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Hi All, My partner has just started a blog for all things gaming, fantasy, fiction and scifi. He is an aspiring novelist (watch this space), but in the meantime he's just started to build up his portfolio starting with a blog. He's got a tonne of ideas and is busy writing his 3rd blog today (BIG mug of tea in hand), but he'd love some feedback from his target audience, and even some input on what you the reader would like him to "unpack". There's a "contact me" page on his site, go nuts! He'd love some traffic on his page, but fighting anxiety all the time means he's holding off on advertising his arrival to the blog scene... which is where I come in! >>>> www.packupyourdinosaurs.com <<<< Anyway, the reason this is relevant to this forum is that his last post was a comedic review of The Outer Worlds. If you're at all curious, please feel free to go and have a read. It would make his day! Afterall, it's not like any of us are short on time at the moment! Enjoy

I am sure some of your heard about it but for the rest I decided to mention this cool little game. It is a new party RTwP RPG done with PIXEL ART and the shortest description of gameplay/story would be: Imagine someone taking Darklands, Baldur's gate and Fallout 1 and mixing it up to make a cool new game. The longer official description you can find here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/335120 (there is a GoG versions as well here http://www.gog.com/game/serpent_in_the_staglands) To hype you up let me leave some of my impressions and experiences with it. Story You start as a Moon God that is stuck in mortal realm and must find his way home. As you must take a mortal body to travel and find out what happened you can be slain. You can create more than one body at start and travel with full (5) premade party if you want to or you can collect companions through the game (or kick premades to make room for companions). I been told there are around 30 possible companions to find. Some of them are only temporary with you and if you want to roleplay an evil guy/god you can bind their souls to yours so they lose their free will (they change their behaviour than). The story is very free form like Fallout, you explore the overland map like in Fallout at your own leisure and run into random encounters or villages/towns/places of interest in your quest to return to the Moon. Character System It is a classless system but you can choose from couple of races which each have 3 subraces. Your race gives you your look while subrace gives you a mechanical bonus They are not a direct copy of any other RPG I seen. You don't get to choose a class but skills are split into 3 groups: War skills, Spells and Aptitudes. War skills and Spells each have 3 ranks that you can get access to as you raise their primary skills during level up (Str and Dex for War skills and Int and Occult for Spells) while Aptitudes are a mix of non-combat skills and unique combat abilities (for example Linguistics lets you use an Incantation book to cast Curses on enemies and environment (a powerful curse can speed up day/night change which normally you can only do by spending money on a Inn, camping supplies or running around the Overland Map) but also lets you examine certain things in the world or get more from some conversations while Woodwise will detect/set traps and give you more information about nature phenomenon you run into). You get points at each level up and can put them into War skills, Spells or Aptitudes of your choice that you have access to. There is of course an inventory system that is like in BG games, one spot = one piece of gear but lots of items can stack. The whole party has one common inventory (the system is done better than in PoE) while the inventory itself is split into combat and non-combat items (two button filter one of the other part). Inventory screen will show for each character how currently equipped gear affects their stats while on Character Screen you can see the total results that take into effect your active War Skills and spells. Gameplay Like expected you get to explore the world, talk to many NPCs and try to loot anything you can see (NPCs will give you one warning if you try to loot their items) You will often need certain Aptitudes to get access to quests or just a bit of extra stuff (in above scene 1 point in certain Aptitude will give you a cool special item). Thing to note is that the game does not hold your hand. I am not kidding. The game has a Journal screen but you need to fill it yourself (although many quests will put scrolls into your inventory that will usually have most info you need), and the local area map is just a zoom out of your normal view that you can then scroll around to get your bearings or watch your party move long distance over the map. But it has many cool things hidden that you can find with the proper use of ingame resources and a functioning brain. Combat is often brutal like in BG1. Remember the first time you went out of Candlekeep and got murdered by a single wolf? Yes, that can happen here as well. Play smart and the game will reward you with victory. The start is hardest, I can tell you that. Your created characters start naked and with little money (and first shop has no armor to sell), but companions you can find early start with armor and weapons so use them well (or loot their stuff and kick them in good old Bg1 style :D). Read what your spells do and come up with good battle plans that uses most of your party skills and you will do well. Combat is often short and brutal so don't be afraid to use all resources at your disposal. War skills are all passive and you can have 3 of them active at any time and can change active one at any moment. There are all kinds although lower level ones are just some direct combat boosts (the notable exception is skill for Elixir bag that lets you elixirs do splash damage - yes you can throw Elixirs in the game as a weapon ) Unlike Bg1 spells in this game are not as OP, they are more toned down like in PoE but you don't have any limits on spellcasting. There two basic type of spells: those that need to channeled and those that don't. Channeled spells last until you stop channeling them which locks down your caster for that one role, while other kind last a fairly short time (except Shapeshifting which can be prolonged a lot if you build your character right) and use those at start of battle. There are no classic fireball/Lightning/invisibility/teleport/fly spells but you can still do a lot. Some fun spells can do things like turn a target into a Fiend that makes everyone around want to attack him (both friend and foe) and he channels negative energy while being attacked and releases that as a AoE damage once he dies. There are some fun outside of combat uses for spells like using some spells to change your form so you can fit where you normally would not be able to. What is that cat doing there Aptitudes can also be used in combat to charm enemies, summon helpers or curse them (like I mentioned earlier), set traps, craft potions to use in battle or check out the stats of your enemies to know how to fight them better. Closing Word Of course the number one question will be: Can I play games with pixel art? If you can answer this question with YES go buy this game today. It is only 20$ (and on Steam sale atm), done by only two people (can you believe that), it has 30+ hours of content and devs are improving it fast (mostly some UI issues left now) while listening to the best community suggestions. If you like the game spread the word around as all mainstream sites have completely ignored this gem. BTW, both Chris Avellone and Sawyer tried it and liked it.

