Amentep

Alternatively, I've never made a character in FO:NV who used drugs (or probably more appropriately stuck with the non-addicting drugs with rare use of the necessary low-chance addiction drugs (because something in the back of my head is thinking RadAway was potentially addictive in Fallout 1 & 2 (or am I flipping Rad-X and RadAway (how many nested parenthetical comments can I make?))) There was never any *real* reason to use them, IMO, and the (potential) drawbacks far outweighed the uses (considering that there were easily available alternatives for the player). Superstimpaks are a great example, IIRC they sell more than a regular Stimpak so it makes more sense to collect and sell them and buy stimpaks and medical kits instead of using them. TES games have had Skooma but other than having the bizarre approach that NPCs can see that I'm carrying it and not do business with me (ffs, am I carrying the illegal substance around my neck or something?) There was never a reason to use it, no real benefit. Partially the problem with translating drugs (IMO) is that our modern perception of drugs tends to be for recreational purposes and RPG games tend to be light on gameplay that involves that (going to an inn, having dinner and some mead, going to a bar and drinking and actually talking - all these things are usually abstracted and talking with NPCs doesn't require one to imbibe). The other is that other uses of drugs - mind expansion, vision quests etc - aren't really useful when there's usually a magic spell that could do the same thing. Now I do think its possible that you could create a system in which drugs could end up supported intelligently in the game in which there is a really solid utility for the player to use drugs and a defined context for what would be "good" and "bad" drugs or drug use. But I'd think it'd be resource intensive to integrate the elements in the gameplay but balance it against the player who may want to play a character who never uses those options.

I don't really care. But I also can't think of a game that had drugs in it that was benefited at all by having drugs in it*. There are somethings that I think to do *right* need a lot more time and game development than others, and drugs to me is one of them. I just don't think the amount of time it'd take to do it right is worth it over other things. *Most often drugs come down to there being very little in-game reason to use them; there are usually alternative ways to get what you want without risking addiction so any "penalty" would most likely prevent the average player ever taking them, thus no reason to include them.

Makes sense to me. Gives a way to test run a lot of things without having to do it with your PC.

Dear lord, no. Who the hell would want to be a gypsy? Gypsy term means different things to different people; I find the impression the US gets with respect to gypsy's and gypsy culture is vastly different to, say, someone living in eastern Europe. But I'd rule out gypsy just simply because it so strongly refers to a real world ethnicity / culture. Be a bit like having one of your classes called "Africans" or "German".

To be even more pedantic, it's only because they didn't come up with a name before. I'd always read that it was Fallout's success that made Interplay finally think creating the separate division was worth it. But assuming that's wrong, given that a number of the Fallout people left around the time of the formation of BIS, it still doesn't equate to Fallout being a BIS game anymore than KotOR does, IMO. Not the same group of people, exactly, and without a divisional brand hard to see one as exactly continuous to the other (although certainly important to the development). EDIT: And at any rate my point is that even the old games we all point to aren't clear in their implementation; I wouldn't want a BG:DA2 game as an exact template for PE anymore than Lionheart or any other game vaguely connected with BIS/Interplay that is old.

As I recall, in Icewind Dale 2 a number of the portraits that got used were used because they had been created for BIS for another game (I seem to recall someone linking to Justin's page and asking about if the art they hadn't seen was from IWD2, Feargus said no it was from a cancelled project, and people asked if they could be added to IWD2 as portraits and that then happened). Anyhow, if you can do custom portraits, I'm not sure who does the portraits will matter that much (other than making the game given portraits feel as if they "match"). I actually used some of the portraits from Invictus (horrible game) myself.

Oh you mean stuff like rapid cooldowns? Or do you mean Spell spamming? Well we've been told the cooldowns aren't like cooldowns we've seen so I personally am giving them the benefit of the doubt until I see more about how it works. That doesn't mean I don't understand a lot of the dismay some of this has caused in terms of expectations from past implementations, though. Did they say something like "Yo Dawg I heard you like cooldowns..."? I do not believe that I have ever heard anyone actually say that. Or am I missing something...?

I don't have a facebook account, but good luck to them in that goal!

2.9 million, they put them back in 3.0 million, they take them back out They could make billions.

I like the ideas of backgrounds ala Arcanum where your stats or abilities may be shifted based on who you were before the game started and is recognized in the game. I'm not that crazy about having innate special abilities because I'm a special birth ala Bhaal Powers like in BG series. But that's just me.

They could make the pottery neon to show the SOUL POWA imbued in the plates. I suppose I should comment on the original suggestion; while I like thinking outside of the box, I think its hard to really think about how a class like this would be practical in adventuring. You couldn't really imbue a painting with skill on the fly without it being a gross simplification of the process. I think a magical bard has some traction just simply because music is an "in the moment" creation in ways the visual & written arts are not. Well that and I want to see Scott Pilgrim / Kung Fu Hustle musician battles (as linked in the Paladins & Bards thread).

