Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity [BETA RELEASED, GO TO THE NEW THREAD]

[suejak]

That's not what larp means, you dumb fuck.

 

[Hormalakh]

So I've been thinking about Barbarians. I wrote a post in the Obsidian forums. Wanted y'alls perspective.

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/63149-barbarians-inspiration-and-mechanics/

Spoiler

I've been thinking about the barbarian class a lot since the beginning of this whole kickstarter and they, like monks, have always rubbed me the wrong way. I decided to read a little about the history of barbarians as well as previous PnP implementations of the "class."

From a historical perspective, barbarian as a term has, except for a few notable exceptions, been used as a pejorative by different civilizations (mainly the Greek) to describe a savage outsider. Many of these outsiders were, of course, not savages nor were they bloodthirsty raging fighters. A more complete description can be found on wikipedia.

Spoiler

Reading through the history of the term barbarian, a few poignant points struck out to me for which I will use as starting points for creating a more interesting barbarian class.

1- The Ancient Greek word barbaros was an antonym for politēs, "citizen", from polis "city-state"...Plato rejected the Greek–barbarian dichotomy as a logical absurdity on just such grounds: dividing the world into Greeks and non-Greeks told one nothing about the second group ...

2- Eventually the term found a hidden meaning by Christian Romans through the folk etymology of Cassiodorus. He stated the word barbarian was "made up of barba (beard) and rus (flat land); for barbarians did not live in cities, making their abodes in the fields like wild animals".

3- A few contexts in the Chinese classics romanticize or idealize barbarians, comparable to the western noble savage construct.

From a gaming perspective, generally speaking, barbarians have always just been considered some sort of "raging fighter with low intellect" and seem pretty railroaded into a very narrow niche class. In fact, an earlier poll on this site singled the barbarian class as the least interesting for players to start with. Generally, barbarians are raging machines with d12 hit-dice, and pretty much always played as a low intelligence class. It is easy to see why such characters are rarely interesting to play and even less interesting to role-play.

From this it seems to me that barbarians should not continue to be pigeonholed into such trite stereotypes, nor should they be known as just a "raging warrior with d12 hit-dice." Rather, the barbarian should embrace his/her description and the designers should find interesting mechanics for the barbarian. I have detailed a few below.

The Barbarian Class
The barbarian is ultimately a person from a tribe or group of peoples outside of what is known as "modern civilization." This does not mean that barbarians are ruthless savages, unintelligent, or uncultured. Rather they are of the disenfranchised groups whose culture has not become the norm. In city-states like the Free Palatinate of Dyrwood or Vailian republics, these people are always considered outsiders. However, barbarians have lived a life as outsiders and know the value of culture and tradition. They are thus welcomed into smaller villages and tribes as they show these people the respect that others do not.

Similarly, because of the lives that they have lived without the "comforts" of modern civilization, many barbarians are hardy people. They are hard-working, many of them are intelligent, and above all else, they value their communities.

Skill bonuses and maluses:

1- Barbarians do not know the common tongue. As such, they have difficulty communicating with the public of the modern city-states. They are generally looked down upon by people who live within cities. On the other hand, they are well-versed in languages outside of the common tongue (player gets to choose which language). Don't know common. Knows two non-common languages.

2- Hit dice. Because of their hardy lifestyles, barbarians are generally healthier and live longer than than their city cousins. Hit dice gets a bonus.

3- Barbarians because they are outsiders get very severe reactions from people. If they gain favor with factions, their reputation increases faster than normal. If they lose favor, their reputation decreases faster than normal. They always start with low reputations inside cities. They always have higher reputations in outlying tribes/villages.

4- Barbarians have used weapons to defend their communities from outside invaders. As such they have skill with certain tools that have been used as weapons. (Specifics here probably should be detailed when more is known about the weapons) These weapons are most likely tribal weapons like the spear, the hand-made axe, and bows. Perhaps some have skill with farming tools and peasant tools as they have seen these used.

