centurionofprix

The first Baldur's Gate. I can't seem to explain just what it is, but there's a subtle sense of alternating solemnity and eldritch wonder to it sometimes, regardless of the quality of the storyline or the general consistency of the tone, that I enjoy (and that I guess the PE team is already going for). I don't know where it comes from; Bassilus's midnight reveries have a feeling of depth to them, for me at least, that isn't at all supported by the rudimetary text. Maybe it's the visuals and soundscape coupled with the fact that the scenario itself leaves so much to the imagination. That would be a great scene for a mod to elaborate upon with some investigation and intrigue before the encounter with the man. Better yet, Mask of the Betrayer.

A minor point, but too cool not to be mentioned: Musashi the legendary Japanese swordsman also fought with two weapons. Or a wooden one, sometimes. http://www.bookoffiverings.com/MiyamotoMusashi.htm

In a good way or a bad way?

I have real-life knowledge of physics and chemistry that tells me that many of the effects of magic shouldn't work the way they do. Fireballs should blow out the walls of any room they detonate in (unless they're made out a foot of solid rock). Getting frozen solid should kill you instantly from the water in your body crystallizing. Lightning bolts shouldn't have a travel time. When it comes to understanding how these things work we have a "basis for realism and believability." On the other hand a smith making a chain mail bikini and then getting it enchanted with some spell that provides the wearer with an invisible layer of whatever across their whole body can, in fact, be handwaived away as simply being "magic." It's still inexplicable (in a serious setting at least) why a character would choose to wear such an item, and why it should be made of mail or in the shape of a bikini rather than, for example, a pair of socks or a normal bikini to be worn *underneath* clothes or another layer of actual armour. Or why they would forego the additional protection afforded by the armour itself (which usually amounts to the bulk of the protection granted by enchanted items anyway).

You did, but clearly we don't agree. A stop sign has a certain purpose: to draw one's attention and to get the message across. Graphics in games (certainly in P:E) represent a fictional world into which one is supposed to be immersed and in which one is to play a role. The graphical representation is part of the way the gameworld is presented to the player. How "pleasant" the graphics make one feel and, moreover, how interesting they make the world, is relevant in the context of a role-playing game. I think everyone agrees; the point is how much divergence between the sexes is needed to make the characters distinguishable from one another, and if this divergence needs to exceed what is decreed by realism/sense/good taste. It seems to me perfectly possible to make the characters distinguishable without sacrificing the aesthetic. If only! Now, the colour doesn't have to be the colour of the armour itself, but can come from tabards, clothes underneath the armour, etc. Characters even of the same sex and race, in the same armour, were perfectly distinguishable in the IE games through helmet styles and a rudimentary colour choice for clothes. The names don't float "mystically" (if at all) since the UI traditionally isn't taken to be part of the gameworld. It's a strawman if the "sarcasm for emphasis" relies for its effect on misrepresenting the opposing argument.

*in* combat, that is.

Breatplates, but full suits of plate though? There's a difference in terms of convenience, even if plate wasn't restrictive combat.

... Why are people UN-concerned with it? In that case, why should equipment even look different? A leather vest and steel plate should just look the same. I mean, you can check your inventory if you want to know what someone's wearing. All weapons should use the exact same sword model, even if they aren't swords. Because, it's really not that big of a deal. They'll still all function properly. It's just aesthetics at that point, and we're obviously being overly picky and want the art team to waste their time, u_u I guess the point was that there is no need to compromise the setting's aesthetic sensibility to differentiate between male and female characters, because it's sufficiently easy to tell individuals and the sexes apart by body size, colour choices etc. Only using one model for weapons and armour would compromise the aesthetic (as well as making it more difficult to tell characters apart, since these are precisely the sorts of things one uses to do so).

Really. Torches etc would look gorgeous in this scene, though I don't know how easy it would be to implement in the 2D environment.

Looks brilliant. Are there going to be weather effects in the game? I can only imagine how fabulous a howling storm with rain and wind whipping the water and bushes would be in this scene.

