Reveilled

That's nothing. One of my friends paid

All the leaders are pretty much like their real-life counterparts. Isabella wasn't exactly known for her religious tolerance, nor Tokugawa for his open and friendly relations with outher countries. "

Not really. They were constructed at the same time, at least going by my oldest books (1e). The Alignment system is fine if you only try to use it for what it was originally intended, that is, alignment based spells, items, and rigidly defining characters when you're acutally playing D&D Gary Gygax style ("You enter the 10'x10' room. There are 10,000 drow in here. Since you are the good guys, they attack. Roll for initiative"). As soon as you try to use it to rigidly define characters in terms of how the players can roleplay when you aren't playing a "Go to the tavern, find out where the dungeon is, end of roleplay" campaign, then yes, it's a completely useless and confining system. In such a situation, you're left with two options, the first being to scrap the system, the second being to just loosen the defnitions and reduce alignment's importance to just spells and items. I go with the second option, mostly because I don't find it particularly difficult to decide how someone is acting in terms of alignment, partly because I have ten years worth of experience with the system, such that I have sufficiently complex and nuanced definitions of the alignments to not find the categories particularly constricting on roleplay*, partly because good and evil are never much of a concern in my campaigns, so alignment has never become obstructive to the game, and partly because none of my players have ever complained about it (except the one that killed the housekeeper, who got upset when I told him his character was now evil). I find it useful for what I use it for, so I personally see no problem with it. *definitions which, being less overt, tend to obstruct my enjoyment of CRPGs that use much blunter definitions, cases in point being the "steal everything and kill everyone" Dark Side path in KotOR, and "Make fun of skeletons to become chaotic" in PS:T.

*shrug* The Alignment system is so that spells like "Protection from Evil" and weapons like the Holy Avenger work acording to simple rules rather than a fairly vague and ambiguous thing like roleplaying.

I've never seen a particular problem with it. A "complex" character is usually just True Neutral, like most people are. Then again, other than for Paladins, Alignment has never been a particularly big issue in my game, other than for alignment-based spells and damage. When in doubt, shove in True Neutral and roleplay however you want is how I do it. Within reason, of course. If you're robbing the home of the evil Duke, that's suitably true neutral. If you kill the innocent elderly housekeeper because she witnessed the job when she went into the Duke's study to do the dusting, then you've crossed the "evil" line and you're now Neutral Evil if I'm DM.

Catherine's a good ally if you stay on her good side. If you give her help when she asks for it, she'll happily give you the same in return. Since she is rather often one of the most powerful civs, getting on her good side is a pretty good idea.

Just last night I found myself playing Uncharted Waters 2 again. Nothing beats a ten-year-old SNES game for sheer gameplay-focused fun.

I believe that in the editions of AD&D, wounding actually worked like that. I would also not be surprised if there was a weapon ability that did just that, but it would have to be in one of the variant books, since I can't find it in the DMG. I'd guess at a name like "bleeding".

Someone needs to make a "I played drow before they were cool" t-shirt. :D

According to p.226 of the DMG (3.5e): "Wounding: A wounding weapon deals 1 point of Constitution damage from blood loss when it hits a creature. A critical hit does not multiply the Constitution damage. Creatures immune to critical hits are immune to the Constitution damage dealt by this weapon."

Maybe even "Cliched". "

They should start listing the Drow in the Monster Manual as "Alignment: Usually Chaotic Good". "

Who? I certainly hope you don't mean me, because I made no plans with you folks to break. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> That's certainly not the impression my esteemed ally gave me...

But I didn't intend to move out to let soneone else in. It's not like I can build there with a Russian army in Vienna instead of an Austrian one. <_<

Grr. I don't know how Deraldin managed to convince me to trust that backstabber. <_<

Hmm. Mappee workee finee for meee.

What's not to understand? Oh, I'll get the map fixed in a few minutes.

Sorry, sorry, entirely my fault. Alas, I have little time to adjudicate the turn right now, so I hope it'll be okay if I just list the orders. It's not like the map is much changed as a result, anyway. Build A Bud Build A Vie Build A Par Build F StP(nc) The removals are listed in the first post already. Sorry about this.

A Party of four is good news, I think. Five would have been better, but I remember one of the moments I most enjoyed in Neverwinter Nights was when thanks to a bug I ended up with three henchmen, and for the first time since purchasing the game I truly felt like I was playing D&D. It wasn't quite the same with just one or two henchmen.

This sounds a lot like the new Matrix game: you actually get to choose between the red and the blue pill, and if you take the pill that returns you to the fake world, the game just ends. I thought that was pretty funny. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> See, they could have made a whole game about accountancy instead. Now that would be hard-core roleplaying. "

I'm going to use this one to symbolise a sigh of exasperation. As in

But...but I like saving the world. :'( I dunno. Personally, the concept I'd like to see isn't so much savg the Kingdom as helping the kingdom to Ascendancy. Instead of killing the Huge Ancient Dragon to rescue the kingdom from certain doom, you go kill the last surviving member of a royal family in another country to allow your King to inherit. Or sneaking into a city in the dead of night so you can open the gates to let your liege's army in, ending the siege before winter comes. Or, in order to avert a war the country isn't ready for, the king requires tribute be delivered to the Emperor of the neighbouring country, and you must escort the jewels through bandit-infested hills. Instead of starting as a dirt farmer, you could start as one of the guards of the Crown Prince, sneaking him out of the palace before his younger brother's plan to make himself crown prince can be fully realised. Y'know, an RPG where the quasi-medieval setting goes hand in hand with a game involving quasi-medieval politics. Damn, I'm in a mod-making mood now, and NWN2 won't be out for ages! <_<

I read this as "The Classic smiley with icepick in his head", and began to wonder what was so bloody versatile about a :trotsky: smiley.

The only thing I'd really like to see out of NWN2 is hills. Proper hills. I hated the constant cliff thing present in almost every outdoor area. If the game has hills, I'll be happy.

I got a 140 on the High IQ Society's test when I was 16. And I'm never going to take another IQ test ever again so that I can claim that score for the rest of my life.