PrimeJunta

In your view. Not in my view. Subjective opinion again. I haven't thought about that, actually. So sorry, can't help you there! That would be a valid criticism if Wagner was a historian. But he wasn't. He was an artist who drew inspiration from mostly mythological sources -- not even historical sources, mythological ones. And then he rewrote those myths to suit his intent. Which is precisely what makes them so great. Once again, you're judging someone based on what you think he should have done, rather than by what he actually set out to do. That's pretty lame. No, I wasn't really making a point here; just responding to your accusation of elitism. And I by no means think anyone should be forced to attend the opera, perish the thought! That's the best way to kill off any enthusiasm for it! I'm not a big fan of Freud. Or, perhaps more accurately: I'm not a big fan of Freudians. Freud did have an insight that was really important politically, as it recognized that most of what goes on in the mind does not happen at the conscious level -- but beyond that, naw, I don't think he's held up very well. His take on the personality is very much grounded in late 19th century bourgeois society, and is by no means universally applicable. Buddhist insights, OTOH, are.

I don't have my journalist hat on now. If I had written a review of PS:T back in my freelancer days, I would most certainly have pointed out its failings as a game. (I'm pretty sure we agree about most of them btw -- shyte combat, horrible balance issues, breaks AD&D rules, doesn't respect the Planescape setting, puts tremendous restrictions on character development, yadda yadda yadda.) Then I would've gone on to write about it as art. And probably gotten the review spiked by the editor. You can most definitely write about PS:T in purely game terms. That's what Karkarov and you have been doing all along. I, however, am not interested in having that conversation, which is why I've been pointedly ignoring everything you have to say about it. I don't care. Any more than I care about how hard the seats are at the opera, if the performance kicks arse. List the works of high culture that connect to PS:T for me? I already alluded to some: Richard Wagner's operas, in particular Tristan and Isolde, Tannhäuser, the Ring, and Parsifal. There are others, but those resonate with PS:T the most for me. I'm by no means saying "only I" am able to appreciate PS:T, or that you have to be a Wagner buff to do it. That would be silly; T:ToN would hardly have broken the "fastest to a million bux" record in Kickstarter if I was alone in this, and I very much doubt all PS:T fans are Wagner buffs. But yeah, I do think that the huge kicks I've gotten out of Wagner come from the same place as the huge kicks I got from PS:T. If pointing that out offends your plebeian sensibilities, then that's just too bad. :monocle: And if it is elitist to think that more people should have the opportunity to immerse themselves in high culture like opera, classical music, and classical literature -- and not as part of a forced curriculum -- then yeah, I guess I'm an elitist. One thing the USSR and the other Communist bloc countries did right IMO was to make these things genuinely accessible to the masses -- and as a result Russians and East Europeans tend to have a great deal more refined tastes in music and literature than most Americans or West Europeans. I think that's a part of the reason Poles are coming up with such interesting games these days actually. I live in a country which heavily subsidizes opera and classical music, which means that it's much more accessible than e.g. in the US -- you can get a ticket to Tristan and Isolde for about 30 euros, less if you're a student, pensioner, or unemployed, for example. Oo, how well do Buddhist beliefs hold up under scrutiny by a modern mind? That's a very, very big topic and one very close to my heart. Short version: you're asking the wrong question, as Buddhism isn't really about belief at all. That's another very common misconception.[1] But what Buddhist thinking has to say about the human condition holds up extremely well. The only parts in "standard" Theravada and Mahayana thought that I have trouble swallowing are explanations of the mechanics of rebirth -- that strikes as simultaneously irrelevant and wildly speculative. But when it comes to stuff like the the Four Noble Truths, the Three Poisons, the Six Perfections, karma and vipaka, what the self is and is not, what the mind is and is not, then hell yeah that holds up well. The bottom line of what you're saying is still the same: you don't like PS:T because it's not what you think it should be, i.e., a solidly-designed AD&D computer role-playing game following the rules and conventions of the Planescape setting. I don't dispute that. It isn't any of that. Where we differ is what this "objective fact" to use your phrase means -- it kills the game for you, whereas for me it makes the game the unique gem that it is. [1] Okay, caveat -- some Buddhist traditions are more about belief. Pure Land practice for example won't really work if you don't believe in Amitabha's Lotus Land, and much beginning Tibetan tantric practice probably won't work if you don't believe in rebirth in a very literal sense. (Although I have it on good authority that the role of belief shifts dramatically as you progress in Tibetan practice too.) But even Tibetan Buddhism has offshoots like Dzogchen and Aro which don't really care about belief, and Pure Land has a Zen twist by asking "Who chants the name of the Buddha?" Buddhism is about doing and knowing (in the same sense Dak'kon uses it), not believing. The big difference between the karmic religions and the monotheistic ones is that in karmic religions, nobody can redeem you. There is no sky-daddy who gives a shyte about what you believe, or don't believe, or do, or don't do. It's just you and your karma, and the only one who can redeem you is you. Teachers and fellow seekers and what have you can just point you in some direction which may or may not be the right one -- ultimately only you can make that call, too.

