PrimeJunta

I hear they dug up some Viking graves in Britain recently and discovered to their surprise that a good many of the warrior graves -- the ones with weapons and shields in them -- held female skeletons. So it looks like the Swedes had their womens' lib thing going already back then.

The more I think of this idea of yours, JFSOCC, the more I like it. It would even be pretty easy to do. Presumably you've already got the vicious dialog in, so you could just start by disabling the most "good" lines, then as the curse progresses gradually reduce your options until you've only got the most despicable, low-down, vicious choices left. And add a few more balls-to-the-wall-deranged-evil lines here and there for flavor. You wouldn't even need to code in any extra companion reactions, since presumably they'll already react to those vicious choices anyway. Then write a nice little sidequest to uncurse you, and you're done. Seriously, that's one of the best ideas I've heard in a while. Hmm, maybe I can steal that for my PnP campaign; I'd just have to recruit the goody-goody player so he'll be in on it, and then watch what the others do when he suddenly starts acting out of character...

Good one. "Tea anyone?" "Yes! Verily I will drink the blood of my enemies from the skulls of their children!" "Uh... you feeling OK?"

Am I the only one who liked the curse in MotB? 'Cuz I did. I thought it was great.

Just to point out, that's not actually the case. There are various cultures which have had belief in magic where the magic was in no way diabolic. Hooray for being a bit of a theology and mythology buff Such as the common Christian belief that prayer or other activities like a pilgrimage to Lourdes for example can sometimes cure incurable diseases. That's a cure disease spell right there. Anthropologically speaking anyway.

I'm partial to certain Jack Chick tracts meself...

Thinking about this a bit more... besides or in addition to a wall of numbers, what other ways would there be to communicate this information to the player? How about sound? Suppose the sound for a hit consists of two components, a "clank" of a weapon hitting armor, and a "thunksquelch" of it doing unpleasant things to flesh. Could you mix these together dynamically so that the sound you hear would be a composite, with the loudness of each component determined by how much damage got absorbed or went through, and the total loudness determined by how much base damage the strike did? I don't know squat about sound engineering so I've no idea if this would be workable in practice. Just an odd idea.

There is a case to be made for a separate skill, which reflects your ability to identify and bestow enchantments. It would make more sense to connect your ability to identify magical weapons to your ability to craft them, for example, than to a catchall "Lore." Maybe a master in Lore could identify an en-runed axe as The Valkyrie's Kiss, forged by Fane the Dwarf, forgemaster in Gubenheim, for the berserker Hrothfjellir Skullgrimsson to aid in his quest to slay Fastolf the Frost Dragon... but you'd need an enchantment master to divine that it provides frost resistance (30), +2 damage (+5 with armor penetration +10 against dragons).

OK, thanks for clearing that up, Arkeus.

No, I don't know. That's why I'm asking. Not all games tell you that info, you know.

Even if armor type isn't shown in a tool-tip, as soon as you deal damage, the damage dealt will tell you everything you need to know. Are we going to see damage dealt per hit in the UI? Of course. That's a basic information. Do you have a source, or are you just making an assumption from the IE precedent and JES's liking for transparency in game systems?

Even if armor type isn't shown in a tool-tip, as soon as you deal damage, the damage dealt will tell you everything you need to know. Are we going to see damage dealt per hit in the UI?

That, good sir, is an excellent idea for an easter egg. Colander of Wisdom +4 FTW.

Are you sure you're not a Buddhist monk? That sounds like a very karmically-informed attitude. The devs have also said there's going to be an Easy mode for players who aren't that into overcoming tough combat challenges. Between that and and an all-non-magical party, I think you ought to be fairly well served. That said, there are other games out there that don't have any magic in them at all. I'm looking forward to Wasteland 2 and Forsaken Fortress meself...

The developers have said that P:E is designed to support as broad a range of character concepts as possible, you don't need to bring any companions if you don't want to, you can build your own party entirely as you wish, and you can even play the game solo. That certainly means that you can play without any spellcasters in your party. However, they have also said that every class will have some special abilities powered by the strength of their soul. This could fall under a broader definition of magic, even if no actual spells or infernal beings are involved. I also wonder what your abbot would think about the metaphysics and theology in P:E, what with all the metempsychosis and stuff...

Guys, I promised I wouldn't wade into this topic again, but I guess I changed my mind. This time I'm not wading into the argument though. I just thought of something which I think is the reason for all this acrimony and thought I wanted to point it out. 1. You can't determine if X is a degenerate strategy if you don't know or can't infer what the game developer intended. If the developer intended to send you exploring every corner of the map or killing every monster, then that is not degenerate behavior. But if the developer did not intend for you to do that, yet the game rewards you for it, then it is a degenerate strategy. 2. A good game rewards "fun" and does not reward "un-fun" strategies. Obvious, huh? However... 3. There are legitimate differences of opinion about what is and is not "fun." It might so happen that you'll find that playing a game with a degenerate strategy is fun. You and the developer disagree about what makes the game fun. So if the dev announces he's going to remove the incentive for the degenerate strategy that you were enjoying, you are not going to be happy. Basically, I think this argument is fundamentally one about what makes a game "fun." It has gone far enough that we've hit the layer of deeply held personal preferences. As such, I think it's pret-ty unlikely that any of us will ever convince each other. I think there's a better discussion to be had about what made the IE games -- or cRPG's in general -- fun (and what parts of them are not so much fun). There were a couple laundry lists in this thread and elsewhere, but that's somewhat thin gruel methinks. If we can have that without attempting to poke out each other's eyes, so much the better. And then maybe we can think about what kind of game system could support the fun bits and smooth out the not-so-fun bits. There certainly won't be a consensus because people have different preferences, but there might be more clarity. That is all.

