Please help me understand something about Neverwinter Nights

[hiver]

There were several reasons, not one.
I dont feel like going into details in this thread but ... thats how it was.

 

[Mortmal]

guize guize guize

Why didn't they just use a phoenix down on Aeris/Aerith? Why didn't the eagles just fly the Hobbits to Mordor? These are some deep thoughts here.

That one is easy to answer:
http://oglaf.com/ornithology/1/

 

[tindrli]

 

[villain of the story]

I think we can all safely assume that having a resurrection spell in your roleplaying game is retarded and undermines the whole setting one way or another. Unless, of course, it's integrated into the plot itself (see: torment, planescape).

It could work but there is no cost or any consequence to resurrection. When Conan is mortally wounded in Conan The Barbarian, they summon spirits to restore his health and make a deal with them to exchange his life for one another. Considerable amount of screen time and drama is given to this mini-plot. Valeria dies later on. It's all very fitting. Resurrection in games don't ever attempt to do anything similar. The closest example that I know of is Arcanum and even there, it's a scripted exception, not a game mechanic and you get over with it pretty quickly.

 

[Rpgsaurus Rex]

Biowhore devs are lazy

Actually this does come up in BG2. Jaheira says that Khalid cannot be resurected, because his body is all fucked up and he stinks really bad. In Saradush you can resurrect the guy who dies in front of you, by any means available, because he's still warm. A ton of people get disintegrated or blown up to avoid the issue. It is there to cover the fact that this is just a necessary mechanic that is demeed to create plot holes. At least they made some effort.

Also, they pretty much got rid of the whole concept in later games. No death, no resurrection, no problem.

IIRC no one is perma-gone in D&D unless their soul gets destroyed or some such. Resurrection/Wish can handle every case of physical death including Disintegrate, even Imprisonment can be handled by Freedom.

The posters above pointing out how hellishly expensive even a Raise Dead spell are right on track, Resurrection requires a 17(!) level cleric to scribe/cast (maybe 1/2 level to read a scroll but - high level (16+) characters are supposed to be very rare in Faerun, so good luck finding someone willing to sacrifice his XP to scribe it). 10k gold is no joke (only 5k gold less for Raise Dead!), if you consider 1 sp is already a lot of money for common people.

Not knowing how to implement material components is part of the reason why porting Player's Handbook spells directly to a video game sucks in all kinds of ways, and the "rest everywhere" mechanic delivers the killing blow.

 

[Gord]

Not knowing how to implement material components is part of the reason why porting Player's Handbook spells directly to a video game sucks in all kinds of ways, and the "rest everywhere" mechanic delivers the killing blow.

Not wanting to frustrate the players is probably even more important for game designers.
Implementing a simple gold/gem/whatever material requirement shouldn't be to difficult, you would just have to check the inventory and remove the component.
But if dying is happening fairly frequent in an cRPG (quite possible considering how combat-centric they usually are), many players will be very upset if their beloved char has died yet again and they are out of diamonds. Likely result will be save-scumming.
The best way would be striking a balance between combat that is challenging, but were death can still be avoided unless the player makes stupid mistakes. Not so easy probably.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Most high magic fantasy worlds are just silly, and D&D is no excpetion. You can come up with hundreds of things that just don't make any sense whatsoever.
If you really want to rationalize this shit, well, I always draw a line between the common folk in the gameworld and the heroes/adventurerers. So while the latter have the required physical, mental and magical predispositions to use things like ressurect and other kinds of powerful magic, the simple folk are simply cut off from most of it in their everyday life.

I'd imagine even simple stuff like cure disease spells/ potions to be rather expensive and hard to produce in quantities that would satisfy more than just the needs of some powerful individuals and adventure parties. In general, since you see the world trough the eyes of your heroes and mainly deal with people akin to them, magic will play a much bigger role for you than it really does for the average inhabitant of the game world. While paying 100 gold pieces for a healing potion might seem a trivial amount for a party of adventureres, for the average peasant this is the price of feeding his family for a year's time.

