PrimeJunta

Is there going to be a pony? I want a pony.

No. My Numenera/Cypher System crush is still ongoing. That only has three classes, and it's absolutely brilliant. You can play just about any character concept you can imagine based on those three. Even the stock selection of descriptors and foci allow for thousands of combinations. That's more variety than you get in D&D chargen! (You can play with the classes with this utility I made.)

I didn't know "no naked Cadegund" was confirmed. If they do that, though, in all fairness they should add a naked Edair as well. Forton is, of course, already naked so that's not an issue. Things I'm not thrilled about, huh? First off, I prefer to suspend judgement before I've actually played the damn thing. I don't have any huge preferences over, say, one attribute, XP, or combat system over another, if it's well implemented, hangs together well, and serves its intended purpose. That said, after playing around ToEE a bit, I have been converted to the turn-based camp. It just fits a small-party cRPG extremely well, where every character has unique abilities. Real-time is better suited for RTS type things with lots of identical or near-identical units you move around, which then do their thing. So that's my first gripe: not turn-based. Elves. That's a no-brainer. Also, dwarves. Elves and dwarves are way overdone in fantasy cRPG's IMO. We could do with one that doesn't have them. Purple. There's gotta be some other color you can use for 'magic.' Why does it always have to be purple? Even the word 'purple' sounds dumb. Like a baby throwing up. Some of the art styles. There's been some I like a lot, but for example those statues sculpted out of the rock in the one temple entrance scene we've seen aren't really to my taste. They don't give a feel of an old, distinctive culture to me. For some reason Polina's godlike concept also bugs me, I really didn't like that one. OTOH I've liked Kaz's art a lot, Defiance Bay looks to be shaping up great, and some of the dungeon and environment art we've seen is pretty sweet too. "All characters must excel in combat." I would prefer a game that also has lots of non-combat challenges that let characters not built for combat shine. I really enjoyed having an über wilderness scout with All The Skills in Storm of Zehir. All he could do in a fight was plink with an arrow from time to time, but having a "Let me handle that" type that could do anything non-combat was really fun. Plus the combat got a bit more challenging (in a good way) since I had to do with effectively one less character, and the others had to keep him alive. I think I'm going to miss that. That's about all I can think of ATM. Overall I really like where this is going.

If you're in Northern Europe, there's a very small museum in a tower in the Tallinn city wall where you can try one on. There are other (very high-quality) replica weapons and armor you can play with too, and a catapult up top. It's a big hit with the kids. The parents perhaps not so much, as there's a real risk of bloodshed with the little tykes running around with light maces and daggers and such.

True, but unfortunately there is skin-color based racism here. That means that skin color in a game will inevitably be seen through that prism. Inevitably. We wouldn't be having this conversation if it wasn't so. That's not quite what I meant though. All I really had in mind is, a black person is most qualified to speak on how she feels about Vailians being black. Her experience of everyday racism, stereotypes, and whatnot will certainly factor into that. She's bound to be more sensitive to recognizing negative stereotypes about blacks, and would be more likely to pick up on those if they show up in the way Vailians are portrayed. If it turned out, for example, that a main Vailian NPC was a proxenete who did some drug trade on the side, she'd be more likely to connect that to the pimp/gangsta racist stereotype, especially with the colorful and showy clothes the Vailians wear. And I think she'd be justified in that. Point being, I don't believe it's possible to completely disentangle fiction from real-world baggage, and lived experience helps recognize that baggage. Obvious and blatant racism certainly is. Racism based on unspoken and often unconscious biases is a lot harder to recognize. It's something that manifests as an accumulating mass of things that in isolation would be utterly trivial. Most of the time it's not even possible to consciously remember each and every one of those little things; together, they just add up to a racist undercurrent. I think this is one reason discussions about race often go off the rails actually. Someone attempting to explain why she feels something is racist often comes off as petty and thin-skinned because all she can do is point at a few of those little things, which easily gets a reaction like "what, you got upset because he asked if you like fried chicken?" Anecdote. I once got accused of racism for not inviting an applicant to a job interview. He was from Kenya. Thing is, he had sent dozens, perhaps hundreds of job applications to companies, and gotten nothing but refusals, while seeing similarly-qualified ethnic Finns get hired. It's likely impossible for him to prove that any particular case of not getting invited was due to his nationality or skin color. However statistically it's pretty damn certain that many of the refusals were. Why am I so sure? Because his qualifications were fine. They weren't a really good fit for the specific position we were hiring for at the time (which is why I passed), but they were more than adequate for a broad range of other positions. If racism wasn't an issue, he should have gotten invited to interviews, oh, say, at least a third of the time, and should not have had much trouble finding a job.

