fez_machine posted:

Hmmmmmmmmmm:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/grapeocean/black-geyser-couriers-of-darkness?ref=discovery

Vargs posted:

Trying to decide what class to play now that Pillars 2 is so close to release. Leaning towards some kind of rogue since that's usually my jam, but I want to add a little bit of complexity and flavor, preferably while avoiding bogging myself down with long cast times. Any opinions on how a Trickster/Shattered Pillar might work out? Would I be best off with 2h, 1h, dual wield, or fists? I'd prefer not to use fists since finding weapons is more fun. Planning on diving into PotD so I'd like to make sure I'm not doing something completely stupid and unviable.

FuzzySlippers posted:

A team of five (CEO, writer, artist, sound, and the ideas guy) with no programmer. That's a safe kickstarter bet

User0015 posted:

Yup, the Alpine Dragon is still a gigantic pain in the rear end/I still suck at this game after 200+ hours. Took me 3 or 4 tries before I killed him, not level scaled, party is level 12. Shame on me I think.

Meyers-Briggs Testicle posted:

have you heard the story of joseph and his wall of many colors

Basic Chunnel posted:

The art director worked on Witcher 3…’s advertisements!

CottonWolf posted:

https://twitter.com/jesawyer/status/990491942285819904
I am unreasonably excited about Pillars X Ars Magica.

Smol posted:

That Kickstarter looks like a hit and run scam.

rope kid posted:

High-frequency rolls are almost all 2d10.

The logic behind using different dice for different mechanics is that insisting on forcing a single die mechanic to represent everything is good for an initial learning curve, bad for modeling anything outside of the probability range represented by that die mechanic. I would rather use different dice to model different probability curves than force everything into a single curve or set of curves.

Wound recovery is handled during downtime, so you shouldn't need to consult it all during a session. I could have used 2d10 or 1d10+whatever modifiers to cover how many days it takes to transition from one wound type or another but IMO that would have resulted in some goofy time ranges. Each stage of recovery has a different time range, but they're all located in the same section and would all be resolved while the player is looking at that page.

I'm going to do my best to organize the final guide as well as I can for quick reference, but I have to admit that I don't care about appealing to the audience who doesn't like looking a few things up during play -- and especially during downtime, which is integral to how the game works. I'm designing the game for long-term play. You make characters, play them through decades of their lives until they are killed, die of old age, or retire. If you're the kind of player or GM who is time-pressed and doesn't really like planning things out, this will probably not be the game for you.

rope kid posted:

High-frequency rolls are almost all 2d10.

The logic behind using different dice for different mechanics is that insisting on forcing a single die mechanic to represent everything is good for an initial learning curve, bad for modeling anything outside of the probability range represented by that die mechanic. I would rather use different dice to model different probability curves than force everything into a single curve or set of curves.

Wound recovery is handled during downtime, so you shouldn't need to consult it all during a session. I could have used 2d10 or 1d10+whatever modifiers to cover how many days it takes to transition from one wound type or another but IMO that would have resulted in some goofy time ranges. Each stage of recovery has a different time range, but they're all located in the same section and would all be resolved while the player is looking at that page.

I'm going to do my best to organize the final guide as well as I can for quick reference, but I have to admit that I don't care about appealing to the audience who doesn't like looking a few things up during play -- and especially during downtime, which is integral to how the game works. I'm designing the game for long-term play. You make characters, play them through decades of their lives until they are killed, die of old age, or retire. If you're the kind of player or GM who is time-pressed and doesn't really like planning things out, this will probably not be the game for you.

Impermanent posted:

Rope kid come post about your ttrpg on the traditional games subforum

quote:

Eric Fenstermaker said Durance and the GM had a lot of "creative energy and research" invested in them. You seem to rely on getting approval every step of the way, which makes me wonder how that happened. Was there a miscommunication on the approval of your drafts and/or outline? And would you agree that the content had to be cut, or would you have tried to save it if you were at the helm? (Including Ulysses in FNV, not just PoE).

"Companion Design - not always. Usually, it's paragraph, page, then dialogue. In Durance and Grieving Mother's case - and this I can say - the Creative Lead told me after my departure that the Project Lead had interfered but didn't specify the reasons. I don't even know what the reasons were (although I couldn't tell if I did, to be fair). In short, the Creative Lead said he should have handled the whole matter differently and didn't, regretted it, and apologized for it.

It doesn't matter - what's done is done - cuts don't bother me (they rarely do, if you're a writer in the industry and aren’t willing to make cuts, you probably won't be a game writer for long), but how it was handled overall was an example of how upper management can get tangled up and despite any problems, perceived or otherwise, you can be the last one to know, which makes the whole situation more hosed up than if you'd gotten a direct critique, fixed everything that was requested, and then it's put to bed. It's not a huge deal unless you make it one."

frajaq posted:

Chris Avellone gave some nice meaty interview on RPG Codex, talking about Pillars of Eternity Cut Content and other interesting stuff

like he talks a bit about Durance and Grieving Mother

quote:

and the original tie in the GM and Durance backstories were they had violated each other physically and mentally and that’s what broke both of them, which I then cut – although I don’t know if the GM one got removed completely – the intention was the Watcher could fix it mentally by repairing their souls by walking through their minds in stages

frajaq posted:

Chris Avellone gave some nice meaty interview on RPG Codex, talking about Pillars of Eternity Cut Content and other interesting stuff

Fair Bear Maiden posted:

Avellone talks about Fenstermaker leaving and sort of hints that it might be because Obsidian is a bad place to work at (which is totally possible and wouldn't be surprising, mind you, given game development studios tend to be)

frajaq posted:

Basic Chunnel posted:

Don’t do it rope kid

frajaq posted:

Fair Bear Maiden posted:

Avellone was pretty open about wanting Durance/Grieving Mother to be important characters going forward with the series in other interviews, envisioning Durance potentially becoming an avatar of Magran and Grieving Mother becoming a villainess, and the rest was already known.

The miscommunication thing sounds lovely, but it's always bad form to just hear one side, and in the rest of the interview (which to be fair, was conducted over a long span of time, so he might not have known) Avellone talks about Fenstermaker leaving and sort of hints that it might be because Obsidian is a bad place to work at (which is totally possible and wouldn't be surprising, mind you, given game development studios tend to be) even though according to the former lead writer of PoE, it was largely because he just had a baby and wanted to spend more time with his family.

avellonme interview quote posted:

The art for the dream sequences would have required maybe 12 images, and it was designed so you could do 1 large image and split the scene, so each image could be repurposed. I will say there were other cuts (the GM’s special Planescape-y weapons and Durance variant equipment) that were just simply dropped and would have required little in the way of resources – it was more a matter of will vs. time in some instances.

Your Parents posted:

Unrelated to this topic about as much as this post was, but remember when Danielle Riendeau wrote a review of a video game calling it transphobic and hateful and encouraged people to not buy it and then it turned out that the woman who wrote the game is trans and was extremely offended.

Then Danielle refused to apologize for mobilizing online harassment towards a trans dev and doubled down that waypoint has no influence on game sales and actually the writer is being an rear end in a top hat for being offended that her game was so maliciously misrepresented