Lephys

I guess what I'm saying is, with the way that P:E is designed, it doesn't make much sense for Stamina to do anything but always replenish to full. I say "always." I mean, it would be kinda neat if there were rare-ish status effects or what-have-you that limited you to 90% or 80% or something. But, anywho... I value the exploration of stamina mechanics, but I've gotta say that, while doing that, in thinking about them in relation to P:E, it doesn't seem like the type of game that benefits very much from a lot of the various stamina approaches. That was the comparison I was trying to make with the Sims and such. In the Sims, the game is pretty much ABOUT your person, and that's it. Everything revolves around your person, including the mechanics. In an RPG like P:E, you've got a lot of progression going on with your character, but the whole focus of the game isn't on your character's progression. The only role I could see Stamina taking (if it weren't taking its "I'm your immediate, in-the-moment" health" role) would be something along the lines of the spells-per-day stuff. It would be the non-magic people's equivalent to spells-per-day, to govern physical acts and abilities in between restings/replenishments. *shrug*

I feel like a **** for just rambling about factors to consider, and not actually providing useful suggestions on how to do so, 8P. My brain was not in-the-zone while I was typing that. Sorry about that. I'm going to think on it, too, and see if I can't come up with a useful contribution.

You know something really simple that that makes me think of? The useful ability to, say, tie a little message to your falcon's leg and send it back to the stronghold to warn someone about something much faster than you, yourself, could travel there. But then, you're without your companion for that amount of time, so I dunno if that would work with P:E's "Wondertwin" Ranger mechanics. But... that's something from PnP games that familiars and such could do that wouldn't be very difficult at all to implement into a CRPG. Instead of "Oh no... That ambassador back in the city is an IMPOSTOR! Come, creature companion who can certainly travel much faster than any of us can, and who has a notorious affiliation with myself to the people of that city! Simply tag along with us as we all attempt to huff it back to the city as fast as our human legs can take us, and make it there JUST several minutes too late, for dramatic effect!"

I was under the impression that that, as well as the rendering posted before it (with the lake in the center, and the archway?) were simply examples of how BG (or IE game) maps could be redone in a different style. In which case, A) the actual logistical design wasn't the artist's idea (if there was no 2nd bridge in the original, then there's no second bridge in this current one), and B) these were made relatively quickly, and were not at all intended to be finished products. If you can't quickly whip up much better results than that, then there's absolutely no reason to judge someone's creation like that. Also, the difference between you and me is not that I'm going to sit here and argue with you about how logical it definitely is to have only one bridge, but instead that I'm going to ask "why is there only one bridge?" before I actually decide it's stupid. Maybe there's no city/establishment/main road coming from the north/northeast (from across that second body of water), so the only route people are worried about taking has them either coming from the west/southwest, or from the east/southeast, and the only river they care about crossing is that one that's in the image. *shrug* I have no idea. Do you?

*shrug*... If the game doesn't simulate the consequences of illogical design to the point of having us deal with all the specific problems that would arise from such a design, then I'm really not that worried about it, unless it gets ridiculously out-of-hand.

I'm sorry, Adam, but this is only software and technology you're dealing with. When has something unforeseen EVER gone wrong with software or technology? That's just silly... (Seriously, I admire you for being so understanding, but peeps honestly need to get off you guys's backs, and stop accusing you of "lying." It's just disrespectful. Keep up the good work! ^_^ It'll be ready when it's ready, and you're all just doing what you can, and most of us get that.)

