I take it he means setting/tone and not mechanics"Conservative" isn't what I'd call Eternity given all the grognard-angst.
Absolutely - eliminating the weakest links like half-orcs andI take it he means setting/tone and not mechanics"Conservative" isn't what I'd call Eternity given all the grognard-angst.
sticking to a straightforward feudal society, etc..
Besides, the real problem is that you're working with a flawed base. Fantasy shouldn't be 'medieval/renaissance...but with elves and dwarves!'. It should be, well, fantastical.
sticking to a straightforward feudal society, etc..
Actually, detailing the exact socio-econiomic arrangements of society is something that's pretty alien to the spirit of D&D. You might encounter "farmers" and "lords" but there's little idea of their legal obligations and privileges.
Serfs? Tenant farmers? Yeomen? Feudalism? Absolute monarchy? You don't really have a clue.
Fantastical = mundane. In the NWN2 OC (and plenty of other RPG's) there's a graveyard map with hostile zombies raised by a shadow priest. In PS:T, zombies are non-hostile corpses from people who signed up to be raised for labor after death, like organ donors. The latter is both more fantastical and more mundane.What do you mean by "fantastical"? It sounds contrary to J.E. Sawyer's aspie geek "putting things under the microscope" approach.
Nolan is a hack, but that link talks about making something like Batman work in what could ostensibly be our world - not creating a whole new fantasy world. As for genre conventions, some of them can be used in interesting ways and some are just terrible.It is the Christopher Nolan method applied to roleplaying fantasy - flesh out the lore and create "realistic"/detailed explanations for cherished genre conventions.
that link talks about making something like Batman work in what could ostensibly be our world - not creating a whole new fantasy world.
In the NWN2 OC (and plenty of other RPG's) there's a graveyard map with hostile zombies raised by a shadow priest. In PS:T, zombies are non-hostile corpses from people who signed up to be raised for labor after death, like organ donors. The latter is both more fantastical and more mundane.
In the NWN2 OC (and plenty of other RPG's) there's a graveyard map with hostile zombies raised by a shadow priest. In PS:T, zombies are non-hostile corpses from people who signed up to be raised for labor after death, like organ donors. The latter is both more fantastical and more mundane.
More fantastic? Seems about equally fantastic to me.
In the NWN2 OC (and plenty of other RPG's) there's a graveyard map with hostile zombies raised by a shadow priest. In PS:T, zombies are non-hostile corpses from people who signed up to be raised for labor after death, like organ donors. The latter is both more fantastical and more mundane.
More fantastic? Seems about equally fantastic to me.
His argument seems to be that there are settings which are pretty much mundane with occasional appearance of magic and others which are truly fantastic, where magic is taken to amazing extremes. In any case, no comparison between Planescape and Forgotten Realms should conclude that they are equally fantastical.
His argument is only sound when you take these worlds as a whole. Being raised from the dead is a world-wide system which is a regular part of Sigil's ecosystem; being raised from the dead in the Forgotten Realms area we see in the NwN2 OC is a distortion of every day life, one which the Hero is meant to destroy.In the NWN2 OC (and plenty of other RPG's) there's a graveyard map with hostile zombies raised by a shadow priest. In PS:T, zombies are non-hostile corpses from people who signed up to be raised for labor after death, like organ donors. The latter is both more fantastical and more mundane.
More fantastic? Seems about equally fantastic to me.
His argument seems to be that there are settings which are pretty much mundane with occasional appearance of magic and others which are truly fantastic, where magic is taken to amazing extremes. In any case, no comparison between Planescape and Forgotten Realms should conclude that they are equally fantastical.
Of course, but he was talking about a specific, out-of-context example, not about the worlds in their totality. Both examples involve people being raised from the dead, and that is their sole "fantastic" element that they both share.
In the NWN2 OC (and plenty of other RPG's) there's a graveyard map with hostile zombies raised by a shadow priest. In PS:T, zombies are non-hostile corpses from people who signed up to be raised for labor after death, like organ donors. The latter is both more fantastical and more mundane.
More fantastic? Seems about equally fantastic to me.