Eeeee, not using very properly, I'd say. That edge on edge contact is hurting my soul. Off topic, but since it was mentioned, I don't think there is anything wrong with that picture. The edge-to-edge thing gets exaggerated/poorly worded by the ARMA guys; there are historical manuals (admittedly not medieval, but 18th century sabre if I remember right) where one is advised to meet blows precisely with the edge, and some earlier material describes hard blocks that wouldn't work with the flat. The crucial point is that the parrying in the picture is done with the half of the sword closest to the hilt, that is, where there is the most leverage against the opponent's sword. You aren't going to strike anyone with this half of the blade in any case, and it was often left unsharpened, which made the blade more durable for blocking even as the half towards the point (with which one wouldn't want to receive blows to begin with due to the poor leverage) often had a very fine edge for offense.

The game is about investigation of TNO's past. As the gameplay is mostly investigation and dialogue, with rather little combat sprinkled in between, I cannot see how investing in these abilities more central to the gameplay than combat ability is forcing you to play a mage. You are not supposed to play a min-maxed 18-18-18-3-3-3 fighter in PST, and it's perfectly sensible design that such a character would be at a disadvantage in a story that revolves around investigation, unable to solve the central mystery and doomed to die and try again, especially as the game explicitly advises you about this at character creation and in the manual. This just isn't true. The game is perfectly manageable on a first playthrough with a high intelligence/wisdom fighter. Perfectly. Very easy to a fault, even. This is a single-player game, again revolving around investigation, not multiplayer centered on beating other players, so whether the combat balance is finally tilted in the mage's favour over the intelligent fighter is irrelevant when both classes can easily make it through the game. I don't even know to what degree there is any inbalance, as the issue simply never became relevant in playing the game. Because one game was more about telling a specific story centered around specific past events, the other more about free exploration and adventure without much of story or detail. Oh bull****z. (at the cost of brevity and wit, it seems almost all the critics and most of the gamers that played it loved it. For whatever all that is worth when discussing the game itself, but it's a hedge against QUESTION BEGGING AND INSULTS. THIS IS A FORUM FOR CONSTRUCTIVE oh whatever.) Does muscle memory go with amnesia? It's a pretty common trope that the amnesiac discovers physical skills from his past, and this one had been a high level fighter in past lives. I don't know how it works in the real world, but that's irrelevant anyway as the game is about a *magical curse* that removes memories. Clearly this curse leaves you with some muscle memory, or it comes back easier than highly theoretical knowledge. Or maybe games aren't, and shouldn't be, separated on such essentialist terms. PST certainly has an adventure game influence. It's merely irrelevant to the quality of the game itself. Although Avellone delights in investigating strange setting conventions (as in KOTOR 2), and Planescape as it presents itself in the game certainly suits the story. I can't remember whether you meet many mages in the Hive, but Reekwind tells you in the same breath that the "mages" in the Hive who stopped Ignus were midwives, witch doctors etc. Not really people who could teach you arcane magic, only extremely dangerous in their combined strength.

Or it might just say that BG's high fantasy adventure had more mass appeal than the weird PS:T. The fact that more people played BG doesn't mean the majority of those who played both agree (or that this would be particularly relevant anyway). In any case, the "game" in PST is not really separable from the "story".

Or even "mcmanusaur". You're cool fella.

That would be cool.

While a specific monster may not be part of a CAMPAIGN, it is part of the SETTING and D&D as a whole. So still suck for me. Soekaing of which, while JRPG's and WRPG's have some design preferences, excpetions prove the rule. Anime did give us some interesting armor designs. That's the whole point of D&D. They added everything into the rule books so that players could pick and choose what they wanted; thus appealing to everyone. The only people who don't like that approach are those who feel everything should be exactly how they like things and damn everyone else's tastes. However, the fact that the source material provides many different ideas from which to pick and choose in creating the setting is not the same as, and doesn't redeem, the DM throwing every contradictory little thing from the source material into the same campaign, or a CRPG designer making the setting into a mess of incongruous aesthetic elements. The actual setting of the campaign still needs to make sense, unless you're going for surrealism or humour.

