rjshae

That's easy to implement by pre-generating a key for each possible action and Xor-ing that with a key generated for the game; the modified key is used to generate the random result, so that you always get the same outcome.

The OP makes some good points. Rather than a success/fail, I'd like to see something more akin to a recursive partial success: You receive a pop-up showing a set of items you can nab. It only shows those items that you can access based upon your skill rank versus the opponent's save rank, with modifiers for the item placement. I.e. body armor should get a massive save bonus; items hanging from the belt get no modifier. You only get a general impression about what's available to pinch, so you only see things like armor, weapon, garb, trinket, &c. Items can be better identified once you exit the dialogue. You can get synergy bonuses when another member of the party has a comparable pick-pocket skill. Each time you take an item from the pop-up, the list is regenerated with the opponent gaining a cumulative bonus to their save. This repeatedly shortens the list of remaining items, and at some point there is nothing left to take.

It's five weeks sway from the one year anniversary. I guess it must be proceeding more slowly than they thought.

Although at first your faithful pet seems like an ordinary animal, in time you discover that it is actually a natal soul. That is, it is a newly formed soul that has never before seen the mortal realm. Instinctively, natal souls seek out a patron with an unbroken soul in order to find its balance and true purpose. The natal soul begins to acquire characteristics of the patron, and in time becomes more than an ordinary creature: they may gain special, unique powers that depend on the nature of the bond. When reborn, such a natal soul may have acquire sufficient identity to achieve a higher form, such as a human. Natal souls that fail to bond with an unbroken soul become cast adrift, turning into animal spirits that linger in the wilderness, acquiring unusual traits and powers. Some natal souls are wracked by forbidden magic to become twisted, malign spirits. At some point in the game, the player may be offered a sizable sum for their pet by a secret practitioner of dark magic; if he accepts, the pet is later encountered having been turned into such a warped creature. Refusing to sell the pet would instead reveal the true nature of the creature's soul.

If you're going to pool the loot, then some type of gathering animation would be nice. For example, upon clicking the loot button, streaky blurs move from the source creatures to a single pile. A drawback to pooling the loot in this manner is that notable finds may get lost in the mix. Stuff that is interesting should move to the top of the pile.

Perfect and after that we can go on a pseudo-adventure in which upon entering the area we pick a faction we helped and check boxes for what tasks we accomplished. If you like. Unless there is some specific type of event going on, like the movement of an army, cross-country encounters in dangerous regions are going to be random affairs anyway. There's just no way to make them predictable without perfect intelligence. If you don't want to include random encounters, then travel becomes a pretty boring affair unless you mini-game it.

The primary benefits (to the game) of random encounters seems to be building character experience and using up party expendable assets. You could accomplish the same thing by providing pseudo-XP for travel across perilous regions of the world map, which can then be purchased in exchange for expendables. There could be a box on the map where you can put travel expendables; as you travel across dangerous regions, those are randomly used up and you gain XP in exchange.

You'd think that a horse would be the preferred mode of transport in a post-apocalyptic environment. But the only mounts I recall were the trader's pack animals. Maybe bicycles then...

it's all about this magical stuff called unobtanium, found deep in the earth's crust, or occasionally under oversized trees. Yes, that could be another motivator. It was called Lyrium in the Dragon Age series, which had some interesting properties and effects.

A world with cannon that can knock down castle walls and magic that can excavate earth and rock provides a reasonable motive for building underground structures. Perhaps earthen excavation is one of the primary economies of wizardly magic? Those who can shape and harden rock, or can summon earth moving brutes, may be much sought after by the wealthy and powerful.

Looting in ToEE was atrocious for that; after finishing off a room full of 20-30 baddies it would take forever to click through each of the corpses and weed out the useful gear. It was especially bad when multiple bodies got stacked up. Plus after a while you'd be guessing which ones you'd looked at and which you hadn't. Either grouping the loot or giving us a looting dialog window would be an improvement.

Horror usually works better when you start off with a sense of normalcy. That sets the baseline and makes it clear that horror is not the usual condition.

...and they used duct tape.

Yes, to me player choice is a key essence of what turns a game into a RPG. The fewer choices there are, the less like a RPG it becomes. A good design provides a range of choices in an integrated package that doesn't overwhelm the player and detract from the fun. The nice thing about a computer interface is that it can deliver a complexity of detail in a user friendly interface. Translating that back into a PnP form may... require some compromises, including simplification. But I blather on...

I never actually hated DA 2 and found that some of the concerns people were howling about seemed fairly minor to me. Having a family structure for the main character really helped with the assimilation into the setting and the story. But the combat seemed a little too twitchy and uninteresting, while the city mostly felt like an empty shell. I played it through a second time as a mage and it was more enjoyable. I'd rate it as slightly above average.

^^^ It might be of benefit when battling the Goblin boss or any of his champions.

Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien. --Voltaire. I just hope they don't run out of money.

By the same token, the game should not be full of npcs who engage in savage cruelty for its own amusement, because I would expect those characters to be hunted down rather quickly - as much by other 'evil-doers' as by 'do-gooders' or what authorities there are. But again, from what quotes have been offered on the development, it sounds like this is fairly in hand. Right, but one of the aspects of adventuring may be that you will interact with unpleasant characters with greater frequency, so they may seem more common. In actuality, it is because you are seeking them out.

Once your evil character becomes reviled throughout the lands for committing acts of cruelty and villainy, I'd have no problem with the game balance being shifted heavily against you. It is totally realistic for abject evil to be hunted down and crushed by any self-respecting civilization. Those of noble bearing would be willing to spend significant sums of gold to have you sought after by highly skilled specialists against whom you would be completely outmatched. Thus, playing an evil character long enough to reach the end game should require a significant amount of guile.

There's...something...about...that...sentence...that seems...a bit...harsh on...Josh... I agree.

Indeed. I count myself one of those people and I have very mixed feelings about the various presented mechanics, ranging from optimistic to indifferent to very disappointed. The majority of what I've heard thus far seems pretty reasonable and sensible; there's a couple of ideas that I'm not so sure about. Hence I'm taking a wait and see attitude toward the implementation of the mechanics because I won't really know until I start playing the game how well they will work out. Having played multiple different PnP rulesets I'm not all that sold on the D&D game system as a whole, so I'm open to some new approaches.

Perhaps some people don't like activated abilities because they are not an accurate representation of reality? For example, in real life one could presumably use a "called shot" whenever one wanted. By giving it a fixed number of uses, it makes the player aware of the designer's manipulation. There's a similar issue with cool downs for repeatable physical actions. I understand why the game designers use these tools, but they do possess a certain element of artificiality.

As the tailor said to the repairman, make it sew...

Eh, no, I don't think they were superior gameplay wise because of the PnP mechanics. I just finished BGEE and the gameplay felt decidedly archaic. CRPGs have benefited by the alteration of PnP rules to make them more CRPG friendly, not the other way around.

Trying to adjust and simplify the CRPG so that it can be made into a PnP game will most likely diminish the result. Hopefully then that isn't a significant factor in this stage of the IP development.