Atreides

Someone should try a campaign where they're obviously the bad guys and have fun doing it. Something like Dungeon Keeper, now that had style.

Good one. The last part sounds a little Buddhist. Sometimes carrying emotional baggage hurts you more than it should just because you allow it to.

Last Exile is class. It's going to be pretty confusing unless you watch the unedited DVD version because a lot of the crucial explanations may be cut out. Or watch it with someone who has so questions can be answered. Nowadays people seem to be watching Naruto, Bleach and Death Note.

I play a lot of football. I used to be a left forward but've been playing more central midfield and defence lately.

Hey, just read this. I'm sorry for your loss. I heard a story not too long ago. The speaker said that he'd attended many wonderful concerts and at the end everyone had to go home. He may have been sad but also uplifted and inspired after and he didn't cry at the end, because he felt so privelaged to have attended those wonderful concerts while they were on. I think the passing of someone very close is like that. While a concert's hardly similar to that person and we'll undoubtedly feel the loss, we also feel so privelaged and uplifted to have been part of that person's life, and likely we'll meet up sooner or later again.

I've got this cool idea of an organisation whose (good?) purpose is taking a proactive stance to "encourage" "directed evolution". Their point of view is beings with special or positive traits show themselves better when they're the only ones left surviving after a catastrophe (say the germs resistant to antibiotics) than ones being crowded out when everybody's thriving or doing okay. On the plus side the bosses would have cool abilities that'd make interesting fights.

A trade guild trying to exert its influence through trade would be great too!

Newbs. Everyone in the know knows Black Lagoon kicks ass. Literally. Gangster nuns running arms smuggling operations out of the church don't take kindly when someone's stray bullet spoils their church door. Additional a-holes included.

Somehow I keep returning to Palpatine as a good example of evil. He's charismatic, subtle yet purposeful, calculating. He intiates conversations with Anakin and also takes advantage of mundane events to plant doubt and shape the thoughts of the Jedi. It's this reason EpIII is my favourite of the six. The individual influence system really shines in this area.

NO U

Well I'm just pissed they didn't add DDR as a minigame.

Why'd [persuade] be evil in that case? I think the game needs some way of determining the long-term motives of the player. Maybe more negative adjective-verbs like [persuade-corrupt] could do the trick.

I bet the immortals will turn out to be emo vampires. Psychotic emo vampire in Sand's case.

How would the game know what Palpatine's intentions are when he praises Anakin? Is it [evil]inflating his ego or [not evil]genuinely thanking Anakin? I'm not sure how this could be elegantly handled.

I think it's a subtle difference in game mechanics that's the root of this annoyance. In BG the characters have different xp numbers depending on when they join. So leveling is spread out and happens at widely different times (unless there's a huge xp reward). Whereas in KOTOR and NWN2, the party leveling depends on the main character. Once s/he levels, everyone levels. You spend the next 10 mins leveling half a dozen characters, sometimes multiple levels at once creating the ZOMG LEVELING OVERLOAD!1 which pisses people off.

I'd place priority in the fun factor before levels. Once you've got a good idea the rest will probably fall into place.

Minor shapechanging abilities and an organised computer-assisted mind could be interesting.

Lol NZ

Some Hulk smash is fine too. http://www.wizards.com/magic/images/mtgcom...l6k91f0nrxq.jpg

I dunno, I kinda liked Dungeon Keeper's Dark Mistresses >_> NWN2's diary of a torturer was pretty good reading too. The dude was refining his techniques over several prisoners.

Torture is fine too. I think there was a minigame where you'd control the amounts of chems pumped into the person while asking questions.

Characters in the game could also try lying to the player. Whether the player sees through it depends on his/her stats I guess. I guess if the player shows that s/he's a competent leader that they can't easily mess around with they'd be impressed. I'd have lots of fun with another NPC with high bluff/diplomacy skills that we could play off each other (back and forth banter) to trick others in conversations and stuff. Much opportunity for hillarity!

I've think mini-adventures would be fun too (and skippable if the player's not interested). Say the beggar was a little kid in the town, and after talking to the PC the player takes control of the girl temporarily and has her own mini quest - say deliver days earnings/food to family (mom or mafia, or mom running mafia). Depending on how the player treated the girl she could handle things differently (say bribing guard to get home safely etc). The girl herself could do evil things (maybe she's the "mom" running the "family") and you could have different (evil?) outcomes that affect the original (good?) player later on.

How should prewritten stories handle evil? People say that many computer games have comic evil, mo' money, hulk smash, unnecessarily rude dialogue etc that isn't satisfying. What's your definition of meaningful evil and how'd you deal with the issues of translating that into a computer game? Issues? I can think of a main one. Unless the game's DM'd, most stories, scripts, dialogues are prewritten and can't organically adjust to the players' actions like in PnP. Therefore the options and dialogue trees are probably going to be limited. Personally I'd like to see more cunning and manipulative evil. Suave and stylish too. PS. I thought I'd post this here because PnP'ers may have more experience with these kinda things and may have more discussion.

It'd be fantastic if they made some trilogy, with each game handling a different location/period of time with familiar aspects (people, themes) through it. Some of the vamp powers like the Malk's sharing of knowledge could become minigames in themselves by having the player play "flashbacks". Great storytelling tools for developing characters too. A minor character in the current game (brief encounter) could be given more depths in thes flashback/forwards.