Indeed. I think everyone knows understands the same thing at this point, and the only thing anyone's hung up on are technicalities now. The way it was initially worded (possibly the first few times), I was very inclined to think the exact same thing Neo is thinking: The magic of a ruleset isn't limited by one player's imagination. The player's imagination is a separate limit that is only imposed upon that one player's experience, and is not imposed upon "the magic." If you provide a lake of water (all the possibilities of the ruleset's magic system), and I only have a coffee mug with which to scoop it, then I am limited to a very small portion of the lake. But the lake is not limited by my cup. It's still a lake. If another person shows up at the very same time I'm drawing water from the lake, and they have a huge barrel, they can fill up their barrel. They are not limited to my coffee mug's volume of water. It's the same with a magic system in a ruleset, PnP or CRPG. And that is all Neo is getting at. Now, after all that's been said, I think everyone realizes that that's the same thing anameforobsidian was trying to say in the first place, so there really wasn't a disagreement. But, Neo was only trying to point out why he responded the way he did. Not insist that something other than what was intended was actually being argued. Or, to put it simply, you basically said "That's what anameforobsidian was trying to say already," and Neo was saying "Oh, well here's what I thought he meant, and why, even though I now know what he was trying to say. Sorry." At least, that's what it looks like. 8P Anywho, I think we can agree that both the ruleset itself (in the case of a CRPG, the design of the magic system/spells) AND the imagination of the individual player are two separate limitations. The objective difference is that the limitations of the ruleset are effective on any player, regardless of how imaginative that player might be, while the limitations of a given player's imagination do not extend beyond that player's experience. So, I think the benefit of clever "professional design" that anameforobsidian was getting at wasn't so much in their ability to limit, but in their ability to mitigate the limitations of a player's imagination. This has almost nothing to do with limiting the rules of a spell so that imaginative players cannot do imaginative things with that spell, but rather has to do with making hints and clues available to give those who find it difficult to think up ultra-clever ways of taking advantage of a spell's versatility the opportunity to expand their own imagination in regard to the use of that spell. A lot of games do this on a basic level. One of the most common examples is spell combinations. "Hey, if you root this person, then hit them with Fist of the Mountain, there's an increased chance to stun/crit, because they're held in place and thus cannot do anything to avoid taking the full brunt of the force of the giant rock fist that's striking them!" Maybe a player won't think of that potential bonus, but the game will give you some sort of clue if you talk to people in towns or read in your spell book, etc. "Some have claimed to find greater effect from the spell if the target is forcefully held in place." Or, heck, maybe it does extra damage if the target is up against a wall with nowhere to go? Not only do they get hit with a giant fist of rock, but they get crushed against a wall of rock, as well. That sort of thing. Using that example, just because one player might think "Hey, I bet if I hit them up against a wall, this would do more damage," and another wouldn't think that, that's no reason to limit the first player to the second player's imagination. That's only a reason to, perhaps, give the second player hints/clues as to spiffy ways in which to use their spells that they may not have thought of. If the first player reads those clues, then he already thought of that anyway, so no harm done. *shrug*. Just my 2 cents on that.

The Guild Wars 2 dialogues are actually set up to be very good. But then, the voice acting is mostly "meh," at best, and the animations and such (and writing) is pretty awful, too. Basically, it's a good idea with absolutely no valuable support from the game's resources. As if just the sheer existence of the skeleton of that type of dialogue scene was somehow supposed to be amazing.

Deal. You are hereby tasked with producing the most epicspheric music known to mankind. u_u (That was way better than "atmosphepic." ) That talk of the style of Gwyn's theme reminds me of Zulf's theme in Bastion. Especially if you opt to forego your weapon to carry him out of the fray instead of leaving him for dead. Really, most of the music in Bastion was VERY good at conveying the mood of the atmosphere, as well as the events of the story.

Ehh... more like "lets spend 1 billion dollars on this unnecessary road so that the people who've backed my campaign and/or with whom I've got lots of stock can fill that new road with business establishments that will make everyone ultra rich." Very few politicians are very interested in things that don't really benefit them in some way, though some are. But, they usually don't get enough backing to build billion-dollar roads. (I realize "billion" is a bit exaggerated.) Besides, that's mainly modern politicians. Back in the day of dirt roads, no one took it upon themselves to politically send teams of road crews out to course correct dirt roads, or plow down people's houses to build bypasses... especially not on a constant basis. A railroad or something, maybe (although that's a bit past P:E's time), but not just a means of getting through wilderness without needing a machete and 17 spare wagon wheels.