@Merlkir – I don't think it's always even possible to arrive at a universal consensus about a portrayal of a race as 'valid.' And I wasn't thinking about historical accuracy; rather, I was thinking about the values, assumptions, affects, and tone in the portrayal. But yes, I would be inclined to give, say, a Czech's opinion about the portrayal of Czechs in a Russian-made game more weight than a Russian's, all else being equal. Because a Czech has more experience being a Czech than a Russian. Of course all else is never equal so the rest of it has to be considered too, but lived experience is always significant. Put another way, I have zero experience of being black, so I don't feel all that qualified to say whether a given portrayal of blacks is racist or not – at least if it's not obviously, overtly, blatantly, and offensively racist.

FWIW, I like the Vailians, and think it's just a cool twist that they have dark skin. I also find it a bit pointless to have all of us (presumably) white guys speculating if it's racist or not. Race is a fraught issue though and there isn't going to be any way that's not going to cause some criticism if the people designing the game and writing the lore are mostly white (as I believe is the case here). Don't include non-whites, and you'll be accused of racism. Include non-whites modeled on actual cultures, and you'll be accused of cultural appropriation. Include non-whites but don't base them on an actual non-white culture, and you'll be accused of tokenism or blackface. I would like to see more non-whites (and women, for that matter) as lead designers and writers on games, though, not least because they'd be able to draw from their own cultural and historical experience without running into these shoals, which would benefit everyone. But as it is, the PE leads are white. I'm fairly certain they don't have racist intent, and at least they've picked an option which is different from the usual "make everybody white" one. So yay for that I say. If there are any blacks here, it'd be interesting to hear if they find the Vailians offensive; I'd be inclined to lend that a good deal more weight. (Or Maori/Polynesians re the Aumaua, for that matter.)

Yonjuro, I think your problem might be that there really wasn't much to IWD besides the combat (and the glorious environment art natch). About as much story as your average pr0n, no role-playing, no choices and consequences, barely any interaction with other sentient creatures that didn't involve sharp objects, and so on. Which is why IWD isn't my favorite IE series game, even if I think it had the best combat of the bunch. (If you include 'spiritual successors' though, that honor would have to go to ToEE -- the combat and environment art is even better, and everything else even worse/thinner.)

I haven't gotten around to playing IWD2, but I did quite like IWD combat (in general). It made great use of the environment. In many cases, there were multiple tactical approaches. There was tactical variety. It justified otherwise-annoying tropes like teleporting-in enemies (they're ghosts, duh.) It rewarded a methodical approach, e.g. to sneak forward with your rogue to scout positions and disarm traps, hold defensive lines, effective use of missile and indirect fire (also from enemies!), a big variety of different types of enemies to face off against; there were battles where the best tactic was to find a defensible spot and stay put, and there were battles where the best tactic was to strike deep and take out the most dangerous enemy first, and so on. You had mob fights, you had boss fights, you had really tough melee, you had magic-using enemies, the works. I.e., if you played it like the xvart villages in BG, then IMO you were playing it wrong. Perhaps with just the right kind of party and certainly with difficulty turned down a bit you could just wade through it, but that would not be fun.

@Sarex: Scott Warner is currently the lead designer of Halo 4. He was a member of the Torment team in 1997. I would consider him a trustworthy source on stuff like that. (Don't believe me? Use your google-fu, grasshopper.)

But there will be colorful tabards, breastplates, big hats with feathers, and greatswords. It'll look just like a Landsknecht!

Edit: never mind, he wasn't talking to me.

Translation: touché.

D&D actually treats polearms just fine, if anything, they're overpowered. It has rules about reach, and having an extra hex of reach makes for a massive advantage to attacks of opportunity and such. The trouble is that in order to apply these rules you need to play with miniatures and a grid, and in cRPG's it won't work in a RTwP system. Temple of Elemental Evil implements the rules really well. A fighter with Great Cleave and specialization in a polearm is scarily effective. Zap him with an Enlarge and he'll clear out an entire largish room without having to take a step. (Overpowered? Yeah. With the extra reach, polearms dominate; there's no point for a fighter to use anything else. If there were penalties to attack the closest hex, it would balance things out.)

