PrimeJunta

I would add Numenera, the upcoming deep-time/post-apoc PnP game by Monte Cook. I never liked the xp-for-kills mechanic, and haven't been using it in my PnP games for years. I find xp-for-learning-something, xp-for-accomplishing-something, and xp-for-exercising-your-skills much more interesting.

Wel-l-ll... actually I was arguing more from cRPG rather than simulationist premises (i.e., verisimilitude is nice but of secondary importance compared to stuff like character differentiation and strategic/tactical depth), but since you brought it up... The simulationist argument for making two-weapon wielding comparatively more effective against human(oid)s is that it relies on more effective feinting. Feinting exploits the training of your opponent. For example, I understand that in fencing it's generally a good idea to keep an eye on where the point of the other guy's weapon is and what it's doing. A feint by a two weapon fighter would involve making like he's attacking with the main weapon, causing the defender to move to block or parry that, but really attacking with the secondary one in a spot now exposed by the blocking or parrying move. A bear wouldn't care about such niceties, it would just rush you. To pile on more simulationist arguments, a bear would have thick fur, thick skin, and, towards the end of summer, a thick layer of fat. It would be a good deal more difficult to get through that to a vital organ with a light weapon than, say, a spear. This applies to pretty much anything that doesn't fight like a human. (It would probably even apply to an untrained but really angry human, but such a human wouldn't pose much of a challenge for a trained fighter anyway, so that's kind of moot.) Also, a bear is able to catch a moving salmon with its bare bear paws. That counts as pretty nimble in my book. Let me emphasize, though, that this wasn't really the direction in which I was thinking; in a game like P:E, if simulation and interesting gameplay collide, I believe simulation should step aside. That said, I think this type of collision is rarer than you might think and quite often verisimilitude and interesting gameplay are congruent goals.

Then again it's really easy to tune the system with modifiers like that. If you have the time to add in a few extra animations, so much the better. The biggest challenge I think would be transparency; communicating to the player what the effects are. But then that's no different from spell combination effects or other such creative nonsense.

@Lephys: I like the way you're thinking. Those would be dead simple to model in a cRPG. Make it harder to flank a dual-wielder, and give your handaxe/sword combo a bonus against sword-n-board. Lots of possibilities.

@Lephys: Nope. It was for the scenario with the premises: (1) Each one either always lies, or always tells the truth (2) Each one is either a boy or a girl (but not sexless or hermaphroditic)

There's a fair bit of discussion here about game balance and various subsystems, such as armor, weapons, dual-wielding etc. Josh Sawyer in particular has discussed the utility of skills a fair bit. Magic has been discussed a bit too. One thing that hasn't been done well in any cRPG I've played, though, is situational utility of combat skills (and equipment). I think it would be a great way to add variety to the gameplay and encourage creativity in character and party builds. By situational utility I mean making different types of combat skills be more or less effective in different situations, or against different opponents. I think this sort of thing would be relatively easy to model in a game system, and it would be pretty easy to have them contribute to the verisimilitude of the game as well. A few examples off the top of my head. Large weapons with lots of reach would work better against large creatures and beasts but be significantly hampered in confined spaces. Heavy armor gives a great deal of protection against damage but would take time to equip and would fatigue you more quickly, which means you would only be able to use it if you had time to prepare for combat, and you'd have to find a way to conserve or restore your stamina during combat if it dragged on. A character would need to be physically very strong and fit to be able to manage this, but would not need to be acrobatically nimble. On the other hand, dual-wielding two light weapons gives an advantage to feinting and parrying. This means it's more effective against human(oid)s, but less effective against beasts and suchlike. Dual-wielding requires higher dexterity, which means trading off something else, resulting in a particular type of fighter. His blows are light but precise, and his skills are honed for one-on-one duels with humans. Piercing weapons would be useless against unliving enemies, but perhaps more effective at getting through magical protection; firearms could be a more powerful version of the same, but with slow reload rates. You'd have a better chance against a battlemage with a gun and a rapier than with a longsword or a sling, but you'd be advised to bludgeon a skeleton or a golem into submission rather than trying to ineffectively poke holes into it. If the game system had these types of complexities, and a variety of combat challenges to match them, it would make party and character-building very interesting. One party could be a collection of specialists, with the one with the right skills taking point in each encounter and the others moving to support her; another could go for a set of well-rounded characters able to perform at their best in most situations, and would use that tactically to their advantage. Both would be viable strategies for victory, but would require very different tactics. Additionally, no build would be objectively better in all circumstances. Our nimble dual-wielding Scaramouche might be able to best heavily-armored Sir George of Joustalot in a duel, with a skilful stab in a vulnerable spot -- but Sir George would run a raging magic giant wild boar right through with his lance where Scaramouche's best bet for survival would be to climb a tree. N.b.: I'm not arguing for any of these mechanics specifically; rather, I would like to see a system of mechanics balanced out to function differently in different circumstances. I don't really care about the details. Thoughts?

