Kiarean

Okay, sorry for not posting responses to the responses, kind forgot about this briefly (partly because it's a 'my 2 cents' kinda of post meant to get my general opinion out there). But I'm here now, and will try and clarify some of the things brought up. Renamed Balance Issue - Yes and no. It's a separate issue as it doesn't deal with any of the game mechanics, stated or theorized. It's a purely storytelling issue. Relativity- Tigranes brought up the point of this not having anything to do with powergaming, and to a point he's right. That's actually the entire idea, to separate story progression and mechanics so that powergaming from to break the game at large is pointless, while leaving the ability to try and break the mechanics for those who enjoy that. I have a friend myself who has stated that he enjoys that. The Point - Then there are those of you bringing up the point of why something like this is even an issue. The answer is to eliminate the belief that there is an optimum path; rather than approaching each encounter from a perspective of what will give you the optimal benefit like some rpgs fall prey to, or making the path to the goal irrelevant like pure balance might (See - Mass Effect 3), you make it so that your choices are about the kind of story you want to tell and what effect that has on the world... in other words, a matter of roleplaying.

I think a good analogy to the real world would be genetics. We know now that genetics can leave you predisposed to any number of things, from alcoholism, to cancer, even emotions I do believe. From this, how do you know what you decide to do and what is simply dictated by your DNA? It's the same question, but with regard to past lives. Am I me, or just the result of the collective experiences of my past lives? As to the issue of the after life. Just because it's transitory doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Perhaps each god has it's own little afterlife, where it takes souls it can claim/cajole/convince. For a 'nice' god, perhaps the soul dies, decides to hang out with this guy and starts liking him, and when he's reincarnated he finds himself drawn toward that god without knowing why. Other possible motivations for both sides besides influence in the world - perhaps worship gives the gods power, perhaps it's the god's job, perhaps gods can influence reincarnation.

Okay, sure,I'll take the OP at face value. A Meta-dungeon is something that resembles a traditional dungeon but breaks one or two of the standard paradigms. Mostly commonly, a Meta-Dungeon is one that does not take place in an enclosed environment, but that still restricts their freedom of of movement in some manner. An example of this kind of meta-dungeon would be an enchanted forest that disorients anyone who enters, preventing them from traversing it.

Okay, thought I'd do this and give my thoughts on power gaming and Obsidian's apparent comments on it. First off, I'll give my most basic stance, that moving to eliminate power gaming is the wrong position to take. Expanding on that, I'm not opposing the goal but approach, as I think it tends to give you a bias towards X being wrong and Y being right. A better approach would be to try and make power gaming irrelevant. Making power gaming irrelevant would be best done (in my humble opinion) by taking the weight off of combat as the driving force of the narrative and also by integrating it more fluidly. What I mean by that is the choice of combat should directly impact the story, account for the difference between a character being there or not being there. If you kill the leader of the local bandits, does someone more vicious or less take his place? If you wipe out the entire group, does that clear the way for another group to expand and thus bigger a bigger threat overall? If you make combat a story element, then the goal becomes what makes the most interesting story, which makes the impact of power gaming irrelevant.

I don't want a traditional city in it, but it would be cool to see some deviation on the norm. Maybe a semi-organized settlement of some of the more intelligent things down there. Could be a place to pick up tidbits about the Endless Paths, maybe restock a bit if you've got the right skills, or a challenge to penetrate and loot if you don't. I just don't want it to be a mindless dungeon crawl, that's kinda boring. I want it to be freaky, and horrifying, and mind-blowing, and strange, and awesome.

I'm late in posting here, but I kicked in the 8 bucks before it was over. Figured I'd already gone up to 250, why the heck not. I'd like to be the Infernal Exalted of the Obsidian Order, if it's not too much. :>

Personally, I think the problem isn't the system, but the assumptions behind the system. A magic user in D&D can't meaningfully contribute to very many battles before using up their good spells. This leads to prioritization, which while potentially cool and tactical, is boring; it leads to battles where the mage is left in the back waiting for the battle to end. This is compounded by auto-attacks for non-casters, which doesn't work well for video games as it leads to the player also sitting around waiting for the battle to end. It's especially problematic when there's little way to avoid taking SOME damage, turning it into a matter of attrition. Because of this, the system has to allow some way to recover, and the D&D solutions don't work because the assumptions between pen and paper and video game RPGs are different. My suggestion would be to not base it on fatigue or sleep. Instead, tie the magic limitations to backlash. You could have subtle affects that merely bend the laws of reality; these would be less powerful but more readily available, the kind of stuff your mage can do on a small scale to help out in battle while still keeping the 'big guns' for the more dangerous foes. Then you would have overt effects which outright break the laws of reality, doing impossible things - turning someone to stone, a lightning bolt out of a clear blue sky, etc; This stuff would cause a build up of negative forces in the mage which have to be safely vented or else it causes some deleterous effect. Venting would be done through meditation, with each hour eliminating one unit of buildup. Of course, this process couldn't be interrupted without consequence, so while you could do it anywhere, if some hostile force happened upon the caster his companions would have to protect him or risk the process backfiring spectacularly, even worse than the mage pushing themselves with lots of buildup.