Vapourware Realms Beyond: Ashes of the Fallen - Chaos Chronicles reborn and dead again

[thesheeep]

I for one have great optimism!
If golden babies can fly, why shouldn't this?

 

[JarlFrank]

When it comes to classes, what can we expect? The basic ones? Prestige classes? Multi classing? Dual Classing? Kits? I understand if it's still early. I'm just interested in the game and curious.

Oh, while I'm at it: vancian magic or no? I've seen games say D&D and not go the vancian route.

What can we expect in power level. Approximately how high leveled will the party be by end game?

About the type of story: Is it a more save the world type scenario, or is it more focused on your party?

As for the classes, we got 8 basic classes available for the player: barbarian, warrior, wizard, paladin, rogue, druid, ranger, cleric.

We also have prestige classes you can level into at higher levels: Arcane Archer, Arcane Trickster, Archmage, Assassin, Blackguard, Cerebremancer, Dragon Disciple, Duelist, Dwarven Defender, Eldritch Knight, Elocater, Hierophant, Horizon Walker, Loremaster, Metamind, Mystic Theurge, Psion Uncarnate, Psionic Fist, Pyrokineticist, Shadowdancer, Slayer, Thaumaturgist, Thrallherd, War Mind. Those are the ones currently under consideration but we're not yet sure whether they will all make it in, so keep that in mind. But prestige classes are definitely in as a thing.

Those are the currently planned class choices available to the player. But we're not copying the prestige class system of D&D verbatim, we're using some houserules and want to merge the ideas of D&D prestige classes with some ideas from Wizardry 7's class system.

Of course we're using Vancian magic. When we say D&D, we mean D&D, although we do use some house rules. Our wizards get X spells per day, but we're doing it the way Dark Sun and Knights of the Chalice did, with you having, say, 5 level 1 spells per day and you can access your entire spell pool rather than having to memorize specific spells.

As for the level range, your party starts at level 1 and can go all the way up to level 15 towards the endgame, at least that's how far we've planned it for now. Expansions/DLC might raise that level limit further.

The story does have its bad guys, but there's no big "threat to the world" scenario. It's more of a political plot, with your guys opposing an influential faction that is active in the world, but there's no "if they win, the world ends" kind of thing.
It's also relatively open-ended and decentralized, rather than following one linear string of main quests, there's a whole bunch of quests and questlines that further your main goal of fighting Faction X, but you don't have to do all of them.
Can't say too much about this yet, though. More about the setting and story will be revealed in later blogposts.

Better yet! Devs are creating/designing combat mechanics to make turns go by faster (sell to Pillars of Shit fans...)! Not to implement a mechanics idea or something like a phase based system.
Smelling the smoke of degenerate gameplay already!
How much trash combat is in there if they are already designing systems to fight 20 goblins?

Where did we ever say there's going to be much trash combat?
The perfect combat encounter contains a variety of elements. One might even say that diversity is an RPG's strength (no, not that kind of diversity).
You've got one or two casters who can buff and debuff and inflict status effects with their spells. They're dangerous and should be neutralized ASAP. You've got one or a few beefy melee dudes who can hit hard and are well-armored. And, to back the beefy guys up, you've got a couple of trashier enemies who mainly exist to drain the player's resources and snatch his attention away from the more important targets.

And why not have these lower quality enemy mobs move at once, rather than watching each and every one of them move seperately, one after the other?
It was painfully slow to wait for the civilian turn in Fallout 1 and 2 if you fought in a city. The larger battles in the old Gold Box games could also drag on when there were many enemies on the screen.
But then came ToEE and, without actually changing any rules about how combat worked, streamlined the movement animations of enemy mobs, playing the movement of three orcs at once rather than one after the other, if their initiative was right next to each other.

That's not even a real combat mechanic. It's just a quality of life improvement feature, designed to remove the boring part of turn-based games - watching the enemy do their movement animations one after the other while you wait for their turn to end.
The only difference between ToEE and our game is that we can assign a swarm mentality to mobs, who will then try to attack the same target in coordination, rather than each and every goblin trying to do its own thing.
Which actually makes the combat with low level mobs more interesting and challenging, since they'll act like coordinated squads rather than uncoordinated retards.

