Opening vignettes

Spazmo · Jan 8, 2004

ToEE did a lot of stuff right and a fair amount of stuff wrong. It also did some new stuff. Case in point, the opening vignettes. We all agree that it's a good idea that could stand to be better implemented. So let's discuss how to do this.

One of the main problems with the vignettes, I think, is that they're linked to alignment regardless of what's inside them. For instance, the chaotic good vignette has you recieving a mission from an elven nation to rescue elven nobles from the Temple (or Moathouse, can't remember). But what if your chaotic good party is composed of dwarves? Why should a bunch of dwarves care about some stinky elf nobles? Granted, your dwarves might be all friendly with the elves, but nonetheless: more than alignment needs to be considered. I think racial vignettes are a must. Class-based ones, too. Outside of the D&D context, that means that all aspects of a character's background (race, class or character build, place of origin, etc.) should be considered when selecting an opening vignette. In ToEE's vignettes, you start as, for example, a party who comes across a caravan that's been attacked. You rush to its aid and get sent off to Hommlet afterwards. Well, okay, fine, but why was I going by that caravan in the first place? ToEE's vignettes just seem to set the "so... why am I here anyways?" question back one step. But if the game cared that my character was a dwarven priest of Moradin from (making something up) Hammerdown, then it could have him start in the Hammerdown Temple of Moradin when something gets him moving onto the main plot. It could be something as simple as the high priest telling me to bugger off to Hommlet and bust some bandit head.

"Fine," you say. "That's all well and good for our priest of Moradin, but what about the rest of the party? Where do they come from?" That's where it gets trickier. It's probable that ToEE's party-based nature is what made the vignettes come out as they did. And that's one reason why I dislike party based games versus games where you only create your own player character. Only focusing on one PC and having the others come along later allows for the specific focus and good vignette of which there is an example thereof.

So, thus far, we have two suggestions:

Consider all aspects of the character's background
Focus on one character

DISCUSS!

POOPERSCOOPER · Jan 8, 2004

Your post was too long, so i didn't read it

Vault Dweller · Jan 8, 2004

Spazmo said:
One of the main problems with the vignettes, I think, is that they're linked to alignment regardless of what's inside them.

One of the main problems with the vignettes is that people preferred to bitch and complain instead of realizing that something is better then nothing and enjoing that something, no matter how small, for what it is. No, I didn't mean you, Spazmo, but since we are discussing all vignettes related issues...

For instance, the chaotic good vignette has you recieving a mission from an elven nation to rescue elven nobles from the Temple (or Moathouse, can't remember). But what if your chaotic good party is composed of dwarves? Why should a bunch of dwarves care about some stinky elf nobles? Granted, your dwarves might be all friendly with the elves, but nonetheless: more than alignment needs to be considered. I think racial vignettes are a must. Class-based ones, too.

Whoa, that's a lot of vignettes. I see your point though, but considering the amount of work involved I think that we either go back to square 1 (no vignettes) or we accept some inconsistencies for the sake of mini uniqueness. If its not a DnD game, i.e. no alignments, then yes, definitely, it should be class-based and race-based. I don't think that we should ever expect more then 7-9 different starting locations, it just wouldn't be realistic.

Well, okay, fine, but why was I going by that caravan in the first place? ToEE's vignettes just seem to set the "so... why am I here anyways?" question back one step.

True, but "why" is always there, no matter how far back you'd go. Why did my char become a priest of city of Hammerdown instead of a small outpost of Hammerhead? Why did he become a priest? Why did he decide to leave the temple? At some point we'd have to accept that that's how it is, so what amount of info is reasonable to expect?

And that's one reason why I dislike party based games versus games where you only create your own player character. Only focusing on one PC and having the others come along later allows for the specific focus and good vignette of which there is an example thereof.

Agree on the party-based thing

So, thus far, we have two suggestions:

Consider all aspects of the character's background

Focus on one character

Well, focusing on one char is always a better choice, considering all aspects of the same one character is trickier, as nobody would provide you with 20 options, especially well-developed options. However, it's fun to discuss this stuff so let's give it a try for example to see how many we'd come up with. You want to do it based on DnD?

