rjshae

^^^ 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.

Tears of a Machine -- mecha anime-style RPG with teenage pilots; currently at $5,056/$7,000 with 69 hours to go. Might still make it... Ponies for Pathfinder -- a... ahh... pony-based setting, currently at $2,509/$3,850 with 25 days to go. Shades of Bunnies & Burrows. The Arcanum 30th Anniversary Edition -- An updated release of the Arcanum Role-Playing System, currently succeeding at $2,340. N.R.G. System Core Rulebook -- sword-and-sorcery setting based on d20, combined with an "Energy" system; currently succeeding at $2,161 with 17 days to go.

I suspect they're just busy actually building the game.

Fallout: Floaters and Sinkers

A lot of people rank on ego as a personality problem. What doesn't get mentioned as often is that ego is a terrific motivator.

Adam Antium

The 8 pre-made companions will have personalities written by Obsidian. The 8 hired adventurers will be soulless automatons that players roll up in the Adventurers Hall. Make that soulless automatons with souls... I hope Obsidian does something with these guys like was done in WIzardry 8. For those of you who have not played that game, the pc created heroes not only had specific voices (like in Icewind Dale) but each voice was tied to a personality (labeled aggressive, laid back, friendly, brawny, loner, chaotic, eccentric etc.) and occasionally the character would comment on in game happenings based on their personality. While this isn't like a companion with his own quests, background, etc. It would add a little more personality to the characters than the Icewind Dale characters had. I had a thought along those lines -- each hireling description could correspond to a secret agenda that encodes specific faction preferences. Hence, a description corresponds to favoring certain factions to varying degrees while having an equally variable dislike for others. It's up to the player to read between the lines and figure out who likes what. At best this approach would only produce a quasi-personality, but it could provide at least some degree of depth and (I'd guess) should be relatively easy to implement: it's just a linear equation of weights based upon the PC's faction standing. The question then is what impact would it have on the game? Would your faction alignments control the hirelings morale, thereby determining their behavior under stressful conditions? Would the hireling leave when their morale falls too low? Would they refuse to fight a faction that they strongly favor? Do they ignore your commands and immediately engage a faction they dislike?

The 8 pre-made companions will have personalities written by Obsidian. The 8 hired adventurers will be soulless automatons that players roll up in the Adventurers Hall. Make that soulless automatons with souls...

Seriously? Another romance thread?

Somewhere in the game I'd like to find an actual dungeon construction project, complete with a strong economic rationale, engineers to design the traps and structures, plus the use of magic and summoned worker-creatures to perform the labor. It should include a source of energy, food, and water, with some means of preventing flooding, maintaining the lighting, supporting the monstrous life forms, and keeping fresh air circulating...

^^^^ ...people glance at the action then walk by... must be Brooklyn.

Thank you for the update; your illustrations reminded me of the old Wizardry I manual so it was a nice retro throwback there. I look forward to seeing what you put together in terms of a character mix and their interactions. My one suggestion would be to consider giving one of them a non-fatal handicap of some kind. Seeing how a character deals with their liabilities, as well as how they compensate using their capabilities, makes for a deeper experience. Thanks. Note that I never received an e-mail notice, so I'm not sure if you are still sending those out.

Hmm, scam seems to be your favorite word. Having Professor Freeman Dyson back his idea is pretty significant cred. I just wouldn't want to be living anywhere near the thing when projectiles start shooting off at mach 20.

It's what we do... it's who we are...