Josh Sawyer Q&A Thread

[Roguey]

In MTG there's this concept that there need to be Bad Cards in order for there to be Good Cards. It's the same in RPGs. Distinguishing between bad items and good items and bad builds and good builds is a major part of the gameplay and trying to make everything viable and balanced just means spending a lot of effort to essentially cut out content for the player. It's retarded.

Intentionally including bad things is actually the retarded move.

Monte Cook and his "ivory tower design" fell out of favor well over a decade ago.

 

[luj1]

In MTG there's this concept that there need to be Bad Cards in order for there to be Good Cards. It's the same in RPGs. Distinguishing between bad items and good items and bad builds and good builds is a major part of the gameplay and trying to make everything viable and balanced just means spending a lot of effort to essentially cut out content for the player. It's retarded.

/thread

 

[Beastro]

Sawyer probably never has used any weapon in his life and certainly never killed anything. I never realized how spongy bouncy rats were until I tried killing my first few. Enough force and the stop moving. Stabbing though, well…. They scream a lot so you better pin it down the either smash it dead or use a second weapon to finish it off. I’d usually pin one with a spear then get up close and cut its head off or put my blade through its chomping mouth and impale it through said mouth and back of the skull. They stop moving soon and are dead.

Quicker is a club to it assuming you make contact just right and it’ll be bouncing around with its gut crushed. If you manage to break its spine or crush its head then you’re golden and move on.

Axe or sword or machete. Gotta hit it. Ended up with chopped off tails and they get away, gut wounds and they trail off to appear another day dragging parts of their guts. A few lucky beheadings or cut in half but mostly crushed spines. And a lot of blows bounce sending the rat flying in the air. If you’re quick enough you can bat it out of the park for a home run.

I’ve pinned a few a sawed em in half as well. Overall, drowning was the most effective. I imagine the rats in the concrete jungle take a different tactic as stone and concrete can dull or break your blades. Prolly metal baseball bats and hatchets/mauls/hammers might be better.

Dude, I appreciate you giving your insights here, but try to keep the details to your rat extermination blog thread, please.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

So no account when I was really drunk and I swore I saw the grim reaper dancing like in a rave, Ares on a red horse shouting, Kali dancing smearing rat blood all over her tits, and Lady Death pole dancing while Black eyed peas was playing on my mp3 player and the rat slaughter was ON? Damn pity it was in my head… celt for the slaughter. Surely when I was banned from rodenticide you can see why I became depressed and almost froze in the woods sitting on a log all night. I fell asleep waking up covered in snow. Cruel world. I won’t see a slaughter-partey like that again.

 

[KVVRR]

Sawyer probably never has used any weapon in his life and certainly never killed anything. I never realized how spongy bouncy rats were until I tried killing my first few. Enough force and the stop moving. Stabbing though, well…. They scream a lot so you better pin it down the either smash it dead or use a second weapon to finish it off. I’d usually pin one with a spear then get up close and cut its head off or put my blade through its chomping mouth and impale it through said mouth and back of the skull. They stop moving soon and are dead.

Quicker is a club to it assuming you make contact just right and it’ll be bouncing around with its gut crushed. If you manage to break its spine or crush its head then you’re golden and move on.

Axe or sword or machete. Gotta hit it. Ended up with chopped off tails and they get away, gut wounds and they trail off to appear another day dragging parts of their guts. A few lucky beheadings or cut in half but mostly crushed spines. And a lot of blows bounce sending the rat flying in the air. If you’re quick enough you can bat it out of the park for a home run.

I’ve pinned a few a sawed em in half as well. Overall, drowning was the most effective. I imagine the rats in the concrete jungle take a different tactic as stone and concrete can dull or break your blades. Prolly metal baseball bats and hatchets/mauls/hammers might be better.

 

[Sannom]

Sawyer probably never has used any weapon in his life [...].

You will probably be surprised by this but the guy is relatively famous for being a gun enthusiast. He's more famous for being a bicycle and tiny Italian cars nut, but still, the point stands.

Sawyer deserves a special place in hell for taking my dream concept, pirate RPG, and turning it into the gayest, most autistic, most unfun experience ever.

Aren't pirates one of the gayest demographic out there ?

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Sawyer probably never has used any weapon in his life and certainly never killed anything. I never realized how spongy bouncy rats were until I tried killing my first few. Enough force and the stop moving. Stabbing though, well…. They scream a lot so you better pin it down the either smash it dead or use a second weapon to finish it off. I’d usually pin one with a spear then get up close and cut its head off or put my blade through its chomping mouth and impale it through said mouth and back of the skull. They stop moving soon and are dead.

Quicker is a club to it assuming you make contact just right and it’ll be bouncing around with its gut crushed. If you manage to break its spine or crush its head then you’re golden and move on.

Axe or sword or machete. Gotta hit it. Ended up with chopped off tails and they get away, gut wounds and they trail off to appear another day dragging parts of their guts. A few lucky beheadings or cut in half but mostly crushed spines. And a lot of blows bounce sending the rat flying in the air. If you’re quick enough you can bat it out of the park for a home run.

I’ve pinned a few a sawed em in half as well. Overall, drowning was the most effective. I imagine the rats in the concrete jungle take a different tactic as stone and concrete can dull or break your blades. Prolly metal baseball bats and hatchets/mauls/hammers might be better.

If only my parents saw it that way. That vid just makes you feel good.

