Gromnir

btw, we is all in favor of josh's factions notions... but the complexity increases with each faction added, and while that complexity affords more possible gameplay choices, it does make for writing compelling stories/characters more difficult... 'specially as you got multiple writers working on games. HA! Good Fun!

we were ambiguous 'nuff that your mistake were understandable. as such you gets a pass... this time. HA! Good Fun!

*sigh* we get that nwn scripting is relatively user friendly. however, that link that the swede showed us... weren't. HA! Good Fun!

call us crazy, but wouldn't a goal of a moddable game marketed to the masses (i.e. nwn) be to offer something relatively user friendly? HA! Good Fun!

lord knows that we generally loathe viewsonic... but the g90fb is a very good and very affordable monitor... one of the best dollar:quality 19" gaming crts we has seen. on the other hand, di might keep in mind that a 19" lcd actually got more viewable area than a 19" crt. if size matters. ... disturbing. not immediately disagreeing with sargy feels... wrong. however, as this is technical advice maybe we can bear the realization. HA! Good Fun!

which again completely ignores the story building strengths of crpg villains compared to crpg protagonists. is the static nature of villains and other npcs that is allowing a writer to makes them compelling. a stark raving madman villain is NOT really mad. the writer ain't mad. the writer knows exactly what the madman is gonna say, and there is reasons for the madman's speakings... otherwise you gets nothing but gibberish, and in spite of the ridiculous ss example of the madman villain, a truely unpredictable mad man character would be 'bout as fun to interact with as would vis is on the boards. sometimes developers get so caught up in trying to makes kewl features that they forget that story offers the actual raison deter. choice for the sake of choice is rather cold and stale. morrowind had lots of choices

"The reason I'm not as fond as having a "murky" antagonist that gets defined somewhere along the way is that I don't feel the player is necessarily making an informed choice. Having different gameplay experiences is cool, but unknowingly making very important choices doesn't necessarily seem great to me" understood. however, consider kotor2. that game offered some early dialogues to "fix" whether or not revan were male v. female or good v. evil. weren't really murky at all. not need be shy 'bout clubbing folks over the head with the choice. as it stands now, you get no choice at all. an albeit somewhat murky choice v. no choice? HA! Good Fun!

no offense, but we think you ain't looking at this from a writer's perspective. predictability is exactly why villains in crpgs can be developed to a much greater degree... they is static. you cannot write a compelling character that is unknown to the writer. come up with all kinds o' wacky randomness and then tell somebody else to write good dialogues to match the situations... and advance a story that is meant to capture the imagination of the player. HA! end up with 4 very different villains who signifficantly alter the choke point encounters and the ultimate resolution of game? is a bad thing? HA! Good Fun!

is no real different than any other crpg. kotor/kotor2 light v. dark quests gets triggered by what? toee opening vignettes were even worse. those were based simply on character generation choices... and yielded no real divergence anyways. *shrug* compared to the typical manner in which limited crpg bifurcation takes place, 20 minutes to an hour of initial gameplay to be resulting in games which affords at least some meaningful reason to try replaying seems a vast improvement. HA! Good Fun!

seems much harder to pull off, but it sounds great to Gromnir. am all for being able to choose an appropriate faction as part of gameplay and story development choice. little bit harder for Gromnir to envision writing appropriate compelling dialogues in josh's suggestion as you still seems to have a more fluid and dynamic story resolution process goings on, but benefits to gameplay might outweigh problems for story development. *shrug* regardless, change focus of development from trying to make a vague and indefinite protagonist more compelling, to creating multiple possible villains/factions seems like a good direction in which to be heading. protagonists is 0 sum, 'cause the more you develop, the more freedom you takes away from player. HA! Good Fun!

its only needing to be a real secret for the first 20 minutes of gameplay... after a player chooses an antagonist through his actions, then there ain't no need for keeping faceless... unless you want a sauron thing. if josh is thinking of a single villain that changes as the player changes, then so be it... but that seems far more difficult to achieve than what Gromnir suggests. run into that same vagueness problem you gets with a mutable protagonist... which is exactly what Gromnir is trying to correct. pope seems to be getting the idea. HA! Good Fun!

"The other problem is that with several villains, all content in the beginning and middle of the story will have to be independant of the general story or "clean slates" to make it possible to fit it with the end of the game." untrue. see above. much of a crpg story is not happening along the main story arc anyway. got loads of sub-quests, right? but regardless, you still not need four or five completely different story arcs. stop the horde. 1) go to goblin fortress and discover try to discover plans 2) now that you has learned plans and possibly killed lieutenant, you gotta accomplish 2 of 5 goals to slowdown/ prevent (or for evil folks: subvert horde to your will) invasion a) block ice fang pass b) subvert the alliance 'tween the red dog clan and the howler tribe c) etc. is typical crpg stuff, no? if a Sauron evil guy is behind the invasion then you is gonna learn something slightly different at the goblin fortress than you would with a Noble villain. the lieutenant at the goblin fortress in sauron situation would talk 'bout a new age of darkness and his dark master's plans... yadda yadda. on the other hand, the lieutenant of the Noble villain would express regret at having to elimintae such a worthy adversary as yourself. add more differences as you progress through game, but the choke points is gonna be in same places. drop in some villain specific journals... add a few timed encounters tied directly to one choice of villain or another... at a few key points you can has some change made to game. am not envisioning a game that completely diverges from point A into 4 unique games. is not feasible. however, you can has a macbeth and a sauron and other villains, each with very different motivations and dialogues w/o substantially changing 90% of a game. HA! Good Fun!

why would there need be a shift? no clear antagonist is set until player interacts with environment for a brief time, then antagonist is solidified for remainder of game. sure, if you wanna does a 180 personality switch after the first 20 minutes o' gameplay then you is gonna be maybe stuck combating a Noble villain rather than a Sinister one, but so what? is still gonna be a viable antagonist, maybe not ideally appropriate, but compared to the single UBG option how is that any different? if developers wanna keep simple and resource

for Gromnir, playing evil is... lame. tried to play evil in kotor2 and other games, but what we ended up being were a bully and a murderer rather than any sorta evil character that Gromnir might be willing to consider. push somebody down just 'cause you can? is evil? probably, but it is a petty kinda evil. find some way to plays an honorable and evil or sneaky evil might be worth trying, but so far all the evil options we has encountered has just been kinda lame.

