Editorial What Sawyer Likes

[Infinitron]

Tags: J.E. Sawyer; Obsidian Entertainment; Pillars of Eternity

Josh Sawyer took some time this weekend to respond to another question from his Tumblr via YouTube video.

truewarriorpoet asked: What are some cliched rpg or d&d tropes you are personally tired of seeing, and how do you plan on creating your own vision in PoE so it introduces familiar but unique twists on them?


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I say "respond" and not "answer", because he doesn't really address the guy's questions at all. Instead, the video is a 12 minute overview of everything that Josh Sawyer likes about RPGs and plans to implement in Pillars of Eternity. It's a nice little introduction to his design philosophy.

 

[Duraframe300]

 

[Diablo169]

I wish more developers took the time to do this.

 

[Dorateen]

What a loaded question.

I hate Dungeons & Dragons and RPGs in general... how will you make Pillars of Eternity different so that I might consider sitting down to play, instead of watching a youtube video and making comments on an internet forum?

Ultimately, I suspect these are the people who will have the most consternation about the finished product.

 

[SuicideBunny]

What a loaded question.

I hate Dungeons & Dragons and RPGs in general... how will you make Pillars of Eternity different so that I might consider sitting down to play, instead of watching a youtube video and making comments on an internet forum?

asking for some innovation and not just a rehash of the same old boring tropes is the same as hating the genre now? guess i too must hate rpgs then...

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

What is that stick thing in his hand around 45 seconds? Some fetish gear?

 

[Kz3r0]

guess i too must hate rpgs then...

Who doesn't?
Planescape:Torment was fueled by hatred for D&D tropes by the way.
Nevermind that Pillars of Eternity is just D&D in all but the name.

 

[Dorateen]

Starting out with the premise that RPGs are clichéd and D&D full of tropes is pretty tired. The hobby has been around for 40 years. Everything is a "trope" now according to these people. Elves and Dwarves are tropes, by such definition. They've already lost on that front and many others.

As for hating the genre, again, people who have been playing PnP from the late seventies/early eighties show a healthy respect the RPG hobby and don't throw around buzzwords like tropes, cliché, generic!

 

[felipepepe]

Cliches are only tiresome when it's done half-assed. I.e., BioWare doing the "honored warrior from a foreign culture" for the 100x time, while making that just a backstory for a NPC that is nothing more than a pile of stats with a exotic design. Now give him severe equipment restrictions, a wildly unique set of skills and make the world actually react to him as a foreigner, and you have a fun character to play with.

 

[SuicideBunny]

Starting out with the premise that RPGs are clichéd and D&D full of tropes is pretty tired.

and also true. especially when you take dnd to mean the widely used and often imitated known areas of fr, which i suppose might be the case here.

The hobby has been around for 40 years. Everything is a "trope" now according to these people. Elves and Dwarves are tropes, by such definition. They've already lost on that front and many others.

elves as archery gifted treehuggers are a trope. dwarves living in mines with a penchant for heavy armor and smithing/architecture are a fucking trope. they are both so overdone that they lost nearly all the connections to their mythological origins and became trite mundane shit copied so often that they lost all flavor. that's why everytime somebody breaks from the the mold even if only marginally it becomes immediately notable, like fae in amalur or witcher's nazi elves.
reusing the same old shit is just lazy-ass world building.

As for hating the genre, again, people who have been playing PnP from the late seventies/early eighties show a healthy respect the RPG hobby and don't throw around buzzwords like tropes, cliché, generic!

my group sure does but we started in the late 80ies, so those 10 years apparently make all the difference... anyhoo you don't see those complaints with pnp gamers because pnp is radically different from computer rpgs in that regard. there is such a huge amount of drastically different settings and systems that the genre literally has a game to cover every possible need (including those that shouldn't ever be covered) and building your own shit tailored to your individual needs is also incredibly easy with generic systems.

 

[Volourn]

"Planescape:Torment was fueled by hatred for D&D tropes by the way."

And, love of FF ones!

 

[Nebuchadnezzar]

Why do so many people on the codex think Sawyer is unreasonable? Everything he said in the video seems like it could lead to a good game.

 

[Duraframe300]

Why do so many people on the codex think Sawyer is unreasonable? Everything he said in the video seems like it could lead to a good game.

Because Roguey

 

[Excidium]

"I'd rather talk about things I like than things I don't like" Huh weirdo. I mostly agree with his point of view on everything else.

