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Crsytals souls on A3 in The Avernum Trilogy
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Wednesday, November 7 2007 18:47 Profile Homepage #12
Special items don't transfer between scenarios.

—Alorael, who would hate to go hunting for them in every single scenario.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Chinese Products Fail Again in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Wednesday, November 7 2007 18:46 Profile Homepage #5
You're missing the obvious. We need more computer games! There's no way to swallow those.

—Alorael, who alternately recommends toys designed not only to be safe if ingested but in fact designed to be ingested. Protein blocks! Carrot men! Make the children grow up stronger for eater their toys!
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
RPGs with Unusual Mechanics in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Wednesday, November 7 2007 12:06 Profile Homepage #46
quote:
Originally written by Yama Toman?:

Edit: What was broken about Call Beads? They didn't seem any more broken than the regular alchemy system, anyway.
Hypothetically, nothing. In practice, you could get an endless supply of them for free and cast full heal on both characters. You know, just in case the last fight wasn't easy enough for you.

—Alorael, who now can't recall any games besides Realmz that allow you to spend a variable amount on your spells to make them more or less powerful. He's sure the mechanic appears elsewhere, but it is actually a good one.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Fantastical Thoughts On RPG Game Mechanics in Avernum 4
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Wednesday, November 7 2007 06:38 Profile Homepage #84
What about Europa Universalis? Okay, that's a war simulator. But X-COM? Other tactical games? They're third persona and they simulate battles, but they're definitely not RPGs. The Dungeon Master games and many others are first person but still RPGs. Planescape: Torment is, or can be, mostly non-combat. Fallout is sci-fi, not fantasy; Earthbound is still fantastical, but it's set in a modern world (sort of) and isn't at all high fantasy.

—Alorael, who has come to terms with the fact that the words "role playing game" are poor descriptors of the genre. Coming up with a better blanket term is hard, though, and everyone knows what you mean when you say RPG. It works well enough.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
RPGs with Unusual Mechanics in General
Or else o'erleap.
Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Wednesday, November 7 2007 06:16 Profile Homepage #41
Some kind of good/evil, light/darkness, or other foo/bar meter is fairly common. Does KotOR even restrict dialogue and actions based on your "alignment" besides giving you different power costs and a few equipment limitations?

Whether or not Escape Velocity counts as an RPG is debatable, but it and possibly EVE Online, about which I know nothing, give you a "character" who has no intrinsic traits or stats outside the plot. Everything you are depends on your ship, which in turn depends mostly on your wealth and how you use it. A new pilot tiny shuttle and a veteran whose immense warship just exploded violently are in the same position except for cash.

—Alorael, who feels like mentioning the slightly different (and very broken) Call Bead system in Secret of Evermore. The regular alchemy (read spell) system just relied on consumables, but Call Beads effectively gave one consumable used for any of a wide range of spells.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Left or Right? in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Tuesday, November 6 2007 19:07 Profile Homepage #65
I don't use guns small enough for one hand without the aid of a tripod.

—Alorael, who pulls triggers with his mind. And, of course, electrical impulses, synapses, and eventually a set of muscles and bones.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
A5 world in Avernum 4
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Tuesday, November 6 2007 08:17 Profile Homepage #31
Rentar-Ihrno was a rock on a pedestal. How was she supposed to go gallivanting across the subterranean countryside?

—Alorael, who thinks evil masterminds have minions for a reason, and that reason is so that they can stay at home, drink tea, and loaf in their bathrobes. Evil is only a part-time job, after all.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Original names in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Monday, November 5 2007 20:53 Profile Homepage #52
13, actually. That means middle school.

—Alorael, who also has to point out that while college is no barrier to Spidwebbery, neither is marriage. Hi, Drew!
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
RPGs with Unusual Mechanics in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Monday, November 5 2007 20:49 Profile Homepage #15
Breath of Fire 2 has hunting, fishing, and town building. That's nothing compared to Final Fantasy 7, which contains such wonderful interludes as CPR, dolphin jumping, Simon Says, and motorcycle fights. The games are in no way improved by being mindlessly easy.