Erm... Well, I mean, I can't change it. I'm just a forum-goer. But, if I had to guess? No, Obsidian probably isn't going to change the "godlike" name to something else at this stage in development. 8\

Yeah, I mean... I get why buffs and enchantments and effects and such were tied to time durations, from a purely gameplay standpoint. This is a game, and you have to make your stuff count. But, it's just pretty lame when you think about it. Even with magic stuff. Even though it might seem silly, because magic's fictitious, it can still be consistent. If you weave a fireball, you're essentially taking some form of fictitious energy, and converting it into a ball of fire, which you then hurl at something. If you miss your target, the fireball still exists. You already converted that energy, and it's already a fireball's worth of energy. It's going to hit SOMEthing. A tree... the ground, etc. Now, maybe you fail to weave the energy properly, like spending 2 hours forging a sword, then accidentally hitting it wrong with your hammer and breaking it in half (the sword) or something... so the spell fizzles. And yet, you're still taxed from all that effort, so you lose an abstract round of spell ammo (a spell-per-day, or what-have-you). BUT, why, then, are you able to cast "burn crap when you strike it" magic on some sword (successfully cast it, mind you), only to have it ONLY remain there for so long? I mean, a duration EVENTUALLY? sure. It could work like batteries. You can use up all the electricity in a battery, leaving it with none. OR, you can just wait months or years and it'll slowly dissipate on its own. Nothing perfectly stores that energy, so why should magic? Anywho... it doesn't have to be years, like a battery. I just meant that the function seems like it'd be similar to a battery. After all... fictitious or non-fictitious, we're dealing with stored energy here. Energy to make fire on contact, or energy to electrically power things on (proper) contact. *shrug* So, yeah, I've just always thought "why should you swinging a sword and hitting NOTHING contribute in any significant way to the diminishment of your sword's finite burn-things enchantment?", and felt that charges would work better. They're still temporary (you can only get so many hits before they're gone), and they'll still dissipate after many hours (or maybe the next time you sleep, etc.). You can still balance things just as easily. Got a flaming sword for 15 seconds before? Well, how many times could you feasibly strike something in 15 seconds? 7? Okay, maybe give it 7 charges. Don't expect someone to actually hit 7 times in 15 seconds? Give it fewer charges. Etc... And yes, Jobby, I think towns and cities should be much more meaningful from a resource standpoint, as well. Neo, regarding your last response, that's the only thing I would point out/suggest is an especial attention to making sure re-applying the affect is not something that's ultra-readily available. The "you can only sharpen it back to 90%" thing is a good idea, in function. But, as far as number tweaking, I just mean that to get further, we'd need to make sure that half the range isn't pointless because you can just keep sharpening your sword at 70% every time. It then becomes that +9% bleed chance that you're an idiot not to keep on your sword at all times. Oh no, it dropped down to 8%! SHARPEN! Ya know? I think part of that comes from "Hey, we don't actually have the facilities out here to properly/fully maintain this equipment." With that in mind, and with no actual durability planned for the game now, the only thing I can really think of is just tying these bonuses to towns/the stronghold, etc. This way, you can rest many times throughout a single trek through some wilderness area, but you can't actually regain some pristine equipment condition bonus while leisurely resting in the woods. Thus, you not only have to make the journey to a town or facility where you can do this, but you ALSO must pay for the affect. Or, if you do it yourself, you must pay for the resources necessary to apply it. Regarding whetstone sharpening of your sword, I would think the whole keeping it from being dull and/or rusty aspect would be a given. Just something that your characters are understood to do whenever they get to sit down for a bit. To make it actually not maintenance, I think it would need to be some kind of bonus, even if that abstracts it a bit. What kind of sharpening can a smith/craftsman do that you can't do with a whetstone and some TLC? I dunno. Maybe sharpening, and "keen edge," specifically, is not a good effect to go with in a durability-less system. Maybe it needs to be (for lack of a better top-of-my-head example) magical oils? *Shrug* But, again, it would need to diminish with use to make it the most strategic decision, because diminishing with time just leads to the most frequent trips back to town being ALWAYS the best choice (even though that's not a fun or strategically necessary thing to do, without the arbitrary wearing off of that oil that your swords just sitting there soaking in your scabbard). Anywho... I should stop here for the moment, or I'm just going to ramble forever. I'm trying to think of too many aspects at once, methinks, and it's not leading to a very efficient post, heh. ME?! INEFFICIENT?! Nooooo... ^_^