Joinable NPCs are fine, but I'd still prefer to make six characters.

I mean they're fine, but I'd like to have a few things clarified:

1.) Can we choose NOT to have NPCs in our party?
2.) Is 7 the amount needed for a normal/balanced playthrough?
3.) When meeting said NPCs, can you replace them with one of your party members that you created? (like in Avernum for example).

1.) Yes. While it is a good idea to take a companion NPC along, it's not mandatory. You can just send your 5 guys to get burgers and fries on their own, without anyone tagging along who isn't created by you.
2.) No, we're balancing the game for a party of 6 - 5 player-made PCs and one companion. The 7th slot isn't intended to be a permanent slot, really, so it's actually more like a party composition of 5 + 1 + 1, with the 7th slot being for NPCs who temporarily join you for a quest. They might stay for a while longer, depending on the length of the quest or whether it's a quest chain, but they'll leave eventually when you finished the quest(line). You won't be able to take away their equipment, either. You can theoretically also play with a non-full party. Soloing or going with only 3 or 4 guys is an option, although we're not balancing the game for that. Still, the option is there!
3.) You don't even have to meet or recruit these NPCs, you can just create additional characters at a tavern or a guild and "park" them there, then recruit them into available slots. And yes, you can fill all 6 of your permanent slots with your own characters. Not right away at the start of the game, but once you get to a tavern with the functionality, you can create and add your sixth character to your party. It also works the other way around: if you want, you can create only 4 characters and recruit 2 companion NPCs, or 3 characters and recruit 3 companions.

So as far as party composition is concerned, you pretty much have a free choice to do it the way you want.

Since you can also "park" your characters at a tavern, it means that if after the intro, you realize that one of the 5 characters you created isn't really all that great as you thought he would be, you can replace him once you get to a tavern. Just park him there, create a new character and add that one to your party instead. Or, park him there and go recruit a companion NPC instead, if that's what you'd prefer. The game supports all those playstyles.

The gameplay of ToEE and the reactivity of Arcanum? Sweet Jesus, you guys sure don’t want for ambition.

How in the world will you fund this? Did someone’s rich relative just leave them a large legacy? Diamond smuggling? Are you pirates of the North Sea? In other words, how many dark eons must pass before you can get the game out without turning to a life of crime to fund its development?

We're directly sponsored by Donald Trump to Make RPGs Great Again.

 

[~*´¨¯¨`*·~-.¸-AIN'T]

You've got one or two casters who can buff and debuff and inflict status effects with their spells. They're dangerous and should be neutralized ASAP. You've got one or a few beefy melee dudes who can hit hard and are well-armored. And, to back the beefy guys up, you've got a couple of trashier enemies who mainly exist to drain the player's resources and snatch his attention away from the more important targets.

I hope you do have some encounters without any trashier enemies though. When I think of the most memorable combat encounters, they tend to be ones where all the enemies are tough and nasty (eg final seal battle in Watcher's Keep).

And speaking of BG2 will there be mage duels

 

[Jack Dandy]

A whole bunch of cool shit

This is cliche by now, but goddamn

 

[Jimmious]

Everything sounds great so far, almost too great to be true actually...!

 

[Sitra Achara]

The issue with trip is that the target is pushed to the ground by the attacker, which is an animation we don't have yet. Yeah, I guess we could theoretically use a standard attack animation and a standard going prone animation, but Peter says he'd prefer a proper animation for it.

He might consider implementing it without a special animation too, though.

Make it so!
I imagine you already use that for stuff like characters going unconscious, it's better to have that than nothing.
Likewise for Disarm attacks.
Bullrush and grapple might be pushing it.

 

[JarlFrank]

You've got one or two casters who can buff and debuff and inflict status effects with their spells. They're dangerous and should be neutralized ASAP. You've got one or a few beefy melee dudes who can hit hard and are well-armored. And, to back the beefy guys up, you've got a couple of trashier enemies who mainly exist to drain the player's resources and snatch his attention away from the more important targets.

