IndiraLightfoot

The Road was all joy and laughter compared to Requiem for a Dream, just saying.

Those scripted interactions with lovely illustrations are über-nice! Especially, as I loved those FF-books.

I like the discussion that's been going on for like three or four pages, but I'd be very happy if it got to be a thread of its own, either here or perhaps in Gameplay and Mechanics. Perhaps a mod could fix that if enough of us agree on that or something? And what should the title be?

Yea, like sitting in your car while lightning bolts strike down. Perhaps this means that crushing blows on electrified may increase the chance of being electrocuted? Even the concept of "critical" may cover such an unfortunate event?

I don't think I've drooled over a game like this since I was waiting for NWN 1 after all the fabulous IE games! *dreamy glance* (and my first meme, ever, and perhaps the last)

True, Fearabbit! There are at least two threads in Gameplay & Mechanics about this: One about Insta-kills and one about randomized outcomes in CRPGs.

You are right about this and the lack of tactical soundness, but gameplay-wise I found it absolutely okay and sometimes even fun. But, and that's a big but, it requires reloading and redoing the encounters one or a few times, perhaps even to get the arbitrary outcome you're after (i.e., survival). For a computer RPG that was all fine and dandy, but in PnP, there are the woes of Disintegrate, as many a DM can testify. Just think of the S14 module - Tomb of Horrors. I've seen people freak out when their beloved character got annihilated from something they couldn't just save themselves from, except not doing the adventure at all or turtling beyond comprehension or something. In short, it may work in a CRPG with this kind of spells, and it can be masochistically fun at times, but is it the best the game designers can do? I don't think so, so in that sense the tactical aspect of gameplay matters quite a bit.

I have thought long and hard about it, and I have settled for option nr 4. Perhaps it's nostalgia getting the better of me, but I'm getting excited just by the thought of different xp tables for different classes. Like you said, it also becomes yet a class-balancing dial for the game devs, so fingers crossed!

Speaking of class diversity: Will different classes have different xp tables, even with different paces to them internally? I realize it's old fashioned and unpractical, but I somehow imagine magic users and paladins levelling harder than the fighter, not to mention the bard: "Bards are a special profession, as they have already earned levels as fighter and thief. Once they begin gaining experience as bards, each must pay tuition to his respective college. These payments and donations must be at least 50% of all monetary gains plus and additional 1,000 gp per level upon gaining a higher one" (sic! AD&D DM Guide, p.86). Edit: I also want to see xp diversity so that levelling the party won't be a synced calculus fest each time. And it was cool when thieves gained a lot of fast high levels too once upon a time in the D&D spectrum.

My question above got answered in Josh GDC Next 10 Talk thread in General Discussions a few hours back: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/64587-josh-sawyer-gdc-next-10-talk/page-2

We absolutely allow people to try it and we will probably not put much effort into balancing it. We do not design anything with the assumption you will have additional party members. Wow! that's a refreshingly profound thing to hear. As someone who approaches games with an experimenter/tinkerer mindset, I read this statement and rejoice. The IE games were all soloable, but because they weren't particularly balanced for solo play, the player felt like he was venturing into uncharted territory when he soloed. And there was a pure rush when you discovered something about gameplay that the devs didn't intend. I live for moments like that. And when an RPG manages to deliver a distinctly different experience with solo play than it does with party-based (intended or not), that game goes up a few notches in my mind. I give it tons of bonus points. That is why I Rank BG2 as the greatest game ever made. Soloing in BG2 was super different from party-play... and more, even solo runs with one of the classes leads to wildly different experiences than one with a different class. ^This! OMG, this!!! That's exactly how I feel about it. *Goes Steve Ballmer-crazy*

Great to hear that, Josh! Having played NWN2 with just one character several times, I know the challenges ahead, but it's also a great way of knowing that character's strengths and limitations. I just read your comment in another thread about each character having an important role in a party, presumably synergetically, so I guess it will be uphill battles on the horizon for any solo character, but that's good in so many ways, as long as it's not totally impossible - a big wall of dejection and resignation.

While I have Josh attention, I'll sneakily wedge in a question of mine in another thread 4 days ago: How much thought and testing has gone into soloing PE. Is it even advisable? Sooner or later, I'm sure gonna try it.

+1 It's one of the things that got out of hand in D&D, and in CRPG-versions of it, this reached an absurd extent as you levelled certain characters. May I add that the characters looked like lit up Christmas trees? It took quite some time if you had a party of casters and you wanted to buff before a big encounter. I'm praying that Josh & Co has solved this issue.

Sensuki: Thanks for putting together all these great tidbits of info!