—Alorael, who should throw in another interesting mechanic, although it comes up for in-person pencil and paper more than for CRPGs: games within a game. Resolving combat by playing a few hands of poker would certainly be interesting, although it can't be based on character skill. There already is an RPG that uses a Jenga tower as a substitute for all the dice and numbers of other games. It makes for an interesting player rather than character skill game.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
RPGs with Unusual Mechanics in General
Or else o'erleap.
Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Monday, November 5 2007 17:20 Profile Homepage #10
Does Treasure of the Rudras let you use any letters anywhere potentially, giving certain combinations certain meanings? Could one apply linguistics and extrapolate further spells?

—Alorael, who thinks that would be a good system. You learn the words for spells and the prefixes, suffixes, and possibly even midfixes to alter them. With complicated enough rules it could be balanced and fairly freeform.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Original names in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Monday, November 5 2007 17:18 Profile Homepage #38
If I stopped posting today, at your current rate it would take around five years for you to catch up. While you currently post more than me, my average posting rate over my tenure at Spiderweb has been greater than yours. No, that's not something I'm particularly proud of; except for brief moments of glory, like the great push to get Morgan to 1,000 posts, most of them have been content-free garbage and mindless gimmickry.

—Alorael, who thinks that "I'm not spamming...on purpose" is only the first step in the right direction. The next one is trying not to spam.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Left or Right? in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Monday, November 5 2007 14:45 Profile Homepage #58
You couldn't possibly lose. You'd have infinitely more chips than their infinite chips.

—Alorael, who considers finite numbers one of the cardinal rules of poker.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
hypetheticly in Tech Support
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Monday, November 5 2007 14:33 Profile Homepage #2
It strikes me as unlikely that Jeff will give you money back for buying the game again, but you should email him and ask. He's less likely to read posts on the forums.

—Alorael, who also recommends taking a little more time to make your writing intelligible. It's hard to understand exactly what you're asking as you've written it here.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
RPGs with Unusual Mechanics in General
Or else o'erleap.
Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Monday, November 5 2007 12:54 Profile Homepage #4
Iron Realms MUDs have an unusual system in which everyone can generally heal much faster than anyone can dish out damage. Combat is often a matter of finding ways to incapacitate enemies, particularly by preventing healing, rather than damaging.

The downside here is a wall of a learning curve. The downside to that is the difficulty of making AI handle the hundreds of possible changes in status, their causes, and their counters in a way that is both fair and challenging. It's really a system that relies on humans fighting humans.

—Alorael, who thinks Waving Hands (or Warlock) deserves mention as another game that uses this mechanic, although it's not an RPG.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
geneforge 3 in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Monday, November 5 2007 11:17 Profile Homepage #17
Can we not pick fights over possible typos, please? I've had misspelled words in my PDNs before. It's not necessarily a sign of orthographical failure.

—Alorael, who had a method to his madness. In fact, he had a message in his madness, although nobody has yet picked up on any of his secret communications by PDN. And now he's wandered far off topic.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Fantastical Thoughts On RPG Game Mechanics in Avernum 4
Or else o'erleap.
Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Monday, November 5 2007 11:14 Profile Homepage #69
It's perfectly feasible to do that. The complexities come in when your two separate systems interact frequently, as in the aforementioned walls, plot, and stackable objects in Ultima. Also, two identical systems with different window dressing are unlikely to actually provide twice the interest. It's an interesting gimmick, but it's not enough to grab any new market.

—Alorael, who thinks the best way to get something like this working is probably to set it up in a MMO environment without any ruinable plot. Tweak until everything works reaosnably, regardless of how little game reality coincides with normal reality, then take the system and turn it into a single player game. But who would spend that much time on it? (And who turns cash cow MMOs into non-MMOs?)
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Original names in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Sunday, November 4 2007 22:04 Profile Homepage #6
I spent about 3 years with Alorael as my PDN with only a several hour break in the middle during which I was Skribbane Addict. I started changing my name exactly once per day (when internet access is possible) when I hit 10,000 posts.