... Or... maybe there used to be a big tree there, when the road was first "carved" through the wilderness. Etc. Regarding the "just 'cause it's visually interesting" bit, art is about visual interest. Even if what you're doing is just depicting something (as in "I'm going to use paint to photorealistically depict that table"), the whole reason you're doing so is because you value the visual interest of that table, and are seeking to create that with your paint/media. So, yeah, even in video games, a portion of the artwork is going to be tackling visual interest. That's just how it is. If it's a simulator, maybe it won't be. Then, it'll just be "try to make that look just like a tree, a forest, the sky, roads, etc." In a game like a fantasy RPG, sure, you want it to make sense (you don't just want a road that arbitrarily snakes all over the place every 10 feet, and causes people traveling it to travel 10 times the distance they'd need to if they just walked straight to their destination, unimpeded). But, ALSO, you want things to be visually interesting. They don't need to be arbitrarily visually interesting. Or, rather, the visual interest doesn't need to completely shove any and all feasibility out of the way. BUT, sometimes, a little less (though still some) feasibility along with some visual interest is far better, in the long run, than MORE feasibility and no visual interest. And, again, if the road's not twisting 72-feet out of the way, who the hell's going to say "Hey, I know this is an already established bend in this road, but... now that that tree's gone that was the reason this road went a bit to the right here in the first place, we should totally start spending all our time and effort cutting that grass and foliage out of the way and rolling our wagons across the uneven ground there, instead of across this consistently-trodden road that's just 10 feet to the right. THAT'LL SAVE US LIKE 3 SECONDS ON OUR TRIP, MAN!" Below a certain threshold, I'm sure it's not worth the effort. You just follow the road. There were plenty of trails through the woods at my summer camp to get from one end of the camp to the other, or from one campsite to the other, and NONE of them were straight lines from all point A's to all point B's. They twisted and wound a little bit, but everyone just followed them anyway, instead of taking upon themselves to course-correct the trails to optimize the trip distance by 1%. Possibly getting bitten by snakes in tall grass and underbrush, and hacking away briars and crap just wasn't worth the miniscule amount of time "lost" by the not-perfectly-efficient trail. Besides... since when were all humans the most perfectly rational robots ever? "Humans wouldn't paint a lion on their breastplate! They'd spend that time doing constructive and practical things!" Oh, wait...

Even with that in mind, it's not the same thing. Imagining the act of adultery with someone is seen as just as bad as the actual act itself, in what you're describing. But, how can the act of being a fictional Wizard with telekinesis be just as bad as non-existent actual telekinetic wizardry? The magic being talked about in Biblical text is generally the "I'm affiliated with Satan and/or at the very least being blasphemous by claiming to have powers beyond a mortal, and therefore challenging the one true God, himself." I don't think it's abrasive at all. And I understand what you're getting at, methinks. But, I'm just not sure the term is being used quite in the way you're getting at. You're looking it from the context of our real-life society, etc., when really, it's just a piece of lore within the game world. The game world has gods, in its reality, and these "godlike" are either actually influenced/affected in some manner, directly, by a god of the game's reality, or at the very least are seen to be, by the people of the world. Thus, they are referred to as "godlike," much like people who live in/near the mountains might be called "mountainfolk." People associate things with traits, and in a world of much more tangible gods, gods would be much more of an associative thing. Heck, even in reality, we name things after gods. "This military endeavor involves striking ferociously and swiftly from high in the air. Codename: Thor." The only difference is that we know them as mythological, whereas, in the P:E world, they are not. Also, just for what it's worth, the godlike are a sub-race, and not an actual race. Almost like... albino humans. Many people are albino, but there is not a race of albino people. They're just people, from various different races/ethnicities, who happen to possess a common trait/set of traits. Again, the only difference being that, in the game, the godlike set of traits is "divine" in nature, rather than purely biological/physiological in nature. It's not that it's impossible or pointless to analyze how this type of thing in a game affects us and our real-life cultures and beliefs (as real-life players of that game). There's nothing at all wrong with that. It's just that I don't think it's directly clashing with any of it. As a work of fiction, it isn't designed to directly challenge reality. The lore of the game exists completely within its own reality bubble, absolutely separate from our own. We just peek into it, with the knowledge that it is not reality. If it has us thinking about aspects of reality, then more power to it. Basically, if we avoided any game design decisions that were along the lines of why you're suggesting "godlike" might be problematic, we pretty much wouldn't ever make any video games, ever. Or books... or most any works of fiction, for that matter.