Otaku_Hanzo · Jan 8, 2004

Actually, it would be doable with a party-based game like TOEE. All you do is have the player make his party and then choose which character is party leader and go off their class, race, whatnot. This is a bit cheesy though and I don't particularly like that idea, but it is a way to make your suggestion work with a party-based game.

Personally, I do prefer the single player aspect. Matter of fact, not having a party of NPCs at all wouldn't bug me in the least. What I would like to see is a game where you have the option of taking NPCs along for the ride, but it's not necessary. I've soloed it in FO2 before. It wasn't easy. Fuck no it wasn't easy. But I did it. And I respected the game alot more for it. Your idea for the vignettes would be best suited for a single player. The only way they would work for party-based, and be realistic, would be if the party was experienced and had been together for some time and trusted each other enough to go with the leader wherever he needed to go and help him accomplish his task.

For instance, in the Chaotic Good vignette, if it had been Legolas leading the party and he had to go rescue these people you know Aragorn would be right there by his side helping out. Gimli would come along as well out of his friendship for Legolas although he would say it was for some other purpose and not admit it. But all of them had adventured together and trusted each other. A dwarf new to the party probably would say 'screw this' and leave to go elsewhere.

Anyways, I would have to lean towards the singe player on this one for sure.

Diogo Ribeiro · Jan 8, 2004

I think focusing opening vignettes on a single character would be better than focusing on an entire party. Its easier to handle. The feeling of the vignettes isn't as well conveyed as it could've been because it lacks showing the motivation for characters being there (but like pointed before, it was a good first step).

Or we could go with a different route alltogether. We could make alignment choices, and other choices, and cause a different beginning for every character in the party. Each character would be placed in a certain place in the world (displaying background motivations for each), then we would play as each until they meet and decide to work together. This would probably make the beginning overly complicated, or too long, but perhaps would show motivations better.

Spazmo · Jan 8, 2004

Vault Dweller said:
True, but "why" is always there, no matter how far back you'd go. Why did my char become a priest of city of Hammerdown instead of a small outpost of Hammerhead? Why did he become a priest? Why did he decide to leave the temple? At some point we'd have to accept that that's how it is, so what amount of info is reasonable to expect?

Well, I just find it easier to assume that the priest of Moradin will be in a Temple of Moradin than to assume that the Priest of Moradin and his four friends will wander across Cannoness Y'dey being murdered.

Vault Dweller said:
You want to do it based on DnD?

Not particularly since less is more where D&D CRPGs are concerned. Let's discuss it in terms of Fallout. Someone somewhere sometime had an interesting idea for vignettes there wherein which skills you tag and thus which kind of character you are (to reprise JE Sawyer's terminology, Combat Boy, Speech Boy, Science Boy or Thief Boy) determines where you start. Since Fallout means you're human by default and everyone starts with 0 karma, that makes things easier from the vignette point of view. That's the thing about D&D: it provides a bunch of fairly arbitrary decisions to make that really only tend of complicate things and occasionally provide a +2 to a given statistic.

Vault Dweller · Jan 8, 2004

Spazmo said:
Well, I just find it easier to assume that the priest of Moradin will be in a Temple of Moradin than to assume that the Priest of Moradin and his four friends will wander across Cannoness Y'dey being murdered.

Fair enough, but let's say the game starts, you sit conviniently in your chair in a Temple of Moradin, the high priest walks in and asks "are you bad enough dwarf to rescue the president, err...to bust some bandits heads

" You say "sure", but it's hardly easier to assume that that's what you do. At least if you find yourself wandering somewhere, you can hope that you had a damn good reason for that and you make your own subconsciously. If you are given a lame reason or a reason that you don't agree with, then no reason is better.

