The hammer of heaven blacksmith - The huge hammer of the blacksmith-god Cronner falls on the skulls of your enemies, giving them little chance to stay alive.​

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Lets start with a really critical point. It's easy for me and I will find many friends here with words like, great game needs great gameplay, but the sense of this article is to talk about game mechanics. A critical point when creating an RPG, one that really can cost you half of the players (the one half or the other one...) is the discussion between a single main character and a party. Both have been successfully demonstrated in various titles, but for some it's only a true RPG if they control the classic party, others disagree and say that it's only an RPG if the slip into the role of a single character. Although I like both, my opinion is that slipping into a single character is exactly the sense of role-playing, it's essence. Controlling a party makes it more like a tactical or strategy game than an RPG. Combat, for example, becomes mass-battles. Real time combat games, it also detracts as a party disables any real action. The player becomes a viewer that can only make specific guidelines for the characters to act, but he can not be any of the characters. Especially strange is that there are games you can win although your character (read: you) has died and only his friends go on (like in Dungeon Siege).​

6.) A big part of advancement in the first Geneforge revolved around barred technology, like canisters. Can we expect canisters to make a return in the second one even though they're barred?

Jeff Vogel: Unfortunately, the magical technology that was forbidden will have an irresistible pull for a lot of people. The skill canisters from Geneforge will pop up occasionally. Some Shapers are secretly working very hard to make more of them.

Unlike in Geneforge, however, you won't get most of your skills from canisters. Now there are actual Shapers around to train you.​

Hypnosis - This shadow spell tricks your enemy, and he doesn't consider you the enemy for some time.​

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Tauna​

Location: Random
Race: Mixed
Sex: Female

Background: As a pilgrim fervently devoted to the Goddess, Tauna spends her days wandering the Valley searching for the path to the heroic destiny that she is convinced her mistress has carved out for her.

Attributes:
Strength: 14
Dexterity: 14
Charisma: 8
Intelligence: 15
Willpower: 17
Endurance: 13
Speed: 12

Skills:
Polearm: 12
Music: 4
Nature: 11
Gifts of Goddess: 14​

The School of Nature has not gained its followers at once. As Grodval thought, those spells were to be used by the village sorcerers and good magicians. But, the last ones appeared to be very conservative in everything that was close to the Secret Knowledge and for a long time preferred their old potions and medicaments to the powerful magic of Makosh. With time, many healing and defense skills were evaluated by the priests of the Great Heroes temple, and, bit by bit, this school became as popular as other schools of the Pact.​

On top of that, leveling up doesn't feel important at all. You get three points to use on your four attributes/skills, and that often doesn't seem to do much in terms of extending your power. In many cases, especially with Human and Gladiator classes, you'll just be deciding on which of the two useful skills you want to place those three points in, since you really can do without the class specific skills in those as well. What's worse is that even at low levels, you can find items which augment you better than a level gain! If you find an item that gives a +4 to a skill, you've already boosted yourself beyond the capacity of that level bonus. This starts popping up around Level 5, no less.​

[Deathy] [Briosafreak] How are the vignettes going to be implemented?can you tell us more about them?
[[Troika]Steve] Maybe, and Tim can, maybe.
[TimCain] Each vignette establishes the reason for your party to be in Hommlet.
[TimCain] Therefore, each one gives a quest, your starting quest, which may be easy or hard to finish. We like variety.
[TimCain] Anything else would spoil the fun, I think.
[[Troika]Steve] NEXT ​

3) Character development is an integral part of an RPG. How will this be handled in Space Empires: Starfury? Will there be a crew experience system in addition to the ability to customize your ship?

There are actually 3 levels to the RPG experience in Starfury. First off, there is you as a captain of the ship. You will be able to gain experience and increase in rank. Secondly, there is your crew's experience which will increase and allow you to customize their skills in different areas such as Offensive Targeting, Defensive Maneuvers, Ship Repair, etc. Lastly, your ship will be completely customizable through components that you find or purchase. The components themselves have a large variety of characteristics since they can have random modifiers as well.​