No, I want an actual ice spell that behaves like fire. Not that does all the same things as fire. Fire doesn't freeze. Magical ice fire does. Boom. Already a functionally different spell. As for your annoyance at my phrasing, I'm sorry that I was forced to compare non-existent, ficticious magical "fire" to real-world phenomenon. Had I been able to constructively compare it to something else that doesn't exist in our realm of physics that you would've intuitively understood, I would've done so. My bad. To recap, my main point was simply that most cRPGs are perfectly resolved to just give you really specific things to do with magic, then call it a day. I want to see magic do things that only magic can do, or do things in ways only magic can do. Magically-created regular fire is fine, but it's hardly an illustration of just how magical magic is. The point isn't that the game should have ice fire. The point was simply that ice fire was an example of both A) control over my magic (I want to use the element of ice, but weave it to behave like fire, because only magic can do that), and B) how much more interesting of a mascot a spell can be than "I can create and toss a molotov ****tail out of thin air!" Fireball.

It's not lying if it wasn't known. If you tell someone you'll go jogging with them tomorrow, then it ends up raining tomorrow, and you end up not going jogging, you didn't lie. Circumstances simply altered the results of your intentions. Is it lame to think we're getting a big update, then find out we're not? Life includes delays. Insisting that Obsidian intentionally lied to us and should be able to accurately foresee the future is neither going to eliminate the delay nor make you feel any better.

While this is understandable, to a degree, and it would be most unfortunate for the game to alienate someone who otherwise wanted to play it, it's honestly a bit irrational to associate blatant fiction with some kind of realistic God substitute. The game is in no way A) laying claim to the heavens with false deities, or B) expecting any degree of recognition or worship from the player for these false deities. It's very similar to the people who won't let their kids read Harry Potter, because magic is evil. Magic may be, but imagination is perfectly legitimate, and imagining a pretend world in which pretend magic pretend exists could only be, at worst, pretend evil. Granted, people are free to believe what they will.

Honey badger should be an option. Immunity to giving a crap about anything. Seriously... They basically walk up to cobras and slap them in their faces, and say "YOUR EGGS ARE NOW MY EGGS, FOO!", even whilst the cobra bites them and injects its venom. They just kill it to death, then embrace the sweet, sweet venom sleep, until it runs out of their system. Then, they wake up, and eat all the cobra eggs, and probably the snake, too. That, and they climb into beehives and eat all their honey WHILST the bees are all swarming about and constantly stinging them! Look 'em up on youtube, for some documentary footage. They be'z crazeh.

I would agree that, while your ideas for that sort of stamina system are pretty good, Osvir, it doesn't really fit the design of P:E very well, I don't think. I mean, Stamina's basically a form of health (even in the Sims), as it dictates what you can and cannot do (you can only do stuff so long as you have stamina, etc.). In P:E, it and health are more limiting how poorly you can handle situations. If your stamina and health just depleted over time, even if you didn't take a single scratch throughout 5 different combat encounters, for example, then you'd just have to rest all the time no matter what you did. It's just not the same thing. The Sims is almost entirely based around time management. You start out only being able to replenish so much stamina (because of crappy beds, etc.), and therefore only being able to do so much in a given amount of time. Then, you get better and better stuff, thus allowing for more stuff to easily be done in the same amount of time.