Often, real life outshines the horrific creatures of fantasy. Meet the Slavemaker! The polyergus ant female is an assassin that specializes in enslaving ant colonies. Her mandibles are so sharp that she can't even feed herself. Those sickle-shaped mouthparts are designed for a single purpose: murder. It all started innocent enough; a female with a taste for power has no chance of rising within her own colony, the queen won't tolerate rivals. So the slave-making female left with her unhatched eggs to start a family of her own. But instead of building an empire she steals one. Her target: a colony of 600 Formica worker ants. She may be outnumbered, but the slave-making princess has a trick up her sleeve: a specialized gland called a dufour gland releases a pheromone that pacifies the formica workers. The intoxicated defenders lay down their weapons and allow the slave-maker to pass. Now her mission is to assassinate the formica queen and steal her identity. The colony Queen is caught off guard. She doesn't stand a chance against the intruder's serrated daggers. After twenty minutes of torture the dethroned queen waits for the sweet release of death. Now this nightmare takes an even more disturbing turn. The slave-making princess licks the wounds of the fallen queen, taking on her scent. The Formica guards surround the intruder. They move their antennae over the new queen's body. Feeling for hydro carbons along her abdomen identity markers that help distinguish friend from foe. By covering herself in the spilled fluids of her victim. The intruder has convinced the colony that she is and always has been their queen. Six hundred Formica ants are now her loyal slaves. They'll feed, clean and raise her Polyergus brood. But as the workers die out, the slave-making queen must replenish her army. So she sends her entranced minions on a raid. Nearly two thousand ants on a military operation to pillage and enslave. The slave-making raiders stream into the formica nest. But it's not the soldiers that the army is after. Their target is the nursery. The kidnappers steal up to 600 unborn Formica young. Carrying each larvae 40 m back to their Polyergus nest. It’s the equivalent of a man walking 24 kilometres, carrying a piano! In 3 weeks, these Formica young will be born into slavery, ready for a life of grooming, feeding and protecting their cruel slave-making queen. You gotta love ants.

Now, that's the spirit, cleric Nemir! That felt appropriate, in a thread about priests...

"Lootdrops" is a mere "t" from something really nasty. Sorry, guys. I couldn't resist.

Me too. I have these periodic cravings for ARPGs. Like now, for instance, I'm all into Path of Exile. Then I cease doing it for long swaths of time. While I am playing them it's like action, concentration and meditation in one fell swoop. It can be great in its own right, but it's not RPG as I would have it. A great RPG should have elements of grinding and loot, but just the best of them, and done sparingly and tastefully. Indeed, getting the balance right with the major parts of the RPG experience - the story, the varied paths of all sorts of conceivable roleplaying, the unexpected twists and turns of fantasy galore - that's what sets a good CRPG far apart from Diablo or Titan Quest.

My two cents: Me and D&D was a perfect fit already in the late 70s. Why? Because Gary Gygax' and Dave Arneson came up with something that jogged both of my big interests: Fantasy melee with strict combat rules using figurines (I used tin soldiers and the like and dice, but my system was rudimentary) and fantasy roleplaying on the basis of Tolkienesque literature. I recall that I was just blown away by it all. I still to this day feel that Gygax, Arneson and I are kindred spirits, and I don't even know them (and sadly they have both passed away a few years ago). In short, I love the combat part that translated so well into ARPGs and what not. I love grinding, mindless fighting, never-ending dungeons and endless streams of loot, and I love many of the fantasy settings as an exciting and varied intellectual and emotional ride in make-believe landscapes with pseudo-cultures and weird menageries. I used to make maps when I was a kid. I could sit for hours and make up place-names, and simply dream myself away. PnP RPGs gave me fantastic tools to do that more systematically and having much more fun in the process. TLDR: Loving action and combat as well as fantasy indulgence can be rolled up into one and the same person: I am a great example of this.

The KS for PE easily reached the stretch goal of $2.2 million, where they offered localization into German, Spanish, and French.

"Is there perhaps any German fan-forum somewhere? This forum seems not to have any German realm/section ('Bereich', not 'Berreich'), no?"

Interesting subject: I find myself saying that I really enjoy having characters level up in an dyssynchronous (word?) manner. One flaw in my experience of NWN2, which I adore, was certainly that. Perhaps some mathematical wizkid can come up with small checks on how much each party member contributed to various solutions of events and encounters during a particular quest. it won't be the most transparent system, and perhaps that's good, I dunno?

Soulburner: Playing pen-and-paper RPGs can be a blast, and you really should try it! But you'll need a good group of friends, a place to be with a big table and space for throwing dice and plenty of time, stuff that makes it hard to pull off in adulthood. I bet that if people who haven't played IE classics just bit the bullet and got over the initial resistance all the systems and rules put up, plenty would be surprised how good the RPG-aspect is in several of those games.

I love those blubbermen. They are like meaty strategic melee pawns and mirror images rolled into one. It would be horrific and confusing encountering them, as they would easily confuse entire parties. making them miss even worse opponents. They have clearly many fiendish uses.