I'd also imagine that adventurers are a different breed altogether from the average inhabitant of the game world, and being a level 1 "adventurer" already makes you much more powerful, gifted and talented than the simple peasant or citizen of a city and means that you posses certain predispositions that allow you to use powerful tools which are mostly closed off to mere mortals.

A level 1 fighter is already above average is considered to be good enough to be in a lord's personal body guard.
Level 2+ characters are basically an equivalent of today's special forces.

Too bad that I sold my 2nd and 3rd edition manuals, they'd be very useful for this discussion.

Actually this does come up in BG2. Jaheira says that Khalid cannot be resurected, because his body is all fucked up and he stinks really bad. In Saradush you can resurrect the guy who dies in front of you, by any means available, because he's still warm.

You can resurrect him because they bothered to script it.

 

[DraQ]

Not knowing how to implement material components

Excuse me?

 

[J_C]

They didn't used the eagles to throw the ring into Mordor because one simple reason: their mission required secrecy and sneaking abilities. Even in the movies Sauron gets confused about who really has the ring due to random people using the palantir (which was something like his radar). Have you guys played a little game called Thief?

Not to mention that if Sauron sees them flying above Mordor, the Nazguls would tear them apart in a minute.

 

[tindrli]

They didn't used the eagles to throw the ring into Mordor because one simple reason: their mission required secrecy and sneaking abilities. Even in the movies Sauron gets confused about who really has the ring due to random people using the palantir (which was something like his radar). Have you guys played a little game called Thief?

Not to mention that if Sauron sees them flying above Mordor, the Nazguls would tear them apart in a minute.

not a chance.. although nazguls seems to be far more massive and powerful for some reason they always losed the battle and another thing is that we dont know how many eagles are in total.. maybe there are like 300 of them

 

[Rpgsaurus Rex]

Not knowing how to implement material components is part of the reason why porting Player's Handbook spells directly to a video game sucks in all kinds of ways, and the "rest everywhere" mechanic delivers the killing blow.

Not wanting to frustrate the players is probably even more important for game designers.
Implementing a simple gold/gem/whatever material requirement shouldn't be to difficult, you would just have to check the inventory and remove the component.
But if dying is happening fairly frequent in an cRPG (quite possible considering how combat-centric they usually are), many players will be very upset if their beloved char has died yet again and they are out of diamonds. Likely result will be save-scumming.
The best way would be striking a balance between combat that is challenging, but were death can still be avoided unless the player makes stupid mistakes. Not so easy probably.

"Not knowing how to implement it without alienating the playerbase" would be a better way of putting it, true.

As you say, adding actual material cost would be trivial - simply deduct gold (or, if you want to be really hardcore about it, some other ingredients - like diamonds) whenever a player uses a spell.

The issue is that death is treated entirely different in PnP and in video games. In video games it's an annoyance and an obstacle. In PnP you can just roll a new character and go for an entirely new adventure (or join up with your surviving party on a new char as a "mercenary" or something), sad and maybe even tragic - but not "fuck me where is my latest save..." if your DM is enjoyable.

 

[Mother Russia]

Oh, why does ANYBODY dies in D&D if there's a ressurect spell? Why can't you rezz Gorion in BG1, if it is possible with any of your party members? Why can't you rezz that chick who dies in NWN2?
OH TEH QUESTIONS!!!111!

First, I have always loathed resurrections. That said, you couldn't rezo Gorion because too much time had passed since he died. Rezo in AD&D had a time limit, if I am not mistaken.

 

[hoverdog]

Oh, why does ANYBODY dies in D&D if there's a ressurect spell? Why can't you rezz Gorion in BG1, if it is possible with any of your party members? Why can't you rezz that chick who dies in NWN2?
OH TEH QUESTIONS!!!111!

First, I have always loathed resurrections. That said, you couldn't rezo Gorion because too much time had passed since he died. Rezo in AD&D had a time limit, if I am not mistaken.

