude I hear from some artists, like "Well it's armor, but it can't look like real armor, cause it FANTASY and we should STYLIZE it" (usually means improbable proportions and ornaments everywhere). It's quite different from just finding fashion based on facts of setting and characters in it.

I've read this, and now I really just want large dungeons with cool monsters and loot -__-

I can see some rough scetches making their appearance in quest journal.

There is a happy ending, you need to be Chaotic Evil to achieve it. Best trolling eva ^________^

Because Domi is a writer and did study in Russia because romance does not take away too much from characters written by Domi. Take Kivan, for example; it's basically a camaraderie which can last from BG1 and to the ToB, there are situational banters, struggles, and trying to understand and help that emo elf to overcome his obsession with revenge. You don't lose anything if you do not play as a female elf, really. He's written as character first and foremost. Compare that to legion of "masturbatory fiction" which BG mods are usually, with 35 flirt options and 40 questions like "What's your favorite color?", "If you'd be an animal, what animal would you be?". There, character only serves a purpose for entertaining a specific crowd, he has no real dreams and hopes, and quickly comes down to being nothing but your plaything. You can easely see when exactly writers steam ran out - he finished writing romance, and then it's like "oh snap, now I need to write something for people who won't romance dude/gal, like friendship path". And it sucks, of course, because the character was there to have romance to begin with, not to be a being with some grand hope or with ideas to say. Those who enjoy that kind of **** should have no vote on how characters should be written and their tribute should end in their names being used as NPCs in that Avellone's dungeon with crazy Cipher.

The point is an amount of angles you could approach an encounter with. You can carry a standard loadout and rely on tactics and timing, you can specialize and rely on companions to fill the gaps, or you can try and scout ahead and then prepare better. You can even savescum, if finding the best outcome for specific battle pleases you. My real problem with Vancian system is that it's completely lore-unfriendly. I'm not sure how exactly it can be solved, possibly with ingredients or some other features to better flesh out spell preparation and bring that part to life in the game. I'm not even a zealous fan of slots, but mindlessly bashing Vancian spellcasting and puting all the sins of IE and Aurora engines games spellcasting on it is a poor way of approaching the problem, especially concidering the fact that IE games are generally praised exactly because of their complicated magical duels and rich repertoire of spells - a success which yet has to be repeated. These sections of the game I mentioned - mostly scouting surroundings and using party skills to "be aware" in conjunction with spellcasting options - need work regardless of magic system. The designer can also build encounters or whole dungeons using limited rest options as well, that's just an option of either using additional resource player has to manipulate in a dungeon layout or not. Designer can even build encounters assuming player's characters are always at full health, which would make things even easier, but do we really need that? And do we really need to overdramatise this "telegraphing" **** so much? Obviously it's more pleasant for some players to think exclusively within the realm of a single encounter and for designers to design the same, but I see no strategic value in a design of that sort.

Vancian system does't do anything of that. It's encounter balance, enemy numbers and how reconnaissance is handled in game which affects player's knowledge of how he should fill the slots. Even then, there is no problem whatsoever in creating a multipurposed set of spells. Noone forces you to memorise three fireballs, when you can memorise Fireball, Haste and Dispel Magic instead. Actually, that *is* a whole point of strategy there - balancing a battle unit (and party is a battle unit) to be multi-purposeful and able to handle what game/DM throws at them. Which means making decisions, and either making everyone a generalist or using a bunch of specialists. And it is an interesting strategic game in itself when playing a spellcaster - to create your own set of spells to match any scenario. What's with all the people having problems with meeting unexpected or troubling enemies suddenly? What, everyone've read Sawyer's posts about resting system and put it on a pedestal as an undisputed truth? I can give a hint how to fix trouble with filling slots: remove stupid next-gen cutscenes which trigger when you step on them and instantly teleport you into bunch of enemies and forced dialogue (NWN2). Then you could easely scout a dungeon with thief and prepare spells for every encounter you'll face. Unshakle player from scripted, forceful mess which games love to throw at players today "for the immersion", and we can get strategy back into our RPGs.

Morale of the story - never use random loot table, place loot by hand.