His argument seems to be that there are settings which are pretty much mundane with occasional appearance of magic and others which are truly fantastic, where magic is taken to amazing extremes. In any case, no comparison between Planescape and Forgotten Realms should conclude that they are equally fantastical.
Of course, but he was talking about a specific, out-of-context example, not about the settings in their totality. Both examples involve people being raised from the dead, and that is their sole "fantastic" element that they both share.
Actually, the NWN2 example mentions a "shadow priest" which sounds more fantastic, but if he'd mentioned the Dustmen that would be alleviated perhaps.
There's nothing conservative about this.I think people would call it 'conservative' based more on the laser focus on balance,
What does being experimental involve?and the apparent disinterest in being experimental,
You're contradicting two posts made on this very page, yes.But maybe I'm misreading things.
I found another example of architecturally unsound arches that break game immersion.
Though I suppose PoE is to TBH what New Vegas is to Van Buren.Josh said:When I came to Black Isle, the majority of the studio was working on Planescape: Torment. I was the webmaster for that project, but I desperately wanted to work in development as a designer. I had spent a huge amount of personal time in the 90s playing 2nd Edition AD&D in the Forgotten Realms. Working on Icewind Dale was a dream come true. Yeah, the game had a smaller story focus, and yeah, it didn't have companions, and yeah, and was linear and dungeon-focused, but I was making a real AD&D video game in the Forgotten Realms.
Icewind Dale II is the first game I was credited as lead designer on, but I was the lead designer on TBH first. I felt that the Dalelands, bordering on the Moonsea, presented a cool subsection of the Realms and a crossroads of cultures that would be interesting to explore. We could build a personal story, focused on how you fatefully intersected the life of someone hell-bent on doing something crazy. Like many Realms adventures, this wasn't a world-shattering event, but something locally catastrophic, like Moander appearing near a town and devouring a huge swath of the landscape. It's just one of those crazy Realms stories where bands of adventurers and the Cult of the Dragon start throwing fireballs and leveling villages while the townsfolk run for cover.
Some people have suggested that I hate high fantasy or want to subvert high fantasy. Neither of these are really true. I just don't like how most stories handle high fantasy: both too seriously and not seriously enough. Too seriously in the sense that a lot of fantasy conventions are considered so sacred that you can't touch them (or even question them). Not seriously enough in the sense that the scenarios and the characters don't feel like they tackle the obvious questions raised by the settings they're placed in.
As an example, the Red Wizards of Thay (an FR magical organization/magocracy) underwent a transformation between 2nd Ed. and 3E. They became a "kinder, gentler" trading nation forming magical mercantile enclaves in lands that would let them in. The thing is, 2nd Ed./3E Red Wizards probably look pretty weird to Cormyreans and Dalesmen. They shave their heads (including the women), speak a different language, and have a lot of magical tattoos. They're also darker-skinned. After a few centuries of being regarded as pariahs everywhere west of the River Sur, they show up in these places and are doing business -- questionable business -- in broad daylight.
The FR designers did something interesting in shifting their MO between 2nd Ed. and 3E. The not interesting thing to do (IMO) with that shift as a scenario or story designer would be to have a pack of bad guy Thayans in an enclave with the good guy locals saying, "Those darn Thayans are up to something, please help us, heroes." I was intrigued by the idea that a Thayan enclave could contain a "new guard" of diplomatic Red Wizards and an "old guard" of fireball-hurling hardasses who aren't allowed (or are discouraged from going) outside. Some of the new guard genuinely want to mend fences. Others simply want to use it as a way to re-establish safe power centers and observation posts in lands where they previously would have been killed on sight.
The new guard use concealing/lightening makeup, don wigs, and wear "western" clothing to fit in. The old guard chafes at having to conceal their heritage and suffers under the jeers and slurs of locals if they dare to appear in public. The new guard speaks with good and proper "Common" grammar and pronunciation, not stumbling over foreign sounds and linguistic concepts. I thought it would create a more interesting and nuanced relationship between the Thayans, the Dalesman, and those who interacted with them, lending sympathy to the traditionally "villainous" and creating a more agonizing struggle between the sub-factions of the Thayans.
