Starting The Game - Class obtaining, biography and circumstances

[ArchBeast]

I must say that i alway love D&D games like BG, NWN, Icewind Dale etc.

 

But somtimes the Prologs of this games was realy disapoining (in my opinion). Let's take NWN 2 for exampe. YOu created our character and then you land in sobe house in West Harbor. You are a man from the small village.

 

You pick up driud class and ..... and problem. HOW you obtain you druid abilitis ? In West Harbor was no driud tu teach you ? Bisides Druids don't live in big citys, they live in forest ....

 

So you go to a conclusion that you will play paladin .... bumm... second problem .. there are no paladins in hest harbor .. agoin who thech you this kind of abilitis ? The come fron thin air ?

 

But for mages there was an option tho than "mages student biografy" and then 1 of lokal mages becomes your teacher. You abylitis are justyfide by this mage, when you aske your self "How i abain that mage class?" ... the answer was "Tarmas show you some tricks" etc.

 

That was simply not realistic, samtimes i felt that my character comes from moon.

 

There are few ideas of fiksing this unseanseably issu

 

1 Class obtaining thru the story line

 

Let's say that you edit everything BUT you charatcer class, you always start as "undefined" class at the begining with no abylitis (or with abilitis that all classes has) and thhen you must lat's say join some gild for obtaining it for mages - mages gulid, for paladins - paladin orders, druids - druids "gulid" (you whould propably need to leave the city). Then you must do same quests and when you done you get fully nominated for you first class and you luses "Undefined" becomeing new.

 

2. Difrant orgins of you character according to class. (dragon age orgins)

 

This is secoud option, you can start game, chose your class but when you do this you will start in difrent circumstances.

 

3. Choiceing or creating biography.

 

This way of explanation for the presence of your character and you abylitis we seen in BG, NWN and Ice wind dale.

In my opinion it worked for some classes (those that could be larned from 1 person and not need to join organisations). Fighter, rouge, mage, bard, wizard and soucerer lived with it but classes like druids, clerics, hunters, paladins or even barberians not so well in my opinion.

In my opinion it fulfills its primary role, but it was not a solution to our chaaracters beginnings of our characters and the biography as it should.

 

4. Explaining charakter class and knowledge/ talents by presence of proper teachers.

 

This type of solution we seen in NWN 2 when we played as mage, then whe got you techer Mage named Tarmas that was teaching from chilhood. It's good option but again no all of the classes. Druid still will feel that he don't belong to the pleace.

 

If you had your own thaout or solution to this problem please please share your thoughts with us.

 

Thank you.

Edited October 14, 2012 by ArchBeast

[Epsilon Rose]

First off, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE SPELL AND GRAMMAR CHECK YOUR POST AND POLL. The numerous errors in both make them quite hard to read.

 

Now, on to the topic at hand:

I personally favor the third option, it seems to give the best of all worlds. Before I go into why I like it let me give a quick run down of what I see as the downfalls of the other methods.

1. Starting a player of as a generic class and having them join a guild to explain their specialties may seem like a great option from an immersion standpoint. Unfortunately, this automatically excludes any origins that would require an early start (for example anything that's culturally based or requires long study). What's worse is that buy requiring a player to start as a generic class you're delaying their access to the features that make that particular character special; which would be especially jarring for a caster type that you'll be asking to rely on mundane (probably melee) techniques for a bit. This method also hurts replay ability since it's probably not going to offer much choice in play and by your third character will probably have devolved into an unwelcome slog to the finish-line.
   
2. Actually, I don't have a problem with this method. In fact, I favor combining it with the third. I'll come back to this latter.
   
3. Same with this.
   
4. As you pointed out, having a mentor might make sense for certain classes (both thief and wizard come to mind) but also works exceptionally poorly for others (clerics and barbarians, for instance, seem unlikely to have a single instructor. This seems like something that would be better as one option among many.
   

 

Now that I've discussed what I think you shouldn't do, lets move on to what you should.

I mentioned earlier that I don't actually mind having a specific origin for each class, but I think it would be better to do the opposite of what DA:O did. Rather than have one or two origins for each race or class I'd have maybe 3 generic origins and then have the class/race combination unlock a few more unique options. The first thing this does is give the play more choice, which is all ways a good thing, but beyond that it helps to eliminate repetition. One of the things that always bugged me in DA:O was that if I wanted to be a magic user I was going to have to go through that blighted chantry. Aside from the fact that I found the chantry origin particularly annoying this also eliminated the options of being an apostate or dalish elf, even though we see that both things exist in the world. By building on to a list of generic choices (rather than creating a new list each time or subtracting from a short list) you prevent a player from being locked into an extremely restricted set of choices without having to spend too much time on extra scenes (maybe 2 unique origins for each class plus some minor dialog change on three generic ones Vs. 3 unique origins for each class nets you 8 free scenes).

[ArchBeast]

First off, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE SPELL AND GRAMMAR CHECK YOUR POST AND POLL. The numerous errors in both make them quite hard to read.

 

Now, on to the topic at hand:

I personally favor the third option, it seems to give the best of all worlds. Before I go into why I like it let me give a quick run down of what I see as the downfalls of the other methods.

1. Starting a player of as a generic class and having them join a guild to explain their specialties may seem like a great option from an immersion standpoint. Unfortunately, this automatically excludes any origins that would require an early start (for example anything that's culturally based or requires long study). What's worse is that buy requiring a player to start as a generic class you're delaying their access to the features that make that particular character special; which would be especially jarring for a caster type that you'll be asking to rely on mundane (probably melee) techniques for a bit. This method also hurts replay ability since it's probably not going to offer much choice in play and by your third character will probably have devolved into an unwelcome slog to the finish-line.
    
