I don’t see the relevance… What does that identical coverage offer to explain the COVER of the magazine for PC Gamer’s NWN2 issue? Sorry if I wasn’t being abundantly clear.
I don’t see the relevance… What does that identical coverage offer to explain the COVER of the magazine for PC Gamer’s NWN2 issue? Sorry if I wasn’t being abundantly clear.[/quote]
I thought you might just want to see the screenshots. Please continue to pwn PC Gamer. As you were and all of that jazz. :)
I hope the single player game is good. More like BG2, nothing like NWN. Being able to control your party members in combat is a good change. I despise AI-run party members (like everyone else) because they will always do something really stupid, like charging offscreen towards unengaged enemies, running through a trap, etc, that gets them or the party killed. Why does any developer think gamers want that?
olaf
Because developers know that the gamers they are always hearing from like challenges and they are afraid of making their game not challenging enough. Dealing with unexpected AI behavior is certainly a challenge.
Or, it just happened to turn out that way and “gamers like a challenge” was the justification used for not putting forth the effort to fix it.
I love parties but you’d be surprised how many people dislike the micromanagement, particularly among casual gamers. Of course, history shows the BG series sold over twice as much regardless but it’s a bit hard to untangle all the possible reasons.
p1) Casual gamers don’t play RPGs on the PC
sp1) Casual gamers don’t play games on the PC
sp2) Casual gamers don’t play RPGs
p2) NWN2 is an RPG game on the PC
Therefore, casual gamers don’t play NWN2.
QED
It depends on your definitions, obviously. I wouldn’t want to say the party/henchman design decision was made for that reason in NWN (it probably wasn’t - more likely just the way they envisioned the whole MP aspect) but believe me, PC RPG makers think about including casual players.
Ok using NWN as an example. There was 1 player character and 1 henchmen, right? Letting the player control 1 extra character, for 2 total, was deemed too much micromanagement? They thought players would rather see their henchmen blow himself up on just about every trap, kamikaze into rooms full of monsters, etc. than have the OPTION to explicitly order him about?
olaf
That actually sounds pretty entertaining. Of course, it wasn’t, but it sure sounds like it should have been.
I’m so sorry to thread derail, but seeing as how DnD is the only PnP RPG I have ever played I wanted to comment about one thing. I know nothing much about 3E or newer DnD but I seem to recall 3 major douchebag classes from 2nd Edition. Experts please help me here but all the twerpy powergamer types seemed to like these three expansions classes and I’m pretty sure all of them had little handbooks (I forget what they are called) for each one:
-
Bladesinger - This guy could swing 2 swords with no penalty and then put one away and fry your ass with a fireball while still swinging one sword at you. The height of douchebag. Am I right here?
-
Cavalier - 12 sided hitpoint dice was some kind of walking tank with 200 hitpoints if powergamed properly. Yes?
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Psionicist - These are not the saving throws you are looking for… because, None exist! Since many of their powers were mental they could just jack you straight away and you had little chance to resist.
DnD Experts please help me derail this thread as I’m curious if I’m right. Again, 3E is a mystery to me… thank you kindly.
I’m so sorry to thread derail, but seeing as how DnD is the only PnP RPG I have ever played I wanted to comment about one thing. I know nothing much about 3E or newer DnD but I seem to recall 3 major douchebag classes from 2nd Edition. Experts please help me here but all the twerpy powergamer types seemed to like these three expansions classes and I’m pretty sure all of them had little handbooks (I forget what they are called) for each one:
-
Bladesinger - This guy could swing 2 swords with no penalty and then put one away and fry your ass with a fireball while still swinging one sword at you. The height of douchebag. Am I right here?
-
Cavalier - 12 sided hitpoint dice was some kind of walking tank with 200 hitpoints if powergamed properly. Yes?
-
Psionicist - These are not the saving throws you are looking for… because, None exist! Since many of their powers were mental they could just jack you straight away and you had little chance to resist.
DnD Experts please help me derail this thread as I’m curious if I’m right. Again, 3E is a mystery to me… thank you kindly.[/quote]
Ho man herms, it’s way worse now - or better, depending on how you look at it.
Want access to Pally items and benefits without the long-term commitment? Switch at level 2 from Pally to, I dunno, Lathander Priest or something. Thief/mage? Again, switch to mage like right away and level up thievery skillz. Sorcs, yeah sorcerors. You’re gonna love them.
Then again, that’s 3rd Ed before the big redo (3.5, I believe they call it). Might have addressed some things with it (but I doubt it).
I guess my problem has been that DnD has always been meant to be played as a party of dudes, with varying skill sets to tackle different situations. I avoided NWN, because I have all the one-guy RPGs I need for the moment (in games that handle the All By Myse-e-e-elf set-up better). I always get a mental image of a fighter staring at a locked door or a mage getting wailed on by an iron golem or the like.
All the things you both mention are game balanced in the rules, but bad DMs don’t enforce them.
For example, if you have paladin levels but break your creed, you lose the nifty powers until you atone (and that ain’t just saying “I’m Sorry”). Those pali levels become like Fighter levels…expect you didn’t get the feats that fighters get, so you are double-screwed.
Yep, Sorcerers can cast spells over and over, far more than wizards. But the sorcerer only has a few spells to pick from, and can easily get caught without the appropriate spell for the situation. But bad DMs often use the same hack&slash adventure design that favors a sorcerer.
So 3e and 3.5e are no better or worse that other DnD at munchkin-ness, IMO.
Let us posit a value Q which is the quality of a particular roleplaying campaign. Let us also posit a value D which is the quality of the dungeon master. Let us also posit a value P which is the quality of the players in aggregate. Lastly let us posit a value R which is the quality of the source material, i.e., the RPG book or books involved. As to the relationship of these values, I humbly submit the following formula:
Q = 10D + 5P + (R/10)
I have completed a proof of this theorem, but unfortunately it is too large to fit in the subject line.
A lot of this has been fixed in 3.5e. Abilities are not so front-loaded anymore. Sure if you want to you can come up with min/max classes (like the Druid/VOP combo). But the difference between a CRPG and a face-to-face d&d game is that the DM can reign in those abuses. Or not even allow them to happen in the first place.
For example I remember in IWD that a party of 6 fighters just tore the game to pieces. Nothing could stop them. Try doing that in a face-to-face game and the DM will exploit your weakness - no healing, susceptible to charm affects etc.
Its much for muchness to be honest. 3.5 are nice clean and functional rules but its a lot closer to the original Chainmail game (miniatures game with RP tacked on) then 1e and 2e were (much more RP orientated). Personally that’s a good thing since I enjoy the combat/strategy part of dnd the most. But I can see for people who are more into the storytelling/rp aspects that the rules are not as accommodating as other systems or the older editions.
3.5 is great for a good DnD tactical game… If that’s all you do with it. Your job as a DM is to create the stuff the game doesn’t actually come with (i.e. - a reason to roleplay, histories, npcs that roleplay, etc, etc), to entice your players to roleplay, to see your world. That’s how D&D has been since the beginning. First the thing you do is pick a race…and that race has stats that affect everything else you do. So they teach you from the begining to min max, not to roleplay. Always been a complaint of mine about D&D.
Other games handle the roleplaying side better…such as WW where the first thing you do in the world of darkness is to pick your job, color, creed, what you do on a day to day basis, why exist, before and after the change, etc.
That said, I love D&D, but it’s lacking in places…which is part of the reason it gets translated over so poorly (i.e. - it’s a tactical fighter, not a deeper roleplaying game).