Incline Chris Avellone Appreciation Station

[Arnust]

Right, good point. Forgot that BJ timestamped everything. I haven't seen THAT many of his inteviews because he has hundreds of them, but I found him pretty open there. Not enough to shittalk, of course.

 

[undecaf]

It was posted in page 94 already, but "repetition is the mother of learning" or how did the saying go.

 

[Arnust]

It was posted in page 94 already, but "repetition is the mother of learning" or how did the saying go.

"You are doing just way too many drugs. I'm outta here."

 

[Joni Odin von Hassenstein]

He said he refuses to play on the easiest setting in any game because it would make him feel like a wimp.

Which he certainly is not.

His character in the video game might have died to the wolves, but in real life he could have taken them.

I have to laugh every time I read your nickname.

 

[Quillon]

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/06/30/the-flare-path-burden-of-command/

 

[Fairfax]

The concept sounds interesting, and "I learned more from this title than any other I worked on" is no small compliment. Don't know anything about the people involved, though.

Before you get excited about MCA, there is also one Alexis Kennedy involved. So it cancels out. Prepare yourself for heavily sanitized versions of war, and forbidden love blossoming on the battlefield.

Can you elaborate? I haven't played any of his games.

 

[Grauken]

So less Panzer General and more Pearl Harbor? Damn, this looked good

 

[Nutria]

A hip and trendy nuBioware Dragon Age writer known for bloated, purple prose and worldbuilding of the kitchen sink school.

They only hired him recently so you can't blame him for Dragon Age yet. Sunless Sea is his only game to be released so far.

He tries very hard to be clever in his writing. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it comes off like a teenage girl trying to be quirky. I don't think he's necessarily a bad writer, but he's not somebody I would ever pick to write about WW2.

 

[LESS T_T]

 

[Lahey]

 

[Goral]

 

[Beastro]

Wut? Virgil was entirely too decent and was fake nasty when evil to be that. I'd think Durance would be more fitting but even his snark was too nice, plus both are too North American/Western European to fit.

Would need a South American or Eastern European Durance, IMO~

 

[Starwars]

Because, newsflash, most people who don't spend their entire days on the Codex views it as being largely whiny and insufferable and not tough and critical.

 

[Beastro]

Because, newsflash, most people who don't spend their entire days on the Codex views it as being largely whiny and insufferable and not tough and critical.

whynotboth.gif

 

[Nutria]

Virgil was like having @RPGCodex as a companion

Wait, you mean in Arcanum you can have a companion who's an alcoholic gopnik? I'm seriously ready to play again.

 

[aratuk]

Didn't Avellone used to have a Codex account? I seem to remember he posted here around the time he left Obsidian.

But it looks like he deleted his account, or all his posts, or something. Did it turn out that the Codex is too edgy for a freelancer?

 

[an Administrator]

Didn't Avellone used to have a Codex account? I seem to remember he posted here around the time he left Obsidian.

But it looks like he deleted his account, or all his posts, or something. Did it turn out that the Codex is too edgy for a freelancer?

His account is still around Chris Avellone

 

[aratuk]

Pleased to be wrong

:mrfussy:

 

[Nutria]

Did it turn out that the Codex is too edgy for a freelancer?

If I was getting waterboarded in GitMo, the last thing I would admit to is posting on the Codex.

 

[Fairfax]

Shane Plays interview:



Another Pathfinder AMA today. You can see all of his replies in his user page.
Answers I found interesting/informative:

There's one non-revealed companion that's interesting because of his outlook (he doesn't fit into a comfortable archetype, which is why I like him), and Nok-Nok is just a plain fun character (the goblins in Pathfinder are a crazy lot). The companion assignments haven't been broken down and assigned yet to my knowledge, so I don't know who's going to be writing who at this time. Still, I have my faves.

That is correct (and you can have romance outside of companions as well, not sure if we confirmed that in the last AMA). We also try and include other relationship arcs as well, not just romance.

There are multiple endings to the game, and even aside from that, your party composition (and alignment) will factor into both the plot and the endings as well, so the replay value is high.

It's pretty faithful, but not every dungeon and quest is laid out in the exact same manner as the AP, we do move some elements around, introduce familiar characters at different points (and re-introduce where appropriate) - so you'll see a lot of hallmarks of the Adventure Path, but you'll still be surprised by some of the content as well.

So far in the writing process, there's been a lot of latitude to develop personalities through dialogue, and my understanding with companions and relationships is that even if alignment is an issue, they still respond to individual choices you've made with them (although alignment does play a big role). Also, companions weigh in to dialogues pretty frequently (and when appropriate - ex: religion, ethics, moral decisions), so they don't silently follow along, they definitely make their feelings known.

I think a lot of sandbox games approach the narrative in the wrong direction (they try to embed a linear narrative in an open-world setting, which doesn't quite mesh). I don't think Kingmaker's original narrative or the additions to the game suffer from that problem, however, and there's a few ways to keep the narrative cohesive - companions (one of the best ways), antagonist reinforcement, and even the kingdom, although the kingdom is only one of these elements.