5- Barbarians utilize their tribal communities and the ways of the tribes effectively. They will have bonuses that deal with utilizing such communal skills. For example, it could be possible for them to become extremely defensive of their party because they begin to see them as part of their family. So, if any of them get severely injured, barbarians defend them zealously as they would their own kin.

This is obviously a very rough introductory sketch. I just think that it's a shame to continue the stereotype that all barbarians are supposed to be these "savages" that don't know anything and are dumb fighters. Expanding the class and allowing room for barbarians to be played in a variety of ways makes the class much more interesting and much more worthwhile.

Let me know your own thoughts on where the barbarians should go. What sort of mechanics they should have and shouldn't have.

in response to the point of the thread and more details

Spoiler

I would too [want barbarians out and "beserkers" in]. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem like it will happen. I think -to start- just the class name "barbarian" is sort of silly. It's a class named after a pejorative! It's a class named after stereotypes, generalizations, and just base idiocy. This was then furthered by the concept of "Conan the barbarian."

This is the whole point of my thread. If barbarians are (unfortunately) in, then let's take a look at these guys once more. Let's not continue to feed into the cliches and base stereotypes. How can we move away from the tired old "barbarian" class and really make "barbarians" proud that they are barbarians?

One more thing: Conan was ONE barbarian. What about all the other types of barbarians? Why not just make a "Conan" class. This whole idea that Conan is the only kind of barbarian we can have is even beyond railroading. It's catering one singular character and creating game mechanics just to cater to that singular character.

 

[Blaine]

Everyone seems to have forgotten the best reward for killing enemies in Fallout: Their horrible squeals/screams/groans of anguish, death animations and gore spraying across half the screen as you murder them in any of dozens of possible ways.

If that doesn't make you happy, then I don't know what will.

 

[hiver]

So I've been thinking about Barbarians. I wrote a post in the Obsidian forums. Wanted y'alls perspective.

Eh, not bad, as a starter.
The problem is that its a fighter class and that games most often do not support any other gameplay.
So... there is not much you can do with a fighter class. Especially seeing how there is already one such class.
The raging, berserking is of course a left over trope from various nordic invaders.
And if you remove that... its very hard to distinguish this fighter class from the regular one.

Though these few non-combat additions you mentioned would be a good addition.

Providing a game supports such skills i would invent something like Barbarian lore - nature lore, outdorsman capabilities, increased physical abilities while in nature and things like that.
Or a whole subclass of barbarian shaman, maybe.

 

[Cosmo]

So I've been thinking about Barbarians. I wrote a post in the Obsidian forums. Wanted y'alls perspective.

You forget the main thing : every fantasy barbarian derives from Conan, who in turn represents a very specific (and recent) take on the "noble savage" construct.
Barbarians were implemented in RPGs because basically people wanted to play Conan, and they didn't care if that class was a very similar ofshoot of the warrior class.

 

[Captain Shrek]

So I've been thinking about Barbarians. I wrote a post in the Obsidian forums. Wanted y'alls perspective.

And yet you forget the main thing : fantasy barbarians derive from Conan, who in turn represents a very specific take on the "noble savage" construct.
Barbarians were implemented in RPGs because basically people wanted to play Conan, and they didn't care if that class was a very similar ofshoot of the warrior class.

Absolutely.

Moreover, other classes are more "like" Professions. barbarians amongst other few stand out that it is not a profession but rather an epithet.

 

[DraQ]

No, mechanics are why we have those. The economy isn't fun when it's broken. Resource management is important for a fun game. XP is completely arbitrary, abstract meta-concept in the first place. It's a good example of why discussing so-called "realism" is warped - the realism and feeling of "immersion" happens through the abstractions, not because you make your mechanics as life-like as possible. It's basically why DraQ is so horribly wrong.

You still cannot into abstraction.

