melkathi

If I could get a group that palys Birthright I'd love to play some AD&D.

New Reno, Klamath, Vault City... The Mechanon Cube The Siege Tower The alley of Dangerous Angles The rest of Sigil... That cave with the giant spider in BG 1 that had Minsc, Imhoen and myself webbed for the whole fight until Dynaheir said "Sod this" and threw a fireball in the middle of the cave burning everyone and everything.

If the castle is the end of the journey, wouldn't that mean it symbolizes release?

That actuallty fits your avatar's expression.

I don't know what is in this castle. I know what isn't though: the princess; she is in another castle.

Now all I need is to get Obsidian to get Terry Pratchett to let them do a Discworld RPG. Then Death could really be Death. Unless he's the Death of Rats. Or on vacation... then Death would be Susan, I guess.

Finishing the Legend of Dead Kel DLC for Kingdoms of Amalur. I really like this DLC even though the undead pirate thing got boring after the first Pirates of the Carribean movie. In many ways the DLC is what Warden's Keep for Dragon Age should have been.

The character builder tool is just to plan your character.

Torian Kel is probably the only npc who's decision made sense to me in any game with companion betrayal. Ok, Ignus is a psycho and keeps teling you that he'll kill you. But most of the time, there is no logic behind companions siding with the enemy. Some games reactions seem to be: "Hi, I don't like you very much. Actually, I hate you so much that if the choice is between saving the world and living or killing you and then dying as the world gets destroyed, I'll kill you before I die. See that wave of lava comming towards us? I wont run; I'll handcuff myself to you and then chain myself down so the lava gets us both!" You wonder why people were in your party in the first place. I guess that is the problem with an affection/loyalty system. So it was nice to see Arcanum base companion choices on their motivation and character and not on some arbitrary number. Even just abandoning the party can be unreasonable (see the Alistair controversy). Torian Kel was refreshing... and quite possibly tragic. It made him one of my alltime favourid npc companions of all time.

Max followers is 5 at charisma 20. So it seems to be Charisma / 4 Try out the character builder at Terra arcanum: http://www.terra-arcanum.com/arcanum/old/characterbank/WEB_ACP.html

Going to reply in spolier

Virgil always leaves you after a while I think. There is a quest line to get him back and at the end, depending on your path he'll have a respective alignment. Evil Virgil is rather different than Good Virgil. Though I felt guilty about turning him evil. Geoffrey in Ashbury is a nice necromancer for an evil party though some people have found his AI annoying. I had no such problem. Torian Kel is a "hidden" npc you have to do a quest for. It's well worth having Geoffrey in your party when you get him. My party was Virgil, Geoffrey, Torian Kel and Z’an Al’urin. Though Z'an isn't really evil. Volinger made for some great irony in that party. Tech affinity though made him and Tollo Underhill hard to use. Both Geoffrey and Z'an are people who have some sort of comment about any location you go. The former of the snarky kind, the later more prophetic. I got a few giggles out of asking them what they know about the places we were.

Playing Blood Bowl: Chaos Edition. But I think they changed one of the lines the commentators do. I think it was "What a wimp!" and it now is "What a sissy!" And I hadn't thought it would bother me, but it really turned out to do.

trying to remember where I have heard 12 from... I know I should know but can't remember :/

I'm not sure whether I should love or cry... That game deffinitly does not have the same target audience as XCOM

The evil playthrough only really becomes different from the good once you meet the elves. But there are little things. The companions have a nice chemistry and Virgil's reactivity to which path you choose is good as well.

I played an evil elf in one playthrough with "sold your soul" as a background which prevented alignment from improving. Yeah, doing that quest was a bit... let's put it this way. That was the first and only time I ever did an evil playthrough of any game. The evil playthrough does have a nice bonus though: you can kill all the gnomes you want and not worry about alignment hits. Though an evil playthrough is well worth it when it comes to companions. I found the evil companions to be some of the best around. Sarcastic Geoffrey is great and so is Torian Kel. And the evil party makes the last part of the game more personal and interesting. Plus you can skip part of the game by teleporting to a certain location, attacking a certain npc you probably shouldn't even meet during the evil campaign and going straight to the last part of the game

I prefer they stick to traditional than to not explore any changes they do "correctly". But if there is actually thought behind anything they do, then I'm all for it. What irks me sometimes is when fantasy settings introduce artifical distinctions within a species just to add variety. If hill dwarf has sandy, blond hair while a mountain dwar has black hair, for example, just because they have to have a difference.

Guess we'll see. But at least they have given it some thought. I'm happy with that.

That's interesting. May have to check it out when I get home.

No the difference between the two has always been mostly about culture and magic affinity. Biological differences have hardly been explored. Dwarves are short and have beards, elves are svelte and have pointy ears. Besides that there is no percieved biological difference. The differences from there in high fantasy come from cultural, societal reasons. Elves are a reflection of an idealised nobility coupled with a romanticised return to magic and nature. Their appearance is based on that, not on Elven biology. Dwarves, usually crafty miners reflect a working class, their skin is leathery, their hand calloused from hard work. But that makes their appearance based on their society, not on what truly would affect the genetics. If dwarves as a species developed below ground, would they in reality not be far more sensitive to light? After all, so many fantasy settings have dwarves that never go above ground. Take Dragon Age for example that you mentioned in the first post: most dwarves never leave their underground kingdom. Yet their vision is perfectly fine above ground with a bright, glaring sun, while below ground, where their species has live for thousands of years, they need torches and artifical light the same as hmans do. Their skin is tanned as if they had been plowing fields all day all their life. Usually in fantasy, elves, dwarves but also to a certain extent the human nations have physical traits slapped on to reflect the cultural role they play. The actual biology is usually left out. It works the way it is, but as DRevan says, it is interesting to see Obsidian going that extra bit and looking at it at that slightly deeper level. It actually seems to be a sign that they are taking the world creation serious.

Makes sense though. If pigmentation is an evolutionary response to the environment, then related species (because let's face it, there isn't that much difference between an elf and a dwarf or a human) within the same environment would, over the hundreds or thousands of years develop similar traits, no?

Wait a minute there! Obsidian convinced your employer to give you a raise so you can back at a higher tier? Hoy Obsidian! I got this pending job application. Any chance you can speed up their reply and make it a positive one? I'll up my pledge as well

Awesomesauce And yeah. Valve seems to be doing pretty well compared to other players in the industry.

In a way similar to Tarant from Arcanum then? I don't mind mixed species ethnicities. As long as it's done well (of course that is the case with anything, right?)