metadigital

This always breaks suspension of disbeleif, and makes me treat the game as a toy, rather than something to immerse myself in. I just lose all respect for the game, because it has given up the inner workings to me, and I can relax as I have deconstructed it. Not enough of this type of Gollum-as-pain-or-saviour device, imo. Of course, like anyhting, it can be overused. It was well done in Deus Ex. I have seen that in a Beerfish community mod, at the end of the sequel to In the Footsteps of Dante: The Nature of a Man, and has the PC chose between sacrificing themself, their party member or the person they spent the last four hours tracking down. Unfortunately, the module ends immediately afterwards, so it makes no difference to the gameplay.

That'll be the age-filter then Schuey. ;) I'll be actually having the party members play a PnP tabletop RPG named 'The Chosen One Must Choose'. There will eventually be LARPing as well, and the PC might participate. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> But which one will be the Chosen One?

Great link, thanks! I haven't played any GURPS, but just reading the summary has impressed me.

But What Does It Mean? (j/k) " But that surely means that automating GURPS would take away the pain, doesn't it? Or is the combat compexity due to other factors beside the weight of calculations, like interaction with the players to poll them for their moves?

I was glad to read in your WIP that you are adding hoods and customised lightsabre grips. Excellent, dudes! "

1. This should be in the spoilers forum. 2. Search for old topics. You even say in your post that you have heard others express an opinion, and yet you want them to express it again, here? This topic has been done in threads about twenty pages long, about fifteen times already. About every couple of months. In fact, someone started one of these about a week ago. There is a lot to read about it. Getting people to write it out again doesn't help, all it does is multiply the information, making subsequent searches more difficult (as there is more to search through and read). For the record, the issues with the end were to do with role-playing and narration. If you liked the story, then that is good. It was a nice interactive story, except the last third wasn't very interactive (hitting "space to continue" doesn't count as interactive). As I said, though, use the search function. And post in the Spoilers forum anything that someone who hasn't finished the game doesn't want to see. Common courtesy.

Yes on all counts; the forces are all predetermined and therefore do not have a free will. We are discovering their rulesets, but they don't change arbitrarily. If the Force (capital "F") has a will, then perforce it must have setience to recognise and exercise that will. It must have some secret agenda that it wants to achieve. (Secret because no-one knows what it is: everyone still debates whether the Force exists or not!) If the Force has a secret agenda, then the next question is, can we affect our fate? If so, then we have free will. If not, then we have the illusion of free will. (If you read back about ten pages we had a long discussion about the pseudo-religious aspects of the Force, for indeed if it has a will, then it is a god-being, and the quasi-ethical questions arise about free will and the existence of evil. To make a long story short, the Epicurean paradox can be circumvented most simply by assuming the Force is malevolent.) So if the Force has a will, and we have the illusion of free will, then to gain emancipation from the bondage of the Force, we must kill the Force. To paraphrase Voltaire: If God existed then it would be necessary to kill Her. :cool: Heh. btw - if your analysis is right, it would seem that neutral would be the best place to stay. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Ok. You are advocating (some proportional multiple of) the linear sum of all the Force-Sensitives' wills equates to the "group consciousness" or the Force. Here's a further question to help bring it into sharper focus: does the "focus of balance" change, depending on the Force Sensitives? E.g. if, say, there are more DS, does it "evolve" or shift into the DS, or is the Force fulcrum static (also at some predefined point, whether that is DS, dead centre or LS), so that no matter how far off balance the Force gets, it will return (probably with a small "f" force proportional to the distance that the state of the capital "F" Force is currently away from the "balancing point")? What do you think? Is it a running-total-average, or a fixed focal point?

I just plug the console into the BCI neural interface I had installed into my cerebellum, just below the Middle Cerebellar Peduncle (13), just anterior to the Trigeminal Nerve (14), which is the organic signal transducer, and just superior to the Inferior Cerebellar Peduncle (15), which in turn connects the spinal cord and medulla to the cerebellum). All quite simple, really. And once the big spike is in, you hardly notice it. (It hurts like a B*tch if you try to walk off with it still attached, though:trap for young players!)

So once you get past the game's OC the game gets better? I heard the story got better in the expansions? My main gripe with NWN was the graphics. Every building I walked into looked practically the same. Their was a lack of creativity with the game's setting. It was a let down because the BG series in 2D looked alot better than NWN did. I enjoyed the gameplay and the story was 'ok' or at least up to the point where I stopped playing. ... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> The OC isn't that bad. (Alright, the ending third of SoU is pretty meh, but the HotU third expansion is not terrible.) The main complaint is the munkinism; there are ludicrous magic items in the epic levels, like Bastard Sword of Global Thermo-Nuclear Warfare +36 to hit / +40 dmg / Critical Range 2-20 (okay, I'm exaggerating a little). The main thing to remember is that the community modules are even better than the OC. Rick Burton has already been given a job at Bioware, based on his terrific work (look for it at the Hall of Fame: there are some cracking mods here. The Community have put together a bunch of common items (like new weapons, e.g. all the Japanese martial types, extra scenery tiles, and even monsters).

Precisely. Um, Llyranor, what is that splashing over the figure on your avatar? It could be water, or sprite, or ..?