If they do put in dual-wielding, I hope it's done for better reasons than the badass factor. It could be a useful building-block in a particular type of character. High DEX has secondary benefits, other than just being able to hit things better, so a fighter with lower STR and higher DEX might trade off some damage per blow and perhaps the ability to use some massive badass weapons, but gain the ability to dual-wield, which would partially offset this. Or we could have different styles be more effective against particular types of enemies. So a dual-wielder, having an advantage in feinting and parrying, might fight better against other humanoids, but would be at a disadvantage fighting a large, thick-skinned beast compared to someone landing heavier but less precise blows. Somebody already mentioned the D&D distinction between different damage types (piercing/slashing/crushing). If done intelligently, dual-wielding could mesh well with this type of system too. If it was PnP -- and I've actually done this in PnP -- weapon concealability also comes into play. You might not be able to wear full heavy combat gear to the King's ball, but having a couple of daggers tucked away in your boots might come in very handy, and in this situation someone skillfully wielding two might be at a significant advantage. Dunno how well that would work in a cRPG; most players would probably object to having the computer force you not to use your most effective stuff where they might find it totally logical in a game with a human DM.

Metric. And make everything 100 times smaller than IRL. So your character would be, like, 18 mm tall, and a real badass dragon would have a wingspan of, like 60 cm. And then let us zoom out far enough to play the game in 1:1 scale.

Actually, with that extrinsic assumption, and an additional one that neither is hermaphroditic or genderless...

Chanter, cipher, monk, druid. Specifically, I'd like to know where they come from in the world of P:E. Are all classes available to all cultures? If not, where do these classes come from? Do different cultures have different palettes of classes to choose from? (Personally I'd find it a bit surprising if a high-Renaissance type culture like the Vailians would also produce barbarians, for example.) * What the hey is a chanter anyway? Are we talking Norse skalds, Provençal troubadours, Celtic bards, all of the above, none of the above, something else...? * How do they intend to differentiate ciphers and druids from wizards, in terms of mechanics? * What's the cultural/religious context monks come from? It's pretty obvious from the Forton art that they have a kung-fu-unarmed-martial-artist archetype in mind. Is there an "Eastern" culture in the world too? If not, where do these types of monks come from in the "Western" cultures we've already seen?

You might want to read that again, Sharp_one. 'Cuz Sawyer is clearly stating that his intention is to do exactly that -- make a variety of armor/weapon combos available, and avoid a situation where there's only one objectively "right" (dominant) way to build and equip a character. Whether he'll succeed is a different matter, but he does have a fair bit of experience tuning systems to do just that, so I think the odds are in his favor.

Sure, it's viable. Also marginal. I've no doubt it'll be in because so many players would howl bloody murder if it wasn't (the "badass factor"), but I think the effort needed to implement it would have better payoff in terms of richness of gameplay elsewhere.