I hope you do have some encounters without any trashier enemies though. When I think of the most memorable combat encounters, they tend to be ones where all the enemies are tough and nasty (eg final seal battle in Watcher's Keep).

And speaking of BG2 will there be mage duels

Of course. Since the greatest strength of an RPG is diversity, we will have a whole bunch of different encounters. Trashier mobs to soften up the player and drain resources, challenging encounters with stronger enemies, encounters with enemy parties that have similar classes and abilities as you might have...

... and yes, of course, enemy mages.

The issue with trip is that the target is pushed to the ground by the attacker, which is an animation we don't have yet. Yeah, I guess we could theoretically use a standard attack animation and a standard going prone animation, but Peter says he'd prefer a proper animation for it.

He might consider implementing it without a special animation too, though.

Make it so!
I imagine you already use that for stuff like characters going unconscious, it's better to have that than nothing.
Likewise for Disarm attacks.
Bullrush and grapple might be pushing it.

Yeah, since there's a demand for it we'll likely include these types of attacks too.

No grapple though. That would just be an animation nightmare. If we had Bethesda's budget...

 

[Reinhardt]

you are not likely to replace the NPC with another one you met later (unless it was sexy elf girl).

Which leads to question - are there any sexy dwarvenelven girls?

 

[Haba]

Romances are confirmed feature, are they not?

 

[Abu Antar]

Romances are confirmed feature, are they not?

 

[Pequod]

That's not even a real combat mechanic....
The only difference between ToEE and our game is that we can assign a swarm mentality to mobs, who will then try to attack the same target in coordination, rather than each and every goblin trying to do its own thing.
Which actually makes the combat with low level mobs more interesting and challenging

That's not even a real combat mechanic... Wat

It was not advertised as something that makes combat more interesting. It was presented as a solution to the casual gripe of slow turn based games.
The thing is, I dont ever watch animations in my turn based games. If there is an option to teleport the enemies and show only the attack animation, I take it.
This grouping mechanic smells funny because its coming from a dirty place.
And its technically harder to implement because it introduces edge cases and ambiguity.
Like, does the the AI handle groups as a single entity? Or does it run on each individual agents turn? What does a 3rd goblin in a group do if they kill an NPC?

 

[JarlFrank]

you are not likely to replace the NPC with another one you met later (unless it was sexy elf girl).

Which leads to question - are there any sexy dwarvenelven girls?

You can see for yourself once we reveal our NPC portraits!

Romances are confirmed feature, are they not?

We're leaving that particular thing to Bioware. They have perfected this feature so much, we can't possibly hope to compete with them on that front.
You'll have to contend with simple brothels, like Madam Lil's in Arcanum. Sorry.

That's not even a real combat mechanic....
The only difference between ToEE and our game is that we can assign a swarm mentality to mobs, who will then try to attack the same target in coordination, rather than each and every goblin trying to do its own thing.
Which actually makes the combat with low level mobs more interesting and challenging

That's not even a real combat mechanic... Wat

It was not advertised as something that makes combat more interesting. It was presented as a solution to the casual gripe of slow turn based games.
The thing is, I dont ever watch animations in my turn based games. If there is an option to teleport the enemies and show only the attack animation, I take it.
This grouping mechanic smells funny because its coming from a dirty place.
And its technically harder to implement because it introduces edge cases and ambiguity.
Like, does the the AI handle groups as a single entity? Or does it run on each individual agents turn? What does a 3rd goblin in a group do if they kill an NPC?

One crowd has initially one AI agent, but this agent will re-evaluate the situation as soon as the previous target has been neutralized.
Essentially, if Goblin #1 kills enemy, Goblin #2 chooses a different target in reach. If 5 goblins are in a mob and choose warrior #1 as their target, but he can only be reached by two of them, the other three will select a different target.