An old evil wizard who strokes his beard and cackles as he unleashes chain lightning on random townsfolk isn't particularly sympathetic. But suppose he were a veteran Red Wizard who watched his fellows succumb over the years in service to the zulkirs and was forced to "step aside" as young diplomats smooth talked their way into trade relationships with their former enemies. He has to endure the insults of locals, hear them mock his clothing, his pronunciation, his skin, his culture. And when he expresses his frustration to his new (younger) "superiors", he's treated like an anachronism, an old artillery cannon left to rust and rot on a forgotten battlefield. That dude may still wind up casting chain lightning on townsfolk, but if we weave a compelling story around him, the player should feel that there's more to him than that.
I've been rambling here a bit but let me get back to the main point: The Black Hound wasn't really *~ sUbVeRsIvE ~* "this ain't your daddy's RPG!" fantasy. It had elven ruins and fire genasi and Ilmaterian paladins and Maztican sorcerers and crypts full of undead -- all the stuff that made the Forgotten Realms the crazy blend of hardass adventurer-heavy, gods-mess-with-things, cults-and-dracoliches-under-this-rock D&D fantasy it always has been. I, and I think we all, just tried to approach the world with open eyes, asking, "Okay, so let's suppose all of this stuff about the Realms is true. What does that really mean for how the people in it live their lives?" It made the world more dark and grim, and sometimes that consideration wound up bucking convention, but we didn't set out to invert fantasy conventions just for the sake of doing it.
I regret that the team wasn't able to complete The Black Hound, and not just because of the time and passion we all invested in it. Some of my best tabletop RPG (and CRPG) memories come out of the Forgotten Realms. Huge, crazy, "how many more Volo's Guides can there be?" Forgotten Realms. I think those scenarios were memorable because the DMs/designers made compelling scenarios and the players gave a damn about each other and what was going on. If you take fantasy for granted, yeah, no one's going to get much out of it. I don't think we took anything for granted. We had an opportunity to make something that celebrated high fantasy without being enslaved by its conventions. In retrospect, there are a bunch of personal design choices I look back on and cringe at, but I don't regret the time I spent on it at all. When you enjoy the process of making something that much, it's hard to consider it time wasted. We had a lot of fun while it lasted.
a crummy first person shooter?Though I suppose PoE is to TBH what New Vegas is to Van Buren
The Black Hound would have been Josh's FR fan-fic.
Josh said:When I came to Black Isle, the majority of the studio was working on Planescape: Torment. I was the webmaster for that project, but I desperately wanted to work in development as a designer. I had spent a huge amount of personal time in the 90s playing 2nd Edition AD&D in the Forgotten Realms. Working on Icewind Dale was a dream come true. Yeah, the game had a smaller story focus, and yeah, it didn't have companions, and yeah, and was linear and dungeon-focused, but I was making a real AD&D video game in the Forgotten Realms.
Icewind Dale II is the first game I was credited as lead designer on, but I was the lead designer on TBH first. I felt that the Dalelands, bordering on the Moonsea, presented a cool subsection of the Realms and a crossroads of cultures that would be interesting to explore. We could build a personal story, focused on how you fatefully intersected the life of someone hell-bent on doing something crazy. Like many Realms adventures, this wasn't a world-shattering event, but something locally catastrophic, like Moander appearing near a town and devouring a huge swath of the landscape. It's just one of those crazy Realms stories where bands of adventurers and the Cult of the Dragon start throwing fireballs and leveling villages while the townsfolk run for cover.
Some people have suggested that I hate high fantasy or want to subvert high fantasy. Neither of these are really true. I just don't like how most stories handle high fantasy: both too seriously and not seriously enough. Too seriously in the sense that a lot of fantasy conventions are considered so sacred that you can't touch them (or even question them). Not seriously enough in the sense that the scenarios and the characters don't feel like they tackle the obvious questions raised by the settings they're placed in.