How about "A Little Bit After The Day After Tomorrow" ?

He's gotcha there, Archie. (PS A poor tradesman blames his tools. )

Something like that. I wouldn't go as far as make it a 'minigame', though. That just makes it a game. I wouldn't have all options be available to the player in every given situation, and have the player 'play the minigame' of figuring out the proper sequence in order to 'win'. Each offered solution should be something unique specifically crafted by the developer. If a choice is there, I'd want it to be there because choosing it will lead to something unique. Making a minigame out of this wouldn't work in terms of what I'm trying to convey. Not a bad idea, though. Again, just my personal design philosophy. The minigame idea sorts of reminds me of the speech 'battles' in one of the threads a while ago, that some MMORPG was implementing --> which had its merits, but again, my problem with it would be that it wouldn take away from the storytelling aspects of having real dialogue crafted specifically by the developer. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Yeah, I didn't mean the dreaded Leisuresuit Larry "guide the sperm into the canal by button-mashing" type minigame. More the sort of word puzzle, like working out the K1 murder suspects on Dantooine. it was just a little awkward using the dialogue tree as the tool, so if there were a better way to interface with it, then that would be better for gameplay. For example, until Ren

It is a LOT cheaper to build teh shiznitz gaming pc yourself. Just buy all the components from a reputable dealer: check out the modding mags (they'll have references for good and bad dealers) and lots of tips. PC Format, while not strickly a modding mag, does have regular features on the best kit for different budgets (and these need to be redone at least twice a year). They have a list of their recommendations for each component in evey magazine. Right now there are a couple of major hardware compoents being radically changed, like motherboards (64 bit is almost prevalent enough to be the Next Big Thing standard), DDR3, multi-cores and PCI-E (16x) (these normally have 10-20 year cycles). I am aiming to wait about six-to-nine months, then I'll buy a special gaming rig, with all the fun stuff. By that time, I expect a projector and home-cinema type production for under

I'm interested, but I have to be careful with the organising of the second game: I don't want to jeopardise the game -- especially early on, when I am still new to GMing it, and there is a lot of initialisation to do.

I just hope that doesn't mean there are eight people playing France!

More like lacking, an empty feeling, incomplete. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Ending = broken.

Oi! First rule of brain-storming is no qualitative criticism. The advantage to this is that it gives the writers a lot more freedom to create the characters, especially the main protagonist, and even bring some novelty to the game. It is a very simple mechanism for pensioning off Force powers that were not wanted (for being too powerful or too boring, or whatever) whilst bringing in new ones (like Battle Meditation was, although it could be the shirt pulling one, or even animating bits of set,

Well as everyone has quoted the Wiki that I posted earlier, I shall give another reference: Classification of demons

Good point you have made. I agree that the problem seems to be a very flat, one-dimensional approach: a "dice-roll-versus-defence-score" paradigm. I am not sure if adding more feats is the answer, though. Perhaps not using the existing feats in the clumsy way they are being used at the moment is a better solution? Again, this is very good. It is surprising that no-one has made these innovations, yet. Of course, it requires thinking outside the box, and it would mean changing the established multiple-choice selection mechanic for dialogue, too. It might be as simple as adding some actions and dialogue together, such as: [Have a member sneak around and try to steal the key whilst the PC talks] [Have a member sneak around and try knock the NPC out whilst the PC talks] [Have a member run up and intimidate the NPC whilst the PC talks] Then ... [Wisdom + Persuasion] If you want, I'll swim across that crocodile infested swamp and bring back your stolen lute, but I'll need a favour ... [Persuasion] Tell me what you want and I'll help you. Maybe together we can help each other? [strength + Intimidation]Give me the key, or I'll make you wish the thieves had taken your life as well as your lute. [Dexerity] Attempt to steal the key. But it's clumsy using the existing process. It would be better to have another interface; perhaps (although I am loathe to use the phrase) a "minigame" of different type of skills (puzzles and feats, with different ways to complete the game and different ramifications for each method). Can't argue with this, either. It's just plain common sense. Because combat has been trivialised, then the audience treats it trivially. This is true of stories. How many times during a thriller in the cinema have you hoped that the credits would role, because that meant that the heroes were safe, and no more ill could befall them? There should be an almost adventure-like focus on plot and character. Note that character is important though, otherwise we are stuck with the Cleesesque notion of "here is a plot point" everytime the plot is advanced (which is exactly what John Cleese successfully avoided in his Fawlty Towers). This last bit has already been done, from a Paladin perspective, in Twilight, Rick Burton's community module for NwN (first in the series; Mr Burton is now employed by Bioware).

I think K2 was horribly broken.

Yep, I like that. I think it's time to break the "train as a Jedi padawan, then decide whether to be a Sith or a Jedi" pattern. I like the idea of the Outcast start; that way, the PC learns to use Force Powers differently than other games. This opens up freedom to: learn new powers, including powers that aren't combat-centric (i.e. plot and conversation) The choice as to LS or DS can be made at the traditional midway juncture. Also, this allows for the Reformation plot I think is overdue, where K3 deals with how the Jedi order was changed either directly (by a LS protagonist) or indirectly (as a result of a DS protagonist).

ROLE-PLAY:

H