... *sigh*... Okay. It's a video game. So, things are abstracted. You can't just get .01% more tired every minute that passes in the game world, and therefore suffer an additional .01% penalty to stats/skills/accuracy, etc., due to tiredness/grogginess every minute, because that wouldn't even register in the gameplay. Therefore, at some point in time you've got to be "tired, but not tired to the point of actually suffering a numerical penalty to anything," then, at another point in time, you're actually suffering from a penalty. And hours are probably a small enough unit to draw the line. Therefore, one hour you're actually not suffering from anything, then after one more hour, you're now tired to the point of some kind of penalty. Hence the "5 hours" example. In reality, you're awake for some number of hours. Then, you eventually reach the point of having trouble staying awake. Thus, in a game, in which we're dealing with abstractly, numerically-represented things, it makes perfect sense that you'd acquire a penalty after some amount of awake time. Again, probably measured in nothing smaller than hours. What isn't making sense about that? I don't know how to explain that more clearly, and if that's insane, then I don't want to play sanely designed games. I don't understand... The purpose of a game is to be played, unlike other things that also have stories (books, movies, etc.). So, why would you arbitrarily design your lore SPECIFICALLY so that a full 8 hours of rest is necessary to restore ANY amount of spell "ammo," even though it completely contrasts with oodles of reasons to potentially want to rest for less than 8 hours at a time? It's not like that's something we can blame reality for, and say "well, we don't want to stray too far." No. That's only so if it's specifically designed to be so. So, honestly? I think that's a terrible, terrible excuse. Also... guess where that came from. Yup, DnD. And guess what you could do in Dnd. You guessed it: sleep for a variable amount of time. You were a Mage and didn't get any spells for that 7-hour sleep? Sucks to be you. You could still do it though. And there were reasons to do it. Which is exactly why I think that's a terribly arbitrary design. If I clean an 8-room house for 8 hours, maybe I clean the whole thing. If I only spend 4 hours cleaning, do I clean NONE of it? Name one other thing in the entirety of the universe in which you spend variable amounts of time and effort on, but only get something done after a very specific amount of time/effort, and you get anywhere from the tiniest amount of work done to an INFINITE amount of work done. You know what that's functionally equivalent to? Having the world map say "you don't actually move anywhere unless you travel for at least 8 hours." Then, letting you pick a destination 8 hours away (minimum distance), and having you run into a random encounter at 7 hours worth of travel. So, you fight, and win, then leave to "resume" your travel. Only, you only traveled for 7 hours. So, instead of being 7/8ths of the way to your destination, you're actually just right where you started. You've got to start over again, traveling for a total of 15 hours just to get where you were trying to go. Why? Because the sheer act of travel requires 8 consecutive hours. But once you spend 8 hours traveling, you just teleport to wherever you wanted to go. A village down the road, a nation across the world, an alien planet. Doesn't matter. Yeah, that makes plenty of sense. Not "Okay, I have 8 spells per day, and I only slept for 4 hours, so I only regained the mental preparation to be able to cast 4 spells instead of 8." That would be preposterous. And what does "what if a spell is yes or no" even mean?! We're talking about a VERY simple process here, logistically: You rest, you get spells back. How are you going to have one spell that deals with simple quantity math, then another spell that's somehow magically binary? Maybe 1st level spells refresh at 1 per hour, and 2nd level spells refresh at 1 per 2 hours, and so on? Awesome. That means that if you only sleep for 1 hour, you don't get ALL your spells back. Oh no! The world's over! I'd rather just get NONE of my spells back if I'm not going to get ALL of them back! This is such a major problem! Orrrr, it could be just like you said. If you chose to not-sleep for long enough to get those particular spells back, then you deal with the consequences of your choice. If you DID sleep long enough, then you deal with THOSE consequences (whatever that extra time cost you, versus having those spells). Great. My problem is not with making sure there aren't any consequences for choices. My issue is with making sure the system isn't nonsensical, just to forcibly generate some problems. The levels and quantities of your spells are already variable (you've got more numerous 1st-level spells than you do of 3rd-level spells, for example), so what the hell reasoning is requiring the replenishment of your spells to be completely binary, based on some arbitrary amount of time? Maybe the simpler question is this: Would you want a system to only replenish your HP and/or get rid of (or make progress in getting rid of) negative status effects if you slept for 8 hours? So, sleeping for 7 hours replenishes 0 HP and doesn't get any poison out of your system whatsoever, but sleeping for 8 replenishes ALL your HP (however much it was) and eliminates the poison? The only reason for that to work like that would be if you didn't even have the option to rest for anything BUT 8 hours, and the only reason you've given for why the player shouldn't be allowed to rest for variable amounts of time is "because lots of things take 8 hours, arbitrarily." Notice how that's not on the 1-item list of reasons why you should HAVE to rest for 8 hours or none at all. The only thing valid you've brought up is the potential that this is all just circumstantially too much for them to put in with their limited budget and resources. And that's fine. But, you're acting as though it's some crazy, unreasonable thing, that would be a problem for ANY budget, purely because it's just a terrible, troublesome idea. No, it isn't. Fractions ARE easy, and "fractions would be tricky" is not an actual reason why sleeping per-hour instead of per-8 hours is somehow ridiculous and problematic. You're fruitlessly arguing against the very nature of my proposal/examples, rather than actually exploring and pointing out potential problems that would feasibly arise with P:E's systems. Or, rather, you're pointing out potential problems in the context of not even trying to design the game with variable resting in mind, so the problems don't mean much. And, for what it's worth, yes, "the discussion" was originally just "it's dumb that your characters would willingly travel for something like 48 hours without taking it upon themselves to rest along the way, even at the cost of delaying the trip," and I'm glad you agree with that. Then, AFTER that came up, I (and a few others who've sort of been on the same page) starting simply presenting further explorations of the resting system, and ways in which it could be made quite interested with respect to other aspects that COULD be represented in the game (such as urgency). So, all I'm really saying is "this COULD work," since I don't have enough information to know that it WILL work. Thus, nothing is accomplished by arguing that there's no possible way it could work, unless it's just plain unreasonable by itself. Which, I think I've illustrated, it isn't.

