Gromnir

btw, no matter how silly and a$$inine a rumor may be, fergie or somebody else would answer as soon as 'nuff folks got angry 'bout it. nuf coverage in mags and online sites and on message boards and fergie inevitably shows up to respond. am just not sure why you jokers is letting him get away with this crap. if you honestly thinks 20 hours is an okie dokie new standard for a sp crpg, then fine... sit back and enjoy. but if 20 hours bothers you we don't knows why you wouldn't be banging on doors and sending emals and posting on boards. fergie only stirs when people makes a big 'nuf stink. is unfortunate but true. HA! Good Fun!

"Grom, Fergie owes us boardies nothing." owes? am not sure 'bout "owes" but any consumer with half a brain should ask questions 'bout a potential purchase... and the reasonable consumer expects to get answers too. ask questions 'bout fergies love life is unreasonable and offensive, but you try to tell us again that it is arrogant to ask questions of fergie 'bout his product and we call bs. if fergie didn't wanna make gameplay hours an issue, he shouldn't have told the gosh darned germans what approx hours were... and if germans got fergie wrong, then fergie can easily explain. oh, and it ain't like the same question were NOT asked by Gromnir on the nwn2 board... so you can go cram that one up your tuckus. am gonna ask everywhere, 'cause fergie ain't responded yet. if we were in socal we would stop by the obsidian offices and ask for a response. HA! Good Fun!

it not matter which is more accurate. the thing is that the estimate from the German rag were attributed directly to fergie. 2x translated? yeah, that makes suspect... so why did fergie not simply say that the Germans or the guy who translated from German got it wrong? obvious reason is that the translation were accurate, and fergie did not wanna confirm that they were accurate... which is kinda chicken$h!7, no? any gameplay hours estimates we get at this point is gonna be suspect... if we take josh comments to be true. however, if the Big Herring, aka: uncle fergie, aka: feargus urquhart, gives an estimate of 20 hours and then refuses to confirm or deny... well, that is wrong. at best it is inconsiderate of him to not at least have one of his many toadies clarify. 5 minutes of somebody's day to clarify is asking too much? at worst fergie is being a duplicitous jerk. cowardly b00b is probably falling somewhere in between the two extremes. some folks wanna believe the 40 hour estimate more than the 20, and you is finding excuses for doing so. good for you.

Actually, my family and I (we're Oneida, of the Haudenoshonee) prefer "Oneida" first and foremost, and then "American Indian". <{POST_SNAPBACK}> we have always been Oglala, but bout a decade ago our cousins told us that we were being offensive if we used the Native American term. Indians were more appropriate. *&$# 'em. we get so tired seeing folks fight over the little crap 'cause they thinks they can win those battles... and then lets all the important stuff be forgotten. infant mortality and malnutrition is still higher on the rez where Gromnir grew up than it is in many 3rd world countries and these jerks is wasting spleen on Native American v. Indian? we say, "*&$# 'em," and we not apologize. also, we will note that the term genocide is appropriate when describing what occurred to many Indian peoples and that even if every recognizable Indian nation/tribe were given its land back there would still be a great deal of land in North America leftover. HA! Good Fun! ps am not saying *&$# you to deg personally. am saying it to our sanctimonious relatives.

Well, Mike Tyson would technically be assaulting a member of the public with a deadly weapon if he only used his bare hands: it depends on the context. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> deadly weapon can, for purposes of the statute, also include an attack by multiple assailants. and why on earth would you wanna use this as an example to bash America? you want us to find any number of examples of euros acting like jackarses? how long you think it would take us to find a few euro examples? bah. HA! Good Fun!