Not particularly since less is more where D&D CRPGs are concerned. Let's discuss it in terms of Fallout. Someone somewhere sometime had an interesting idea for vignettes there wherein which skills you tag and thus which kind of character you are (to reprise JE Sawyer's terminology, Combat Boy, Speech Boy, Science Boy or Thief Boy) determines where you start.

Volourn posted a few days ago that your skills should be determined by starting locations, vault gives you a bonus to science, city to speech, etc. I liked that. So anyway, we have one race: human, locations: vault, city, town, tribal village, and raiders camp, and classes (based on skills tagged) melee, ranged, thief, science, speech (classes are for the purpose of background and starting loc only), so then each class can start in a specific location inside of of the main locations, i.e. a melee guy in a raiders camp participates in raids, while a thief could be sent to scout, etc. That's about 25 vignettes we are talking about, without a burden of races and more classes (ToEE had 11 classes). We can go with basic locations only: vault, town, desert (tribals or raiders) and that would bring it down to 15, 12 if we combine melee and ranged as fighter. Still a lot of work.

Megatron · Jan 8, 2004

How about making your own vignettes?

For instance: Fallout. Instead of the little clip at the start, why not have the player, based on his highest tag be placed somewhere. Something could happen if the player felt like it, or just explore. Like a combat boy could do tough guy stuff like eating cold fast-food while cleaning guns, mabye do some party-trick like bishop with the knife on aliens and mabye bust a head or two. The thief could be in the middle of sneaking around the sleeping quaters full of people to steal something. The diplomat could be caught in bed with someone's girlfriend and have to talk his or her way out of it.

The science boy didn't exist then, so FUCK OFF B)

I thought the vignettes were a bit lazy. Like I just finished burning a church then I walk through the town? Shouldn't I be galloping through, raping and pillaging?

Vault Dweller · Jan 8, 2004

Megatron said:
The science boy didn't exist then, so FUCK OFF

What's wrong with the science boy? He fits into the setting, people who can tinker with stuff, recognize what could be salvageable, and how to make it functional again (we are not talking about fixing railroads and making planes fly, but the small things like radio, water pump, making a broken elevator work, fixing small power generators, etc). The value of this people should be clear to anyone from raiders to overseers of the vaults that are falling apart.

Volourn · Jan 8, 2004

Actually, VD, you misrea dmy post I think. I stated that I thought skills (espicially tagged ones) could determine where you start. You'd get no extra bonus though. An example I gave was since city dwellers are comparitively speaking known for sweet tongues so if you had tagged diplomatic type skills (persuasion, gamble, & barter for example) would start in a city while someone with tech stuff tagged could start in a Vault since vaults are known for their high tech. Yeah, yeah, a dimplomat could be found anywhere as cna a techie; but if we were do that; there'd be too many start locations. No need to overall connections.

I think the ebst way to improve vignettes is to make them mean more. Have them matter throught the game; not just the beginning. For example, in TOEE, i fyou were the one who destroyed the church have there be a survivor who snuck out while you did your thing and come back for revenge; or if you were the goody goody who svaed the caravan have one of those you saved meet the PC later and offer to join, or you meet them in a town where they give you deals. Just a thought... And, make the vignettes actually more than vignettes. No more than a one minute blow job; but an actual half hour to an hour start. I mean rpgs are usually at a minimum 20-30 hours; so using an hour on that on the start wouldn't be too bad; would it?

Sheriff05 · Jan 8, 2004

The key word in the definition of vignette is "short"
the best way to improve these is make a series events come later in the game as a direct result of a starting vignette. Whatever the character basis for the starting vignette, having later events that are exclusive to it would only add to replayability and depth in that singular experience.

Volourn, calling the vignette's an "Utter Failure" one day than applying constructive criticism to them the next, does wonders for confirming my opinions about you.
While you might maintain you think it's purely "Troika's implementation that is the utter failure", You seem to misunderstand what a vignette even *is*.( given your suggestion they should be up to an hour long). You should either stick with the idea they "suck" in general (i.e. your "one minute blow job') OR try to be constructive on the idea overall.
consistency always helps toward improving civility-

Vault Dweller · Jan 8, 2004

Volourn said:
Actually, VD, you misrea dmy post I think. I stated that I thought skills (espicially tagged ones) could determine where you start. You'd get no extra bonus though.

