Various role-playing RPG game stuff not deserving its own thread

[WhiteShark]

There's no way to fuck up so badly in Diablo 2 that it's impossible to complete the 5 acts, kill Baal, and see the end credits.

It's possible. When I was a kid I made a Barbarian and put all of my points into the jump skill—not the jump attack skill, the jump skill. I can't remember if I got stuck on Andariel or in Act II, but it was pretty early.

[Oyster Sauce]

There's no way to fuck up so badly in Diablo 2 that it's impossible to complete the 5 acts, kill Baal, and see the end credits.

It's possible. When I was a kid I made a Barbarian and put all of my points into the jump skill—not the jump attack skill, the jump skill. I don't think I can't remember if I got stuck on Andariel or in Act II, but it was pretty early.

What was your reasoning here?

[rusty_shackleford]

There's no way to fuck up so badly in Diablo 2 that it's impossible to complete the 5 acts, kill Baal, and see the end credits.

It's possible. When I was a kid I made a Barbarian and put all of my points into the jump skill—not the jump attack skill, the jump skill. I don't think I can't remember if I got stuck on Andariel or in Act II, but it was pretty early.

What was your reasoning here?

He was a kid.
These systems exist only for people to create nonviable characters, they don't actually add anything to the game.

I'd even be fine if it was classes/subclasses you could pick but advanced users could customize. The main issue with this, however, is it seems developers never know how to play their own game. Anytime this is offered, the developer choices are complete shit.

[WhiteShark]

What was your reasoning here?

IIRC it let me jump farther and I thought that was cool.

[Vergil]

What was your reasoning here?

IIRC it let me jump farther and I thought that was cool.

Did you ever have a trampoline as a kid?

[rusty_shackleford]

What was your reasoning here?

IIRC it let me jump farther and I thought that was cool.

That's the entire reason I picked the fighter spec in BG3 that lets you jump super far.

[WhiteShark]

Did you ever have a trampoline as a kid?

Yes. Jumping on the trampoline was one of my common leisure activities, either with friends/siblings or alone and playing out a fantasy adventure in my head.

[Vergil]

Did you ever have a trampoline as a kid?

Yes. Jumping on the trampoline was one of my common leisure activities, either with friends/siblings or alone and playing out a fantasy adventure in my head.

Good I'm happy for you
I never had one

[Oyster Sauce]

Did you ever have a trampoline as a kid?

Yes. Jumping on the trampoline was one of my common leisure activities, either with friends/siblings or alone and playing out a fantasy adventure in my head.

Good I'm happy for you
I never had one

A hurricane killed mine

[Anon]

Is having trampoline as a kid a normal thing?

[Oyster Sauce]

Is having trampoline as a kid a normal thing?

Moreso that having one as a childless adult I would imagine

[Envergence]

I assume it's normal. We had a trampoline when I was growing up that we played on all the time. Although we didn't have the fancy-schmancy rich kid one with the safety cage.

► Show Spoiler

I could've used that cage; one time the trampoline launched me off of it and I slammed onto the ground and blacked out. Who knows if that had lasting consequences?

[WhiteShark]

Is having trampoline as a kid a normal thing?

Pretty common. My parents are divorced and both households had one, as did my cousins and some of my friends. My step-sister has one for her kids now.

[OnTilt]

Who knows if that had lasting consequences?

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

[Envergence]

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

Or in my case, more retarded.

_{Edit: I think the smiley I originally chose conveyed the wrong *tone, lol.}

[Anon]

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

Or in my case, more retarded.

You're a pretty alright guy. You might have your irl struggles but everybody does don't worry

[Tweed]

Is having trampoline as a kid a normal thing?

I had one, all my friends had one, everyone had one. I'm sorry your childhood was so bleak.

[Oyster Sauce]

Remember when Bethesda designed a faction with a 3D printer that could create fully sentient(?) combat trained soldiers who obeyed orders unquestioningly and could teleport anywhere they wanted at any time? And the 3D printer only took 1-2 minutes per soldier?

