rjshae

Still waiting on a space opera based on the Lensman series... ...

An idea that still intrigues me is the possibility of having ship-to-ship combat in an IE-style game. I could see that happening in two stages: 1) the enemy ship moves across the area toward the party's ship, allowing ranged combat to take place, including spells and firearms; 2) following some animations showing grappling hooks being tossed across, the two ships become joined together in a stationary position, allowing boarding across ramps. A pitched battle ensues. The first part would require some special coding to factor in the moving ship during combat. That's probably the part that makes this concept more difficult to implement. But it would add a lot of realism to the scene. I'm not sure how do-able that is, mechanics-wise. Perhaps the enemy are repeatedly translated across the map by applying offsets to their positions many times a second? The issue of fire during the battle would be a concern. Tossing fireballs across could cause both ships to catch fire, so perhaps the game would need to impose a restriction on fire spells? This wouldn't necessarily need to be a mechanical restriction, but could perhaps be handled via a faction change with the group transporting the party. However, that would also require that the game simulate the spread of fire across the ships, and possibly sailors spending time fighting those fires. Any thoughts?

I kind of like this idea but for the fact that it sounds like a lot of railroading. What if my character doesn't want to have kids? What if my character has no love interest, or my character is gay, or my character is a psychopath who would sooner butcher and devour a potential mate rather than produce offspring with him/her? What if my character just prefers the life of the wanderer over the ol' ball and chain, finding the idea of settling down with husband/wife and a gaggle of brats absolutely nauseating? Basically, the sequel would all hinge on your character being the family type. Not that games like BG2 didn't railroad you to the point of absurdity, but in general I think that's something to avoid if you can. As a player you wouldn't need to be concerned about having a family. All you need to do is make it to the end of the first game, whereupon the writers can author an epilogue based upon the character you played. Granted, the corner cases you presented would make it a challenge.

So, you had Garrick in your party in BG1? Did anyone keep a Bard in their party at all? IMO, that was easily the worst class in all of 2E. Hopefully Chanters will be useful. I tried to force myself to try one for a while, but it basically played like a party of 5.1. That experience wasn't unique to BG1 though.

Watched The Tomorrow People on the CW last night; it had pretty decent effects and a young hottie cast. The background story seemed like a variant of Jumper, with a plot twist or two.

I recommend talking to yourself. Tried that, but we had irreconcilable differences...

I love the sensation of having my mind expanded through creative and meaningful discourse. Where can I find that?

The golden ratio is 1.62:1, so under that ideal a portrait 330 pix high would have a width of 204 px. Also, most portrait frames have a weighted bottom, which might help with the presentation. Just saying...

Yep. Although in games such as IWD and ToEE you didn't have that sort of banter so they devolved into tactical combat systems. In P:E I'll focus on the characters the first couple of times, then fine tune the party's tactical makeup for a hardcore run through.

^^^^ Part of the problem comes from restricting class names to single words. You can get a lot more colorful with 2-3 words.

Tactile Rendering of 3D Features on Touch Surfaces, from Disney Research I can think of any number of uses for this...

Now there's a feature that never really gets much use in the IE series: choosing primary/secondary colors for your character. Once you start wearing armor then your color selections become fairly useless.

Only with the right makeup...

A better approach to designing a multi-classing system might be to build it that way from the ground up. That is, start with the assumption that a character will always be built with two demi-classes, then manage the special case where the demi-classes are the same class. (I.e. add in additional options and benefits for specializing in a single class that compensate for the fact that your character is less flexible.) A variant of this approach would be to have a major (67%) and a minor (33%) class, then allow a character to take three minor (3x33%) classes... with some limitations.

I'm not sure that a game about a virtually empty desert world would be worth playing, or even be considered "space opera".

Hopefully you folks are planning ahead for an HD release several years down the road by saving the assets in a higher definition form.

Nothing to do with P:E. Flush, wipe, move along...

Something I wouldn't mind playing is a game based on a family heritage. You start off with the character in the current game; after much struggle he gains a stronghold, power, and a record of achievement. Then he settles down and has a parcel of kids. Maybe a disaster happens and the family becomes scattered to the four winds: the second game plays the role of one of those kids trying to figure out what happened, working to locate family members and recover her family name, then gaining revenge on the blackheart who devastated her family. The third game could be about a black-sheep cousin who became lost to the family. His adventures are about what shaped his destiny, and how his soul is tied back to the originating character.... &c. If you build a heritage plot in this manner you don't necessarily need to scale the game to epic levels, but you still create a story that links together between the different releases.

The tl;dr version:

Multi-classing in D&D seemed like a cludge designed to allow the type of flexibility that later became more readily available with a skills-based system. The problem is that multi-classing hard to balance well. An improperly balanced multi-classing system favors a min-maxing approach, making it more of a zero-sum game than is preferable for the role-playing experience. (I.e. it encourages munchkinism.) To me, as long as there is sufficient flexibility of design in the system, then the multi-classing cludge isn't really necessary. Of course, that approach introduces a whole new set of balancing issues.

That's mechanically too similar to the Monk, I'm afraid. I don't think that's a problem. The monk wants to get damaged, so it's an incentive not to wear armor. The cipher with this power up wants to get hit but not significantly damaged, which suggests wearing damage-absorbing armor.

...proofreading.

I could imagine the Vithrack being able to command herds of insects with their minds. Perhaps they have even domesticated and selectively bred some, so that they start to resemble the insect form of farm animals. Giant bovine-spiders could produce non-sticky silk that can be woven into tough fabrics. Giant beetles repeatedly shed their shells, producing tough materials that can be chemically reshaped into bowls, cups, and so forth. Giant canine-wasps round up the bovine-spiders and serve as watchdogs.

For Epic levels, the average exploration and encounter approach isn't going to cut it. Your power levels are beyond nearly everything you're going to face in a typical location. I think you need to travel to where the challenges are, which may mean moving to distant locations around the globe, or leaving the globe altogether and going to another plane or realm.Perhaps elevated souls are directly tasked by the gods to accomplish great things, meaning you'll become an agent of a deity and be sent against the greatest perceived threats? If you succeed, then your soul will ascend to wherever it is elevated souls go.