mcmanusaur

Well, I certainly wouldn't go so far as to draw parallels between my humble accolades as a preacher and those of the King, but I suppose I must consider myself flattered that you feel such a comparison has any merit. The way I see it, these days activism has to aggressively modernize to stay relevant, and that often means utilizing the endlessly vast resources of the Internet. While I do agree that there are other issues worthy of mention, I believe that giving each specific attention is in the interest of ultimate progress.

And I'm sure you'd accuse MLK, Jr. of the same, no?

I think using such an indirect term merely tries to sidestep the social stigma, rather than confronting it and truly fixing the problem. "Fat" is just a word, and it only has to be derogatory if we let such a view be impressed upon us. Perhaps you have more experience than me, but the movement as I know it is about reinventing "fat", not running from it.

I am someone who believes the fact that there are a variety of acceptable lifestyles. Humanity is diverse, and that's something to cherish, not scorn. Fat people can rightfully be proud of who they are, and just because fat is not for you doesn't mean that others can't happily adhere to a fat lifestyle. I find it a bit presumptuous of you to dismiss something that many Ameri- people are happy with as tragic. I think the real tragedy is that someone such as yourself who has experienced the hardships of fathood- which arise from social perceptions, mind you- nevertheless engages in the same kind of implicit discrimination against others that you were no doubt subject to yourself. I pity that, but you are entitled to your own point of view. I will choose not to respond to your ad hominem attacks, other than by saying that being a fat ally doesn't make me either of those things you called me. You wouldn't make such accusations of a LGBTQ ally, would you?

Well, there will always be individuals of social privilege that don't recognize the scope and significance of the issues that marginalized minorities face. I appreciate your input nonetheless; discourse is the first step to equality.

Artifacts lose their appeal if they comprise 90% of all drops; I would even argue that DnD tends to have too much magical loot, such that magical items don't feel special like they should.

Wow, I can't say how much this massive amount of support means to me, guys! Thank you so much!

Hmmm... I've pondered something similar, but this does have costs with regard to how much freedom there is in designing the plot of the game, and how the protagonist's past might play into the plot.

To Obsidian Entertainment and whomever else it concerns, As a fat ally, I am very much concerned about how body image will be portrayed in your upcoming title Project Eternity. Too often cRPGs equate obesity to gluttony and reinforce stereotypes that associate traditionally unattractive qualities with evil. This reliance on hackneyed tropes both demonstrates a lack of narrative depth and ultimately castigates loyal fans. Human bodies come in many different shapes and sizes, and I'd like the character creation process to reflect this fortunate reality. Perhaps PE could even provide social commentary on these serious issues by having one of the companions experience body image issues throughout the campaign. At any rate, I think that acceptance of fat lifestyles has been understated at best in previous Obsidian releases and I sincerely hope that this oversight is addressed for the future. I'm also very hopeful that the other members of this wonderful community will join me in proclaiming this forum to be fat-friendly. In summary, a cRPG that promotes a healthy body image is something for which I've been waiting an eternity, and Project Eternity could be that game. -mcmanusaur, Fat Ambassador

Yes. I'm all for some geriatric questing. And on the other side of the road we have... "Pacifier of Superior Feather Fall? Goo-goo ga-ga" -Sir Poops-in-his-Pants, patron of infantile adventurers

Or implement age but simply let it be chosen freely, optionally with certain bonuses and penalties (like racials) to relevant ability scores such as wisdom and constitution respectively, or perhaps instead with older characters being a kind of higher difficult since they learn and acquire experience slower.