Hey, you're right. The IE games did have more than two sets. I had forgotten about that. Maybe P:E will too. We'll see I guess. I kinda hope not because as Val said it sort of makes the tactical planning aspect moot if you can have one of each equipped.

@Adhin: Sorry, but you're mistaken. You can't access your inventory in combat; you can only swap between weapon sets. From Update #36:

You can't access your pack in combat. You can only switch between equipped weapon sets (presumably two). So if you're set up with a sword and shield + bow and arrows, there's no way to dig out your mace or estoc if a heavily armored guy shows up.

I don't see that a thrown javelin is quantitatively any different than, say, a hurled axe or dagger. Now granted, it's probably not the ideal weapon for a party of adventurers to lug around, but it might be a nice change-up for an enemy attack. Wel-l-ll... an axe or dagger can probably use a generic "throw" animation, same as a grenade, rock, or such. A javelin would look a bit odd if hurled the same way. That said, do we know if any hurled weapons are in?

Well, the Creative Commons community is very big, vibrant, and growing, and people in it do exactly that. I put everything I make (privately; my day job is different unfortunately) into CC, and some of it has wound up remixed and reused in some pretty surprising ways, some of the commercial, most not. A photo from this series ended up as a CD cover for a piece of classical music, for example -- I thought that was kinda cool: But then here it would go both ways. It would need a couple of studios to get together to start with, but the synergies would be apparent pretty quickly. It's the same model as with open-source software. And yeah, losing some of that unique feel would be a trade-off. I've no doubt that games made in that kind of community would develop a common "feel," even if each studio puts its distinctive spin on it. Whether that would be a bad thing is a matter of opinion of course.

Yeah, you could. I'm sometimes imagining a community of game devs contributing all of their generic-ish things into a common pool. Like a big collection of sets, props, and extras you could grab and reuse. So you could quickly assemble your generic fantasyland and then spend your time doing what it takes to give it character and personality. You could build up libraries based on themes -- ancient Rome, say, or medieval Europe, or Wuxia. So a small team who decided to set their game in one of these types of settings could get a head start by grabbing what's already in the library, then expand on it, contribute back the "generic" stuff they added, and finish off by using relatively lightweight assets to give their thing a personality of its own. It's not a free lunch by any means; they would be operating within some fairly tight constraints, but I think this way it would become possible to make rather splendid things with rather small teams and little money. But then I like art-house cinema too.

True, but nowadays there are standard formats for models and animations, so there's no reason it'd have to be restricted to a single developer, engine, or series. I think it'd be nice if these relatively generic, easily reusable assets were put into a common pool everybody could dip into. Would lower the cost of small/indie projects.

A javelin would be a bit of a PITA to implement I think. At this point you have melee weapons and missile weapons, with missile weapons using ammunition. These are both simple as you always have the character holding the weapon. A javelin is a hurled weapon. That's qualitatively different since the weapon leaves the character's possession when it's used, and then lands somewhere where it can presumably be picked up. It's a different type of mechanic which needs more programming and more animating. It'd be cool to have such stuff in, but I'm pretty sure that for the same budget you can add in several different melee or missile weapons, or critters for that matter. I can understand why they'd rather do that.

I like that idea for Endless Paths. I'm imagining something like this, inspired by Fritz Leiber's Quarmall: the once-capital of a once-great empire ruled by sorcerers who kept expanding it downwards for their arcane wizardly reasons, long since fallen into decline so only ruins are visible above-ground. Now it has disintegrated into factions controlling multiple levels. Some of their rulers are sorcerers pretending to the "true" rulership of Od Nua. Some were created by locally successful rebellions. Each of them has their factions as well. Teams of slaves kidnapped from among surface-dwellers and magically mutated into little more than beasts of burden man the air-pumps and mushroom farms. And of course, many levels have been abandoned entirely and left to the ghosts of the ancients as well as creatures who have crept in through cracks and never-inhabited cave systems extending into the darkness. Centuries of magical mutation have left their mark on both the citizens of Od Nua, and the inhabitants of the spaces in-between. I think there's lots of room for doing something fresh with the basic notion of a really deep dungeon. It doesn't always have to be "go kill the balrog" or "go fetch the McGuffin." There are some seriously inventive writers on board, and I trust they'll come up with something that'll surprise all of us.