Essentially, they move in one go but attack one after the other, and both movement and target selections are made in one AI caclulation.
Say, it's 5-goblin-mob's turn.
The mob decides to gang up on the mage with low defense, but due to having his flanks covered, he can only be reached by 2 of the 5 goblins.
The other 3 goblins pick the fighter who covers the mage's left flank.
All goblins move. Then they attack, one after the other. The mage dies after goblin 1 deals him a critical hit. Goblin 2 will then switch targets to another enemy in reach, possibly the left flank fighter. Left flank fighter is low on HP, takes damage from goblins 2, 3, and 4, and dies. Goblin 5, who had also selected him as his target, now looks for another target in his reach. But alas, he has not enough movement points left and ends his turn.

 

[Haba]

Romances are confirmed feature, are they not?

We're leaving that particular thing to Bioware. They have perfected this feature so much, we can't possibly hope to compete with them on that front.
You'll have to contend with simple brothels, like Madam Lil's in Arcanum. Sorry.

Is it at least possible to romance the developers at game conventions or nearby park/public toilet?

 

[JarlFrank]

Romances are confirmed feature, are they not?

We're leaving that particular thing to Bioware. They have perfected this feature so much, we can't possibly hope to compete with them on that front.
You'll have to contend with simple brothels, like Madam Lil's in Arcanum. Sorry.

Is it at least possible to romance the developers at game conventions or nearby park/public toilet?

Sadly, we're also leaving that particular thing to the local brothels.
Sorry.

 

[Haba]

0/10, worst game ever, no purchase.

 

[Dorateen]

JarlFrank

Would you consider a lore-related blog post in the future, addressing the cosmology of Realms-Beyond? The mechanics of the game are Dungeons & Dragons/OGL inspired, but the setting will be unfamiliar. Interested in whatever plans there are in that regard.

 

[JarlFrank]

Yes, we're going to gradually reveal our setting and lore as development progresses and we update our blog. Expect some of the first snippets of setting to come along in a blogpost pretty soon.

 

[Darth Roxor]

great cant wait for some deep lore

 

[Grunker]

How dafuq did I miss this

Obligatory "can't wait" and "why no pathfindaaaar" inserted here

All is looking great and exciting.
But I don't think I got the answer to this one yet, tho-

How are our boys funding this?

I will not pipe down! I must have my answer!

We're still looking for funding options, a tax collection in Codexia for developing the perfect RPG included.

I would probably donate hard-earned kroner to this! Against my better judgment of course, since you guys will undoubtedly fail to deliver on this project leaving me once again saddened and self-loathing from not relying on the obvious correct cynicism I should be feeling towards this project.

Can you talk about character customization, JF? How do you generate attributes, how many feats do you have, are those house-ruled or by and large direct OGL-imports? You said you are house-ruling stuff like granting Wizards sorcerer-esque casting - are you planning on any such changes to the other classes?

Also is the "once you start a dungeon, you can't leave"-feature still in? I really like that idea from the original Chaos Chronicles as a way to balance resources and prevent rest-spam.

Spoiler

also why no pathfinder

 

[ArchAngel]

Probably because pathfinder does not have such a nice OGL. At best they would be forced to set the game in Pathfinder setting (Golarion or some other) instead of making their own.

 

[Grunker]

Probably because pathfinder does not have such a nice OGL. At best they would be forced to set the game in Pathfinder setting (Golarion or some other) instead of making their own.

Huh? That's not true at all to my knowledge.

www.d20pfsrd.com

What is copyrighted is the setting. What isn't is more or less everything you see in that link, which is pretty much every single rule from the official Paizo-rules, including every single splatbook. If anything it's a wider OGL than 3.5, as I understand it.

 

[Serus]

great cant wait for some deep lore

 

[ArchAngel]

Probably because pathfinder does not have such a nice OGL. At best they would be forced to set the game in Pathfinder setting (Golarion or some other) instead of making their own.

Huh? That's not true at all to my knowledge.

www.d20pfsrd.com

What is copyrighted is the setting. What isn't is more or less everything you see in that link, which is pretty much every single rule from the official Paizo-rules, including every single splatbook. If anything it's a wider OGL than 3.5, as I understand it.

Hmm, you might be right. Maybe they are just more knowledgeable about 3.5e so they wanted to base their modifications on that.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

make it dark eye ruleset instead

 

[ERYFKRAD]

make it dark eye ruleset instead

You already got Realms of Arkania HD for that.