Thought you chaps might be able to reuse some of the colour from a campaign I'm running. I've edited it down to save needless bits for your own work. The videos are essential to paint the picture. Do give them a listen at least.

If it was a fact that hell existed and it is 100% for sure that evil people go to hell - wouldn't you try to be good? One thing which really bothers me is that in a lot of fantasy settings the people of those realms *know* for sure that gods and the associated powers exist. Also, it is a fact that there is a hell and heaven (or multiple hells, heavens etc.) as in Forgotten Realms or Planescape settings. For instance, in Planescape Torment, every person living in Sigil knows there exists multiple planes of hell/heaven, and you end up at hell if you are an evil person. Hell is not a nice place and a sane person would certainly not want to spend an eternity there among demons and such. Therefore, regarding the evil characters in these fantasy settings (apart from the crazy ones), isn't there a very strong motivation for them to actually try to be good? For example in real life, since it is not 100% for sure after-life exists, the only factors restraining people from committing *evil actions* (yes, very subjective in some cases) are things such as the laws, their conscience and beliefs. I am sure people would think a second time before committing crimes etc. if it was a common fact that after-life existed and you would be punished in hell for sure (even if you were able to get away with it in real life). I think you get the point. Sorry, if this philosophical aspect had already been covered on the forums, but this has been one of the questions which started bothering me especially while I was playing PS:T. It certainly decreases the realism of any setting IMHO and lawful evil (smart evil) characters don't seem to make much sense in such settings. (Only if they pursue immortality to avoid their fate or try to redeem themselves in order to go to the neutral or good heavens)

Hey guys, by now you have probably noticed my tendency to sporadically put up very generalized polls, and this is my latest effort. Essentially, I'm asking everyone to think very hard about why fantasy appeals to us, being fully honest with ourselves in the process. I think that we often tend to fall prey to the allure of crusading under the "fantasy" banner, without really considering what it is about fantasy that specifically appeals to us. There are many potential answers for this, and I believe that they have different implications for design philosophy, so I think it's important that this is considered. Poll answers are anonymous for the record.

Here it is: Coming in 2014 on PC and "all high-end platforms available" (CD Projekt RED isn't saying flat-out that it's a next-gen game, but it's a safe bet that new console announcements in the coming months will define the term "high-end platform"), The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt stretches from stormy islands to war-torn forests and a sprawling dark fantasy metropolis without a loading screen anywhere to be found. Read more: http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2013/02/04/march-cover-reveal-witcher-3-wild-hunt.aspx Third and last part of Geralt's epic adventure which takes place after the events described in the book series called The Witcher Saga by Andrzej Sapkowski, the most famous modern polish fantasy writer. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Both fantasy and science fiction draw heavily upon the real world and its history for inspiration, whether intentionally or subconsciously. There's been a lot of talk about how Project Eternity is set a bit later on (in terms of technological development) than most of the Infinity Engine games, and that includes an opportunity for it to depict a more cosmopolitan mixture of cultures. Josh made that one thread about linguistics that further hinted at the variety that will be seeing, so I wanted to see how people felt about this. Unfortunately I can't capture all the vast options in the poll, and let me know if I've forgotten anything obvious. This has been highlighted by a few games that I've been playing recently, such as Europa Universalis (which pays a lot of attention to cultural religious diversity and the social issues it has historically created) and Bioshock Infinite (which if nothing else is very interesting in its somewhat atypical choice of setting). Even though I can barely take the series seriously, Assassin's Creed IV is going full-on pirate, which should be quite interesting. The classic medieval fantasy RPG is a fairly obvious case, based on England, France, and Germany during the Middle Ages, but I think we're starting to see a lot of series move away from pure high medieval stuff. Other fantasy RPGs often incorporate a wide range of influences, such as the samurai-based Akaviri, Viking-based Nords, and Greco-Roman Imperials in The Elder Scrolls (one could even make the case that Morrowind's dark elves . Even so, I think there's a lot of opportunities for diverse influences that the genre hasn't even begun to cover, so let me know what you'd like to see.

This is just a poll to see what people's general preferences are in terms of how much "magic" is necessary in the fantasy genre, and whether certain forms of magic are preferred to others. As such, the poll questions do not directly pertain to wishes or expectations to Project Eternity, but I feel it would be worthwhile to survey the community anyway; the results should prompt interesting discussion regarding Project Eternity. I had to rush the poll a bit, but hopefully it suffices.