Abstraction isn't when you take something completely off the wall.
Abstraction is when you manage to adequately convey how something works, using the least amount of details - "adequately" being fluid term, what's adequate for grand strategy may not work when you're up close and in control of every action.

At least some amount of realism is necessary in a game like RPG, because in order for our adventure to be meaningful and relateable, resulting in fun it needs to conform with our expectation of how stuff should work. Arbitrary, off the wall mechanics generally creates ripple effects in same way phlebotinum in fiction does, even if it works in given spot, you have no guarantee it won't break this expected logic somewhere else.

As for XPs, they aren't some off the wall mechanics injected to make more fun. They are an abstraction of *something*, namely they are an attempt to quantify what makes a veteran perform differently from a noob. They are much more abstract mechanics than use-based, and thus need to be regulated in more top-down manner.

Kill XPs are shit, because they mix highly abstract high-level measure with low-level mechanics to govern it. Problems ensue.

 

[Grunker]

You still don't get it. Conveyance and the achievement of realism is only important in so far as it doesn't break the fun. It's a nice thing to accomplish but it's not at all a necessity like you make it out to be. I don't care about realism if it causes problems for the mechanics. And even with totally abstract mechanics - mechanics that are nothing like real life - conveyance of the real world is achievable anyway. The perfect example here is Sid Meier's Civilization. It's completely and utterly abstract. None of the mechanics even remotely resemble real life, except in the graphical design. Any resemblance is extremely superficial. Yet it is still a game praised for its "realism" and many criticize stuff like Archer killing Tank because they've been convinced by Civ's illusion that the game attempts realism. But it doesn't, not even in the slightest bit. It's just an example of how abstract stuff can be. Civilization prioritized fun mechanics - not your "least abstraction possible" bullshit.

The vision you're speaking of is called 360 degree realism in game-design. It's the philosophy that game design should strive to be as close to reality as possbile. That abstractions are something we use when it's impossible to implement reality completely, and when we use them, they must be as small as possible - with as little distance between themselves and reality as possible. In other words, abstractions must be as small as possible and never get in the way of the realistic vision. And it's widely ackknowledged as bullshit, precisely because the systems that achieved the nearest possbile 360 degree realism weren't necessarily accepted by users as more realistic than other systems. In fact, 360 degree realism systems broke the immersion of players more than the abstract systems, because players suddenly started noticing the details that were unrealistic because they stuck out.

Essentially, this:

Abstraction is [...] using the least amount of detail

Is a complete fallacy.

And so we come back to the debate on XP. Kill XP suck, as we both agree. Usage XP - your homeboy - sucks even more, for reasons we've discussed countless times, and unlike you I'm not ready to compromise on the fun just because the abstraction "makes more sense" to you. Quest XP simply has no problems, and it solves all the problems we need solved. There is no reason to start complicated designs and have long discussions on how to "fix" usage XP according to you, because we already have a model that works perfectly.

It's fine that you have some pet peeve with 360 degree realism. Really, congrats. But making the achievement of realism in RPG systems seem like a general rule for system design because you like it is just bullshit.

(Mrowak, the above should also answer your points)

 

[Captain Shrek]

You still don't get it. Conveyance and the achievement of realism is only important in so far as it doesn't break the fun. It's a nice thing to accomplish but it's not at all a necessity like you make it out to be. I don't care about realism if it causes problems for the mechanics. And even with totally abstract mechanics - mechanics that are nothing like real life - conveyance of the real world is achievable anyway. The perfect example here is Sid Meier's Civilization. It's completely and utterly abstract. None of the mechanics even remotely resemble real life, except in the graphical design. Any resemblance is extremely superficial. Yet it is still a game praised for its "realism" and many criticize stuff like Archer killing Tank because they've been convinced by Civ's illusion that the game attempts realism. But it doesn't, not even in the slightest bit. It's just an example of how abstract stuff can be. Civilization prioritized fun mechanics - not your "least abstraction possible" bullshit.