I am left to conclude that lack of a flashy title and short attention span have dictated a general lack of motivation and ability to read my post and respond to it in any thoughtful way, and thus as a last resort I choose to summarize its main points in the probably vain hopes that this will facilitate something vaguely resembling discourse. At the very least this should help me organize my thoughts. mcmanusaur's Gigantic Treatise on Mechanics I. Statistics (numbers that quantitatively define characters) __A. Basic statistics (directly influenced by players during character creation and/or leveling) ____1. Ability scores/attributes (one kind of basic statistic that is relatively static as characters progress; we are all very familiar with the six-attribute system that DnD uses) ________i) Could PE incorporate a more complex system of attributes, by either adding new ones or reorganizing existing ones, or is that straying too much from previous cRPGs? ________ii) Should PE distinguish between agility (which relates to speed and dodging ability) and dexterity (which usually means manual skill)? ________iii) Should PE distinguish between endurance (which influences fatigue) and constitution (which influences health and resistance to poison and disease)? ________iv) Should things like memory and creativity which vary significantly between individuals continue to go ignored in character creation? ____2. Skills (another kind of basic statistic that is generally dynamic as a character progresses) ________i) Should skills in PE have both knowledge and experiential components? ________ii) Which types of skills should be present in PE? Trade skills, combat tactics, social skills (persuasion, leadership, mercantile), stealth, wilderness survival? Is magic a skill? ________iii) Should all skills draw from the same experience pool like DnD, or should they be grouped in some way? ______a) Active skills (use is somehow triggered by the player) ________i) How many trade skills is enough, and how many is too many? ________ii) Should certain steps of the process (such as woodcutting in a carpentry skill tree, for example) have no skill check but still give experience? ______b) Passive skills (always in effect) ________i) Are balance and concentration better suited as some kind of ability score than as a passive skill? ________ii) Is there really such thing as a passive skill or is active use precisely what distinguishes a skill from an attribute.ability score? ____3. Overall character levels ________i) How should leveling work, and should ability scores be fixed or increasing? __B. Derived statistics ____1. Hit Points, Fatigue, and Mana/Magicka (the resources that are depleted as a character is exerted) ________i) Is this system acceptable, or does it leave anything out? ____2. Saving throws ________i) Are they truly necessary, or can they be rendered somewhat obsolete by the inclusion of awareness as an ability score? ____3. Attack/To Hit and Defense/Armor Class II. Traits (qualitatively define characters but usually indirectly confer some kind of statistical advantage) __A. Native traits ____1. Physical bonuses and penalties ________i) Are keen senses more of a trait or an attribute? ______a) Race ________i) Will racial traits be included, or does that go against the player's ultimate freedom? ______b) Gender ________i) Is there any precedent or reason to include gender traits? (Hint: No) ______c) Age ________i) Should age influence how quickly characters learn and therefore level up? ________ii) Should there be statistical penalties to physical attributes with a bonus to something like wisdom beyond a certain age? ______d) Height and Weight ________i) Should a character's stature directly impact their strength, constitution, or agility? ____2. Personality ________i) Should a pool of selectable personality traits at character creation influence available dialogue options, or should players always be free to choose- even inconsistently? ________ii) How much of the protagonist's identity and past should the player be able to customize? __B. Acquired traits ____1) Feats ________i) What are feats fundamentally, and what role do they perform in a game's mechanics? Do they merely serve to fill in the gaps of an otherwise flawed system? These are all questions that will have an immense effect on character creation and progression, and that I am sure will be addressed at some point, but why not now.

No, realism doesn't matter. Who needs gravity, or conservation of matter? To hell with inertia, and three-dimensional space is right out. Just as there's no such thing as a game that is perfectly realistic, there is no such thing as a game that doesn't try to imitate realism in some way. Of course it matters; our minds our equipped to comprehend the reality in which we've evolved, and every step away from realism is a step away from players being able to understand the game. A more interesting issue is which aspects of a game can be the least realistic while maintaining quality of gameplay experience. Next vacuous question, please.

I will kill you all.

You mean, don't make it like the Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale series end games? Or something else? It was more a bit of paranoia creeping in that things would go the route of most MMO's lately (including DnD Online) in that for most of the game one is progressing through various tiers of magically enchanted items that could easily be farmed. Enchanted items in my opinion should be the endgame; they shouldn't be commonplace junk. It's all summed up in the fact that running around with magical gear just doesn't feel magical in many RPGs, since it's so mundane. I'm big on mechanics that are interesting enough to function without magic and enchantments; they've already said the setting is low-magic in terms of healing, so maybe that's a good sign. I just think that modern RPGs have just generally become saturated with enchanted items, such that you're behind the curve if you don't have one by level 3, and I don't like it.