First, I'll get a couple of things out of the way. And I'll repeat: there ain't no such thing as an objective judgment of art. The best we can do is intersubjective -- that is, find a collection of people who agree about it and to some extent about the reasons why they agree about it. So all we can do is share our experiences, and note whether we agree about them or not. The best possible outcome -- and this has happened to me, by the way -- is that someone points out something you missed, which then causes your perception to shift and suddenly it all looks completely different. Second, "the inside of a school" -- again not what I meant. Some of us have gotten huge kicks out of what is commonly known as "high culture." Not just subjected to them, but really swept away by them. That includes me, and I got that same kick out of PS:T. If you have never gotten that kind of kick from "high culture," I believe it's less likely you would get it out of PS:T either. For some reason or another, that door of experience is closed to you. Maybe you haven't opened it yet, or maybe you're just not wired for it. I do know it takes work to open that door, unless you're exceptionally talented. Most people are unlikely to get anything other than extreme boredom out of, say, Wagner's Parsifal[1] -- but once you've built up enough experience about the art form, it can be an unforgettable, transcendent experience. But you do have to climb that hill. About that question regarding the interpretation of notions like karma, rebirth, transcendence, and enlightenment in PS:T: no, they're not trivial at all. It's not an infodump. You're not expected to learn anything from it. You don't even need to be familiar with the concepts. But MCA gets them, at a deep, intuitive level, which is very rare even among people who have practiced that shyte for years. I don't know anything about MCA's personal history, but I get the feeling that he must've hung around a lot of Buddhisty and Vedanta-y hippie types as well as the occasional and rare genuinely insightful teacher, and a lot of his take on the Factions is based on that. I've met most of that motley crew at the Dustmen bar IRL -- the old practitioner who's had a crisis of faith and is suddenly seeing everything in a different light (and is consequently way wiser than just about anyone else present); the one whose grasping for enlightenment (True Death in this case) is the very thing keeping him from getting there; the severe be-robed master who projects a lot of authority but doesn't have much insight to back it up; the old guy who really has made peace with it all; the young guy who's dressed up in the robes and talks the spiel but doesn't even realize that he just sees this as another career rather than a spiritual practice. Nowadays all these types are all over the Internet, but back when PS:T was written you actually had to wander into the temples or ashrams or zendos and hang out with the people -- as well as do a fruckton of reading. MCA did, I'm quite sure. (Unless he's just born enlightened, heh.) I'm especially impressed by this because 99.9% of the time when you see concepts like self/identity, karma, rebirth, and transcendence turn up in pop culture, it's in a really trivial, stupid way, distorted by our Judeo-Christian-Freudian view of the personality, in which it just doesn't fit. Like your quip about the Lady and her Sorting Hat. PS:T is the 0.1% that does it right. They're slippery notions that are incredibly difficult to explain; you can only really absorb them osmotically as it were, I think, and PS:T does just that. So no, PS:T's treatment was not trivial, at all. Especially that final twist -- you really have to get transcendence to be able to write that, in a way that communicates it to the player intuitively, without having to spell it out. Which would've ruined it. But that's not really the point either. You don't have to know any of this beforehand. You do have to be open to being kicked in the gut by a work of art, and it takes time and effort to develop that openness. And then you can absorb it through the skin. [1] If you have the time and inclination, check out Mark Twain's take on Parsifal. It's hilarious. It also illustrates the effort needed to get something like this to open up -- even if you are a true-blue genius like he was.

Sacred_Path -- exactly, that's what I've been saying all along: your failure to appreciate PS:T is due to your inability to approach it on its own merits. You expect it to be, as Karkarov put it, a faithful rendition of AD&D in the Planescape setting -- and when it isn't, you get conceptually stuck. There is no way I or anyone else can give you the experience we have had with it. But it's a bit ridiculous to suggest that our experience isn't valid -- or is even conspicuously out-of-the-norm -- given the huge success of the T:ToN kickstarter, bigger even than P:E's so far. So yeah, totally subjective. I can only speculate about why you're unable to appreciate it and I am, just like I can only speculate why Razsius is able to appreciate BG and I'm not. One of life's little mysteries, I guess. But not something you can argue about, since, as you pointed out, it's all based on subjective sensibilities. I do think, though, that being grounded in classic literature and opera helps appreciate PS:T. It's based on tragedy archetypes and existential questioning, both of which have been explored a lot in them. Perhaps I felt immediately at home with PS:T because it wasn't the first time I encountered these themes; only the first time I encountered them in a game. So maybe that's why I was able to easily shift my expectations from "AD&D/Planescape/IE" to "opera in game form." Familiarity.