Yep, that's how I got it. You get no actual bonus but technically the location is the reason for higher skills, so it's a bonus sorta. On a players side, you tag the skills and assign extra points, on a character side, the location explains why these skills are more developed.

I think the ebst way to improve vignettes is to make them mean more. Have them matter throught the game; not just the beginning. For example, in TOEE, i fyou were the one who destroyed the church have there be a survivor who snuck out while you did your thing and come back for revenge; or if you were the goody goody who svaed the caravan have one of those you saved meet the PC later and offer to join, or you meet them in a town where they give you deals. Just a thought...

I like that, a small touch here and there throughout a game would make vignettes more then interactive cutscenes.

And, make the vignettes actually more than vignettes. No more than a one minute blow job; but an actual half hour to an hour start. I mean rpgs are usually at a minimum 20-30 hours; so using an hour on that on the start wouldn't be too bad; would it?

Depends on what we are talking about, if we have 9 locations then it means 5-10 hours worth of extras. That's a lot. Give me an example of an hour-long vignette that justifies the time.

Volourn · Jan 8, 2004

Sherriff:

Pehraps you should read the post again. I suggested making the vignettes more than just simply vignettes. Duh. I know very much what a vignette. Only a :roll:

like you would read that post, and think otherwise.
And, duh, when I said vignettes were an utter failure obviously I meant how they were handled in TOEE. So, for one more time, just for you: :roll:

VD: 1. Ahh.. I see. Basiclaly you see (and I agree) it as an 'unoffical" bonus.

2. Hah. Yup. Exactly. This is what I mean. :cool:

3. Like I saud, to Sherriff the :roll:

; I'd prefer if the vignettes were actually more than simple vignettes. Here's an example from TOEE. IIRC, a CN party got to explore a cave; but said cave was just a very puny one that took five minutes tops (tell me if I'mw rong since I actually never did it). Why not make this cave actually have some meat on its bone where you actually have to explore it. Or better it, to use the temple burning as another; why not make this a more quest thing where you have to explore the temple and scare or burn out the occupants and chase out as many as possible victims as you can before they escape.

I just want the "vignettes" to mean something menaingful. Remember, not eveyr vignette has to be exactlyan hour. I'd say a range of 30 minutes to an hour that gives the character something actually tod o thatr equires thinking.

That is all. :twisted:

Voss · Jan 8, 2004

They don't necessarily need to be long, but they need to be connected to events later on.
That was the big problem with the TOEE ones.
They start, give you someone to talk to (in order to send you to the Moathouse), and then they largely stop being relevant.
They need more. LIke for the CE one, who's caravan was it? Do you go after them for more loot? Do they hire someone to get you for raiding the caravan? Shouldn't you have time to search it for loot, and find other plot clues in the process? Maybe meet up with the bandits in the Moathouse peacefully, and they give you missions to raid Hommlet or other caravans. And then Burne's Badgers come looking for you...
They were a good idea, but they need more.

Sheriff05 · Jan 8, 2004

Volourn said:
*typo-ridden unreadable bullshit*

Point is- what you want aren't actually "vignettes"
your just looking for more varied elaborate and detailed starting locations-
there's a difference.
Did I read Spazmos starting post wrong?,
I missed where He said "lets talk about what Volourn wants"
I thought it was about how to better implement "opening vignettes"-
well you don't better * implement* an opening Vignette, by changing what a fucking Vignette *IS*
Keep on trying-

triCritical · Jan 8, 2004

First off, I like the idea of Vignettes for games like ToEE and IWD. I think its kind of nice to have a background to why you are in the middle of nowhere, which is not famous for adventuring. Stil, I believe Troika's Vignettes where poorly implemented. They were short and kind of worthless. While they did give motivation for being in Hommlet, they themselves lacked motivation. Why am I attacking a church for instance. And like Spazmo pointed out, why do I want to help an elf.