[Vergil]

Remember when Bethesda designed a faction with a 3D printer that could create fully sentient(?) combat trained soldiers who obeyed orders unquestioningly and could teleport anywhere they wanted at any time? And the 3D printer only took 1-2 minutes per soldier?

Paper penis ripper

[Oyster Sauce]

Remember when Bioware made the exact same Corrupt Fantasy Races Zombie Bad Guys twice just a couple of years apart?

[Oyster Sauce]

[Roguey]

Remember when Bioware made the exact same Corrupt Fantasy Races Zombie Bad Guys twice just a couple of years apart?

I remember back in the early days of working on “Dragon Age: Origins” (before that was even its title) when I was asked to make the new game’s setting. It’s not the sort of task one gets assigned very often, and in this case it didn’t come with a lot of direction beyond ‘make something fantasy-ish…but your version of fantasy’. Lead Designer James Ohlen and I had chatted about some of the possibilities, after which I went off and made a world in the time-honored fashion of any nerd who grew up playing D&D: with a bunch of crudely-drawn maps on napkins and reams of text filled with enough twee-sounding proper nouns to make your head spin.

I’d really warmed up to the task, after some initial trepidation. This was going to be my subversion of the fantasy genre, a world that was in the aftermath of its ‘Lord of the Rings’ era where dragons were dead and magic was waning. I could take all the tropes I disliked about fantasy as a genre and turn them on their head, say something about the genre itself! I was psyched.

James was less psyched, as it turned out. “Where’s the magic?” he asked, after which I quickly learned the difference between creating a setting that made for interesting reading on the page and one that made for something around which you could build an interesting game. I grudgingly began to iterate based on his feedback, inching towards the version of the Dragon Age setting fans are familiar with today…but there was one change he wanted which didn’t sit very well with me: he wanted an “evil horde”, some ubiquitous enemy like the standard fantasy orcs which the player wouldn’t feel bad about killing. Dragon Age fans will recognize this role as what eventually became the darkspawn — but, back then, they simply didn’t exist. There was no such thing in the world I’d created.

I’ll admit: I balked. It ran smack against the very theme I’d tried to establish. I didn’t want to figure out how to do it, I just didn’t want to do it. I made arguments, I whined, I even made a couple of proposals which were so obviously stupid I was inwardly hoping they’d illustrate why the entire idea was bad. You know, the sort of things which undoubtedly made James question both my professionalism and my competence, and which he rightfully dismissed out of hand.

So I tried. I sat down and, rather than imagining all the ways in which adding orcs was the worst decision in all of human history, I instead tried to figure out if there was a version of orcs that…maybe I wouldn’t mind so much. Eventually I thought of an idea where these weren’t sentient monsters so much as a plague, a reoccurring event that threatened the world on an irregular basis in the same manner the Thread threatened Anne McCaffrey’s Pern (my nerd roots are showing, pardon me). That…that wouldn’t be so bad, would it? In fact, I could think of several spin-offs that would be kind of interesting for the setting’s history, a sort of periodic “purge” which would make for more interesting reading than a litany of “king X did Y” entries.

So I asked James: would it be okay if, instead of orcs, I did this “living plague” idea I was more excited about? I don’t remember his actual response, but it boiled down to “yes, I am indeed okay with you doing an implementation you will make interesting rather than the one you would make boring and crappy.”

tl;dr in the 00s, liberal writers had come to realization that evil races were Problematic, but game directors really wanted evil hordes that players could kill en masse without guilt, hence fantasy/sci-fi zombies.

[maidenhaver]

I could take all the tropes I disliked about fantasy as a genre and turn them on their head, say something about the genre itself! I was psyched.

I hate these people.

[rusty_shackleford]

Remember when Bioware made the exact same Corrupt Fantasy Races Zombie Bad Guys twice just a couple of years apart?

I remember back in the early days of working on “Dragon Age: Origins” (before that was even its title) when I was asked to make the new game’s setting. It’s not the sort of task one gets assigned very often, and in this case it didn’t come with a lot of direction beyond ‘make something fantasy-ish…but your version of fantasy’. Lead Designer James Ohlen and I had chatted about some of the possibilities, after which I went off and made a world in the time-honored fashion of any nerd who grew up playing D&D: with a bunch of crudely-drawn maps on napkins and reams of text filled with enough twee-sounding proper nouns to make your head spin.