Oh, about Gothic 2 and that first city -- I especially liked that first area. One of the better a-ha! gaming moments I've had was when I figured out I could lure the orc scout hiding in the woods near the gate to the shadowbeast also sleeping there, and have them take each other out. Later on, I had huge fun sneaking stealthily around areas with monsters that would kill me dead in seconds should they spot me. Much more fun that peril-free exploration where the only thing you're going to encounter are trash mobs.

@Razsius: I didn't know much about Hinduism or Buddhism when I first played PS:T. I only got into that much later and connected the dots then. I only described it here to point out that the stuff that seems random and arbitrary to you isn't, because it's grounded in that deeper thematic structure. @Sacred_Path: "Have you played only a few games, or did they all lack the attributes that strike you as art?" I have played a ****load of games. I have no idea how many. Must be hundreds. I even reviewed them for a magazine at one point. So no, that's not it. Art is not defined by attributes. It's like porn: you know it when you see it. And so far, PS:T is the only game I've played that I would consider art, without qualifications. There are others which timidly dip a toe in, but that's about it. @Karkarov: so what if it took huge liberties with both AD&D and Planescape? That's another thing that makes it such a great game -- it refuses to be bound by anything if it interferes with the thing it's trying to do. It would have been far worse if it hadn't broken those conventions! Bottom line: most games you have to approach analytically. PS:T isn't like that. That, you have to approach intuitively -- just throw yourself into it and follow its dream logic. For me one of the most wonderful things about it was the realization -- early on -- that the usual rules don't apply and then the quest to discover the logic under which Sigil does operate. I love that sort of thing. Most, I think, hate it. Your, Karkarov's, and Sacred_Paths dislike of the game stems from that. I believe it is something that's pretty deeply built into the structure of your personality. You simply do not have the capability to appreciate a game like PS:T -- just like I don't have the capability to appreciate a game like Baldur's Gate. Each of them collides with deep personality structures -- the karma we've inherited, if you will -- so we just don't get it. I honestly don't. Lots of people are rabid fans of BG, so there's must be something to like about it. I just totally can't see what it could possibly be, and no amount of explanation could get me to see that. It must be like that for you guys and PS:T.

Since you changed your tone... Actually, I like PS:T so much precisely because it's a game, and I don't think it would have worked well as a novel or a movie. The novelization was certainly complete rubbish. Why? Because the game format gives you agency. You're actively discovering the story, fitting together the pieces, rather than being fed it in a predetermined order. This process of discovery is uniquely suited for a game, and PS:T is all about discovery. PS:T is the only game I've played that has made me think that one day games could be a serious art form rather than just a way to pass the time. It opened the door to a whole new world. Nobody's walked through it since -- even if a few games sort of tentatively peek through. I like the pitch for T:ToN so much partly because they de-emphasize the gamey aspect of it. Look at what they're pitching -- hey, we have these artists, and this composer, and these writers, and these designers, and these ones for stretch goals, and this is the story we want to tell, and for stretch goals we have more story, story, story. I'm pretty sure that there'll be a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth about the mechanics when the game comes out though. Numenéra is as streamlined -- dumbed down, if you will -- as a RPG system can be while still being able to claim to be one. It is the exact opposite of D&D in this respect. Which strikes me as just about perfect for Torment. But if you're expecting PS:T with similar but fixed mechanics, I don't think you're going to be very happy.

Sacred_Path, I'm done. I have no desire to trade insults with you over PS:T. I attempted to explain what I think is so unique and great about PS:T, but you respond with a lame attempt at sarcasm and snide comments about "artsiness" and "dime-store novels" and what have you. If you ever drop that attitude and demonstrate a willingness to discuss this topic in a friendly manner, I'll be happy to get back to you. But I'm angry enough in meatspace that I really don't need more anger here.

I can't seem to shut up about this, so what the hell. Here's another thought about PS:T and karma. Spoilers abound (although it's a bit late for that at this point, so sorry everyone if you haven't played it.) On the face of it, the best ending you can get in PS:T is not exactly happily-ever-after. In it, The Nameless One voluntarily embraces damnation -- not even the escape into True Death the Dustmen seek, but casting himself into Hell to fight for all eternity in the Blood War between the tanar'ri and the baatezu. That sounds like a complete downer. But it isn't. The ending ought to feel horribly depressing, but it actually feels uplifting, purifying, almost joyous. How can that be? Because of the karmic logic of the ending, that's why. The Nameless One's final act is that of ultimate self-sacrifice and atonement, giving his last to make good the misdeeds of his past lives, which he doesn't even remember, voluntarily offering himself to the worst the Planes have. Under the thematic logic of Planescape: Torment, governed by the immutable, iron law of karma and vipaka, action and consequence, such a massive sacrifice cannot but bear fruit. We do not need to be told in so many words, but we know, intuitively, that in that final act The Nameless One has redeemed himself. That is The Nameless One's final rebirth -- as Ksitigarbha, the bodhisattva of the hell realms, the one who voluntarily offers himself to the torments of Hell to give succor to those hope itself has abandoned. What could possibly be more glorious than that?