 

[9ted6]

In Sawyer's balanced utopia, the broken chair leg you use as an improvised weapon during a bar fight is as useful as a holy weapon forged by the gods themselves.

Wait a minute...a system where nobody is better than anybody else and all power is distributed equally? Isn't there a name for that?

And why does it sound so eerily familiar when Sawyer keeps repeating that real balance has never been tried before?

Yeah, he is a Californian hipster commie.

To think that at one point he was considered a decent writer.
If only we knew.

 

[luj1]

I never heard of him before Pillars

 

[luj1]

Sorry that hurt your feelings Infinitron

Like I said, never heard of him prior to Pillars. And after Pillars I kinda see why

 

[santino27]

In Sawyer's balanced utopia, the broken chair leg you use as an improvised weapon during a bar fight is as useful as a holy weapon forged by the gods themselves.

Wait a minute...a system where nobody is better than anybody else and all power is distributed equally? Isn't there a name for that?

And why does it sound so eerily familiar when Sawyer keeps repeating that real balance has never been tried before?

Yeah, he is a Californian hipster commie.

To think that at one point he was considered a decent writer.
If only we knew.

I don't think he was ever considered a decent writer? He was never in a writing role at all... he was Black Isle's web dev then associate designer then lead designer.

He was thought of as a somewhat based grognard by at least some people though before his decades in california and an apparent overabundance of estrogen turned him into a social media dwelling grandmother with a penchant for sex workers.

 

[Roguey]

I don't think he was ever considered a decent writer? He was never in a writing role at all... he was Black Isle's web dev then associate designer then lead designer.

The writing he did for New Vegas was good. His contributions to the Icewind Dale games were certainly interesting.

 

[luj1]

He was probably a good designer back in the day. Just an awful, awful lead. And it's possible he went crazy in the meantime too.

No one is great all the time, not in sports, not in this industry either. Look at Fargo, Tim, Leo. At least I don't know of any gamedevs who consistently produced cult classics.

 

[9ted6]

I don't think he was ever considered a decent writer? He was never in a writing role at all... he was Black Isle's web dev then associate designer then lead designer.

The writing he did for New Vegas was good.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

He was probably a good designer back in the day. Just an awful, awful lead.

Sawyer has always been an effective lead in the sense of being a project manager who can bring his project to completion in time and within budget. He's just a terrible designer with a horrendous misunderstanding of RPGs, who should have been booted into the role of producer two decades ago.

 

[SpaceWizardz]

The writing he did for New Vegas was good.

Honest Hearts is the only DLC Sawyer did any writing for.
This, as well as most of OWB's bizzare humor, was likely Avellone's doing.

 

[Roguey]

The only thing Avellone regrets from Old World Blues are the penis jokes (too many people on the team liked them and wouldn't let him remove them when he felt the post-penis regret)

 

[Athena]

when he felt the post-penis regret)

Avellone is trans now?

 

[luj1]

Sawyer has always been an effective lead in the sense of being a project manager who can bring his project to completion in time and within budget.

We have vastly different definitions of effective

 

[9ted6]

The writing he did for New Vegas was good.

Honest Hearts is the only DLC Sawyer did any writing for.
This, as well as most of OWB's bizzare humor, was likely Avellone's doing.

Honest Hearts has two things people say are good in terms of writing, the Survivalist and Joshua.

The Survivalist wasn't written by Sawyer. The guy who wrote his entries was Gonzalez who also wrote most of vanilla New Vegas. It blows that Avellone and Sawyer get most of the credit when Gonzalez apparently took Fallout seriously while Sawyer barely did anything and Avellone wanted it to be either a Rick and Morty episode or his philosophy blog, with disastrous results both ways.

While Joshua's pretty well written and it's a wonder Sawyer didn't write him as an aggressive atheist parody of religion like he did with Pentiment he still has light dialogue and his questline is rushed and short. He's alright but he's not amazing, he's just significantly better than whatever Sawyer tried to write in later games.

I don't think Sawyer's a good writer and whatever credit he gets for New Vegas is way overstated in my opinion. His best contributions were the guns.

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

It blows that Avellone and Sawyer get most of the credit when Gonzalez apparently took Fallout seriously while Sawyer barely did anything and Avellone wanted it to be either a Rick and Morty episode or his philosophy blog, with disastrous results both ways.

IIRC he specifically cited Venture Bros as inspiration.

 

[9ted6]

It blows that Avellone and Sawyer get most of the credit when Gonzalez apparently took Fallout seriously while Sawyer barely did anything and Avellone wanted it to be either a Rick and Morty episode or his philosophy blog, with disastrous results both ways.

IIRC he specifically cited Venture Bros as inspiration.

Same idea though. Quirky reddit level humor that isn't funny in between pop culture references and pretending to be smarter than it actually is. Getting one of the Venture Bros VAs to voice one of the scientists likely didn't help them cut back on the Adult Swim shit either.

It's surreal that the army vet struggling to find a reason to live after losing his family and suffering in nuclear fallout and the cartoon scientist computers making nonstop dick jokes are one DLC apart.

 

[Sannom]

IIRC he specifically cited Venture Bros as inspiration.

Wasn't that specifically about Dr. 0 because he had James Urbaniak voicing a mad scientist ?

 

[luj1]

Quirky reddit level humor that isn't funny

This is all over the game

 

[Infinitron]