Neal Hallford - Krondor Kickstarter petition

[RK47]

Floodgates opening. Shai'hulud.

 

[SCO]

Signed

 

[Johannes]

I wonder how Christmas will affect peoples funding behaviour.

 

[xemous]

good luck

 

[Lyric Suite]

Butthurt dete..., wait:

Ok, butthurt detected.

 

[Hekateras]

I think I'd like to see the predefined character thing again. My experience with customisable characters left me with a meh aftertaste more often than not - at one point, I felt like it was less about telling a story and more about the player's ego-stroking by letting them create the most awesome Mary Sue they could conceive.

Anyone know of a good Let's Play of it?

There is a mind-bogglingly elaborate one by our very own Wyrmlord right here.

I also know one that's unfinished, but took a very fascinating prose form approach to it, effectively making it a mini-novelisation.

 

[FeelTheRads]

You aren't obligated when you sign the petition to do anything. It's purely a petition site.

Yeah, just wanted to be sure I understand the $200 thing correctly, because as others said that's quite a large sum.

Also, regarding the Obsidian folks, feel free to drop a comment into their thread about us, but please don't bash them, and especially not on our behalf. They're really good guys. I've been friends with Chris Avellone for years, and he's supporting our efforts here. I would hope he'd never have his supporters do that sort of thing to us. We're a big creative community, and there's room for all tastes.

Eh, nevermind that. Bashing Obsidian is only done locally. At least for my part.

Anyway, thanks for showing up!

 

[suejak]

BaK is certainly a cool game and was lots of fun at release, but I'm not sure what point there is to a "spiritual successor". It was essentially an interactive novel -- in the era before real cutscenes, BaK had massive blocks of text and dialogue that ran by on autopilot while the player, left with zero control, simply watched.

What exactly are you guys asking for? It wouldn't be the same setting. You're asking for an open-world plot-heavy game with tons of cutscenes, fixed player characters, an improve-through-use skill and experience system, and fights that teleport you to a small turn-based "battleground" map? Sort of an open-world Final Fantasy, really.

I like BaK a lot, but this feels like Kickstarting a "spiritual successor" to Commander Keen. Yeah, Commander Keen was cool and shit, but what the hell do you need a "spiritual successor" for?

 

[made]

Help us gather at least 5,000 signatures of fans who will pledge to either give or raise $200 apiece to go towards the production costs of a "spiritual" sequel to Krondor.

Doesn't this needlessly complicate things?

If you want to gauge whether you can safely set the KS minimum goal at 1mil, this seems a rather poor way to do it.

 

[suejak]

Actually, now that I think about it, BaK was about as "open world" as any SNES Final Fantasy game. It was basically a Final Fantasy game with improve-through-use stats and a first-person perspective.

 

[m_s0]

I like BaK a lot, but this feels like Kickstarting a "spiritual successor" to Commander Keen. Yeah, Commander Keen was cool and shit, but what the hell do you need a "spiritual successor" for?

If it means we'll get a well-written, story-driven game on par with BaK, I'm definitely for the idea. How many of those do we get these days? My biggest concern, aside from this petition thing, is whether they'll be able to deliver that well-written story and how do they plan on going about it. Krondor is out, since they don't have the rights, so assuming Feist is out as well, my main question is who's going to do the writing? I don't see many people paying 200$ upfront for a vague promise if one of the primary reasons behind the original game's success won't have anything to do with this spiritual successor.

 

[Anselmus]

With this and Grimoire we have a shot at spiritual successors to probably the two best RPGs of all time. Sign me up, and dumbfuck suejak while you're at it.

 

[Suchy]

Since BAK, there wasn't a single game, not counting Betrayal in Antara (which had a ton of other problems), that would be so heavily focused on the story, while being almost completely open as well. It was always either focus on the story, or on the open world. Planescape Torment - awesome writing, good story, but the "world" was just a bunch of locations. Same with Fallout. From the other side we have Morrowind - an impressive open world, but the story was laughable. Not a single memorable character.
The closest experience for me were probably Gothic games, even if neither the writing, nor the world size could match BAK. Similar case with Fallout: New Vegas.

I'm all for a Krondor-style gameplay, even with oldschool, pixelated graphics. As long as I get digitized characters with fake beards.