That's a false dichotomy. The third option is that your choices are constrained by your past actions, but you do have enough freedom of will to choose between them. Incidentally, I believe that this is more or less how things are in real life. Oh, not at all! You simply don't have enough time over the course of TNO's single lifetime in PS:T to grow him into, say, a sword-wielder or an armor-user. If the game gave you several lifetimes' worth of choices to make, who knows? You've got it! Your gamer-karma -- the habits and expectations that carried over into PS:T from the other games you've played drove you to look for armor, and you felt frustrated because it wasn't there. Just like TNO's numberless lifetimes had generated karma that precluded him from wearing armor. This boils down to another common criticism of PS:T that also completely misses the point of what it's about: the fact that you're forced to play as a particular character, instead of being able to generate your own like in most role-playing games. Hell, some people argue that PS:T doesn't even qualify as a RPG because your character is predetermined! They're not smatterings, Sacred_Path. They're actual, serious explorations, of ideas that take genuine effort to understand. That's what makes PS:T what it is -- and the reason that people either love it passionately or totally don't get it. Put another way, there is no way you can enjoy PS:T if you made WIS your dump stat. You just won't get it, any more than TNO will get any of the genuinely enlightened dialog options if you made WIS his dump stat. Not a problem at all. Nature is great! But it's not what I meant either. I meant, have you ever gotten a huge kick out of a work of art? A kick that puts tears in your eyes, takes your breath away, and forever changes you in some way? Which explains why you're struggling so hard with something that cuts right through such categories. That's an extremely uncharitable way of putting it, but in substance it's not too far off. I'll dispute "artsy" though. Most "artsy" stuff is worse shyte than most entertainment; pretentions bollocks that's nothing but everyone's waste of time. I do know genuine art when I see it though, at least some of the time, and PS:T has it. It's pure gold inside even if it has some mud stuck to it. I don't think this conversation is really going anywhere much, by the way. I feel like I'm trying to explain what's so great about Wagner's Ring to someone. You can't explain it. You have to sit through and experience it. Then either you get it, or you don't. If you do, you will be forever changed. If you don't, you'll walk out wanting your sixteen hours back and thinking that anyone who does that voluntarily must be completely out to fracking lunch.

Karma does not require an arbiter any more than gravity. It just is. If you regularly practice, say, sarcasm like you're doing here, you will develop that facet of your personality. You will become better at it, you will resort to it more commonly, it will shape the way people react to you, and the way you react to people. For example, you will see people less willing to engage with you emotionally and intellectually; instead, you will tend to see interactions as conflicts or confrontations. By the time you're old, you will have developed a really ruthless, cutting wit, able to shut anyone down with a well-chosen retort. You will also have driven away many people with your tendency to resort to it, and perhaps accumulated a few friends who share the same outlook and enjoy trading barbs with it. Then you will die. This sarcastic karma will carry over into your next lifetime, and you'll already as a child be able to cut down people with words. You'll be your high school debating champion, and then maybe grow up to be a stand-up comedian known for his ruthless, cutting wit. After ten, twenty, a hundred, or a thousand lifetimes maybe you'll be born in the Abyss as a tanar'ri able to drive a weak-willed mortal to suicide by hitting her with the right barb at the right time. That's karma. Simply the accumulated weight of habit, practice, and skills, which carry over from death to birth and become innate characteristics. No "sorting hat" needed, any more than you need angels to pull down rocks so they fall to earth. It's a completely impersonal force of nature. That's a common misconception you have, though, perhaps coming from our monotheistic culture with the notion of a god that sits in judgment over people. There's no such thing in the karmic religions. Gods have a very different position in them. They certainly do in Planescape. Ah, but is the universe completely deterministic? We don't know that, do we? Does a smoker finally succeed in giving up smoking, after a huge struggle, simply because that is the fruit of his karma, and is what he perceives as an exercise of agency and free will simply a delusion? Or does he have genuine agency? His choices are certainly constrained by his abilities, characteristics, and circumstances, but he appears to have the option to not light up, or to light up, moment to moment. Do you, as the player, have any choice when you're playing Planescape: Torment, or are you only assigning the ability points, selecting the conversation branches, and picking your class(es) driven by your karma? "Has the game profited from this?" What an utterly stupid question! That's like asking "Has Star Wars profited from being space opera?" That's what Star Wars is. That's what Planescape: Torment is. If it wasn't about the great existential question -- as phrased by Ravel or someone else -- it wouldn't be Planescape: Torment. Seriously, Sacred_Path, have you ever experienced anything deeper than popular culture? Edit: Taking this thought a little bit further. The narrative structure of Planescape: Torment itself is a pretty good metaphor for karma. The Nameless One is driven by his karma to confront first Ravel and then The Transcendent One in the Fortress of Regrets. That much is completely deterministic [1]. No matter what you do along the way, that's where you end up. What's more, the choices available to you in the endgame are also determined by your previous choices during the course of the game -- even and perhaps your ability scores; choosing to cultivate the perfection of wisdom (=putting enough points there to get it to 25, a game mechanical view of practice of prajñaparamita if I ever saw one) will open up possibilities you would not otherwise have. But ultimately you do have a degree of choice. None of the choices are of the "everyone lives happily ever after" kind, which underlines exactly how much that crushing mass of karma you have accumulated really weighs. And in my view the game is certainly MUCH better for that -- if they had put in a "get out of hell free" ending where everyone lives happily ever after and TNO reaches True Death or merges with the Godhead or whatever (based on his choice of faction, natch), the game would have fallen on its face big-time. Yeah, karma. Edit edit: [1] There are a couple of ways you can lose the game and never make it to the Fortress of Regrets, but IMO they don't really count. If you play the game to the end, that's where you'll end up.