My idea is to have perhaps more short Vignettes, if you are so inclined to use them. Lose the alignment system, and let the player choose how they want to start the game. This gives the AI, an indication as to what diriction your good/evil/chaotic/lawful tendencies might be and allows the player to start off their mission in a more handpicked sense. Of course this will require more work, but the end result would probably be more favorable to the people judging the game.

Volourn · Jan 8, 2004

Sherriff:

Tri: Yup, you are exactly right. You need to give proper motivation for the PC(s) to want to take part in the vignette.

Vault Dweller · Jan 8, 2004

triCritical said:
While they did give motivation for being in Hommlet, they themselves lacked motivation.

Motivation is a chain reaction, one thing causes another one. It's hard to pick a point in this chain that satisfies everyone.

Lose the alignment system, and let the player choose how they want to start the game. This gives the AI, an indication as to what diriction your good/evil/chaotic/lawful tendencies might be and allows the player to start off their mission in a more handpicked sense.

It's not very clear. Is it something like: you start in a generic location (a small town) that has typical issues/quests, so if you want to play a LG equivalent you behave like one and do good quests, etc?

Volourn said:
IIRC, a CN party got to explore a cave; but said cave was just a very puny one that took five minutes tops (tell me if I'mw rong since I actually never did it). Why not make this cave actually have some meat on its bone where you actually have to explore it. Or better it, to use the temple burning as another; why not make this a more quest thing where you have to explore the temple and scare or burn out the occupants and chase out as many as possible victims as you can before they escape.

So in other words, you want them to be more like mini-adventures, instead of focusing purely on motivation?

triCritical · Jan 8, 2004

Vault Dweller said:
Motivation is a chain reaction, one thing causes another one. It's hard to pick a point in this chain that satisfies everyone.

Exactly, that is why I thought it would be nice to pick your own. I guess the problem with alignments is the cliche archetypes. I don't want Chaotic Evil to be associated with burning churches that is not my style.

ToEE surprisingly let me do something that I have always wanted to do in a DnD CRPG and that is create an army of undead and destroy the good village. HE HE!

Spazmo · Jan 8, 2004

triCritical said:
Exactly, that is why I thought it would be nice to pick your own. I guess the problem with alignments is the cliche archetypes. I don't want Chaotic Evil to be associated with burning churches that is not my style.

That's the problem with alignment: despite what rulebooks and others may say, it is ultimately an arbitrary straightjacket that gets in the way of how you want to develop your character. It's a gross oversimplification that beyond being a burden simply isn't necessary at all. Alignment is handy to know how a monster or NPC might behave at a glance, but it simply shouldn't apply to PCs. When players consider, "ooh, would my neutral good fighter do this?" instead of considering whether or not Torkor would do this, alignment is not helping. I think the only way to go is a karma scale where everyone starts at 0 and goes wherever they damn well want to from there.

I find races and classes are also simply a pain. Why do we need elves and dwarves? Why not just create a human with two extra points in dexterity and two less in consitution? Why not create a human who's short, hairy and grumpy? Races and the baggage they bring are another hassle. Some will say that races are handy for story and roleplay reasons--ie., it's easy to create a plot involving war with a dwarf kingdom and an elf kingdom right next to each other. Bullshit. Humans are the only intelligent race on Earth and we've never had any trouble hating each other. Classes are also troublesome--we've been over why classless systems are better many times.

So I want a classless, alignmentless, raceless system. This makes vignettes easier as there are fewer variations (well, there's infinitely more due to the flexibility of classess systems, but be quiet, you). Read: Fallout. It shouldn't be too hard to create a range of quality vignettes for a Fallout game. I say base them off of what skills the character tags and maybe what stats they have (a PC with a starting strength of ten is going to live a life that takes advantage of that strength and may be a heavy labourer). Yeah, it'd take a lot of work to create a satisfactory range of vignettes, but since when do we want designers to slack off?