You could carry your dead teammates around for months on end and still would be resurrected just fine, and ten-twelve hours (approximately) is suddenly too much?

 

[Gragt]

They didn't used the eagles to throw the ring into Mordor because one simple reason: their mission required secrecy and sneaking abilities. Even in the movies Sauron gets confused about who really has the ring due to random people using the palantir (which was something like his radar). Have you guys played a little game called Thief?

 

[Mother Russia]

Oh, why does ANYBODY dies in D&D if there's a ressurect spell? Why can't you rezz Gorion in BG1, if it is possible with any of your party members? Why can't you rezz that chick who dies in NWN2?
OH TEH QUESTIONS!!!111!

First, I have always loathed resurrections. That said, you couldn't rezo Gorion because too much time had passed since he died. Rezo in AD&D had a time limit, if I am not mistaken.

You could carry your dead teammates around for months on end and still would be resurrected just fine, and ten-twelve hours (approximately) is suddenly too much?

Hmm, see I am not 100% sure. Either there was a time limit and the fact you could carry your teammates around was just a slip up (keep in mind you can rest for years without consequence...Jaheira and Khalid are still waiting for you at the FAI) or I am misremembering.

Anyhow, D&D rules and settings are pure shit. Even potentially fun settings, like Ravenloft and Dark Sun turn to shit due to the rules.

 

[Murk]

[

So, what is your complaint? Like you pointed out, any PC can be of any class, not any NPC. If that kind of thing bothers you, DCC RPG has rules for starting out as a 0-level PC without a class, but a trade. In fact, Arcana Unearthed added rules to start as a 0-level or even a -1-level PC, though you had to select your class before hand. Old D&D alsop had a rule where clerics only started casting spells on their 2nd level, so 1st level clerics could be seen as similar to NPC clerics without spells.

But still, at the end of the day, the PCs have some kind of great, "heroic" power to solve their problems. They might start as normal humans. But assuming they don't die as that, they will eventually become larger than life. That doesn't imply the setting should abandon all semblance of logic and cause and effect just because of that, though.

I don't really have a complaint -- I just ended up rambling.

Basically, my point goes back to the thing I sad in my first post -- it's pointless to play logistics and dragons because no game system is perfect. You just have to accept whatever scenario is presented to you... or not play the game. Inquiries about how D&D society functions is silly because it doesn't function, it exists only in vacuums and because it's not a real system that functions outside of the players -- it functions around the players.

My point about clerics was just a single example in a long list of many of how the system can be broken if we put in even a minimal amount of effort.

 

[hiver]

They didn't used the eagles to throw the ring into Mordor because one simple reason: their mission required secrecy and sneaking abilities. Even in the movies Sauron gets confused about who really has the ring due to random people using the palantir (which was something like his radar). Have you guys played a little game called Thief?

Not to mention that if Sauron sees them flying above Mordor, the Nazguls would tear them apart in a minute.

not a chance.. although nazguls seems to be far more massive and powerful for some reason they always losed the battle and another thing is that we dont know how many eagles are in total.. maybe there are like 300 of them

Thats not how things go at all.
Lets just say that that "how it should have ended -end" is only possible if everyone knew how things are going to go, before any of those things happened.

Its simple case of being a smart general after the battle.

Nazgul did not always loose a battle either.

In short:
Tolkien does not scale to your level.

 

[Rpgsaurus Rex]

[

So, what is your complaint? Like you pointed out, any PC can be of any class, not any NPC. If that kind of thing bothers you, DCC RPG has rules for starting out as a 0-level PC without a class, but a trade. In fact, Arcana Unearthed added rules to start as a 0-level or even a -1-level PC, though you had to select your class before hand. Old D&D alsop had a rule where clerics only started casting spells on their 2nd level, so 1st level clerics could be seen as similar to NPC clerics without spells.

But still, at the end of the day, the PCs have some kind of great, "heroic" power to solve their problems. They might start as normal humans. But assuming they don't die as that, they will eventually become larger than life. That doesn't imply the setting should abandon all semblance of logic and cause and effect just because of that, though.

