Agelastos
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Posts posted by Agelastos
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The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall had Language Skills. IIRC (it's been 16 years), if your character knew how to speak the Daedric language, that skill would be checked whenever s/he came close to a Daedra. If successful, the Daedra would be non-hostile (until provoked), allowing you to speak with it.
By Odin's empty eye-socket, Daggerfall was a great game. One of these days I'll have to replay it...
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Why would she want to look sexy in combat? For the exact same reason soldiers paint flames and eagles and **** on the sides of jets; 'cause it looks awesome.
I'm pretty sure that's a modern form of warpaint. It's supposed to look imposing, not just cool. It's a kind of psychological warfare, basically.
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i'd like to have no furries in my game, if possible, thx
No werebeasts or -taur creatures, then.
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There aren't very many ways to interpret that vision statement; it's obvious they added the babes in because they wanted them in there and not because they felt compelled by marketing.
Isn't that supposed to be written in the voice of Morte, a character who's constantly going on about wanting to share coffins with all the "hot undead babes"?
If it is, then I wouldn't read too much into it.
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Since we've touched upon the East, I thought I'd post this one too. I think it challenges the notion that using historical influence would ultimately result in drab and boring designs :
Not to sound condescending, but it's fascinating how little progress they had made since the days of Kievan Rus and the Varangians.
If it weren't for the rifle, the boots and the tassels, you'd barely be able to tell the difference. Peter the Great really had his work cut out for him...
Indeed - but I find that mix quite appealing visually.
Definitely. I love the whole Old meets New thing. One of the reasons I'm so fascinated by the Meiji Restoration and the Hundred Days' Reform.
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Since we've touched upon the East, I thought I'd post this one too. I think it challenges the notion that using historical influence would ultimately result in drab and boring designs :
Not to sound condescending, but it's fascinating how little progress they had made since the days of Kievan Rus and the Varangians.
If it wasn't for the rifle, the boots and the tassels, you'd barely be able to tell the difference. Peter the Great really had his work cut out for him...
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Nice! Looks Indo-Iranian. What is it? Sarmatian? Saka?
I really hope there will be lamellar armors. You almost never see them in western RPGs.
Indo-Iranian sounds about right, looks way way later than Sarmatian/Saka. My guess would be 16th century, something like the Mughal empire.
edit: Google says it's Sind - 18th century. Wasn't THAT far off then. ;P
Hah! That late? The general design didn't change much in 2000 years, it seems.
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Nice! Looks Indo-Iranian. What is it? Sarmatian? Saka?We're getting really derailed here - let's get back to discussing armour designs. Here's something really unique looking (the helmet's pretty intimidating) :
I really hope there will be lamellar and plated mail armors. You almost never see them in RPGs.
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I don't know... I don't want "boob plates" or maille bikinis, but old school sexism - of the "Cover up that ankle, young lady, you look like a two-bit harlot" variety - could still be interesting.
Boys mocking girls for wanting to be adventurers when they grow up. Arranged marriages. Jus primae noctis. Rape. Women's lack of legal rights.
I'm not talking about making the game into some kind of sandbox for misogynistic high school boys, à la GTA. I'm talking about taking the social issues that were prevalent during the middle ages and using them to tell interesting, emotionally raw stories (possibly with feminist morals). It doesn't have to be something that female PCs have to deal with all the time, but it could be interesting if at least some dialogue changed to reflect these views. Just like some races might be treated as second-class citizens (cf. elves in Dragon Age, or any non-humans in The Witcher). It would add to the replayability and could make playing a female character even more rewarding, if you are given the opportunity to prove society wrong.
Some cultures could also be more egalitarian than others. Maybe men and women are considered equals in w/e country the protagonist is from.
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Weirdly enough, everyone seems to be talking about the elephant in the room.
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NWN2: Storm of Zehir had Heritage Feats, which were basically Fallout-/Arcanum-esque traits that you could pick on level 1
I could see this being done with background traits, like in Arcanum, e.g. raised by monks, feral child ect. but otherwise I would think it would just get to confusing and not really add much. I doubt that ancestry in such a diluted form would really even have any noticeable effect anyway.
This.
Like the "Heritage Feats" (Fey and Fiendish) from NWN2: Storm of Zehir. A character with the Fiendish Heritage feat had a small amount of Baatezu or Tanar'ri blood coursing through their veins, granting resistances to poison and spells cast by Good foes, but not enough to be considered Tieflings. It didn't affect the character's appearance in any way, and I'm not sure if it was ever mentioned in dialogue.