2 quick comments... 1) point of the thread were not to get advice. don't get Gromnir wrong, we not mind advice, but for a campaign to run 8 months we gotta be doing something right. am not trying to fix at this point. our number 1 goal is for players to enjoy the experience, and they is. fact that they went and did things far different than we expected is irksome to us, but is not really a problem. 2) "To get player's to make moral decisions, you need to:" as far as we is concerned, there never is and never should be a reason to Make players do what we want 'em to. am not gonna specific reward the rights and wrong moral choices. is maybe the way other folks GM, but not Gromnir. we set up the rules and the setting and we tries to give players stuff to do, but we do not dictate to them overtly or through carrot & stick routine what it is we wants them to do. we got expectations, and that helps us better prepare for what players will want to do next week or month, but we never try to make'em do stuff. am just simply surprised at the direction the players chose... considering our rather alarming lack o' subtlety. btw, eldar's advice, other than the Divine intervention stuff (no Gods to muddy our campaign with Transcendent Morality,) is stuff that were built into the campaign from start. we had clear and definite practical reasons for the players to wanna makes the brain battery moral questions their primary focus. the whole undead stuff were one such method we used. in a d20 kinda world with traditional undead but no clerics, and given that undead is such a terrible foe for mind zorking psychics, makes undead a real and serious problem for our players. the growing undead threat and the use o' brain batteries were linked. we were giving the players an obvious kinda Big Threat to contend with. also, our resistance movement (more like sympathetic terrorists,) afforded all kinds o' potential for players to meets npcs and situations that we thought would makes 'em question The System. heck, we even had our players eventually discover that a sub-race of degenerate humans had survived the seeming destruction of their race. illithids in Gromnir's campaign is not bred from humans, but is, in point of fact, a remnant of a cult o' humans that managed to survive their race's apocalypse. those brain eating monsters is what is left of humanity (though we gots a couple baba yaga and merlin kinda characters in our world who is rumored to possibly actually be human as well.) see, the thing is that the players were really having fun with the world we created and they were enjoying using the brain batteries and brain powers far more than they were interested in getting involved in a Big Picture campaign... which is fine for them, but Gromnir obviously miscalculated. our players happily harvest from kills and preserve tissue and when they is in towns or cities they restock their supply o' batteries or even buy slave stock from which they can makes their own bats, now that their appropriate craftsmanship and profession skills is high 'nuff to be doing so. our greedy players would prefer to perform the gruesome brain harvesting themselves if it is meaning they can save a few brass coins by so doing. did far more work than we had to with detailed setting and npc backgrounds n' such. were simply wondering if other gms had had a similar experience... players go all Lord o' the Flys on 'em... or simply act in a completely unexpected manner. has never really been something we had to deal with in the past. HA! Good Fun!

we gots hijacked by our players

seemingly moments ago you were complaining 'bout 20 hours and how you weren't gonna buy til bargain bin prices for nwn2 were making reasonable. personal opinion is that we am still gonna wait for bargain bin. HA! Good Fun!

listening to fergie we could not help but wonder if he were the nerd that ricky manning jr. recently beat up at a LA area denny's. http://www.suntimes.com/output/bears/cst-spt-bear24.html linky for you non-sports fans. HA! Good Fun!

I only get games if I can get the CD Pass. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> maybe you can burn the game onto a cd? am having dsl at home. one wonders just how long it would take to download that game. might consider if we coulds manage to use our office connection for the inevitable interminable download process. problem is we cannot let anybody from office know we is downloading games at work. download pr0n would be more acceptable than would be downloading games. HA! Good Fun!

nwn2 sucks. you know how we know? 'cause we saw a child in a screenshot. children will continue to be unkillable 'cause certain euro countries has some laws 'bout such things, and 'cause atari probably don't want a MA rating here in the States even if they could release such a game in europe. and as we all know from having followed the codexians, a game with unkillable children is NOT a real crpg. therefore, as is proved by means o' simple logic, nwn2 must suck. is a shame really, 'cause we actually prefer many of the nwn2 screenies to stuff we seen from oblivion. no nightmarish faces alone is a vast improvement over bethesda

... huh? "GB: If Jade Empire sells well for the Xbox, is there anything that would necessarily restrict you from porting the game to the PC? If there would ever be a PC version of the game, are there any particular features you'd like to tweak or enhance given the opportunity to take advantage of more powerful PCs? "Ray: We haven

then you should know better than to follow their lead. you ain't destined to save nobody. you ain't got no special power. you ain't no child of prophecy. you is some poor dumb bastard who were at the wrong place at the wrong time and now people wanna kill you. if you die, does world collapse? sure don't sound that way. again, is no different than the witness scenario we gave above, and nobody would call that a Chosen One story. am not saying that nwn2 cannot be turned into Chosen One with elements noted, but it ain't based on what is in that preview. HA! Good Fun!

the definition of Chosen One is getting a little strained. you ain't a child o' prophecy and we ain't sure if you got special powers and you ain't being called 'pon to save the world/galaxy from some kinda unstoppable dark force. you is some poor slob that is worth more to some people dead than alive... is not Chosen One. say that your character witnessed some crime at start of game, and now some folks is after your arse... want you dead, whether you plan on testifying or not. would that scenario make you the Chosen One? you spend game trying to either find some way to appease the bad guys or makes yourself too valuable to kill or some such other option. sound much different than nwn2? just 'cause the clowns at codex yells Chosen One with scorn not mean you gotta parrot their stoopidity. btw, we ain't saying we likes the nwn2 story hook, but is not really Chosen One from what we got. HA! Good Fun!

ok, let us get focus back a little. regardless of what levels you thinks is best, is there an appropriate rate of leveling in a d&d crpg, and does size of your party somehow alter that rate? HA! good Fun!

low and high levels is both extremes. we can talk 'bout how kewl it is to has lethal combat that has you on edge for every roll of dice, but who wants to be the guy who gets killed by the goblin with the pointy stick... and then have to sit out the rest of the gaming session. sure, such stuff can happens at any level, but it happens LOTS at low levels. at high levels... well, the opposite is the case. dice mean almost nothing. the results of combats is predestined. you got right equipment and correct spells for an encounter? yeah? then there ain't no mystery who is gonna prevail. 4-12... seems like the sweet spot for d&d rules. HA! Good Fun!