Okay, tattoos. I'll try to make this as short as I can, but this will get a bit heavy. Still, you asked. The philosophical underpinnings of Planescape: Torment lie in the debate over the nature of karma that's still going on between Hindus, Jains and Buddhists in this little Prime Material plane we inhabit. Karma is Sanskrit for "action." It's also come to mean the delayed consequences of actions, in this life, in future rebirths, and in the weight of karma you have inherited from previous lifetimes.[1] That's about the extent of agreement about it. Opinions differ about the nature and causes of karma and its consequences, in this life and future lifetimes, in our world as much a in Sigil. Karma and rebirth are central to Planescape: Torment. So central that it's literally the first thing you learn -- even if these words are cleverly obscured. The Dustmen believe that all actions in this life cause suffering. That eternally dying and being reborn is eternal torment. A king or a god suffers just like a beggar or a demon: the only difference is in the details. A beggar might hunger for food and warmth, where the king is tortured by fear of assassination or lust for more power -- and of course both will eventually grow old, sicken, and die, seeing everything they thought they owned, everything they ever loved or valued or believe in, turn into dust and be blown away by the winds of time. The only way out is to mortify your will to live and embrace the oblivion of True Death. And you -- The Nameless One -- are bound to the wheel of rebirth without even the relief of temporary oblivion caused by physical death and rebirth; you're condemned to awakening in the same body, recognized by your enemies and the tools you have used and discarded along the way. What could possibly be worse? [2] PS:T doesn't offer you any answers at all. It just lets the various factions explain themselves. If the Dusties are the existential pessimists, the Godmen are the optimists. They see the cycle of rebirth as a school, which if embraced will eventually allow the divinity inherent in you to emerge as a rebirth in a god-realm, and perhaps beyond that into ultimate, blissful enlightenment and union with the divine essence. [3] The Sensates believe the only thing that exists is what you are experiencing here and now, this very instant, and liberation is perfect and complete surrender to that experience.[4] Ravel is your secret Zen master or guru who doesn't offer any answers either: she only puts that great existential question into words and forces you to answer it. To give your answer. Yours, not hers. [5] So, tattoos. Tattoos are a reification of your karmic burden. Fell's selection changes based on your actions. He will engrave new images on your skin based on things you have done, companions you have chosen, dilemmas you have resolved. You -- and only you -- can benefit from them because you -- and only you -- carry the crushing weight of karma that has accumulated from countless rebirths in the same body, as the same broken being that awakes once more on that slab in the Mortuary. Annah could not benefit from them because she is a young soul, without the karmic weight to lend power to Fell's scrivenings. Grace could not benefit from them because she is a hell-being, a creature of pure chaos and evil struggling to overcome that substance and be reborn as something else. You're not the only such being in Sigil, though -- the collection in Fell's shop is testimony to that, and you can even encounter someone bearing a tattoo similar to yours in one location. Planescape is not a democracy. The only iron rules are the rules of cause and effect; karma and vipaka, birth-and-death. The Nameless One wears tattoos because that is part of his karmic burden. Harmonium guards wear armor because that is where their karma placed them. The Nameless One could not trade his tattoos for Harmonium armor any more than you could trade your arms for wings and take to the air. This is where the internal consistency of Planescape: Torment lies. It could only allow The Nameless One to wear armor, or Annah to benefit from tattoos, by breaking its own, far deeper and more fundamental logic. It is a dream logic, yes, but a powerful dream logic; the world not as it is, but, perhaps, as we would like it to be. [1] Although technically there's another term for this, "vipaka," which means "consequence." [2] The Dusties are seriously cool and definitely my favorite faction in PS:T. They actually represent a relatively common misunderstanding of Buddhism. Nirvana is Sanskrit for extinction, "going out," which is very easy to misunderstand as meaning the same thing as final oblivion -- True Death. Arthur Schopenhauer was the first serious Western thinker exposed to Buddhist ideas, and he misunderstood it this way despite the fact that the Tipitaka explicitly warns against this. Consequently he developed a philosophy of deep existential pessimism. He was, in other words, a real-life Dustman! [3] The real-world counterparts to the Godmen can be found among Hindus, who believe that practicing the four purusharthas will lead you to ever better rebirths and ultimately union of your âtman with the brahman. [4] This is another way-cool twist on Buddhism. Theravadins and some Zennies teach that enlightenment is found right here, right now, and the trick is just to sit still and pay attention to everything that's in your sensory experience at every moment. Much Zen and Theravada meditation practice is intended to train you in precisely this. They would not recommend that gallivanting across the Multiverse in search of ever cooler peak experiences is likely to lead to anuttara samyak sambodhi though! [5] This is a nod to kôan practice, which is the basis of Rinzai Zen. The encounter with Ravel is pretty close to the real thing actually!