If you picked a heritage feat at level one, that would unlock more Fey or Fiendish feats further down the line.
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Depends on what you mean by "Should be level one when I first get them in my party".
Would they start with 0 XP or could I level them up to my own level as soon as I got control over them (thus getting almost complete control over their stats, etc.)?
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I'm not sure how many times I've said this already, but I really don't to see more animal head-human body races, they are all over the freakin place.
I wasn't proposing this. Nor was I proposing the animal body, human torso thing that is so popular in fantasy writing. I'm talking about races that make some sort of evolutionary sense. Like, what would an arachnid who developed further along it's evolutionary timeline to the point of intelligence look like? Act like? Etc.
Spiders are among the most ancient beings on this planet and have remained pretty much the same for hundreds of millions of years. They haven't evolved much because they don't need to. So if there's to be a race of sapient arachnids, it should look pretty much indistinguishable from real life spiders (or w/e arachnid it's based on). I hate it when fantasy and sci-fi writers anthropomorphize animals and try to pass it off as "evolution". Note that I'm not accusing you of thinking that's how evolution works, I'm just venting. I actually like your idea. That's how I usually try to go about when I invent new races.
Also, their moral framework and way of reasoning should be completely alien to humanoids.
Edit: Of course, when magic and gods are involved, it doesn't have to make evolutionary sense.
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that asian themed elephant samurai is giving seizures to at least 10 realism aspies at this very moment...now if you wanna make it really inflammatory put it in a chainmail bikini and say it's romanceable.
Why is it inflammatory? I'm not a fan of anthropomorphic animals. I prefer my playable fantasy races to be demi-human.
BUT I could envision a demon or other humanoid monster looking like that, if you removed the samurai outfit. Kind of reminds me of Yag-kosha from Robert E. Howard's The Tower of the Elephant.
Compared to a lot of the demons described in ancient and medieval works on demonology, it looks downright normal. Take Pazuzu, for instance: a Mesopotamian wind demon who is usually depicted as having the body of a man, the head of a lion or dog, taloned feet like an eagle, two pairs of wings, a scorpion's tail, and a serpentine ****. He must have been quite a hit with the ladies, huh?
Edit: Really? I can't write ****? It's the medical term, damnit! What am I supposed to write? Ding-dong?
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A combined Morte/Kangaxx reference, maybe. I'm too tired to think of one right now, but there's something there...
or a cursed red robe (penalty to Charisma) that once belonged to a very bitter witch named Edwina.
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Well then, those Parisian tunnels that may, or may not, have been as spacious in 1370 as they are since 1850 shall serve as proud example of the average Europea urban sewage disposal system.
Wow. Way to twist my words.
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Pretty much everything in fiction stems from the rule of cool. Hell, the very concept of magic came from some guy figuring "You know what; it'd be badass if I could shoot a fireball out of my fingers." Did it make sense when he thought that up? Not really, but it was awesome.
I think you could really benefit from a crash course in cultural anthropology, because that was just... soooo wrong.
I was hardly referring to ancient cultures trying to explain away weather and death, or are you honestly going to tell me that all the spells ever used in D&D (and other fantasy settings) have some far reaching anthropological origin and were not just thought up by a guy going "this'd be cool."
Then you should have phrased it differently.
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Pretty much everything in fiction stems from the rule of cool. Hell, the very concept of magic came from some guy figuring "You know what; it'd be badass if I could shoot a fireball out of my fingers." Did it make sense when he thought that up? Not really, but it was awesome.
I think you could really benefit from a crash course in cultural anthropology, because that was just... soooo wrong.
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I'm hoping for a rock-cut temple complex built by an ancient and technologically advanced (skilled engineers, no futuristic sci-fi stuff [even if I do love the Ancient Astronaut trope]) progenitor culture. Something like the Ellora Caves in India.
If they just throw enemies at you from the moment you enter, there's no suspense, so I think the first couple of levels should be more or less empty (there could still be a lot to explore, just no enemies). A few animals, maybe. Rats, bats, snakes, spiders. A few traps. Nothing major. They could probably do a lot to heighten the sense of dread with just a few sound effects.
Maybe it's just the wind or the echo of your own footsteps you're hearing, but it's enough to put you on edge.
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I don't very much like large sewers, but only because they are too anachronistic for me. I'm fine with crypts and caves. Cellars and mines are cool, too. I love castles and especially towers, but they are dungeons only in the broader sense.