I don't really have a complaint -- I just ended up rambling.

Basically, my point goes back to the thing I sad in my first post -- it's pointless to play logistics and dragons because no game system is perfect. You just have to accept whatever scenario is presented to you... or not play the game. Inquiries about how D&D society functions is silly because it doesn't function, it exists only in vacuums and because it's not a real system that functions outside of the players -- it functions around the players.

My point about clerics was just a single example in a long list of many of how the system can be broken if we put in even a minimal amount of effort.

I have to admit I'm more with Alex here. A system is as broken and stupid as the DM/game maker allows it to be. Nothing physically stopped the makers of NWN from adding a material component to raise/ressurect/cure disease, or adding a line of dialogue along the lines of "but why don't you deal with plague using magic?" - "because blah blah blah", something plausible. It was just laziness, or ignorance, or just not willing to bother with something only a minority of players would appreciate.

A deeper problem stemmed from developers foolishly reducing the degree of visual abstraction without following it up with anything of substance - fancy chests and cupboards, and other pieces of furniture everywhere THAT YOU CAN'T LOOT! They're just visuals! Even in IE games, as far as I remember a chest was a chest - if it looked like a chest, you could loot it even if it only contained trash. NPCs as generic as the next one, with "Villager A", or "City Dweller B". Which disgusts me. Why put these NPCs there in the first place - it's just a braindead pursuit of "realism" where it's actually counter-productive to immersion (not in "omg it's real", but in "I'm OK with this" sense - like, idk, we're fine with NCR being just 3 screens in FO2 because we're fine with assuming the rest is off-screen and just isn't of interest to us). Which is what bothers me - why is sea so bothered about this shit in the first place? Who gives a shit about NWN, NOTHING in this game makes sense plot or gameplay-wise.

 

[sea]

Fuck this game.

I saved the Spirit of the Wood by giving it some cure for its poison, I return to the Archdruid, and all I can tell him is that it's dead. I think this is because I returned to the area it was in after the Spirit teleported me out, so I could collect its loot. I used the portal to exit, which made the game think that I killed it. Yeah, minor bug, but pretty lame. I'm sure the Spirit of the Wood being "dead" impacts absolutely nothing of course.

When you think about it, this bug is colossally retarded. When speaking to the Archdruid, all the game should do is check to see if the Spirit was killed (I'm sure there is a variable for that that updates) or cured, and gives the appropriate dialogue option. I don't even see why you would do it any other way. If it does do that, and the game sets the "Spirit = dead" variable when you use the exit portal, then... fuck it, what? So if you exit before talking to the Spirit, does the game just say it's dead without you ever having met it? No, you'd need to check to see if the player talked to it first to avoid that problem, which means that we are talking at least *slightly* complex logic to figure this out. Which means that someone would have had to put effort into doing that.

The real question is why the hell would you ever tell a plot variable to update when the plot conditions haven't even been met properly. So not only are we talking about moronic design, but moronic design put into play by someone who should have been smart enough to not do it in the first place. Brilliant.

I don't have the will to rant about this game just yet, but holy shit, I think this is possibly one of the worst, most boring and repetitive games I've ever played.

 

[Murk]

Yeah... basically.

Don't get me wrong, I agree that the game is badly designed -- I just think it's pointless to "analyze its inconsistencies" because... fuck man, why is there a magical dagger in a chest in someone's front porch?

I stumbled my way through to... uhh... fuck the last chapter and just got tired of the meaningless caves and dungeons I was going through. Jumped to Hordes of the Underdark which was so highly praised but realized I was just sick of the game's style/interface/"engine" and quit.

I really hate how NWN 1 looks. The menus, the interface, the dialog boxes, the tiles, the character models. All of it. It's terrible =(

 

[Alex]

I don't really have a complaint -- I just ended up rambling.

Basically, my point goes back to the thing I sad in my first post -- it's pointless to play logistics and dragons because no game system is perfect. You just have to accept whatever scenario is presented to you... or not play the game. Inquiries about how D&D society functions is silly because it doesn't function, it exists only in vacuums and because it's not a real system that functions outside of the players -- it functions around the players.