Heh, actually I want Torment: Tides of Numenéra to be like Planescape: Torment. That's kind of the point. As to P:E, yeah, for sure I'd like it if it takes things from PS:T -- for example, making the story a personal rather than epic and making at least some of your companions draw from tragedy archetypes. I think Mask of the Betrayer is a pretty good precedent actually: not as out-there as PS:T, but still grounded in a comfortingly familiar "real [fantasy] world."

LOL, apology accepted. Rant away. I'm in a bit of a ranty mood myself actually. Okay. Example. No armor allowed. With no armor, you, the player, are forced to look for other ways to equip your character. Which leads you to Fell's tattoo parlor. Fell's tattoos were one of the most unique and memorable things of the game. Hiding them under a big suit of armor would have completely changed the way you're imagining the Nameless One, and would have turned the tattoos from a lynchpin of character building into just relabeled rings and amulets. You would've ended up playing a pretty generic high-fantasy hero -- robed if a wizard, armored if a fighter, cloaked and leather-jerkined if a rogue. Eliminating armor gave TNO a unique character. It made him stand out even in the bizarre and wild world of Planescape, and that much more so among other cRPG protagonists. It's crucial. Do I mean that every game should be like PS:T? Hell no. Would I like to play only games that are like PS:T? Absolutely not. Would I want P:E to be like PS:T? No way. But I do want there to be room for games like PS:T as well. Games that push the boundaries, upend your expectations, go on wild flights of fancy, go out of their way to break conventions. In fact the irony is that there could be no Planescape: Torment without the generic western high-fantasy blandness of Baldur's Gate to compare it with. (I wrote a lengthy digression on the philosophical underpinnings of PS:T and Planescape, but snipped it. Maybe some other time; I don't currently have the energy to get into that discussion with the dedication that it deserves. The short version, though, is this: Planescape: Torment does have very strong internal consistency; the thing is that it's a metaphysical and thematic consistency, not the petty surface consistency that governs such mundane things as who gets to wear armor and where all the swords are. Keywords: belief shapes reality; the struggle of a sentient being against the substance of his, her, or its being, such as with Grace the chaste succubus, Dak'kon the lawful creature of chaos, Nordom the individual modron, and of course, The Nameless One the immortal mortal.)

I haven't read much fantasy lately; been more caught up with sci-fi, especially New Weird and New Space Opera. Miéville, Duncan, Banks, Reynolds, MacLeod and others. Back when I was a teenager I read a lot of fantasy but mostly just the "classics" like Tolkien, Fritz Leiber, Ursula Le Guin, Moor****, Robert E. Howard and so on. In fact I've read almost no "new" fantasy at all and wouldn't really know where to start. But thanks for the recommendation, I'll check it out. Seems intriguing.

You're still not getting it, Sacred_Path. Downgrading internal consistency as a writing goal gives you more freedom to explore other stuff. Blade Runner would have been a much worse movie if they had cut out the Voight-Kampff tests even though Deckard didn't actually need them to hunt down the replicants, and wouldn't have needed them in any case because he had complete files on them including perfect 3D portraits. That's because the test is a kind of reductio ad absurdum of the notion that there's some fundamental difference between replicants and humans. It's there to point out that any difference that requires an hour-long test of iris dilation responses to tease out isn't much of a difference at all. I'm also a fairly serious Wagner enthusiast, and his operas aren't particularly strong on internal consistency either. They are extremely strong on deep exporation of themes of profound human importance, through a combination of text, music, acting, and stagecraft. Internal consistency isn't the point. Ditching it lets Wagner do **** that he wouldn't be able to do otherwise. Same for Blade Runner -- or PS:T. What do you mean by "hipster," by the way? If you mean someone who finds most mainstream entertainment dull, then hell yes I'm a hipster. But if you mean someone who stops liking something if it suddenly becomes popular or cool, then... nah, that doesn't fit. I like what I like, some of which is thoroughly mainstream, some of which is not.