To cite this example in order to answer your question... if you build a game like chess, then just play it like checkers, then I wouldn't call it WRONG. I'd just call it a waste of a variety of distinctively-shaped game pieces (no point in checkers' rules), as well as of a perfectly good ruleset. In other words, people will do what they please with what they're given, but it's not the game's job to ensure that its resources get to go ignored in its use.

I, too, don't want to be sent on a quest to retrieve a lost-because-someone-was-drunk ring. BUT, happening upon a ring that someone lost when they were drunk (or, at least, having the potential to do so, probably before you even have any reason to be actively SEEKING that ring) and then taking the time to find out who owned it and/or give it back to them? That's more of an occurrence/simple choice, and I'm totally okay with that. In other words, I'm completely against such quests, but not against such situations, outright. Something so simple never needs to be something you're tasked with, that you go out of your way specifically to seek out. And, granted, in plenty of games, they kind of tack those quests onto other quests, so that some main quest has you traveling to the area where this wolf cave is, but the optional quest has you taking the time to wander into the wolf cave and explore it, etc. But... I still think that's way lamer -- to be sent out to find some thing that's just lying about in some area you've got to go to anyway -- than doing it the other way around. "Oh, hey, because I explored and found this ring, I CAN choose to now take the time to wonder whose ring this is, and how it came to rest here, and maybe do something with that information" is much better than "I should be on the lookout for a ring that I most likely can't miss without just not even trying to look for it... when I find it, I know that I just need to return to this town, which I most likely need to return to anyway, and give it to this dude for some free stuff." *shrug*. Just my 3.7 cents (inflation!)

I think they prefer to be called "information enthusiasts," not stalkers.