My point about clerics was just a single example in a long list of many of how the system can be broken if we put in even a minimal amount of effort.

Of course, D&D doesn't give you a framework to simulate each and every aspect of the society, and even if it did, that would miss the point. but even if the system functions around the players, the players don't need to go where the DM tells them to go. they may go anywhere, and where they go, the system will be solidified into something. Do they want to raid caravans, then the GM will need to come up with some kind of system to determine what is being shipped where. If he wants to add some consequence to this, he will need to think up what will be the results of the players stealing some of these products. Do they cause a famine somewhere? Do they cause a war by stealing tribute the duke was sending to the king? This kind of stuff is the lifeblood of the sandbox game, and even if some of AD&D considerations make this kind of game wacky, they are a whole lot of fun.

 

[tindrli]

They didn't used the eagles to throw the ring into Mordor because one simple reason: their mission required secrecy and sneaking abilities. Even in the movies Sauron gets confused about who really has the ring due to random people using the palantir (which was something like his radar). Have you guys played a little game called Thief?

Not to mention that if Sauron sees them flying above Mordor, the Nazguls would tear them apart in a minute.

not a chance.. although nazguls seems to be far more massive and powerful for some reason they always losed the battle and another thing is that we dont know how many eagles are in total.. maybe there are like 300 of them

Thats not how things go at all.
Lets just say that that "how it should have ended -end" is only possible if everyone knew how things are going to go, before any of those things happened.

Its simple case of being a smart general after the battle.

Nazgul did not always loose a battle either.

In short:
Tolkien does not scale to your level.

i just dont give a shit.. loved the books, great movie

 

[Xavier0889]

fuck man, why is there a magical dagger in a chest in someone's front porch?

because of fuck gun control and libruls, guns dont kill peoples, obama is teh devil :patriot:

 

[Gord]

NWN's visuals were indeed pretty disappointing. The comic-like item pictures. The sometimes simply surreal level design/tilesets, low poly 3D models, etc...
Coming from IE games, NWN 1 was an eyesore, with the exceptions of some spell effects, at least.

Rpgsaurus Rex:
Infinity Engine wasn't that different in matters of containers, I think, at least the Bioware IE games (not sure about IWD).
Backgrounds were pre-rendered and container functionality just added on top of it, afaik. Unless the level designer decided to add an container overlay to some visual feature, you wouldn't be able to interact with it.
On the other hand, the level designers probably were less lazy and made most chests, cupboards, etc. interactive.

 

[Rpgsaurus Rex]

NWN's visuals were indeed pretty disappointing. The comic-like item pictures. The sometimes simply surreal level design/tilesets, low poly 3D models, etc...
Coming from IE games, NWN 1 was an eyesore, with the exceptions of some spell effects, at least.

Rpgsaurus Rex:
Infinity Engine wasn't that different in matters of containers, I think, at least the Bioware IE games (not sure about IWD).
Backgrounds were pre-rendered and container functionality just added on top of it, afaik. Unless the level designer decided to add an container overlay to some visual feature, you wouldn't be able to interact with it.
On the other hand, the level designers probably were less lazy and made most chests, cupboards, etc. interactive.

Precisely. IE may have had its flaws, but every chest-looking container was... well, a chest (it may have contained trash, or valuables - didn't matter), not simply a decoration. It fit with the game, even though it's was just visual overlay. I'm ignoring the fact that some furniture was a container while other - arbitrarily - wasn't, you simply had to press TAB to see what's what. Still, it was far less jarring than in NWN, where they added a LOT more 3d visual clutter and a fuckton of chests that were simply there and you couldn't interact with - it was part of "3d visual realism" running through the whole OC (which included the tons of copy-paste NPCs that were added just because) that really was really fucked up from gameplay perspective.

Like you say, it's not really a matter of engine - it's a matter of developers being lazy/deluded/not giving a crap.