There's a cost to everything, Sacred_Path, including internal consistency. In this case, it would have constrained the writers' flights of fancy. I'm pretty sure I would've enjoyed the game a great deal less had the writers made internal consistency a high priority. You're right about the reasons for enjoying it, though -- I would probably have enjoyed it even more had the "gamey" aspects been even more stripped down. For example, your ability scores should have been nailed down, with minor shifts when you change classes. This is because there's a narrow optimum to them, and you can only know what that is through metagame knowledge -- and if you're outside that optimum, the game is much less enjoyable. Being able to nudge them by swapping tattoos in and out would have been enough, especially with the addition of a tattoo or two that let you, say, trade CHA for CON or vice versa. "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." (R.W. Emerson)

Very interesting points, Razsius. And yeah, :brofist: -- I put in enough to get my name on a tombstone at least. And I'll offer some counterpoints. First, I'll demonstrate that raging inconsistency in the "this does not make sense" level is not always a problem, if a story is told in a different way. Second, I'll argue that usual conventions of narrative do not apply in a game. This is going to be a bit long, so I hope you have the patience for it. Case study: Blade Runner. Blade Runner is justly considered one of the best sci-fi films ever made. Yet its narrative is full of holes you can drive that Goodyear blimp through. For example: why is Holden even adminsitering the Voight-Kampff test on Leon -- let alone being completely off his guard -- when the cops have complete files on the replicants, including perfectly lit, detailed 3D portraits of them? Why does Deckard bother doing that "enhance" sequence on the photo of Zhora, and then going through the elaborate charade in the backroom of the club, when he must already know exactly who he's dealing with, for the same reason? How is Roy able to just waltz into Sheldon Tyrell's bedroom, even with JF Sebastian offering an excuse for it? Where's the security? And so on and so forth. There's a simple reason for all of this: it's because the film never was about offering a coherent and logical story. It was about exploring themes like what it means to be human, and doing that through a narrative that combines character, atmosphere, and music. The purpose of the story is to keep the movie flowing and let the audience gradually discover the tragedy of the replicants and the blade runners, and of course Deckard himself who is both, through sound, image, expression, phrases, words, scenes. The fact that it makes no kind of logical sense is completely irrelevant. It's the same thing with that famously derpy question about The Lord of the Rings -- if Gandalf was BFF with the eagles, why not just fly the damn ring to Mordor -- or hey, even over the Misty Mountains -- instead of having to do all that tedious trekking? Same question, same answer. Planescape: Torment and Blade Runner are thematically very similar. So the fact that things don't make sense and aren't internally consistent doesn't matter either. It's not based on everyday logic. It's based on dream logic; the kind of logic where a bartender has been keeping your eye in a jar for you for fifteen years, and plucking yours out and replacing it, or tearing out tattoos and sticking on others, is as natural as putting on a shirt or changing your shoes. It was totally crucial that TNO did not wear armor, or that the only swords in the game were so integral to their owners that they could not be separated from them. Bringing daytime logic into that context would've shattered the dream logic, and the whole game would have collapsed. Now, the second part. About narrative logic and games. The difference between games and linear narratives like books or films is that games are about discovery and exploration, where you are the agent. It's more like putting together a jigsaw puzzle where you don't know the picture, and less like reading a detective story or watching a film. There can be a narrative arc, of course, but it can and should shift and meander according to your whims and interests; there can and should be many ways to discover bits and pieces of that puzzle. Like having different people around who can tell you the same thing. The only thing that matters is that all the time there's something that grabs and holds your interest and keeps you going. The sandbox games I don't like don't have that. They just dump you into the world and go "Here, have fun," and leave you to figure out why even bother. Planescape: Torment managed to maintain that sense of urgency, the drive, that kept me going through the whole game, even as the focus shifted when you discovered who you were. The first time I played, I felt truly driven to find out who, or what, this part of me that Ravel had cut off was; to meet it, speak with it, discover it. Bottom line? If you try to play Planescape: Torment like other role-playing games -- focusing on the mechanics, applying everyday logic, lawnmowing, and so on -- you will hate it. Just like you did. But if you allow yourself to be swept away by its dream logic which allows for chaste succubi, godless clerics using divine power, removable tattoos and no allowed armor, it's a whole different experience. By the way, when I returned to it this time, I played with a self-imposed "no scumming" discipline. I.e., I only kept quicksaves and one save file that I updated after every session. I only departed from this discipline twice; once when I painted myself into a corner that would have been really tedious to dig out of (stuck in the Whispering Alley with very low HP, no healing, no hammer, and no crowbar, and the Chaosmen at full strength and angry), and for a second time in the Modron Maze -- which was specifically designed as a comment on computer games and was the most fun to play by grinding, rest-spamming and savegame abuse. And yeah, it was awesome. So Razsius... let go. Let go of that everyday logic. Fly. Be free. And dream.

