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Spiderweb future


Owenmoz

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So inspired by nercis omega's thread and a short conversation with hyena of ice where they sugested a spinoff of geneforge rather than a continuation if were it to happen.

 

I went to thinking about the future of the company. As most people seem to think Jeff will stop at Avadon with a very possible remake of geneforge and then retirement. Of course he hasnt said anything officially.

But in case it does happens, reading a lot of posts, comments, topics and talking to some people. I realise there is a lot of potential in these forums and a number of great ideas. My point is, I dont know the first thing on game design or coding or computer science. But if there are enough people who do know, maybe they could try to buy the rights for the games here and continue the legacy of high quality indie rpg. Create new games, continue old ones etc... I mean around here not only do i read great things in terms of imagination, but also smart and logical things making the fantasy genre more realistic. As well as very well made cricticisms on gameplay balancing etc... I think creating games from a player perspective tends to help for better games. I guess in the end i would trust the fans of the franchises to keep the legacy than a big company. And if you think it cant work just remember that the person who finished the dune series was a fan of the writer.

 

I am missing a point so this will probably be edited soon.

 

 

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Jeff's in his mid forties, and even if business is good now I doubt he's planning imminent retirement to his gold-filled lair. I don't doubt that Geneforge remakes are on the horizon, but I'd also be very, very surprised if we didn't see some completely new games as well.

 

As far as taking over, I think you overestimate how easy it is to make games as a group. It can be done, but it's hard. And it's especially hard because most people who have the coding skill and design skill to pull it off don't want to tell someone else's stories, they want to tell their own.

 

—Alorael, who has even more doubt that a "big company" would want to buy out Spiderweb. IP is only worth its customer base, and Spiderweb's is tiny.

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Jeff has listed some things he plans to do starting with remakes, but hasn't stated that he won't do anything new. Between Avadon 3 that he's halfway through and Avernum 3 remake, he can go another 2 to 3 years before he has to decide on a new game series, an Avernum prequel, or going straight into Geneforge remakes.

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What, like a fan made new game? Um...almost certainly, that would fall apart long before it got finished, and if by some terrible miracle it got done, it'd almost certainly be a massive disappointment because it'd be compared with the real ones, and there would be much pretending it didn't happen, lest childhoods be ruined.

 

Now, if people could get together and make a game of the quality of even a poor BoE scenario, then I'd be much impressed and take the idea seriously, but even from their to carrying on one of the franchises is quite an ambitious step. Even something simple, like a webcomic of any quality would much surprise me.

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I've taken it upon myself to create a tabletop Pen&Paper RPG version of Geneforge; initially just the rule framework and mechanical stuff and then just as with D&D people could all do pretty much whatever the hell they wanted story and content wise in their own little groups and not have to code anything. I wouldn't sell it or anything, and idk if I'd even be able to distribute it for free but I want to make it anyway even if I only end up playing it with my friends. And maybe if it turns out well it could get approval from Jeff.

 

I'm aiming to transpose as many of the mechanics and math stuff from the games as possible with minimal alterations into the tabletop system, anything that wouldn't be murderous to calculate by hand or require too many dice. Then borrow ideas from D&D to fill in the gaps like frog DNA in Jurassic Park's dinosaurs. And I plan to create a very elaborate shaping system with more depth and customization than the games have. Probably differentiate the classes a little more with exclusive bonuses and abilities besides the variance in health/energy/essence pools and which skills are cheaper. add some stuff to make melee more interesting. Crafting will work similarly to how it does in the games

 

The time consuming thing is going to be the "monster manual" and doing spells and items, because of the sheer volume. And typing up background and lore stuff for reference. And a lot will probably be vague since there's only so much we can extrapolate from the existing games.

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I've taken it upon myself to create a tabletop Pen&Paper RPG version of Geneforge; initially just the rule framework and mechanical stuff and then just as with D&D people could all do pretty much whatever the hell they wanted story and content wise in their own little groups and not have to code anything. I wouldn't sell it or anything, and idk if I'd even be able to distribute it for free but I want to make it anyway even if I only end up playing it with my friends. And maybe if it turns out well it could get approval from Jeff.

 

I'm aiming to transpose as many of the mechanics and math stuff from the games as possible with minimal alterations into the tabletop system, anything that wouldn't be murderous to calculate by hand or require too many dice. Then borrow ideas from D&D to fill in the gaps like frog DNA in Jurassic Park's dinosaurs. And I plan to create a very elaborate shaping system with more depth and customization than the games have. Probably differentiate the classes a little more with exclusive bonuses and abilities besides the variance in health/energy/essence pools and which skills are cheaper. add some stuff to make melee more interesting. Crafting will work similarly to how it does in the games

 

The time consuming thing is going to be the "monster manual" and doing spells and items, because of the sheer volume. And typing up background and lore stuff for reference. And a lot will probably be vague since there's only so much we can extrapolate from the existing games.

 

I am behind you 150%. I just started playing table top and would love a nice sci fi pnp board game. The only question is how would the missions and quests work?