—Alorael, who doesn't mind so much when there's a custom title or other identifying marker to help him keep people straight. Even a useful signature helps. Sometimes he's just in the dark, though. He's getting old.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Fantastical Thoughts On RPG Game Mechanics in Avernum 4
Or else o'erleap.
Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Sunday, November 4 2007 21:59 Profile Homepage #57
Wait, you want less randomness? Then you really don't want realistic combat, or at the very least you don't want much in the way of combat. Combat is inherently random, and should in fact be far more so than RPGs paint them.

—Alorael, who can see Slarty's point. What you want isn't really an RPG any more, except that you have a character or characters with stats. What you really have is a puzzle-solving game in which you are presented with a situation and you have certain characters with certain equipment and stats with which to somehow resolve the situation to your advantage. That would actually be a fine mechanic for a game, but it wouldn't be recognizably an RPG. You could dress it up as one with pseudo-medieval swords and armor and some magic, but it's still not an RPG.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Name Choice in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Sunday, November 4 2007 10:56 Profile Homepage #72
quote:
Originally written by Dryth'tor:

All things considered, Eragon the novel was quite imaginative.
Impressive, maybe. Imaginative, no. The book is a patchwork of other, better works.

—Alorael, who resists attempts to call Eragon a novel. Nothing in it is, in fact, novel.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Crsytals souls on A3 in The Avernum Trilogy
Or else o'erleap.
Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Saturday, November 3 2007 11:43 Profile Homepage #5
A1 has Lost Bahssikava and a bit more vahnatai foreshadowing, I'm not sure about A2, and as far as I know A3 is a faithful recreation of E3 town by town.

—Alorael, who certainly knows that Lost B is the only significant addition to the trilogy in terms of world and plot.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Fantastical Thoughts On RPG Game Mechanics in Avernum 4
Or else o'erleap.
Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Saturday, November 3 2007 09:53 Profile Homepage #51
quote:
Originally written by The Crimson Coyote:

Do you think Jeff is interested in starting a new RPG universe around realism over Fantasy?
Probably not. Realism isn't what he does, isn't what he knows his market wants, and probably isn't what any major market wants.

—Alorael, who has to add that even if Jeff were interested in realism, he neither solicits nor accepts ideas from fans. It's bad legal practice. It also takes away one of the best parts of being your own designer, programmer, and so on: having a final product that's all yours.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Thoughts on Custom Titles. in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Friday, November 2 2007 23:07 Profile Homepage #106
Deleted posts still count. The UBB just adds one every time you post and doesn't track after that.

—Alorael, who could make insinuations about sneaky mods making and deleting their own posts quickly. That would be far too sinister for the upstanding pillars of the Spiderweb community that you know and fear, though.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
geneforge 3 in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Friday, November 2 2007 23:03 Profile Homepage #9
It's a perfectly understandable mistake. Welcome to Spiderweb and don't forget to leave your sanity at the door.

To everyone else, I'm very tempted to try to make the words newb, noob, n00b, Ed, argh*, and everything else associated with the ideas grounds for a day of ban. They don't need to be discussed, they don't add anything to discussion, and discussion of them should end quickly.

—Alorael, who is not, of course, serious. Arbitrary censorship is wrong. He'd just like to reserve the right to have banned those who take their privilege of limited speech on Spiderweb's forums a little too seriously.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Thoughts on Custom Titles. in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Friday, November 2 2007 20:26 Profile Homepage #101
Drakey: Don't double post, please. You have been officially warned.

—Alorael, who will now run very far and very fast. Maybe he can get far enough away that James will be distracted by a nap.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Crsytals souls on A3 in The Avernum Trilogy
Or else o'erleap.
Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Friday, November 2 2007 20:08 Profile Homepage #3
The only real difference is the engine. If you like Exile more than Avernum, go with E3. If you like Avernum, go with A3.

—Alorael, who supposes you could also make the choice based on price. Given how cheap they both are, though, that would be a crazy choice.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00

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