If they BOTH say it, then we have a paradox. No, we don't. All these riddles are insoluble as they're stated here. For all we know, everybody could be normal people who sometimes lie and sometimes tell the truth, in which case you can't deduce anything about what they say. You need some sort of meta-information to make the riddles soluble. For example, that they either always lie or always tell the truth. In which case this riddle would have a solution (it's not a paradox). (I love these problems, btw. Got a great book full of them. Called What Is The Name Of This Book, by Raymond Smullyan.)

Bah, that what maxed-out Handle Animals is for. There's not much a well-trained sheep can't accomplish.

Or a wizard who can summon goblins you can send into the trapfield to set them off. Or a ranger who can tame sheep that can be used as living minesweepers. The possibilities are endless.

IMO what JES is saying is pretty much common sense. Of course there's a risk of "overbalancing" to the point that all classes end up in the same place (e.g. a rogue is just a wizard who throws grenades instead of fireballs, and a wizard is just a rogue who uses Knock and Find Traps spells instead of Open Locks and Search skills), but I think he and the rest of the P:E gang are smart, experienced, and self-aware enough to be able to avoid this pitfall. If the game has a viable path for any relatively sane character and party build, and different character and party builds produce materially different but interesting experiences, it will have been a success. I mean seriously, why would you even want to implement riding if there are no horses in the game? [Yes, I know this has been done. And it is puzzling to me.]

Actually, they're very practical. Probably not what you had in mind though.

Here. I'd take it further than that; I don't have any problem with being able to roll up squibs that hit a brick wall at some point, at normal or harder difficulties anyway. However, I'd think it unfair if you end up with a squib even though you made reasonable assumptions about what your choices do.

I'd actually pass on this RPG cliché altogether. If you have to have it, then small weapons only for the off hand. And please don't make it overpowered, like having double the number of attacks per second. Shouldn't work like that.

Yeah, a dynamic economy would be cool. It would also be a hell of a lot of work and tune so that it wouldn't be outrageously exploitable or easy to break down. Especially if it's any more complex than a handle of goods, a handful of sellers, and a handful of buyers. Try it for spits and giggles: model the turtle beak market of Chelonia, starting with the following equilibrium: * Stock: 100 beaks * Buying price from Chelsea the chemist's: 1 penny/beak * Selling price to Chelsea the chemist: 1 penny/5 beaks * Base demand: 10 beaks/day * Base supply: 10 beaks/day Now try plugging in a couple of different formulas for Chelsea to decide on her buy/sell prices based on how many beaks she has left at the end of the day, and supply and demand curves that respond to these prices, and then put yourself into the shoes of an unscrupulous trader who wants to make a bundle by cornering the turtle beak market. (That would be you.) This brings up questions like * How elastic is demand for turtle-beaks in the short term? In the long term? * How elastic is supply for turtle-beaks in the short term? In the long term? * Do I have to factor in a potential crash of the turtle population, if a demand spike drives up turtle-hunting? How do I model that? * Will an increase in long-term demand be offset by an increase in supply through imports? And before you know it, you'll find yourself modeling the trade patterns of the continent, the ecology of both nearby areas (which determine the limits to short-term turtle beak supply) and far-off areas (which determine limits to long-term supply through imports), customs and excise, taxation, the economic impact of smuggling, and so on and so forth. I know, fun. What's more, it would have major implications for the gameplay -- for example, time would become a lot more important. Normally time doesn't really matter in cRPG's. This would totally wreck the economy since you could just wait out any market disruption you may have caused to the dynamic turtle beak market. In sum, personally I'd prefer they put in some killer quests, encounters, companions, dialog, story, classes, and what have you, and mmmmaybe deprioritize modeling a dynamic economy.

Sure! I just think it's a bit of a brute-force way to do it.