@Razsius: do I even like sandbox games? As I said, I'm pretty much agnostic about genre and style; what really snags me is content -- what a game is about as it were. Sandbox games are really tough to pull off well IMO, and yes, I do find most of the ones I've played rather disappointing. Nevertheless, there are a few I did enjoy tremendously: Fallout 1 (a true classic and IMO still unequalled in its type) Gothic 2 Morrowind (despite those !!#@$☭⚒☠☢⎈⍟ cliff racers) Make of that what you will. As self-analysis I'd say that FO1 and Morrowind have in common a deep yet quirky setting; in both cases, that's what snagged me. I would certainly have liked them just as much in hub-and-spoke format -- and in fact I would probably have liked Fallout 2 a lot better that way, as it would've brought the egregious balance issues under control, so there would've been more constantly enjoyable challenge instead of sudden flips from instadeath to falling asleep on the keyboard. With Gothic 2, what got me was the way it hit a balance between perils of exploration and freedom, the way you yourself pushed the borders of your world as you gained in power. This IMO is the one thing sandbox games can do that a more restricted hub-and-spoke structure can't. It's very tough to pull off though. You need to have areas with varying difficulty, you need to constantly communicate that difficulty to the player so he can make intelligent decisions about where to go and what risks to take, and you need to populate the world with stuff that's genuinely worth discovering. Bottom line? It all depends on what kind of game you want to make, but most of the time IMO a sandbox format just isn't worth the trade-offs, and usually they end up falling on their face for any of a number of reasons. More story-driven, structured formats tend to fail less as they're much easier to design. On the other hand, if you do manage to pull it off, sandbox games can be uniquely engaging. FWIW, I'm mildly hyped by CDProjekt Red's talking up of Witcher 3. If they really can pull off what they say they're doing, that could be the sandbox game for my tastes.

@Raszius, yeah, I guess we do have fundamentally different preferences about what makes a good game. I think it's a pretty good demonstration of the flexibility of the IE -- and the strength of the more general concept on which it's based. I hope you don't consider my dislike of BG as a personal affront. You're a seriously good egg, even if you have terrible taste in games.

@Malekith: can't argue with that. I'm generally fairly agnostic regarding the style of a game or the engine with which it's made. I enjoy twitch just as much as turn-based, as long as it's well done. Twitcher 2 was good twitch; Twitcher 1 was tolerable twitch, and Bloodlines was headdeskingly bad twitch, so much that it seriously detracted from the game. KOTOR 2 was tolerable RTwP IMO. It would've been better in isometric format as the party aspect of it was pretty much lost in the over-the-shoulder perspective. The NWN2 camera was a real beast to tame, but I have to agree with Kissamies (moro, Suomi hyvin edustettuna täällä näköjään) that it's not so bad once you find the settings that work for you. The real problem is the amount of headdesking needed to get to that point -- more so because it's totally unnecessary since a fixed camera would've gotten the job done with much les fuss.

"Every modern RPG is below the IE games? Hell yes." I disagree, sort of. PS:T is in a class of its own, yes, but there are several (more) modern cRPG's that I'd rank higher than the next-best IE game (BG2). Both Witchers, VtM: Bloodlines, and Mask of the Betrayer to name three. As to PS:T, the strengths of it are in the imagination, the story, and the way it constantly surprises, delights, and amazes you. That has nothing to do with the IE as such. Its wine would have been just as heady in a completely different skin.

Right, "everything modern is excrement." Now who's the hipster?

+1 on PS:T. It was the game that made me sit up and take notice that computer games could one day become a serious art form, comparable to film or opera for example. And yeah, since then pretty much a whole lotta nuthin', in that department. MCA, are you listening?

"Antagonist" = the main baddie. "Supporting characters" = companions, Gorion, that wizard dude that keeps following me around, and so on. The music, yes, check, that's pretty dopey music. Like Wal-Mart Grieg. PS:T's music, OTOH, was superb. IWD vs BG combat: the big difference is in the environment. IWD's maps are full of features like corridors and chokepoints that you can make use oftactically. BG's maps are mostly open, or you get dumped in the middle of a fight on the pretext that you were ambushed, or you open a door and are in the middle of a hand-to-hand melee. Huge difference to the gameplay. I did like BG 2 a quite a lot, as I've repeatedly said. The characters were a lot less dopey in it. And there were some completely new characters who weren't dopey at all, or were only tolerably dopey. Either the writer took some very good after-school writing classes (in which case I want to know who the teacher was 'cuz she did a seriously good job), or they got better writers.