The vision you're speaking of is called 360 degree realism in game-design. It's the philosophy that game design should strive to be as close to reality as possbile. That abstractions are something we use when it's impossible to implement reality completely, and when we use them, they must be as small as possible - with as little distance between themselves and reality as possible. In other words, abstractions must be as small as possible and never get in the way of the realistic vision. And it's widely ackknowledged as bullshit, precisely because the systems that achieved the nearest possbile 360 degree realism weren't necessarily accepted by users as more realistic than other systems. In fact, 360 degree realism systems broke the immersion of players more than the abstract systems, because players suddenly started noticing the details that were unrealistic because they stuck out.

Essentially, this:

Abstraction is [...] using the least amount of detail

Is a complete fallacy.

And so we come back to the debate on XP. Kill XP suck, as we both agree. Usage XP - your homeboy - sucks even more, for reasons we've discussed countless times, and unlike you I'm not ready to compromise on the fun just because the abstraction "makes more sense" to you. Quest XP simply has no problems, and it solves all the problems we need solved. There is no reason to start complicated designs and have long discussions on how to "fix" usage XP according to you, because we already have a model that works perfectly.

It's fine that you have some pet peeve with 360 degree realism. Really, congrats. But making the achievement of realism in RPG systems seem like a general rule for system design because you like it is just bullshit.

(Mrowak, the above should also answer your points)

Totally this.

EDIT: Just for added emphasis:

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...zo-realism-in-video-games.69743/#post-1978813

 

[imweasel]

Kill XPs are shit, because they mix highly abstract high-level measure with low-level mechanics to govern it. Problems ensue.

And so we come back to the debate on XP. Kill XP suck, as we both agree.

Well, kill xp would suck for Deus Ex and for Bloodlines... but they are also totally different from the IE games.

Give some examples of great IE style games (tactical and strategical combat based with loads of loot) that only used quest xp (and not quest + combat xp).

 

[Grunker]

Any situation that could be handled diplomatically and yielded less XP and loot when that was done. Now it's your turn. Name one issue if the IE games had had quest XP.

 

[imweasel]

Any situation that could be handled diplomatically and yielded less XP and loot when that was done.

In the IE games the diplomatic solution sometimes gave you more xp than a violent solution and you got some great (better) loot when you turned in the quest.

The IE games used a combat + quest xp system. It's still your turn.

 

[Grunker]

Any situation that could be handled diplomatically and yielded less XP and loot when that was done.

In the IE games the diplomatic solution sometimes gave you more xp than a violent solution and you got some great (better) loot when you turned in the quest.

The IE games used a combat + quest xp system. It's still your turn.

No it's not. You haven't explained what the problem would be if the IE-games used just a quest XP system. What you state could be achieved just as easily in a system with only quest XP.

 

[Infinitron]

You reached the XP cap way too easily in Baldur's Gate, so anything that reduced your XP flow in that game would be an improvement.
It makes more sense to remove kill XP, since it's grindable (Josh Sawyer would call it "systemic").
It also encourages players to go out there, explore and find quests, which is what they should be doing.

 

[Lancehead]

If it wasn't a party based game, there's no need for XP and character levels to exist in the first place.

 

[suejak]

My only problem with removing combat XP is that it incentivizes pure questing. This gives the developer so much power over your experience. Gone will be the days when it made some sense to just go looking around -- unless they reward for exploration, as well.

Basically, they need to deincentivize grinding without deincentivizing other cool aspects of RPGs like Baldur's Gate.

 

[Mrowak]

In fact, 360 degree realism systems broke the immersion of players more than the abstract systems, because players suddenly started noticing the details that were unrealistic because they stuck out.

What you metioned here is critical problem with "suspension of disbelief", which indeed arises when too many real life elements trump over abstract ill-thought one, whereas exactly those abstract bits were the main carriers of gameplay/story.

It's like talling the tale of Hensel and Grettel all the while being preoccupied by implausibility of a house made of candy and trying to come up with possible theories which totaly devastates the point of the story itself.