Okay, I can tell I'm going to make a fool of myself and my limited knowledge of the DnD system used by the games that have inspired Project Eternity, but oh well. Traits and statistics. The qualities and numbers, respectively, that define our characters. What would we like to see in Project Eternity? It might be intuitive to think that Project Eternity will mirror the classic cRPGs in this regard, but there is always room for innovation. ============================================================================= Statistics broadly fall into two categories: basic and derived. Basic statistics tend to be ones that you the player can directly change during character creation or leveling, whereas derived statistics are things like Hit Points, Fatigue, Mana/Magicka, saving throws, and combat statistics like attack/to hit and armor class/defense scores. I'll admit, I'm not an expert on the latter in the DnD system (though I generally find the trifecta of Hit Points, Fatigue, and Mana to be sufficient), and this post is primarily concerned with the former. Among the most commonly used statistics in video games are those concerning fundamental attributes/ability scores; Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma in the familiar DnD system. This scheme is tried and true, but there is no reason I see why it cannot be deviated from. It's not as simple as coming up with words that sound nice, though; if one attribute is less utilized than the rest, it will inevitably become a worthless dump stat. The current system works because each ability score is equally integral, and I like to think they can be further broken down to reveal their true essence. Evidently one could probably decompose "attributes" endlessly in this manner ("what is running speed but the combination of leg muscle and reflexes?", etc.), but at some point we must draw a line and ultimately ask whether the groupings are logical. Here is a likely incomplete list of what these actually measure in my opinion, or rather things that an ideal system could possibly measure: Physical: Raw physique (which influences melee damage, ability to perform physically demanding tasks, and maximum encumbrance), endurance (the attrition rate of fatigue), balance, speed (in the form of acceleration and agility), "dexterity" (as I describe manual skill and/or hand-eye coordination), reflexes (reaction speed, dodging), "constitution" (innate resistance versus poison and disease), sensory acuity, and physical attractiveness. Mental: Willpower (volition), concentration (focusing of attention, and I suppose discipline is also related), creativity (use of the imagination), memory (though this is typically not included in video games), reasoning (including all high-level cognitive function), wisdom (for the sage archetype just as reasoning is for the tinkerer), awareness (by which I mean perceptual awareness of surroundings), intuition (which I suppose is social awareness), charisma (persuasive ability), and I suppose something that represents degree of attunement to magic or whatever. Obviously I have just included magic as a mere afterthought, so the system isn't perfect, but I think that touches on quite a few things the DnD system leaves out, or perhaps includes in the form of traits instead of statistics. Is there some way we can better group these characteristics, that will give us more precise control over our character, or open up new possibilities? Do we really need separate derived statistics like saving throws, or can ability scores be rearranged to render them obsolete? Historically, some aspects such as memory and creativity have gone completely ignored, in theory left up to the player I suppose; is that how it should be? Is character movement too neglected, and we should actually add agility separate from manual dexterity (which would still be useful for ranged attack and trade skills). Or perhaps add an Awareness attribute (I can hear the hardcore DnD crowd wincing)? Are balance and concentration best left as passive skills, and sensory acuity best left as trait modifiers? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The other predominant form of statistic is the "skill", which can denote combat skills, trade skills, survival skills, social skills, among others. This is one part of the DnD system that I find particularly deficient, with little distinction made between the very different types of skills. Typically, at any rate, these skills contain some kind of ability check (reflecting the above attributes) and are leveled up through experience. So far I believe we know that Project Eternity will contain trade skills unlike some of the other cRPGs we know, but we don't know much else. I'm not going to go into detail regarding which skills I'd like to see as that deserves its own thread and this one is long enough, but there is one thing I wish to harp on with regard to skills. Skills in real life are the result of knowledge and experience. Disappointingly, however, I have yet to see a game really get this right. Many games just forgo knowledge altogether, and ultimately become a game of how quickly you can collect X experience orbs to level your character, or at least their skills. While I can see this for overall leveling, for individual skills it just makes little sense to me; I think leveling all manners of skills should have a knowledge component and experience component. To this end, there should be teachers/trainers throughout the world along with a wealth of books or another medium by which knowledge is transferred, which is just as important to character advancement as grinding. That's something I'd really like to see with Project Eternity. Also with regard to skills, in particular practical skills, I'd like to see some kind of profession/occupation field on the character sheet if the trade skill system is as good as I'm envisioning (which for one thing would be better than vanilla Skyrim's). Most tradeskills should involve multiple steps of transforming raw materials into finished goods, but each of these steps doesn't necessarily need its own skill for leveling. In fact, some steps of the process could have no skill check (yet still give experience), but complexity is immersive. Just as a brief overview, I could see various DnD-esque skills but a wider variety. Individual combat maneuvers (parry, disarm, shield bash), mercantile skills (appraise, haggle, bribe), stealth skills (pickpocket, sneak), various persuasive tactics (bluff, intimidate, charm, deceive, etc.), leadership skills (rally and other things to make up for lack of bards), survival skills, along with trade skills. Perhaps movement skills like swimming, climbing, and jumping, or perhaps those would be best left as derived statistics. ================================================================================== Whereas a statistic is quantitative, a trait is qualitative (though it often has a numerical impact on a relevant statistic). However, traits can range from racial bonuses and penalties to feats, and also conceivably include physical and personality traits. Notably, keenness of the senses has usually been relegated to trait status, which I suppose makes some sense since they can't be readily improved. On a side note, why limit it to race? Perhaps we should choose our characters age, height, and weight during character creation, and those should confer certain physical and mental bonuses and penalties. More importantly, I'd personally like to see the use of traits widened substantially in Project Eternity. I know this would be quite difficult to implement and nigh impossible to perfect, but perhaps have us select from a list of traits in character creation that merely influence what kinds of dialogue options are open to our character? Things like attractiveness (if that doesn't become an attribute), sense of humor, body language, etc. ================================================================================= Even with all the traits and statistics in the world, there are some aspects of characters that can't be captured in numbers or single words (here I maybe reveal that I sort of come from a roleplaying angle), and it would be cool if there were various ways to define one's character and some aspects of their past outside of "We choose your character's story, and you put a name and a face on them". Perhaps things like socioeconomic status, level of education, religious beliefs, etc. or am I asking too much? What character creation/progression system would you like to see in Project Eternity? Does the classic DnD system cut it for you? Should attributes be rearranged? Should skills be grouped in any way, or should they all draw on the same allocation pool? Should skills in Project Eternity reflect both knowledge and experience, or should they stick to experience? Do you wish for more freedom in defining your character's various non-quantifiable traits? Did you actually read this whole post, or did I waste my time writing it?

