Enoch

"Trash mobs"? Like the crowds of Collectors you meet in the Buried Village?

Oh, I certainly wouldn't argue for a diversity of languages that approaches that of historical Europe. But it would be neat if, say, one of the advantages of having a Cipher or Monk in the party could be their ability to read the runic script carved into the walls of the ruin the party is investigating...

Given that, absent printing, written books/scrolls/etc. would be rare and valuable items, basic literacy would presumably also be quite rare, unless there are countervailing cultural influences that we don't yet know of. So, should it be presumed (as it generally is in these kinds of games) that our main character is literate, or should literacy vary depending on character background, race, class, and intelligence? And literate in which language(s)? It would create some difficulties for the voiced-over portions of the dialogues, but I could envision a system where the player could be kept ignorant, where approriate, of things written/spoken in languages that the main character does not understand/read. It could even lead to some interesting roleplaying moments (e.g., asking Dak'kon to interpret Fell's rebuses).

Icewind Dale II, I believe, let you carry a dead cat in your inventory through the entire campaign, and called you out for it late in the game. Oh, err... quote fomat, huh?

Heh. As a guy who started with a wind instrument, I'm totally with you. The idea that people can successfully be simultaneously responsible for more than 1 melodic line at a time amazes me. I can plunk out chords on a piano (which is just a side-effect of knowing some jazz-based theory), but it falls apart whenever I try to play a melody or a bassline with my other hand at the same time. Anyhow, yesterday would've been the 95th birthday on one Thelonious Sphere Monk. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXUDfoLyirU

As I read Josh's hints, the Chanter's abilities aren't really "songs" in the way that we're used to thinking about Bards. More like recitation of an epic poem, or the chorus parts of a Greek play. (Which frankly, is far less lame than the idea of tra-la lute playing in the midst of battle.) So I don't see much room for "harmony" being as within the thematic scope of the class. And, given that, if the posted stretch goals are reached, there will be 11 classes and only 6 partymembers, the portion of parties that have more than one Chanter will probably be miniscule. So it'd be tough to make a significant chunk of any class's suite of abilities dependent on there being another of that class in the group.

Although they seem to be less "tra-la-la lute playing during battle" and more "recitations of ancient epic poems that retain connections to mysterious sources of mystical power." Which is far less lame. I've never been as over-the-moon about MotB as many around here (it just required me to swallow far too much Forgotten Realms cosmology, which I find tough to do while keeping a straight face), but it did have its moments. It'd be nice to see more of what Ziets can accomplish absent the twin anchors of established FR canon and chesse-tastic epic-level D&D rules.

If you don't have WW enabled, at the "crash" location (towards the western end of northern border of the explorable Mojave map), you instead find a campsite with some well-equipped raiders, one of whom is holding the unique variant of a gauss rifle. Which is a nice consolation for not getting the Alien Blaster. (Personally, I think it's more useful, as it's a way to get a Gauss Rifle rather early in the game, and it doesn't have the finite-ammo issuse that the AB does.)

I honestly never had the patience to set up spell triggers and contingencies in BG2. But I also never messed with the difficulty-boosting mods that others seem to be so fond of. I found that I could handle the encounters the game threw at me without putting in the extra work, so I didn't bother.

IWD was fun, but it got to be a drag with how repetitive the combat got in some areas. Although flawed in other respects, I thought that the sequel was an improvement in this regard-- it had a higher occurrence of unique setpiece battles, relative to the grind-through-another-pack-of-this-level's-monster-of-the-week.

Zelda isn't quite the flavor of classic gaming that this project is designed to emulate.

Personally, I hope that they terminate the trope that "successful stealth roll" = "functional invisibility." I don't care if you rolled a 19 to beat a DC of 15-- no thief however skilled should be able to (for example) just walk through a gate with two guards standing sentry duty on either side of it and remain unnoticed based purely on a skill check. (That's where disguises, bluffs, distractions, locked secret entrances, wall climbing, and/or mystical powers/items come into play.)

The most important spell was clearly Cure Light Wounds.

I think I'll write a note to my grandfather, who has always enjoyed this kind of game. Although putting it on a "memorial stone" is a bit macabre, considering that he's still kicking.

There should be as much area to explore as there is interesting content. Out-of-the-way optional areas are cool, but only if they have something in them more interesting than 12 Gnolls, 3 wolves, and a bear that swallowed a garnet necklace.

Keep in mind that we ain't talking about 19th-Century breach-loading rifles here. A character could credibly get one shot off in prone position... and then they'd have to reload their weapon somehow. I don't see how one would reload a wheel-lock firearm or any but the smallest of crossbows while lying on the ground. Also, the direction that a character could fire would have to be limited by the direction they faced when they laid down. Altogether, that would make this enough of a "very rare special case" ability that I can understand it being a very low priority for Obsidz to put in the game. I'm guessing that "prone" is in the game because they want to support knockdown effects, rather than because they envision anybody using it deliberately.