Anonymous · Jan 8, 2004

I didnt mind the opening viginettes mainly because that's just how D&D is. You open a module book and you gotta come up with a simple reason for everyone being there and to guide them in a general direction, which I think the vinginettes did well.

The elves thing was sorta peculiar (especially since my group has 2 dwarfs and the one the dialog was with had -1 Int, so the elves are basically associating with an ignorant form of a disliked race.), but I figure it's good enough for a reason to start.

Also, since ToEE is a party game, this sorta of reinforces itsself, the only other way to have the openers is if they did it for each character, but in a party game, it's not a solitary thing (obviously)

The way it usually goes for normal PnP D&D is that I usually pick 1 or 2 reasons for my character joining, as do the rest of the players and then the DM tries to net all the reasons together and give us a main instinctive to drive on and a reason to be together.

Currently I play a Half-Orc Paladin in PnP, he is Lawful Good and I made his over-arching goal to make people think better of Half-Orcs and to slay those Half-Orcs which might tarnish that plan. His under-arching goal is to simply find a ring of Enlarge Person so he can finally drive off the Hill Giants that are plauging his home, the temple he resides him gave him his Breastplate +1 to go and help find this ring.

The DM then netted us together by saying we met in the wilds (as I was busy exploring and looking for the ring, the other player is a Ranger and the other is just a Warrior with a thirst for adventure). DM says I join the Dwarf because he is adventuring, and that could be an aid for me finding my ring, the Ranger offers to join because he knows the area well, we all. travel onward to Hommlet (we are doing the Return to TOEE).

So my opener is we just met in the wilds and we are adventuring, nothing amazing, but it just works.

Spazmo · Jan 8, 2004

Pat is quite right: parties just being together is a convention of D&D. And that's why I don't want D&D games. I prefer games where you play YOU, not some party of adventurers. Think Arcanum, Fallout and, to a lesser extent, the BG games. By focusing on your character and giving him a halfway decent raison d'etre, these games created a sense of actually playing a character in a world instead of some five headed monster, as Volourn (I think) puts it.

Walks with the Snails · Jan 8, 2004

I thought the opening vignettes were cool, though the only ones I saw were the NG and LE ones. I thought they worked for the alignment system they had and gave the party a reason to be there. The main thing was just to give a party a reason to actually be in Hommlet. Six people just suddenly showing up there for no reason would be a tad hard to swallow, not that it's not been done before. In a meta-game sense I got the feeling the party alignment was actually yours as you were the one pulling all the strings, so I didn't have much problem buying the idea of them being based on party alignment.

Having tons of really long vignettes would be pretty dumb IMO. Developers do have schedules, so it's not merely a matter of "slacking off" if they don't want to blow all their time and money making a lot of content most people will never see. Punching out a few extra lines of text for real dialogue options not everyone will pick is one thing, entire maps, creatures, scripting, etc. is another. Guess that's always the problem with RPG's. It would be awfully nice if they were about 100 times bigger so that you could do whatever you want, but that's not how it works. God, I'm sounding like Dave Gaider, shoot me.

As for what I'd like to see, I sort of liked how Ultima 4 worked. You answered several questions as to your moral priorities and then you were plopped into a body and location that suited you. Wouldn't work for most things, but when you're an earthling who gets whisked away to save some fantasy kingdom, it makes sense. Megatron's idea makes sense, too, but there's always going to be the completists like me who feel strangely compelled to deck the guy, pick the locks, and repair all the broken machinery by hook or by crook, and then you just come out as a bland generalist. Which may be appropriate, but it might sort of defeat the purpose for those who don't really get what's going on and just have that deep down feeling that they've got to complete every task and explore every last nook and cranny of a game in one go.

Vault Dweller · Jan 8, 2004

Spazmo said:
That's the problem with alignment: despite what rulebooks and others may say, it is ultimately an arbitrary straightjacket that gets in the way of how you want to develop your character. It's a gross oversimplification that beyond being a burden simply isn't necessary at all. Alignment is handy to know how a monster or NPC might behave at a glance, but it simply shouldn't apply to PCs. When players consider, "ooh, would my neutral good fighter do this?" instead of considering whether or not Torkor would do this, alignment is not helping.