This is kind of off-topic, but please, less endgame reliance on ridiculously over-enchanted items! Weapon/armor statistics should be complex enough in and of themselves that you don't need every piece of equipment to have multiple enchantments to be competitive. Enchantments should be rarer and therefore more valuable, no more throwing away enchanted items that are comparatively crappy!

Perhaps the cipher class might have some such elements? Well, maybe not a natural philosopher, but still.

#1 reason why despite cruder graphics and mechanics Morrowind was a more immersive experience than Oblivion. Okay, maybe the pure scale/scope of Skyrim wins out, but yeah.

To me that's just rehashing the age-old binary distinction between a STR tank and a DEX tank. We have to go deeper than that to solve these issues in my opinion. Personally the last thing I want is to have to level up armor.

Indeed. I really think the armor class of barbarians is the most illogical of the lot. Why would someone who wants to be a pure melee fighter consign themselves to poor armor outside of the reasons you mentioned? Maybe a Project Eternity incarnation of a barbarian would make more sense in medium armor than the ridiculous loincloth type things you often see (which are by the way as bad as boobplate).

I agree that running around with multiple loadouts is tiresome, but simply put some types of armor are advantageous is certain situations, and that's how it should stay. It just shouldn't be as mundane and transparent as having one anti-fire armor set, one anti-ice armor set, one anti-lightning armor set, one anti-poison armor set, etc. that you just switch based off the type of monster the party is facing. It should require more strategic thinking. Well then what makes something "optimal" if you're not punished for not using it? Either there's an optimal choice and you are implicitly punished for not using it, or there's no optimal. One other thing I should mention in regard to cultural modifiers is that it shouldn't simply be linear where Elven>Dwarven>Orcish. Certain cultures should excel in certain endeavors, and the hierarchies should vary accordingly. For a generic example, an elven bow is better than a dwarven bow, but a dwarven axe is better than an elven axe, etc. Blah blah blah

No, no, a million times no. That's just another mechanic that has no kind of in-character justification; characters should be able to switch armor at will (within reason), and you should only get bonuses for what you're actually wearing. Likewise, I don't support there being random, far-flung class-based bonuses for different types of non-magical armor; once again that's covering up for the fact that the armor statistics don't present an interesting enough portrait, which is the ultimate problem. I should also add my feelings on the loincloth fighter and the plate armor mage. Variety within classes is fine, but there still needs to be some kind of incentive for players to do what is intuitive (i.e. give a tank a lot of armor, or leave their mage in a robe or at least lighter armor). That said, I'm for being able to have some kind of plate mage, but players should have to tailor other aspects of their build to make this viable. It shouldn't be as simple as "I want my character to have the novelty of heavy armor, which hey... happens to be equally viable on my current build". At that point however, we must always consider how different we truly are from something like the paladin class.

They do, however, support classes in archetypical roleplaying way. This is Wynne from Dragon Age, an old, wise motherly-like mage who is also a healer: http://blog.bioware....9/09/wynne2.jpg And this is Wynne played by someone who choose Arcane Warrior as a second prestige class for her, which gives an option of using Magica stat as substitute for Strength to wear armor and cancels some penalties for that: http://img80.imagesh...91117015314.jpg What an outfit. Fits that character like a glove, does't it? But to me that points to a deeper problem with people being allowed to make characters that don't make sense. I don't think covering it up using arbitrary restrictions is really the way to solve that; the other mechanics that allow it to happen need to be fixed, or we just need to acknowledge that not everyone will have characters that "fit". In an MMO, I could see it, but in a single-player cRPG, people should be able to do what they want within the constraints of actual concrete costs in the form of logical statistical penalties.

To me, class restrictions are only a cover-up for the fact that the qualities of the armor itself (as described by its statistics) aren't sufficient in describing its potential for use. Maybe we should fix that problem by making the armor system more complex, or ensure that the statistics themselves prove prohibitive in certain cases, instead of trying to cover it up with restrictions that have no justification outside of mechanics.