There's a lot of Sawyer hate around, these days. I don't really get it. From where I'm at, what he's saying appears to be, well, common sense really. Why would you even bother implementing a "ride" skill if there are no horses in the game? That said, there is a trap there -- an overly enthusiastic attempt at balancing everything can make everything the same. For example, an "open locks" spell that opens all locks is probably a bad idea if your rogue's raison d'être is an open locks skill. Going by what JES has said, though, I think the P:E team is entirely aware of this potential problem and quite capable of avoiding it. What I would like to see is a very broad take on what constitutes challenges and rewards. It's too common IMO to view these through a powergaming lens. I.e., if, say, Read Ancient Poetry doesn't net you an item of at least as awesome power as Open Locks, [or XP, or whatever] then it's a bad choice. The payoff for that skill could be a really cool twist to a story. Or even <gasp> Ancient Poetry -- say, background lore that deepens your experience of the game. Similarly, I think it'd be cool if the game had a solid variety of different types of challenges -- combat challenges, for sure, but also dialog challenges, puzzles, traps, intellectual challenges, and so on. [in fact IMO this would mean that characters who are less strong in combat would still be viable choices, if they would be commensurately stronger in the non-combat challenges.] I also think that it would be kind of dim if every character and every party was equally awesome. A part of the fun of playing games like this is to figure out how to make the awesomest character/party you're able. That said, I would like to have enough information from the get-go to be able to make an educated guess about how to make an awesome character. Case in point: the archery mechanics in DA:O are extremely counterintuitive: it doesn't make much sense that your awesomest archer has maxed-out INT and shoots a shortbow. So please don't do that. If I want to make a fabulous archer, I would expect to need DEX and a longbow, TYVM. I'm not sure that skills should be balanced by the designers by making the more useful ones cost more. I think it's more important that the game telegraphs the usefulness of the skills it offers, either explicitly or implicitly. I would be bummed if it turns out that all the points I invested in Open Locks were wasted once a mage with the Knock spell joined my party a quarter of the way through, for example.

A resounding YES! to spears and polearms. Spears would fit the Celtic theme great too. Gáe Bulg FTW!

The first one. Didn't bother with the others because I didn't enjoy it much. I didn't count the hours, but 30+ sounds about right -- that's short in my book. It was utterly awful, borderline unplayable on release. With enough patching, especially community patches, it became quite playable so that wasn't the problem. The problem was that it was an enormous world full of same sameness. It had its moments, but to get them you had to trek through endless deserts of tedium. By the time I was halfway through Nordmar I couldn't take it anymore and just let it drop. It's too bad, really; if they had made the world smaller and dropped 75% of the filler it could've been a hell of a good game. As it is, you have to have a really high tolerance for mindless grinding to get to the good bits. I'll probably lose all my geek cred here, but I haven't played either of those. I missed BG and went straight to BG2, which I enjoyed enormously once I got over some serious initial frustration. I didn't play the IWD's because I understood that they're basically dungeon crawlers all about the combat challenge, and I prefer to play roguelikes for dungeon crawls and RTS's for combat challenge. I'm getting curious though and might give 'em a shot at some point. What I look for in a game is a bit analogous to what I look for in a movie, comic, or a book. It has to have something to say, and it has to say it in an at least moderately interesting way. That "something" could reside in the gameplay, the story, the characters, the lore, or whatever else. But it has to be there. Hitting things until they fall down, getting better things to hit them with, and eventually running out of things to hit doesn't do it for me. Nor am I very interested in playing the same game over and over again. So I loved Morrowind (unusual, challenging, creative, interesting, believable world) but got bored of Oblivion plenty quick (vanilla, unchallenging, uncreative, boring, repetitive, artificial-feeling world). [Repeat for a half-dozen more like/unlike pairs of outwardly similar games.] That's what's missing in AAA cRPG's these days, mostly. It's like they're really afraid of pushing any boundaries in case somebody doesn't like it. [And the fact that the boundaries are different in gaming than in, say, daytime TV doesn't change it any; it's just pandering to a different audience. Rampant sexism, racism, and blood/gore might be edgy on TV, but it's edgy as potato in games.]