I’d really warmed up to the task, after some initial trepidation. This was going to be my subversion of the fantasy genre, a world that was in the aftermath of its ‘Lord of the Rings’ era where dragons were dead and magic was waning. I could take all the tropes I disliked about fantasy as a genre and turn them on their head, say something about the genre itself! I was psyched.

James was less psyched, as it turned out. “Where’s the magic?” he asked, after which I quickly learned the difference between creating a setting that made for interesting reading on the page and one that made for something around which you could build an interesting game. I grudgingly began to iterate based on his feedback, inching towards the version of the Dragon Age setting fans are familiar with today…but there was one change he wanted which didn’t sit very well with me: he wanted an “evil horde”, some ubiquitous enemy like the standard fantasy orcs which the player wouldn’t feel bad about killing. Dragon Age fans will recognize this role as what eventually became the darkspawn — but, back then, they simply didn’t exist. There was no such thing in the world I’d created.

I’ll admit: I balked. It ran smack against the very theme I’d tried to establish. I didn’t want to figure out how to do it, I just didn’t want to do it. I made arguments, I whined, I even made a couple of proposals which were so obviously stupid I was inwardly hoping they’d illustrate why the entire idea was bad. You know, the sort of things which undoubtedly made James question both my professionalism and my competence, and which he rightfully dismissed out of hand.

So I tried. I sat down and, rather than imagining all the ways in which adding orcs was the worst decision in all of human history, I instead tried to figure out if there was a version of orcs that…maybe I wouldn’t mind so much. Eventually I thought of an idea where these weren’t sentient monsters so much as a plague, a reoccurring event that threatened the world on an irregular basis in the same manner the Thread threatened Anne McCaffrey’s Pern (my nerd roots are showing, pardon me). That…that wouldn’t be so bad, would it? In fact, I could think of several spin-offs that would be kind of interesting for the setting’s history, a sort of periodic “purge” which would make for more interesting reading than a litany of “king X did Y” entries.

So I asked James: would it be okay if, instead of orcs, I did this “living plague” idea I was more excited about? I don’t remember his actual response, but it boiled down to “yes, I am indeed okay with you doing an implementation you will make interesting rather than the one you would make boring and crappy.”

tl;dr in the 00s, liberal writers had come to realization that evil races were Problematic, but game directors really wanted evil hordes that players could kill en masse without guilt, hence fantasy/sci-fi zombies.

I've caught Gayder lying before, and I will catch him again. He has repeatedly rewritten history to make himself look better. He is a snake of a man who will throw anyone under the bus to further his own appearances and/or career. He has repeatedly reinterpreted his past through a modern lens and rewritten or excluded the parts he dislikes.

How do I know this?
Because there is what is essentially a lawful evil race of humanoids in Dragon Age: Origins — The Qunari! The same race Gayder has gone back and lied about prior, claiming there was no real world influence upon their design despite having to completely scrap the DAO race and make a new one with the same name.

[Oyster Sauce]

Remember when Bioware made the exact same Corrupt Fantasy Races Zombie Bad Guys twice just a couple of years apart?

I remember back in the early days of working on “Dragon Age: Origins” (before that was even its title) when I was asked to make the new game’s setting. It’s not the sort of task one gets assigned very often, and in this case it didn’t come with a lot of direction beyond ‘make something fantasy-ish…but your version of fantasy’. Lead Designer James Ohlen and I had chatted about some of the possibilities, after which I went off and made a world in the time-honored fashion of any nerd who grew up playing D&D: with a bunch of crudely-drawn maps on napkins and reams of text filled with enough twee-sounding proper nouns to make your head spin.

I’d really warmed up to the task, after some initial trepidation. This was going to be my subversion of the fantasy genre, a world that was in the aftermath of its ‘Lord of the Rings’ era where dragons were dead and magic was waning. I could take all the tropes I disliked about fantasy as a genre and turn them on their head, say something about the genre itself! I was psyched.