I mostly agree. Although I do think it is possible to allay this concern by taking replacing what used to be called "dead" with "functionally useless." Serious Injuries are Fun! And I'm not talking about any of this mamby-pampy Fallout- or DAO-style "you have a leg injury-- 20% movement speed reduction and -2 to Reflex Saves!" I'm talking more "You have a compound fracture of your left femur, and you are feverish from the infection of the associated flesh wound-- the party straps you to the back of their mule, and you cannot participate in combat, spellcasting, conversation, or any other adventuring activities beyond breathing and feverish delirium." The game-mechanic results are functionally the same: unless you have access to high-level healing abilities in the Party, you've got to haul that guy and all his stuff back to town for some expensive and/or time consuming healing. But you get that result without shattering too much of the relateability of the Human Experience between the player's world and the gameworld.

Isn't this sort of information the reason that there's a pinned link to the wiki site on this forum?

See, that's what I HATED about Durlag's. I never got any further than the 2nd dungeon level because all the "walk into each room one step at a time and wait for the red outline to appear" makes those maps so incredibly tedious. Making the player nervous is fine. Making the player bored is unforgiveable. The traps in Durlag's did the latter.

I found Dead Money to be the most satisfying, which is odd, because I generally don't enjoy horror elements in my entertainment. I was something of a nervous wreck for the first third of it, presented with the opportunity (and completionist's compulsion) to explore thoroughly, but punished for taking the time to do so by the constant health drain of the Cloud. However, once I found the recipe to get Stimpaks out of the vending machines, I managed to relax and enjoy the setting and character writing. The radio collar stuff that others found annoying appealed to the puzzle-gamer in me. It made me feel clever for finding the ways to get around obstacles by running along rooflines, etc. (Although it can be fairly criticized for relying on the user adopting a brute-force save-and-reload approach.) And the whole plot arc of the expansion-- the paired stories of the Sierra Madre and Elijah's doomed little undertaking-- was just a pitch-perfect iteration of so many core Fallout themes. It makes for one of the better Fallout-y short stories in the franchise.

Hey, every one of the IE games had cooldowns on abilities-- those cooldowns were just all locked at 1 combat round each. (IIRC, 6 seconds?) In transitioning to a system that is designed for Real Time use, as opposed to a tabletop turn-based system shoehorned into a real-time CRPG, of course you need some kind of limit on how rapidly you can use your abilities. Otherwise, pure Diablo-clickspam becomes the killer tactic.

No, it's the guy you always blast away because you took the "Four Eyes" trait, and he's wearing the first damned pair of glasses you've seen on a character who you can get away with murdering. I actually just went back to my Sawyer-mod playthrough a few days ago. I'm about level 17, and currently doing NCR quests with Boone. I'm also trying to decide which order to take the DLCs, but I keep thinking of other little quests or tasks to do first. OWB-first makes the most sense from a gameplay perspective, as it gives stat boosts and access to the Sink. But original-release order is also an option, as doing Dead Money again is probably the bit that I'm most looking forward to.

I'm of two minds on this one. On the one hand, I want to know what my character is getting when I'm choosing which abilities to give him or her. That means that I'd like to be able to compare the efficacy of certain abilities-- including spells-- and make a reasoned choice between them. And that requires access to the underlying numbers. On the other hand, I also believe that, as a matter of world-building, magic is best when it is explained the least. That's what makes it *magic*-- it should be mysterious, unpredictable, and occasionally dangerous. So, my compromise position is this: First, have a "core set" of spells that are well understood in the gameworld, with full explanations of both their mechanics and their histories. A "Basic Practitioner's Spellbook," if you will. These would be the spells that you can buy scrolls of or choose at level-up. (And I wouldn't be opposed to the selection getting pretty limited at high levels, if a "spell-level" system is being used.) And then have other spells-- spells you find on half-burnt dusty scrolls ancient ruins, spells you learn from eccentric hermits as quest rewards, spells written in lamb's blood on the walls of barns by savant-like deaf-mute children, spells that you understand intuitively when you stare deeply into the eyes of the Dryad Queen (or, alternately, consume her still-beating heart). I think we should eventually get access to the numbers, but in order for all mechanical data to be uncovered, you've got to try them out a half-dozen times or so. (Against live targets, if appropriate.)

we have a winner! this is exactly how the game should be named! Only if every pronunciation of the name is appropriately punctuated.

I'm about a year late on this one, but: Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline. The writing is a bit simplistic (although that does fit the narrator), and some of the puzzles are a little too easy for verisimillitude's sake. But the pacing is admirable and the constant stream of 80s-era nerd-culture references is delightful.