I agree that mechanics are about abstraction i.e. illusion of the thing they are trying to depict. It is when they fail in this endeavour that we get the result that is very similar to what you described, only from the other side.

Again, I was not strictly talking about realism. Rather, *what* the mechanics is trying to depict. Because at the other hand of the spectrum we have mechanics trumping all - them becoming means to itself rather than achieving "fun" so to speak. Well unless someone enjoys grind, linear dungeon design, and "gameplay" involving nothing but dice rolls. Some people seriously consider it fun, you know (look at MMOs)?

And so we come back to the debate on XP. Kill XP suck, as we both agree. Usage XP - your homeboy - sucks even more, for reasons we've discussed countless times, and unlike you I'm not ready to compromise on the fun just because the abstraction "makes more sense" to you. Quest XP simply has no problems, and it solves all the problems we need solved. There is no reason to start complicated designs and have long discussions on how to "fix" usage XP according to you, because we already have a model that works perfectly.

I can agee with that. I always claimed that KISS is the answer to all our problems...

Spoiler

And by that I mean: Keep It Simple Stupid.

Seriously :no homo:

Although the usage XP idea is still appealing. I loved how it worked in Betrayal at Krondor... until I learned to break the system.

 

[Bony]

If it wasn't a party based game, there's no need for XP and character levels to exist in the first place.

o_O

 

[Mrowak]

If it wasn't a party based game, there's no need for XP and character levels to exist in the first place.

o_O

Yeah, TB combatfags gonna fag.

 

[imweasel]

Any situation that could be handled diplomatically and yielded less XP and loot when that was done.

In the IE games the diplomatic solution sometimes gave you more xp than a violent solution and you got some great (better) loot when you turned in the quest.

The IE games used a combat + quest xp system. It's still your turn.

No it's not. You haven't explained what the problem would be if the IE-games used just a quest XP system. What you state could be achieved just as easily in a system with only quest XP.

Well, if that is what you think then give me an example where that is true. You can theorize all you want, I would like to see proof that quest only xp is better than quest + combat xp in an IE style game. I am still waiting for your answer.

 

[imweasel]

You reached the XP cap way too easily in Baldur's Gate, so anything that reduced your XP flow in that game would be an improvement.
It makes more sense to remove kill XP, since it's grindable (Josh Sawyer would call it "systemic").
It also encourages players to go out there, explore and find quests, which is what they should be doing.

It wasn't really grindable imo because of a) the xp cap and b) creatures did not respawn (not notably at least).

If you wanted to find quests (because you need xp) then you visited an area, receiving combat xp did not stop you from doing so.

 

[Lancehead]

If it wasn't a party based game, there's no need for XP and character levels to exist in the first place.

o_O

Character levels are an unnecessary layer between actions and rewards. Just give appropriate rewards (stat points, loot etc) based on how quests are completed; can also done (mostly through loot) for actions that are not part of any quests.

 

[Infinitron]

If you wanted to find quests (because you need xp) then you visited an area, receiving combat xp did not stop you from doing so.

It's not about what you want to do. It's about what you have to do. This isn't a Bethesda LARP sandbox type of game that's supposed to "validate every playstyle".

It wasn't really grindable because of a) the xp cap

This is some twisted logic, bro. You're saying XP isn't grindable because you can grind it until you reach the XP cap?

b) creatures did not respawn (not notably at least).

They most certainly did.

 

[imweasel]

If you wanted to find quests (because you need xp) then you visited an area, receiving combat xp did not stop you from doing so.

It's not about what you want to do. It's about what you have to do. This isn't a Bethesda LARP sandbox type of game.

Wut?

If I need xp then I have to find xp, that is what I have to do... right?

 

[Infinitron]

If I need xp then I have to find xp, that is what I have to do... right?

Yes, and if you can grind XP from monsters, the game is deincentivizing you from exploring new territory and solving quests. What is so hard to understand?

Joined: Monday

Oh.