I kinda like if a game rewards smart play. I.e., accomplishing the maximum with the minimum expenditure of resources. So if you have one player who just charges in and beats the carp out of the dragon (expending a lot of resources in the process), and another player who pokes around every dark corner, does a lot of research, figures out the clever, less obvious solution, and manages to collapse the dungeon on the dragon (or permanently imprison it in the mountain, or dimensional warp it to the Great Darkness, or turn it into a newt, or convince it to join the adventuring party), I don't have any problem whatsoever with both getting the same reward and the second one ending up better off as his solution cost less. Not to put too fine a point of it, but a lot of the complainers about PE appear to me to fall into one of two categories: players who just aren't very good at gaming but don't have the self-confidence to admit it and just play on Easy, and therefore want easily breakable, exploitable mechanics, and players who just aren't very smart and therefore want bigger rewards for dumb and costly solutions, thinking that it's not fair that the clever, less costly ways of solving problems are rewarded equally well. Personally I have no problem with PE's designers ignoring both of these groups. In fact, the butthurt is kinda fun to watch.

Huh. I didn't even know that one. I used Feeblemind instead and then hacked him to death as he stood there drooling.

OTOH the ancient Greeks went into battle naked, as did Celtic woad warriors and a good many others. In a fantasy world where women can be warriors too, I can't see why there couldn't be naked amazons. But yeah, platemail bikinis and boobplate are still dumb.

I love you too, Gfted1. :kiss kiss:

Oh joy. The waah-no-quest-XP-degenrashun "discussion" again. This place is a barrel of laughs.

I've done this many times.. including clearing Moathouse on Ironman. TBH, not playing TOEE on Ironman would be anti-fun for me. There is no tension otherwise. The only problem with TOEE Ironman is how buggy the game is. Impressive. Do you also enjoy hitting yourself in the nuts repeatedly with a brick?

The problem is that most games of this type can't be played enjoyably without reloading after losing a fair fight. Suppose you have a party-based cRPG with permadeath. Further suppose that it's a reasonably difficult game. I.e., you can get party members killed in fair fights, even if you're a reasonably competent player. Now, suppose a party member does get killed. The result is that your party is materially weakened. This means that if all else remains the same, you will be more likely to lose more party members in further fights. This creates a feedback circle, with difficulty rising exponentially after every loss. With the difficulty assumption above, this makes it extremely unlikely you'll even be able to complete the game. If you lost one party member, you're more likely to lose a second one, more likely than that to lose a third, fourth, fifth, and last. Unless you magically upgrade your gaming skills so much you'll be able to make up for the loss with that. Which is unlikely. Game over. To break this cycle, you need some way to make up that loss. Options are: Resurrection magic. This is IMO worse than stunned-and-get-up, since it nerfs death itself – what should be if not the biggest penalty for failure in the game, at least one of the biggest. Magic resupply of (near) equivalently powerful replacement party members. E.g. an adventurers' hall where you can hire another meat shield of more or less the same level, ad infinitum. Level scaling. Joy and happiness. In my opinion, none of these options are particularly attractive. Sure, it's unrealistic to have people beat up to incapacitation only to get up and prance around merrily afterwards, but from where I'm at none of the others are any more realistic – nor, IMO more importantly, do they make for any more enjoyable gameplay. I quite like PE's current approach to this – characters that are beat up badly enough become maimed, which significantly reduces their effectiveness until they get some medical attention that's more sophisticated than you get in the field and presumably costs money. That's enough to motivate you not to get them carelessly beaten up, but not so severe that it'd be an automatic reload trigger. I'm all for hardcore modes with permadeath, though. That can add to the replay value a great deal. But with that you know what you're getting when going in. Don't believe me? Then I challenge you to play Temple of Elemental Evil from level 1 through 3, not in Ironman mode, without reloading after losing a fair fight. It can be done, but it's sure as hell not my idea of fun.

Oo, good list. I even agree with a lot of it. Marked the ones I agree with in green, the ones I disagree with in red, and the ones that I'm neutral about – as in "it all depends on the context or the implementation" in gray. These aren't ironclad preferences, though; there are games where immediate permadeath instead of stand-up-after-the-fight work, but in most games of this type it's just another reload trigger, and I'd rather minimize those. But monks. Monks are cool. Especially Friar Tuck style quarterstaff-wielding beer-swilling monks.

A tall, young, bald, senile midget with red hair, a clean-shaven beard, with a tiny straw basket made of wood, with two dozen giant miniature space battleships in it.

That would be a fairly substantial system in its own right. It would be cool to have a maritime-themed campaign which did have it. Doesn't sound at all impossible to implement on top of a cRPG system.

I'd just be happy with a combat log that breaks down the adjustments for every attack. If I see "Flanking +2" or "Assisted +2" there, I know that hey, flanking and assistance is kinda cool. I've played RTS's with morale meters. It's a great feeling to be able to make a sudden maneuver which succeeds in breaking the enemy's morale and sends the lines unraveling and the troops fleeing. I'm not sure how much fun it would be in an RPG though.