Note that while we're modifying parts of the adventure and pacing for the computer game, I don't think the Kingmaker original storyline needed "fixing" - there were some limitations on foreshadowing certain elements (and perpetuating certain elements), but I feel we've fixed that in the current narrative.

Also someone (probably a codexer, but I don't recognize the name) asked him to make Planescape: Lost Souls or Planescape: Pariah:

Ha ha ha - well-researched, SnakesPaw. I don't know - I don't think Lost Souls may be appropriate (it was still too tied to the Nameless One story, so I'd be afraid of bleed-over), although doing a Dak'kon-involved PST story would be a lot of fun (I always liked the githzerai).

I think I've quoted this in the thread a couple of times already, but for those who don't know, those were two concepts he had for another Planescape game:

Spoiler

A long time ago, I did kick around the idea of two sequels. One was "Lost Souls," an adventure that allowed the player to experience the events surrounding Torment (both past and future) but the Nameless One wouldn't be in it - it would, however, feature Deionarra, some of the members of the player's first party (Xachariah), Fall-From-Grace, Ravel, Trias, and other major characters and see the Planescape universe from a different perspective. This didn't go much beyond a one-page vision statement, though, and I never submitted it for serious consideration.

One I felt less strongly about (but still liked) was "Planescape: Pariah", which allowed the player to take on the role of Dak'kon and try to unify the githzerai and githyanki, but again, that never went past the vision doc stage.

The reason I never submitted either one was because a direct sequel somehow feels wrong (I feel the game stands on its own, and I don't want to drag a rake through the first game).

I'd be up for another game in the Planescape setting, though. Some of the Planescape mods I've seen for Neverwinter Nights 2 would probably put any ideas I had to shame, though - they're pretty amazing. I know there’s a few guys at work who would also like to do a Planescape game.

Also:

 

[Roguey]

So Avellone's answer to "What does one life matter?" is "It doesn't."

 

[ga♥]

ha ha his reaction when he's called m-c-a, and shane explains that this means "master chris avellone" on rpgcodex

"oh gawd" (breaths out)

hahah

 

[ga♥]

Pretty sad to hear that the whole RPG tabletop market in NA is around 35 milions/year. Considering this, I wonder how they could have turned down the surely (not) generous offer by Brian Fargo to license the Planescape settings.

I also wonder how can Monte Cook (and others as well) raise so much money via kickstarter if the market is so tiny.

Also, MCA should verbally punish anyone who mispronounce his Italian surname.

Anyway nice interview Shane, but you didn't let him reply about his preference about turn-based vs RTwP.

 

[Fairfax]

Pretty sad to hear that the whole RPG tabletop market in NA is around 35 milions/year.

Unfortunately, the industry has been taken over by TCGs and the likes (a process that started in the early 90s):

The whole industry growing, though. RPGs went from $25 million in 2014 to $35 million in 2015.

I wonder how they could turn down the surely generous offer by Brian Fargo to license the Planescape settings with this situation.

I believe that had more to do with Fargo's record than the money involved:

Ha ha. Remember when Fargo announced the Numanuma as the game's setting and said that they tried to negotiate with WoTC on Planescape but were dismissed. And then some wizard's guy shown up and said that there was no any negotiating attempt from inXile at all?

Ah, maybe it's for the better after all. What a fiasco...

The WOTC guys didn't say there was no offer:

It turns out, however, Wizards of the Coast wasn't against the idea of licensing Planescape at all - or so it told me.

"We would absolutely consider licensing out Planescape, or any of our other great D&D IPs, if we were approached with a proposal," Wizards of the Coast told us through its presumably bushy beard.

"We often get proposals and are actively pursuing opportunities to make great digital D&D experiences.

"Brian [Fargo] suggested Baldur's Gate 3 had proven difficult in the past before we regained our digital rights, so, that probably didn't help the situation."

The last quote is just the guy being polite. He's basically saying "we are willing to license Planescape, we just don't want to do business with him". This is because Fargo was Interplay's CEO when Hasbro sued them for unpaid royalties for the first time.

The weird part is that they said Fargo himself brought up the BG3 situation, but that only happened after Fargo left the company. It's possible he fucked that up by not explaining the story correctly and getting the blame for no reason.

 

[ga♥]

Meh, maybe, but we are talking about companies relationship, don't think they hold "grudges" or something like that. I mean its business, and Interplay was in a bad situation at the time.
I think the offer made by Fargo was instead too low (like ridiculously low), and that's all, or they would probably have accepted it.

We can say anything about Fargo but his Interplay, with the d&d rights, published ALL the IE games and this helped a lot to spread RPG tabletops as well (I myself became a D&D player thanks to Baldur's gate 1).

Anything is possible but in the end I believe it was just a matter of money.