? not see how you get to "exponential" growth from our suggestion. obviously you simply cannot have limitless or even dozens o' potential UBG (Ultimate Bad Guy) possibilties, but 3 or 4? most of his/her minions can be left unchanged, but change the UBG can make big difference to story and game as a whole. HA! Good Fun!

what the heck is dragonbait? is it some kinda fr monstrous pr0n? that letch who keeps making elminster books/crap finally lost all self control and made the old wizard into toril

weren't our idea, but we wish it were. as is so

it had to happen eventually. drink miller light. product placement in movies and games is ubiquitous. drink miller light. the only thing we gots working in our favor here at obsidian is that we gots so little traffic that nobody would ever waste such effort on this kinda nonsense. drink miller light. you think that some marketing morons would actually pay an established obsidian boardie to push their product in such a gross and demeaning fashion. drink miller light. seems mighty unlikely. HA! Good Fun!

conan > belgarion if you want a tangential Chosen One, and Good v. Evil and that kinda stuff then we is okie dokie with that, but do different. if you need a Chosen One in story/world then maybe make so that the player's actions decide the fate or nature of the Chosen One. *shrug* maybe Gromnir gots too much Nietzsche than is healthy, but in stories we prefers that the Gods or Fates or whatever would just back the hell off and let men decide man's future. HA! Good Fun!

"Well-written fantasy can be realistic, logical, and entertaining." actually no, fantasy cannot be realistic. is pretty much the definition of fantasy. if the stuff happening in a fantasy story is all realistic stuff then you not got fantasy. however, fantasy can be rational and internally logical

what about the out of work pr0n stars? who is gonna think 'bout them? dozens of second and third tier starlets of the scandalous screen depended on e3 yearly for some much needed cash... no doubt to pay for extension classes at the local university. why does developers gotta be so selfish. want e3 to be 'bout them and their games? sure, that is understandable, but ain't there 'nuff love to go 'round at e3 for the tramps and trollops working their arses off to earn a living? why does josh gotta be so cold? bah. our midwestern values run far too deep for us to complain 'bout change at e3. there is still gonna be attractive babes at e3 for those of you who wants to ogle and gape and drool, but they is gonna now be dressed in clothes/costumes that no longer can be fitting into an aspirin bottle. good. no more booth babes trying to distract us from recognizing that a publisher/developer's game sucks? great. for chrissakes. e3 is in LA during may. go down to the friggin' beach or one of the 2000 local health clubs and gawk at the beautiful & scantily clad women at those locales. HA! Good Fun!

1) Gromnir has an adversarial posting style 2) josh thinks that Gromnir is full of hokum put these two factors together and we suspect that any constructive criticism we might have to offer would be falling on understandably deaf ears. ... y'know, most of the folks who read josh's item descriptions liked 'em... all 12 of us. attention to detail and somewhat staid style is not crippling josh as a potential writer... just gotta find the right characters and situations to make use of his particular style. get a martin luther character into a game and we thinks josh could write him up wonderfully... or maybe has a series of short essays incorporated into game (is any number of reasons for doing so,) and we thinks that josh would do a bang up job. if Gromnir were in charge of writing for obsidian, we would find some way to make use of josh

has been a number of "what the hell..." kinda moments we were having over the years. probably has already been mentioned, but most recent unfortunate example were the mentionings of the droid factory in kotor2 and how/why obsidian left'em in the game. ... laugh if you will, but Gromnir retraced every possible inch o' accesible geography in kotor2 looking for the droid factory we musta' missed. oh sure, they 'members to take out the factory, but they forgets to take out a couple lines of dialogue from hk-47? HA! Good Fun!

observation: we recently watched as a woman friend of ours played kotor2, a realtively linear and simple game. having never really played video games of any kind previously she were unfamiliar with many conventions of such games. kotor2 became frustrating for her at a number of points... simply 'cause she were thinking like a real and rational person as 'posed to thinking like a gamer. *shrug* a handful of timed quests that is tangential and optional is fine with Gromnir, but we thinks that gamers forget just how frustrating these games can sometimes be for normal folks who has not been perverted by game logic. HA! Good Fun!

sounds like he weren't particularly happy trying to find that medium. if josh don't want to write, and he not have to write to stay involved in game development, then we not see any reason why he should keep banging head 'gainst wall trying to write stuff that you or Gromnir will like. josh has been in game development for a long time now, and he has developed his craft to a point where he enjoys a certain 'mount of recognition and respect from peers and fans. he understands his current limitations and he has, with eyes wide open, decided that his writing (whether good or bad,) is not popular. is not a knee-jerk reaction. is not like he ain't tried to write in past games. we can respect the choice of josh precisely 'cause it has taken him some time to come to the realization that he don't wanna write... which ain't the same as saying he cannot write. btw, this is josh we is talking