"I almost always feel as if the only point of the early game is to get the characters enough levels to be viable in the mid to late game." the first 3 levels of D&D is lethal. 'less you got some mechanic likes in ps:t wherein resurection and dying is somehow part of ordinary gameplay. you typically gotta cheat to keeps a low-level party alive. a single critical from a goblin with a bone knife will kills almost any 1st or 2nd level mage. and criticals is not all that uncommon. is ways to deal with low levels, but d&d, played straight and 'ccording to the book makes first 3 levels mighty tough on players... and the dms trying to keep 'em alive. HA! Good Fun!

I take it no one listened to your ideas at the DA forums about that? I was in favor of your idea, but don't remember if I ever posted about it. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> seems that the no-win encounter were deemed unfit for gamer consumption by the powers that be at bio. *shrug* HA! Good Fun!

does number of party members make a difference? level up 1 an hour 'posed to level 4 or 6? HA! Good Fun!

"Regarding the Gargantuan dragon, I don't know. It could be a cameo, or there could be a "trick" to lower its CR. " agreed. deus ex machina is hardly unknown in in crpgs (the orb in nwn to helps with klauth is a particularly useful example,) and one might prefer if the Dragon in a 20 hour game were simply an npc beyonds reach... is maybe the character who gives you THE quest or somesuch. that being said, if you gots a dragon in a game, some people is gonna wanna have a chance to fight/kill it, no? HA! Good Fun! ps we would love it if Dragon were in game and fightable... but only as an arse kicking lesson. would love for once there to be an encounter in game where the measure of succes were not how quickly or easily defeated, but simply how little hurt you took before escape. but back to the topic at hand...

gamer definitions is... fluid. is likes getting 10 of us to agree 'bout what is immersion or what is even a crpg. we prefers when people simply describe what it is they wants using features from existing games as examples,

nwn allowed players to reach 'round level 18 or so in 50+ hours. too many? many of you were thinking so. one reason given for fast levels in nwn were fact that you got only 1 character to improve... as 'posed to 6 in the ie games. reasoning goes that it is taking no more time from game to level 1 character 18 times in nwn than it is to level 6 characters 10 or 12 times in BG2. number of level opportunities for a player in nwn is probably actually less in nwn than bg2... maybe even in bg1. does that make a difference? the majority of posters on the bg2 boards did complain that levels were too slow in BG1. alternatively, perhaps there is a leveling speed that is simply too quick for you to be able to maintain illusion that your character is a D&D character? the 1 character v. 4 or 6 character explanation not mean much to you? nwn2 will allow you to reach level... well, we don't know what level you will be able to reach. however, we has been told that a Gargantuan red dragon is gonna be part of game... something to show off capabilities of obsidian's engine tinkering. is it possible that after 20 hours o' gameplay our party o' four mights be able to battle such a beastie? assume for a second that such a confrontation is indeed possible in nwn2. is level 20 in 20 hours too many? so, how many is too many... levels that is. take some gameplay time period at random... say, oh, 20? yeah, 20 is a nice complete arbitrary choice. how many levels should a d&d crpg character be able to gets in 20 hours, and does size of you party make a difference? HA! Good Fun!

am working on puting together a list of useful email addys for game magazine writers/editors. is tougher to track these guys down than we first thought. HA! Good Fun!

well, first thing tomorrow Gromnir is gonna send off emails to every internet gaming magazine we can gets an email addy for... asks them if they know the truth behind the rumors that the nwn2 oc will only be 20 hours long... reference the german gaming magazine article. emails is wasteful to get developers or publishers to do something, but perhaps we can puts the people at gamespot and ign to good use for a change. please join Gromnir in his reasonable efforts to shed a teeny-weeny bit o' light on this issue. HA! Good Fun!

based on what evidence? Gromnir likes some josh ideas, but the fates conspire to put him in a position other than where we could ever see what he does with those ideas... *shrug* 'course it not matter to josh what Gromnir thinks of him. if j.e. peers and potential future employers thinks highly of him he gots no reason to be concerned 'bout what Gromnir and other fans thinks of his skills... am just saying that we gots very little material we thinks we can use to honestly judge his skills as being anything other than adequate... am not even sure that he would argue that. HA! Good Fun!