And see I'd like the low int/wis character to just not be able to get it and have to have an alternate path.

...Black Isle made Icewind... And Fallout and PST and KOTOR2. To be pedantic, Fallout came out before Black Isle was formed inside Interplay. BIS developed Fallout 2 though (as well as PST and IWD and Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance). And that's it; Stone Keep 2, Fallout 3, BG3, Torn, BG:DA3 were all cancelled. Obsidian made KoTOR2 and while they have a lot of the same people, they're not really BIS pt 2 either, IMO.

I wouldn't mind A, B, C choices if low int and/or low wis characters couldn't get the right answer unless they'd found the proper answer somewhere else (scroll, book, or for really low INT puppet shows in the middle of the big city ) This could also be a point where a party member could jump in if it was a game critical point. But realistically how could my 3 Int, 3 Wis Barbarian answer *any* riddle other than by Me as the player knowing it without some in-game reason - someone telling him the answer, or he read it in a book and repeated it constantly so he didn't forget it walking 10 paces to where the riddle giver is from the book he read it in, or you know, that puppet show that he sat and watched with the little children. EDIT: the problem with writing the answer quiz like, IMO, would be spelling errors or missing the exact wording looked for by the game to "solve" the riddle which might create issues (or worse, logically equivalent answers that are rejected due to not being the one the creators worked out).

Oh you mean stuff like rapid cooldowns? Or do you mean Spell spamming? Well we've been told the cooldowns aren't like cooldowns we've seen so I personally am giving them the benefit of the doubt until I see more about how it works. That doesn't mean I don't understand a lot of the dismay some of this has caused in terms of expectations from past implementations, though.

I honestly don't see what this rant has to do with the topic. At a guess, Umberlin didn't find DAO's tactics or non-pause combat interfaces sufficiently good enough to believe that there is anything within the system worth looking at in regard to PE. At least that's what I got from it, YMMV. And to be honest, given what we know about PE's presentation and what they're going for, I think DAO is a bit too far away from the kind of things I'd want them to look at (and I enjoyed DAO).

I don't believe that there is a formula for how an RPG would be good - otherwise they'd all be good and everyone would be following the formula.

I think that's coming very close to a TRON class...

^I think he thinks you're trolling with the PE = DAO comment. I think the origins were a neat idea, and I did enjoy them. I wasn't as crazy about the plot railroading, but that became obvious as their intent early on when it was stated that you *had* to become a Warden. So essentially the game became "clear out four zones to get to the baddy" with some dialogue changes based on which origin you picked. I liked DAO and DA2 for what they were (rather than what I wanted them to be), but frankly I'm not sure there's anything game mechanics wise I'd want to see PE use.

I tend to agree with this sentiment, but not entirely with its logic. Here's my take: Kill it with fire. Put a sharpened cross through its heart and bury it at a crossroads. Then pour in a crucible of molten lava (Whence it came, I haven't the slightest). Finally, place a monolith on top, an obelisk with glyphs of warding would be even better. I agree; I don't really care about extra content as long as the content isn't going to effect the main game at all. I finally played through FALLOUT NEW VEGAS with some of the specialty packs and...didn't really change the game at all. You got some "neat" stuff to start with, but nothing that you'd miss if you didn't have it.

I like reputations affecting your party members, but I didn't like that BG gave you an "out" for High/Low reputation by allowing you to game its system (donate to a church to raise rep, whack a villager to lower). Yes if you're RPing properly you wouldn't do it, but IMO it was a gameplay design that encouraged players to think about how the system worked, not about what their actions really were (well that and the fact that I think they assigned "goodness" to far too many actions).

You'll hate WICKER MAN more if you've ever seen and appreciated the original film. I watched DOCTOR NO and FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE over the weekend as I'm making my way through Bond films in the lead-up to Skyfall (plus its been ages since I've seen most of them). Also re-watched TRON: LEGACY. The middle section which didn't seem so long first time around seemed a lot longer this time.

Ya swung back from "kooky" to "creepy" again Sargy.

I loved the way Troika's TEMPLE OF ELEMENTAL EVIL did it. You could adjust height within the racial type's height limits, hairstyles and hair color, skin tone within racial type and of course gender and race altered the look as well. It made for characters who could look different from one another despite being the same race and class and was generally noticeable from the isometric view.

I've never had a DM refuse to allow a session to break up anywhere in the campaign - including in the middle of combat. So I'm not sure where the "save" issue comes from. Mind you PnP games don't allow you to restart from a previous point (unless the DM is really generous) That said, what might work is a mechanic I've seen in some games where you can do a "permanent save" at only specific points (home, hotel, camp) and then an "interim save" anywhere. Interim saves are deleted when they are loaded. Thus if you screw up after an interim save you have to go back to the last permanent save but you're not utterly screwed if you find life suddenly requires you to step away from your computer either because you can use an interim save to pick back up in the middle of the dungeon.