Contemplating dungeons inspires me to a song...
Dungeon Zone
Gettin’ in your armor
Listen to the cleric pray
Heroes under tension
Burnin’ to decamp and go
Highway to the Dungeon Zone
Ride into the Dungeon Zone
Headin’ into twilight
Bashin’ monsters dead tonight
We got you runnin’ into traps
And keepin' our band alive
Highway to the Dungeon Zone
I'll take you
Right into the Dungeon Zone
You'll never say hello to you
Until you get your blade run red with blood
You'll never know what you can do
Until you make it down as deep as you can go
Down below the ruins
Always where I burn to be
The deeper underground
The hotter the intensity
Highway to the Dungeon Zone
Gonna take you
Right into the Dungeon Zone
Highway to the Dungeon Zone
How are sewers anachronistic? They've been around for thousands of years, since the Indus Valley civilization.
I'm not sure if the medieval Europeans built any sewers themselves, but some European cities had fully serviceable sewer systems built by the ancient Romans.
So, if the P.E. continent had a mother culture of skilled engineers, like the Romans, there is no reason that there shouldn't be sewers.
Sure. I was referring to large, roamable sewers, fed by pipes
The Cloaca Maxima in Rome was, and is, definitely roamable.
Apparently the medieval Europeans DID build sewers. I thought the Parisian sewer system was built in the 18th century, but parts of it was apparently built as early as the late 14th century. Mea culpa!
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A ritualistic dance, like the bone dance or the rain dance? I like that idea. Maybe not for wizards, but for more primal casters like Druids or Chanters.
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I think there are way too many settings where orcs are noble savages. I'd rather go back to Tolkien, and have them as a corrupted slave race. (In my own homebrew setting, they were people kidnapped and repurposed by the not-quite-dark-elves-but-something-like-that cavedweller race; their agression magically repressed, and while in darkness, they got physically more powerful, but their muscles atrophied when light shone upon them. Thus, they are great for menial labor, but not gain a lot by fleeing to the surface).
This!
Realized about an hour ago that I had left that part out of my earlier post, but it was too late to edit it.
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I don't very much like large sewers, but only because they are too anachronistic for me. I'm fine with crypts and caves. Cellars and mines are cool, too. I love castles and especially towers, but they are dungeons only in the broader sense.
Contemplating dungeons inspires me to a song...
Dungeon Zone
Gettin’ in your armor
Listen to the cleric pray
Heroes under tension
Burnin’ to decamp and go
Highway to the Dungeon Zone
Ride into the Dungeon Zone
Headin’ into twilight
Bashin’ monsters dead tonight
We got you runnin’ into traps
And keepin' our band alive
Highway to the Dungeon Zone
I'll take you
Right into the Dungeon Zone
You'll never say hello to you
Until you get your blade run red with blood
You'll never know what you can do
Until you make it down as deep as you can go
Down below the ruins
Always where I burn to be
The deeper underground
The hotter the intensity
Highway to the Dungeon Zone
Gonna take you
Right into the Dungeon Zone
Highway to the Dungeon Zone
How are sewers anachronistic? They've been around for thousands of years, since the Indus Valley civilization.
I'm not sure if the medieval Europeans built any sewers themselves, but some European cities had fully serviceable sewer systems built by the ancient Romans.
So, if the P.E. continent had a mother culture of skilled engineers, like the Romans, there is no reason that there shouldn't be sewers.
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Dancing? Waving? Nah! The wizard should sit in a dark room heavy with the smell of incense, miles from the battlefield, in front of a makeshift altar facing North.
On the altar, drawn in chalk, is an outlandish sigil surrounded by lit candles. He opens a huge, dusty grimoire and starts chanting in a long-forgotten language. He then grabs an ornate bronze dagger and cuts the palm of his left hand, allowing the blood to trickle down onto the sigil. When he's done, he waits. There are no flashy light effects, no immediate signs that the spell worked, nothing.
Sounds much more fun than hurling fireballs at monsters, no?
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Monks in Project Eternity
in Pillars of Eternity: General Discussion (NO SPOILERS)
Posted
Very good post. I agree with pretty much everything you wrote.
However, are you sure that Boreal dwarves are supposed to be Siberian themed?
There are several indigenous peoples living in the northernmost stretches of Europe (most of them Finno-Permic) with material cultures very similar to those of the Altaic peoples of Siberia.