Search the Community

Hey, so, surely you guys remember BG2's opening main quest - "raise X amount of money to proceed". I think it was 20k gold. Now, while BG2 is not my favorite RPG and the quest was appropriately blunt, this made my first playthrough SO very immersive. Suddenly, even silly fetch quests had a purpose! Since I have a knack for playing on hella-hard the first time around, I even had to postpone resolving that quest because I wanted to buy one more item (I think it was a helmet at Ribald's). That gave us a third layer beyond XP and wanting to experience the content. And the content experiencing bit fades after the second and third playthrough, obviously. So I propose to make money relevant, even moreso than in BG2. XP and money and in the case of the Fallouts reputation are things you expect to get for deeds well done. The first two, however, usually tend to be rather gamey. I always assume it's because it's the oxygen of RPG staples and designers don't think they have to put any more effort into it - after all, it's already been done and NOT HAVING IT would not be an option because people would explode with confusion. Why can I not bribe my way through more quests? I'm not talking "I'll talk if you give me five coppers" but amounts that matter to me. It's a Mass Effect semi-interactive-space-opera-click-to-win-dialog-option-non-choice if I know that 5 coppers will net me progress. It doesn't hurt me and makes me always pick that option, because why gamble on a Charisma roll if I can just spend money I don't need anyway. Why are the encounters with bandits that want 100gp to let you pass always the easy ones? Imagine Kangaxx level difficulty in one of those encounters, but with a band of Serbian war criminals instead of ~Oliver Twist and his incompetent band of louts~, and money would change hands right quick. Of course the encounter should be surmountable, but it should rarely be a no-brainer to keep your money. Has anyone here ever given money to ruffians like that, short of maybe in the beginning of Arcanum with a stupid, clumsy AND weak character? I guess what I'm complaining about is a certain betrayal of the otherwise beautiful, immersive worlds people create. There's never a shortage of poverty and greed in dialog or character design if it helps paint the setting, but that's only half the equation. As long as the money the player has comes from the same common pool as the money the poorest lack and the richest bathe in, the concept of need and/or greed dictates that Player should feel the value of it.