Olle

Know of only one trainer that you get access to after the second big quest (or was it third?). The training will set you back 2x3000 gold. I guess there are more as you go along, haven't had time to find out.

In a lot of ways I find it refreshing to play a game wherein the main character is a doer and not some navel gazing egomaniac with a backlog of emotional traumas to deal with. When I started to play Avadon it seemed pretty clear that this game would function in many ways as Fallout, where your identity is tied to 1) being a vault dweller 2) wether or not you become a slaver (like that is ever a tough choice - that brand is ultra cool). As long as the game lives up to the expectations that it is creating I'm all for it. Finally I would say that the main character resembles many of the more dedicated denizens of Avadon, such as Redbeard, who have shed their former identities in a lot of ways.

That actually made me chuckle, perhaps these options will grow on me...

Just one thing on the dialogues. Why is there ever a dialogue option that, in the face of betrayal goes something like this Bad-guy-ion: Moaha ha ha, you have stepped right into my trap. Now I will feast on your innards! Player: What are you doing with that knife? What is going on? When will you give me that lollipop you promised earlier, just before you led me down this spooky dungeon and turned of the lights? You have to be pretty dedicated to playing happy-go-lucky in order to pick those, or am I missing some subtle adventurers joke here? Edit: sorry if I just went completely off-topic, not that anything is being helped with this ad hoc excuse

Just want to publicly declare that your combined leadership skill just beat mine! No more polemics from me

I'm going to kick this puppy one last time by saying that I think the highest reward of a good dialogue/diplomacy system is the feeling that your decisions made a difference rather than that your high stat gave you the WIN-option.

you could always mod the games graphics for a male sorcerer... ...with long blond hair and massive chest muscles

To Paul, Whoa, I like the antagonistic streak in your reply, RPGs does matter! When you say that the point of any RPG-experience is to play a role I wholeheartedly agree, and in the case of Avadon I would say a diplomatic approach is not entirely compatible with a loyalist line. On several occasions you have to choose, shall I listen to this, milk for information or attack at once. If the divides multiply and are expanded upon, a player with a history of being a diplomat may very well be able to talk enemies out of a confrontation, but that would be based on earlier choices rather than a stat in the rooster. That if anything would make for an engaging re-playable experience in my mind. It all hinges on complexities in the dialogues and a sense that different choices do matter and are to some extent exclusive. Looking back at Planescape they had this system in part, part stat and part sacrifices, with that final aspect being a favorite of mine. Having a character considering giving up an eye, ally or perhaps something as etheral as childhood memories always makes me smile. So I don't think you are being entirely fair when you say that I'm arguing for proficiency without reason, and to me that argument seems like a slippery slope with end result being a map-making skill, a walking skill etc.

Running the risk of being a bit repetitive I have to ask if it is really the presence of a Leadership skill or an attention to details and possibilities in the dialogues that we hope for? For me the leadership skill means nothing without a really good context, but that context can just as well be used without 'leadership' being present as a stat. Sure, it is practical to use the skill to check in order to determine the outcome but instead you can check against earlier decisions, conversations, items, tendencies, alignments etc. Perhaps I'm thinking of this in terms of economical game design and that warps my perspective...

One good thing that can come out of not having a leadership skill is that the dialogues could become more exciting knowing that there is no "win" option but rather different paths. This is something that can make you sit and ponder for a while and leave you with an uneasy feeling after the conversation is concluded, and in my mind that tension is helped along if you don't have to also consider "is my stat high enough?" Comparisons to P&P RPG is perhaps not all that solid, but in my experience any 'convince npc' stat adversely affects all players willingness to seriously engage in conversations as a means to drive the story forwards. Now, I'm undecided as to wether or not Avadon reaches this kind of tension but playing it for the first time I must say I have my hopes.

Hi again, and thanks for the welcome. Perhaps I'm running the risk of being a pest but the v1.0 Rev 1 is running very sluggish on my computer compared to the original v1.0. When I set game not to draw all graphic details this improves, but it doesn't get as good as the older version, which I ran with all details being drawn. My computer is a 2006 macbook 2 Ghz, 2GB RAM, gma 950 running on MacOS 10.6.6 The sluggishness gets atrocious when it starts to rain but other effects such as some spells slows down the game noticeably. Again, when I switch back to the old version everything runs smoothly. By the way, I'm really enjoying my first playthrough of the game!

This is my first post here so hello all! Don't know if this is the appropriate place to point out a slight oddity that I stumbled upon but here we go. It might have been corrected in this beta patch but talking to a character named Hahn, an old farmer in Dhorl Steads lower right quadrant, I noticed that his avatar was that of a female warrior instead of what I suppose should be a decrepit old farmer.