1: Your lack of knowledge of D&D mechanics and the Planescape campaign world is hardly a defense for the game failing to be faithful to either. The question of how closely PST adheres to DnD mechanics and the Planescape setting is irrelevant to how good it is as a game in itself. There doesn't need to be any defense. I admit I've lost the train of thought here. There wasn't much *need* for building a team or using tactics in the Baldur's Gate games. It was messy and trivially easy, most of the time, only made interesting by the varied encounter and location design. In any case the combat, while flawed, is a secondary concern in PST gameplay, which revolves around dialogue and investigation.

BG1 no memorable characters? Misc and Boo are the most memorable characters of RPG pc gaming history. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ozv1RcQJAHA They are memorable, for being so incredibly, utterly moronic. And because the internet won't let you forget about them.

While a specific monster may not be part of a CAMPAIGN, it is part of the SETTING and D&D as a whole. So still suck for me. It doesn't have to exist in the setting of the campaign, either; the DM can choose what parts to include or omit from the source material in designing the world in which the campaign is set. Tasteless or unfitting aspects of the source material don't have to exist in the setting of the campaign.

Yes, if there is a situation that calls for it - absolutely. If the player meets forces presented as being much greater or of an entirely different kind than himself, they should not in the end be flattened down to his level just to please the ego. The same goes for "unwinnable" encounters Pshaw mentions above - a godlike being shouldn't be defeatable by caving him in, and the PC party shouldn't have the power to cause them to retreat either (if the setting has such creatures). If the player insists on throwing himself off a cliff, let him. Perhaps give the player a chance to retreat, though, or a fair warning.

The hardass Xena warrior woman. Don't mind the chain bikini either.

The game shouldn't hold your hand through the morality of the thing, or fellate you for taking the "selfless" modern-sensibilities PC choice. It's when the morality is obscured, perhaps as part of some greater questline or in interaction with the world rather than as an obvious binary choice, or when there is some actual advantage or temptation to the selfish path, that the choice itself becomes meaningful.

Whoa.

As I said before, that's physics. You can't cheat physics. You move mass either way. True, but the physics of the matter don't reduce to "heavier is slower". There is also the leverage created by the use of two hands on a long hilt/shaft to consider, allowing for very quick and nimble handling of the weapon compared to one-handed usage, as well as the fact that even "heavy" polearms can attack very quickly with short jabbing attacks. You don't slash with them like you would with a one-handed cutting sword. Furthermore, your speed of attacking is often constrained not by how fast you can swing the weapon, but by the speed of your feet in stepping into striking distance, which is almost always slower than the time it takes for the hand to strike. You don't just stand in striking distance wailing away as fast as you can. Time of the hand vs time of the foot vs time of the feet as George Silver explained it in 1600; and in time of the foot the person who has more distance to cross is at a disadvantage. The spear thrust coupled with a short lunge can be faster than the taking of a full step into striking distance with the arming sword. I think the more accurate abstraction would be to give one-handed weapons defensive bonuses with shields or, if going without the shield, grappling abilities with the free hand or bonuses to defensive grappling checks (if there are grapple checks in PE). And in some cases you use them in ways where the attack with the bigger weapon is faster. I don't know if the DnD "hammer" ever really existed as a weapon, or if it appears in PE. Nope, it's not. The center of mass for an axe will always be higher, making it inherenlty less balanced. It's not less balanced, it's balanced in a different way for a different use. It's inherently less balanced for being waved about like a sword, but the leverage of two hands on a long shaft makes many of these polearms perfectly balanced for their own purpose, and wielding those weapons like swords wouldn't be the most efficient way to make use of their advantages anyway. Even without the leverage of two hands, one-handed axes and maces were usually quite short and light, making them more nimble for many uses than a long rapier, for example, but then the technique and the time of the foot is crucial again. Speed in use just doesn't reduce to weight or size.