I don't see how a character can have no "relevant history." How can everything you've ever done or experienced have absolutely nothing at all to do with anything you do or experience in the future? Unless you somehow died and were reincarnated into a new, fully adult being in the blink of an eye? In which case, complexity aside, you'd still make use of previous experiences in your new form. Unless you just didn't know anything. In which case, you would only have no relevant history because you, for all practical purposes, would have no history. Now, do we choose some big elaborate template that we, the player, must sort of mold our play to, for that character? Or, do we simply decide what happened in the past for our character whenever something comes up, so that we get to pick and choose all the little nuances ourselves? I dunno. But, either way, I don't see any scenario in which an RPG character can possibly have "no relevant history." The sheer act of choosing a class immediately begets the relevant history of anything and everything that led to your Level 1 state-of-being in that class/those skills/traits/stats, etc. In fact, the entire progression system, itself, is literally built upon the relevance of history. What did you do at Level 1? That now affects what you can do at Level 2, and at Level 3, and so on and so forth. So, a game can simply say "Meh, we're just not going to worry about what that character did before he became a level 1 (insert class here), specifically)." But, that hardly makes character history irrelevant. History affects the present state of things (including your character), and the present affects the future. 'Tis the natural flow of cause-and-effect. Personally, I think just starting whatever character you build at the common narrative source point (like the crash in Arcanum, for example) is the way to go, with character creation allowing us to choose things about our past that don't affect things like where we go or end up, but, instead, the state of our Level 1 character when we take direct control over them. The state that will affect things throughout the game. Basically, a slightly more complex trait/background system, that possibly goes so far as to present us with a bunch of scenarios from the character's past, and have us decide how we handled them/what our character was like in those scenarios, then tell us the results, and how that affects our character's current state.

For me, it would have to be a sense of control over magic (as a Mage/Wizard). Games almost ALWAYS give you the same-old-same-old spell list, even if you get a few feet of wiggle room to "customize" your own spell list, and the same stupid cliche themes apply: Fire = most damage/extra damage over time Ice/frost = less damage, but lots of slowing and freezing in place. Lightning = middling damage, but most concentrated one-shot damage, and/or most piercing/critical damage/chance. Stuff like that. I'm soooooo sick of fire, it's not even funny. "Oh, you picked the magic class? You get... FIREBOLT! 8D!" No... no no no! I want to build a Mage who couldn't care less about ever using fire, except to light pipes and make cantrips, etc. Out of ALL of magic, why is the absolute best thing a Mage can do always burn stuff? We can do that WITHOUT magic! It's easy enough to make a flamethrower, or molotov cokktails (take THAT, overly senstive censor!). But, the fact that you can wave your hand to make it instead of generating sparks or heat with physics is somehow the greatest thing in the universe? Even though it can burn the crap out of all your friends (and yourself) in the process? Don't get me wrong... fire's a fine element. But, sweet lord! I'm sick of it being THE go-to element for magic. Magic does not EQUAL fire. You can do PLENTY of magic without ever even using a lick of fire. Hell, you want magical fire? I want to make fire that freezes people. Yeah, it physically behaves like fire, but it frost-burns and freezes the crap out of stuff, like flames of liquid nitrogen. Now we're talkin' magic! And, on the note of actual control over magic... I want either spell customization (logistically simpler than it seems), OR such a variety of spells that I feel like I'm actually weaving magic the way I want to. Want to use Ice magic? Awesome, how so? Do you want to hurl razor-sharp shards of ice at people? Maybe you, instead, want to freeze bodies of water? Orcs crossing that river, knee-deep in it? FROZEN! Nice... Or maybe you want to hurl "boulders" of ice at enemies, that then explode into clouds of ice "dust" (tiny shards of ice crystal) that blind targets and deal AoE damage, etc.? Why not that instead of a fireball? Or, maybe you want to use Frost/ice formation to stick enemies together? Pool moisture on them, then freeze it? Now they suck at fighting you, unless they've practiced 3-legged-race fighting a lot. There are so many things I would do if I could ACTUALLY wield magic. I'd want to invent my spells by finding ways in which to weave the elements. Not just "hurt that thing, but in a flavorful way, with my favorite glowy color of element."