You're looking at it from the wrong angle. Of course, if a player is more concerned about acting withing alignment then with a character, it's wrong. Alignment should be used as a guideline especially for those whose actions are inconsistent and stupid. I agree that it became a straightforward jacket but it doesn't have to be and it still offers more good then bad.

I think the only way to go is a karma scale where everyone starts at 0 and goes wherever they damn well want to from there.

Agree and disagree. Karma system could be easily abused, did something bad and want to take this cool quest but it's goody goody only? No problem, go and say something nice to people and save 10 kitties. Look at KOTOR as an example.

I find races and classes are also simply a pain. Why do we need elves and dwarves? Why not just create a human with two extra points in dexterity and two less in consitution? Why not create a human who's short, hairy and grumpy? Races and the baggage they bring are another hassle. Some will say that races are handy for story and roleplay reasons--ie., it's easy to create a plot involving war with a dwarf kingdom and an elf kingdom right next to each other. Bullshit. Humans are the only intelligent race on Earth and we've never had any trouble hating each other.

True, but we have subraces(americans, japanese, germans, italians, blacks, russians, arabs, etc) that we associate with certain traits, and those racial differences are the reasons we hate each other. Here is an example, French are evil

It's easy to set up an rpg in a modern setting and create personalities by saying this guy is German, this is American, and so on. It doesn't require much explanation. Same with dwarves and elves, they are the basically the same as human but comes with personalities, hence the remark "what the hell my dwarf is doing with this elf" in the beginning of the thread. Fallout quickly and easily established the races: humans, ghouls, and s/mutants. I think that one of the problems with FO2 was that after Tim left nobody had a clue how to make different human cities unique like in FO1 and that's why they did theme cities, the results you know.
Where I agree with you is that I'm sick and tired of dwarfs and elves, and it would have been nice to have some alternatives and not to deal with cliches.

Spazmo · Jan 8, 2004

Vault Dweller said:
You're looking at it from the wrong angle. Of course, if a player is more concerned about acting withing alignment then with a character, it's wrong. Alignment should be used as a guideline especially for those whose actions are inconsistent and stupid.

Well, stupid people tend to be stupid. Strange but true! I don't think games should be designed with the lowest common denomiator in mind. I think they should be designed with ME in mind. I usually find alignment is just an obstacle. I don't need two words telling me how to act, even if I did pick them--a choice I see as pretty much damned if you're lawful good, damned if you're chaotic evil and damned if you're anything in between. Nothing is that black and white and CRPGs shouldn't be.

Agree and disagree. Karma system could be easily abused, did something bad and want to take this cool quest but it's goody goody only? No problem, go and say something nice to people and save 10 kitties. Look at KOTOR as an example.

Well, KOTOR isn't a shining example of quality RPG design, you know. All it would take to avoid this kind of exploitation is good design. For instance, it doesn't matter if you pay to rebuild it or give money to twenty-six hobos, people are still pissed off at you for burning down the school. Besides, here in Real World Land, even the nicest people do bad things and then do something nice to make up for it--if only to themselves.

As for the race issue--well, yeah, but in the context of Fallout, where the whole game is in one or two states, the spectrum of races is far fewer. It'll be more a question of ideology and it'd probably be best to start the player in a neutral town.

Opening vignettes

Erudite

Prophet

Commissar, Red Star Studio

Erudite

Erudite

Erudite

Commissar, Red Star Studio

Liturgist

Commissar, Red Star Studio

Pretty Princess

Liturgist

Commissar, Red Star Studio

Pretty Princess

Erudite

Liturgist

Erudite

Pretty Princess

Commissar, Red Star Studio

Erudite

Erudite

Anonymous

Guest

Erudite

Erudite

Commissar, Red Star Studio

Erudite