   
2. Actually, I don't have a problem with this method. In fact, I favor combining it with the third. I'll come back to this latter.
    
   
3. Same with this.
    
   
4. As you pointed out, having a mentor might make sense for certain classes (both thief and wizard come to mind) but also works exceptionally poorly for others (clerics and barbarians, for instance, seem unlikely to have a single instructor. This seems like something that would be better as one option among many.
   

Now that I've discussed what I think you shouldn't do, lets move on to what you should.

I mentioned earlier that I don't actually mind having a specific origin for each class, but I think it would be better to do the opposite of what DA:O did. Rather than have one or two origins for each race or class I'd have maybe 3 generic origins and then have the class/race combination unlock a few more unique options. The first thing this does is give the play more choice, which is all ways a good thing, but beyond that it helps to eliminate repetition. One of the things that always bugged me in DA:O was that if I wanted to be a magic user I was going to have to go through that blighted chantry. Aside from the fact that I found the chantry origin particularly annoying this also eliminated the options of being an apostate or dalish elf, even though we see that both things exist in the world. By building on to a list of generic choices (rather than creating a new list each time or subtracting from a short list) you prevent a player from being locked into an extremely restricted set of choices without having to spend too much time on extra scenes (maybe 2 unique origins for each class plus some minor dialog change on three generic ones Vs. 3 unique origins for each class nets you 8 free scenes).

 

I like your opinion on this topic. I think that is very good and I think that should be done in the project Eternity It would be a huge plus for this game but causes several other problems.

 

1. Lets say we have 10 classes. So this mean that we need at least 20 different "origins". 2 for each class. Such a large number would reflect on their QUALITY. And I do not want another 20 dalish elf orgin which was considered to be the weakest (in your opinion chantry origin).

 

2. If multi-classing appears in game. This is how to explain that the wizard who taught for many years suddenly takes warrior class. This can be explained by taking specializations like "War-Mage" but it creates more problems. If we got 10 classes this means that we can have up to 30 different specializations like "assassin","magic thief", "rogue warrior" etc. because each class would like to have at least 3 specializations "Pro-Thief","Pro-Magic","Pro-Fighting"

 

and how do you think we should solve these problems ?

 

Thanks for Respond

Edited October 14, 2012 by ArchBeast

[rjshae]

Number 3. The less handcuffed I am in choosing a character I want to play, the better.

[tox1c5lug]

The origins plot for each class need not be anywhere near as long as they were in DA:O

[wickermoon]

I still remember my reaction to NWN2, which allowed me to play a poor little DROW which was raised in the starting village...yeah, that made sense...not. Or the time I thought about how ridiculously gratuitous it was to be able to write a background story in BG1 and BG2 (I think) when the whole background had been pretty much explained before. So for me it'd be option number 2. Also, I really like the DA:O concept. Very immersive

[teknoman2]

3 is fine so long as it has some contact with the game itself. in mass effect, you would get a quest at some point based on Shepard's past. earthborn would get a quest with a member of his old gang, colony born would get to speak with a suicidal girl from his old home and i dont know the last. but i definetly dont want it like arcanum where the biography would alter some stats at the start of the game, but then it was like you just dropped in from another world. you had no connection with anything or anyone in the whole world, even if you were an elf or dwarf that lived in this world for a few hundred years. you knew no one and no one knew you

im fine with any of the other 3

Edited October 15, 2012 by teknoman2

[Milten]

I still remember my reaction to NWN2, which allowed me to play a poor little DROW which was raised in the starting village...yeah, that made sense...not. Or the time I thought about how ridiculously gratuitous it was to be able to write a background story in BG1 and BG2 (I think) when the whole background had been pretty much explained before. So for me it'd be option number 2. Also, I really like the DA:O concept. Very immersive

BARBARIAN villager DROW, because I can. Yeah, village prologue bagged me every my game.

Solution 1 gets a lot of immersion, but as it was said before fails for time-consuming professions like mage.

Solution 2 is best in my opinion. It keeps immersion and remains logical. Unfortunately we have (how many?) 11 classes. Impossible to implement in our case.

Solution 3. Some kind of self-deception. If you can just forget first hour of the game then you may get more possibilities for roleplay. I can't.

Solution 4. More easier to implement version of 2. Actually may work in some case.

Edited October 15, 2012 by Milten

[khango]

You don't really need a whole plot or giant system, just consideration of the context of starting location.

[Larkaloke]

Number three is likely fine, and is my preference -- the others, I think, would end up being a bit limiting at times. Number one would have your character learning their skills rather too quickly and suddenly for my taste. Two, while interesting the first time or so, I think would end up feeling too specific after several playthroughs (particularly with the family members and all, I didn't really like creating two characters of the same class/race combination in DA:O for that reason). And, as you say, four would probably not work well for all classes.

 

I have not encountered any problems with coming up with a reason for whatever class/race combination my character is in any game. Sometimes it's a little trickier, such as in NWN 2, but I still prefer the freedom of deciding.

 

Come to think of it, I actually think that some version of number four would be the second best option. Not necessarily a mentor, but rather some mention of how your character came to have their skills (whether they were always sent off for ten years in their childhood to learn them, but to a different place depending on class, or what). That assuming that the prologue is such that it needs any in-game explaining.

 

All of this of course largely depends on what the prologue of the game is like, and we really don't know anything about that yet. NWN 2's prologue was a bit tricky on the background because your character always was raised in West Harbor, and it was obvious that it was a very out-of-the-way sort of place with not much outside influence or even knowledge of the outside. I never had any sort of problem like Baldur's Gate, perhaps because I figured that there would be enough tomes of lore and what lying around for your character to educate themself in just about any class, or perhaps because there were at least a few examples of each primary class around. In both Icewind Dale games, I felt quite free to come up with whatever background I wanted, and it never seemed odd at all.