 

[abnaxus]

Watching paint dry?

 

[Morality Games]

Why do so many people on the codex think Sawyer is unreasonable? Everything he said in the video seems like it could lead to a good game.

The Codex psychologically conditions itself to take the worst possible view of most things. It's the end result of a culture of pessimism.

 

[Decado]

Planescape:Torment was fueled by hatred for D&D tropes by the way.

Aww yeah. It is also an allegory for video gaming in general.

 

[Snozgobler]

What is that stick thing in his hand around 45 seconds? Some fetish gear?

Do you mean the tail of the cat that seems to jump off his lap? You can see its ears on the left near the beginning of the video.i

 

[Karellen]

Why do so many people on the codex think Sawyer is unreasonable? Everything he said in the video seems like it could lead to a good game.

I was wondering about that myself, but when I think about the stuff that he says in this response, I think it’s noticeable that when he talks about ”things he likes about RPGs”, he doesn’t really say much that would be specific about computer RPGs, but rather things that are at least equally or more relevant to PnP RPGs, particularly when it comes to things like game mechanics, encounter design and character creation. Now Sawyer has played a ton of CRPGs and I assume he likes them just fine, so that’s not the issue, but I get the feeling that he thinks of game design a lot in terms of PnP, and more to the point he’d like people to play CRPGs in a way that resembles the way PnP RPGs are played - which, come to think of it, might be where he gets his notions about ”degenerage” gameplay as well.

Well, that whole premise is really something I disagree with, since I tend to think that game design for CRPGs should be approached in a substantially different way than system design for PnP games. Now it’s not wrong of him to have an opinion like that, but what does bug me somewhat is that because of it, he doesn’t say all that much about things that specifically concern computer games, like game structuring, pacing, level and dungeon design and that sort of thing; certainly not in this ”things I want to aspire to and move towards” sense. So that leaves me wondering how much he cares about things like that, and if he’s designing games as computer games first and foremost, keeping in mind all the baggage and challenges and opportunities that come with the medium, or if he looks at computer RPGs as elaborate, tricky DM-less simulacra of PnP RPGs.

 

[Excidium]

You just described what I like about Sawyer.

things that specifically concern computer games, like game structuring, pacing, level and dungeon design and that sort of thing;

That's not specific to computer games at all.

computer RPGs as elaborate, tricky DM-less simulacra of PnP RPGs.

That's right.

 

[Infinitron]

I was wondering about that myself, but when I think about the stuff that he says in this response, I think it’s noticeable that when he talks about ”things he likes about RPGs”, he doesn’t really say much that would be specific about computer RPGs, but rather things that are at least equally or more relevant to PnP RPGs

Roguey Heretical interpretations of scripture!!

Seriously, that doesn't sound like Sawyer to me at all. Quite the opposite.

 

[Karellen]

I was wondering about that myself, but when I think about the stuff that he says in this response, I think it’s noticeable that when he talks about ”things he likes about RPGs”, he doesn’t really say much that would be specific about computer RPGs, but rather things that are at least equally or more relevant to PnP RPGs

Roguey Heretical interpretations of scripture!!

Seriously, that doesn't sound like Sawyer to me at all. Quite the opposite.

Yes, well, I haven't read anywhere close to everything he's ever written, so it could be I'm wrong and there's a big trove of Sawyer-writings about the intricacies of computer game design somewhere and how much he loves thinking and talking about that stuff, but setting this particular video aside (which, it seems to me, is largely about stuff he likes about various PnP RPGs), I think that often when Sawyer talks about CRPG design, it's from the standpoint of things that he wants to change for various reasons, one of which is that he feels that a large portion of players aren't able to grok how it works. Because of that, in the context of this video, I was wondering if there's anything that's specific and unique to CRPGs that he particularly likes and really wants to accomplish.

 

[DraQ]

Cliches are bad when they make shit utterly predictable because they make shit utterly predictable.

Story that can be predicted from the onset is one not worth telling.
This applies to actual stories, as well as settings and so on.

 

[AW8]

What a cute cat!

I wish more developers took the time to do this.

Me too.

 

[Darkforge]

I like how he mentions liking unique characters then gives examples such as a dwarf wizard or a Elf paladin /facepalm. How about coming up with some original classes instead of the trite old Warrior, Wizard, Rogue, Preist