James was less psyched, as it turned out. “Where’s the magic?” he asked, after which I quickly learned the difference between creating a setting that made for interesting reading on the page and one that made for something around which you could build an interesting game. I grudgingly began to iterate based on his feedback, inching towards the version of the Dragon Age setting fans are familiar with today…but there was one change he wanted which didn’t sit very well with me: he wanted an “evil horde”, some ubiquitous enemy like the standard fantasy orcs which the player wouldn’t feel bad about killing. Dragon Age fans will recognize this role as what eventually became the darkspawn — but, back then, they simply didn’t exist. There was no such thing in the world I’d created.

I’ll admit: I balked. It ran smack against the very theme I’d tried to establish. I didn’t want to figure out how to do it, I just didn’t want to do it. I made arguments, I whined, I even made a couple of proposals which were so obviously stupid I was inwardly hoping they’d illustrate why the entire idea was bad. You know, the sort of things which undoubtedly made James question both my professionalism and my competence, and which he rightfully dismissed out of hand.

So I tried. I sat down and, rather than imagining all the ways in which adding orcs was the worst decision in all of human history, I instead tried to figure out if there was a version of orcs that…maybe I wouldn’t mind so much. Eventually I thought of an idea where these weren’t sentient monsters so much as a plague, a reoccurring event that threatened the world on an irregular basis in the same manner the Thread threatened Anne McCaffrey’s Pern (my nerd roots are showing, pardon me). That…that wouldn’t be so bad, would it? In fact, I could think of several spin-offs that would be kind of interesting for the setting’s history, a sort of periodic “purge” which would make for more interesting reading than a litany of “king X did Y” entries.

So I asked James: would it be okay if, instead of orcs, I did this “living plague” idea I was more excited about? I don’t remember his actual response, but it boiled down to “yes, I am indeed okay with you doing an implementation you will make interesting rather than the one you would make boring and crappy.”

tl;dr in the 00s, liberal writers had come to realization that evil races were Problematic, but game directors really wanted evil hordes that players could kill en masse without guilt, hence fantasy/sci-fi zombies.

I've caught Gayder lying before, and I will catch him again. He has repeatedly rewritten history to make himself look better. He is a snake of a man who will throw anyone under the bus to further his own appearances and/or career. He has repeatedly reinterpreted his past through a modern lens and rewritten or excluded the parts he dislikes.

How do I know this?
Because there is what is essentially a lawful evil race of humanoids in Dragon Age: Origins — The Qunari! The same race Gayder has gone back and lied about prior, claiming there was no real world influence upon their design despite having to completely scrap the DAO race and make a new one with the same name.

Wish they didn't scrap his idea for the race of greedy schemers called the Tohari

[Roguey]

I've caught Gayder lying before, and I will catch him again. He has repeatedly rewritten history to make himself look better. He is a snake of a man who will throw anyone under the bus to further his own appearances and/or career. He has repeatedly reinterpreted his past through a modern lens and rewritten or excluded the parts he dislikes.

How do I know this?
Because there is what is essentially a lawful evil race of humanoids in Dragon Age: Origins — The Qunari! The same race Gayder has gone back and lied about prior, claiming there was no real world influence upon their design despite having to completely scrap the DAO race and make a new one with the same name.

Wouldn't really call the qunari evil. Sten had a fit of murder-rage because he lost his sword, but he's a good guy. They want everyone to be a part of their religion, but it's not an evil religion worshiping some dark god, just weird and rigid.

[rusty_shackleford]

. Sten had a fit of murder-rage because he lost his sword, but he's a good guy.

Absolutely not. That is lawful evil shit.

[wndrbr]

Aren't qunari just magic muslims?

[Roguey]

Absolutely not. That is lawful evil shit.

It was a burst of chaos he feels bad about. They impose these harsh laws on themselves to quell their violent impulses.

[rusty_shackleford]

Aren't qunari just magic muslims?

Until they got retconned after gayder realized he did a heccin racism, yes.