 

[Gozma]

I like BaK for the fight-riddle-explore-fight-riddle-explore cyclic pacing and the prose-graphics. "Story" I don't like or care about much and I'd expect a much better RPG level-uppa system and better combat now with the benefit of hindsight. I don't want to give Hallford false hope if the isn't on that wavelength and he just wants a way to get out a fantasy novel he's had in his head instead of a system he's been grinding out

 

[Kosmonaut]

Jesus Montgomery Christ! Neal Hallford posting on the Codex!

Wyrmlord. Well, maybe I was too pessimistic about the chances of success from a Hallford Kickstarter. But BoK is one of my favorite RPGs, and I also own and enjoyed his book (Swords and Circuitry). So, having the chance of a Krondor spiritual sequel, and then failing because of an unsuccessful KS campaign, would be a real bummer.

 

[mondblut]

BaK is certainly a cool game and was lots of fun at release, but I'm not sure what point there is to a "spiritual successor". It was essentially an interactive novel -- in the era before real cutscenes, BaK had massive blocks of text and dialogue that ran by on autopilot while the player, left with zero control, simply watched.

It was more than interactive novel - it was integral part of the Riftwar saga. Half the charm of it was going to familiar places and meeting up familiar people. It hit a golden spot between games set in modular worlds, where nothing that happens therein matters shit anywhere else in the setting (like all the D&D, Star Trek, Star Wars etc games) save for a maybe occasional cameo mention, and strict novel adaptations (like all those LOTR games throughout history) which universally suck balls as games. BaK had an artistic freedom of being a brand new story, yet firmly grounded in Riftwar canon as a direct sequel to "Darkness at Sethanon".

Hence the Antara mention - I haven't looked at the credits, but it was a carbon copy of everything BaK all over, except with a new setting and unfamiliar characters tucked inside. We all know how it ended up.

 

[nealiios]

Noone said anything about it being a marketing study. This is just a simple "hey, can we even get 5,000 people to bother to go over and sign the petition". If we can't, then it isn't even worth trying to start the formal design and launch the Kickstarter campaign. Just the creation of a serious Kickstarter launch is a lot of time and an modest outlay of cash. This is just a quick barometer for us to see if there's real interest out there.

 

[Gakkone]

No way I can afford $200 but I'd definitely throw more money at this than anything else on Kickstarter so far. BaK is fucking awesome. I've just recently thought about replaying it too.

 

[Suchy]

Noone said anything about it being a marketing study. This is just a simple "hey, can we even get 5,000 people to bother to go over and sign the petition". If we can't, then it isn't even worth trying to start the formal design and launch the Kickstarter campaign. Just the creation of a serious Kickstarter launch is a lot of time and an modest outlay of cash. This is just a quick barometer for us to see if there's real interest out there.

As much as I'd love it to succeed, I think that the $200 shelf is putting off a lot of people, who'd otherwise easily pledge $30 or $50 on Kickstarter. Finding 5000 guys willing to give $200 is going to be much harder than getting 50000 fans to pay $20.

 

[Mother Russia]

Wow, this would be AWESOME!

First, I would 100% say go with allowing players to generate their own characters. It is VERY possible to craft a great story around even player generated characters. Please, just make this happen, and PLEASE, give us a magic system similar to BaK, along with spell research and many many combinations of spells.

Note, I also loved Return to Krondor. It was a fantastic game with a great story. Bear was a villain I loved to hate, and it was soooo satisfying killing him finally. Do you have any idea why a sequel to RtK was never made? Did it not sell well enough?

And yes, BaK was cutting edge when it was released. Graphics looked great at the time, and the cutscenes were amazing.

 

[Kukulkan]

stuff.

I'm playing BaK right now but I don't like the way the party moves in the gameworld. Is there a way to make movement smoother and with less key presses?

 

[Renegen]

I want a Krondor sequel more than any other RPG. Make it happen, that game was special.

 

[InspectorRumpole]

I'd be interested for sure because of the praise the original gets on the Dex..not $200 interested though.
So i guess i shouldn't sign.

 

[Gakkone]

stuff.

I'm playing BaK right now but I don't like the way the party moves in the gameworld. Is there a way to make movement smoother and with less key presses?

You can change the movement and turning speed in the options, but IIRC that doesn't help all that much. You'll to be tapping those keys like crazy.

 

[dnf]

"Thinking only made it worse..."