As an example, the Red Wizards of Thay (an FR magical organization/magocracy) underwent a transformation between 2nd Ed. and 3E. They became a "kinder, gentler" trading nation forming magical mercantile enclaves in lands that would let them in. The thing is, 2nd Ed./3E Red Wizards probably look pretty weird to Cormyreans and Dalesmen. They shave their heads (including the women), speak a different language, and have a lot of magical tattoos. They're also darker-skinned. After a few centuries of being regarded as pariahs everywhere west of the River Sur, they show up in these places and are doing business -- questionable business -- in broad daylight.
The FR designers did something interesting in shifting their MO between 2nd Ed. and 3E. The not interesting thing to do (IMO) with that shift as a scenario or story designer would be to have a pack of bad guy Thayans in an enclave with the good guy locals saying, "Those darn Thayans are up to something, please help us, heroes." I was intrigued by the idea that a Thayan enclave could contain a "new guard" of diplomatic Red Wizards and an "old guard" of fireball-hurling hardasses who aren't allowed (or are discouraged from going) outside. Some of the new guard genuinely want to mend fences. Others simply want to use it as a way to re-establish safe power centers and observation posts in lands where they previously would have been killed on sight.
The new guard use concealing/lightening makeup, don wigs, and wear "western" clothing to fit in. The old guard chafes at having to conceal their heritage and suffers under the jeers and slurs of locals if they dare to appear in public. The new guard speaks with good and proper "Common" grammar and pronunciation, not stumbling over foreign sounds and linguistic concepts. I thought it would create a more interesting and nuanced relationship between the Thayans, the Dalesman, and those who interacted with them, lending sympathy to the traditionally "villainous" and creating a more agonizing struggle between the sub-factions of the Thayans.
An old evil wizard who strokes his beard and cackles as he unleashes chain lightning on random townsfolk isn't particularly sympathetic. But suppose he were a veteran Red Wizard who watched his fellows succumb over the years in service to the zulkirs and was forced to "step aside" as young diplomats smooth talked their way into trade relationships with their former enemies. He has to endure the insults of locals, hear them mock his clothing, his pronunciation, his skin, his culture. And when he expresses his frustration to his new (younger) "superiors", he's treated like an anachronism, an old artillery cannon left to rust and rot on a forgotten battlefield. That dude may still wind up casting chain lightning on townsfolk, but if we weave a compelling story around him, the player should feel that there's more to him than that.
I've been rambling here a bit but let me get back to the main point: The Black Hound wasn't really *~ sUbVeRsIvE ~* "this ain't your daddy's RPG!" fantasy. It had elven ruins and fire genasi and Ilmaterian paladins and Maztican sorcerers and crypts full of undead -- all the stuff that made the Forgotten Realms the crazy blend of hardass adventurer-heavy, gods-mess-with-things, cults-and-dracoliches-under-this-rock D&D fantasy it always has been. I, and I think we all, just tried to approach the world with open eyes, asking, "Okay, so let's suppose all of this stuff about the Realms is true. What does that really mean for how the people in it live their lives?" It made the world more dark and grim, and sometimes that consideration wound up bucking convention, but we didn't set out to invert fantasy conventions just for the sake of doing it.
I regret that the team wasn't able to complete The Black Hound, and not just because of the time and passion we all invested in it. Some of my best tabletop RPG (and CRPG) memories come out of the Forgotten Realms. Huge, crazy, "how many more Volo's Guides can there be?" Forgotten Realms. I think those scenarios were memorable because the DMs/designers made compelling scenarios and the players gave a damn about each other and what was going on. If you take fantasy for granted, yeah, no one's going to get much out of it. I don't think we took anything for granted. We had an opportunity to make something that celebrated high fantasy without being enslaved by its conventions. In retrospect, there are a bunch of personal design choices I look back on and cringe at, but I don't regret the time I spent on it at all. When you enjoy the process of making something that much, it's hard to consider it time wasted. We had a lot of fun while it lasted.
Though I suppose PoE is to TBH what New Vegas is to Van Buren.
O wonder how much of such buildings we get in new Torment.I found another example of architecturally unsound arches that break game immersion.