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I second dungeons and dragons like geneforge game.(when you first mentioned i had no idea what table top means). You're going exactly for the fabled blades of geneforge. Creative freedom! Mission freedom! Interaction freedom! Amaze!

sidhe dreams,made of glass could do the beta testing for you and we all get to enjoy it. I guess the comunity isnt huge so it would be just destributing to friends.

Tell us when you're done. Imma hire a trumpeteer to provide you with a heroes welcome.

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Balancing doesn't seem all that hard really.

 

I imagine that it could be done fairly simply through background choices as a sort of guide for the characters growth. Essentially every character is sort of the same like in the games but are limited in what they can choose each level up depending on background. ie. Shapers can get shaping buffs each level up, magic buffs every 2 levels and fighting buffs every 5 levels. And so on and so forth. There is considerable scope for background training to influence growth even beyond the traditional shaper/guardian/agent trichotomy.

 

And that is only one suggestion. Balance can be done in any number of ways to make the characters interesting.

 

 

 

What really interests me in the universe would be the issue surrounding canister usage. I envision something along the lines of one canister being available each session or so and the players need to decide who gets to use the buff. They can contest each other in some roleplay manner and if more than one person has been using canisters then the compulsion means that they are forced to contest for future canisters so you can't just be all nice and sharing through some sort of 'meta' knowing that more will come. (canister madness and all that compulsion to use more) Not to mention the obvious downsides of avoiding the contests by letting just one person use them all rather than sharing them. Madness abounds!

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Although I love Spiderweb Software's games (Avernum / Avadon / Geneforge), thinking they have the best RPG gameplay of **ANY** RPG, I've long advocated that Jeff should seek a new direction rather than taking the time-and-cost efficient path (read: easy way out) of remakes.

 

Here are my suggestions:

 

1. A browser-based RPG, preferably without client software. Why?

  • Most people play Internet (i.e. MMO) games now, not standalone games;

  • Jeff would have total control of the cashflow. I suspect Jeff currently loses huge amounts of money to cracks and keygens.

2. Provide a site where people could develop their own text-based, browser-based RPG games. In other words, Jeff works on the "engine" and provides the database system for player records. I have many more details in mind (contact me via private message); for now, here are a few:

  • Anybody could develop a game for FREE;

  • However, no game gets released on the site for "public consumption" until Jeff approves. The worst characteristic of "design your own" sites is the HUGE number of absolute rubbish games. What a pain to weed through them for actual good games.

  • Jeff takes a percentage of income generated by publicly released game. (Thus, Jeff only approves developed games that he thinks have income potential.) All income goes through Jeff's site because the publicly released games are based there, so he is guaranteed to get his percentage.

  • The best test-based, browser-based RPG games by far are the HoboWars franchise (HoboWars, HoboWars 2, Facebook HoboWars). The engine is available somewhere because it was used to produce Skate Warfare, which is not affiliated with the HoboWars franchise (i.e. it is not a HellBored Entertainment game).

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Yeah, Jeff's blogged a bit about online gaming before. His assessment is that firstly, it's not really where his skills or interests lie as a game designer and programmer, and secondly, there are a lot of bigger and more experienced competitors in that market, there are high costs of entry and ongoing expenses, and if he tried to compete there's a pretty good chance he'd be eaten alive.

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2. Provide a site where people could develop their own text-based, browser-based RPG games. In other words, Jeff works on the "engine" and provides the database system for player records. I have many more details in mind (contact me via private message); for now, here are a few:
  • Anybody could develop a game for FREE;

  • However, no game gets released on the site for "public consumption" until Jeff approves. The worst characteristic of "design your own" sites is the HUGE number of absolute rubbish games. What a pain to weed through them for actual good games.

Also, you may be unaware of the history of Blades of Exile and Blades of Avernum. The upshot of it is that Jeff has very negative feelings about the last time he designed a game engine for players to make games with. (I'm not sure if that's what you mean, since you say "develop a game" rather than "design a scenario." If you're actually talking about a game application development platform, though, then I'm really confused as to why you think a one-man operation makes any sense for that.)

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Also, you may be unaware of the history of Blades of Exile and Blades of Avernum. The upshot of it is that Jeff has very negative feelings about the last time he designed a game engine for players to make games with. (I'm not sure if that's what you mean, since you say "develop a game" rather than "design a scenario." If you're actually talking about a game application development platform, though, then I'm really confused as to why you think a one-man operation makes any sense for that.)

 

It sounds like what he's envisioning is something that'd be a direct competitor to sites like StoryNexus, if you're familiar with that: a platform for creating mostly text-based browser games. The problem, of course, is that those already exist and have access to more staff and resources than Jeff does, so if they can't adequately curate all their content it's hard to see what Jeff and his wife could do that anyone else can't. Also, Jeff doesn't necessarily want to spend his time vetting other people's work even if there were money in it; he's mentioned repeatedly that he prefers to work on his own, and his previous experiments with publishing other people's stuff (I'm not just thinking of BoE/A here but also Lost Souls, Galactic Core, etc.) have had mixed results at best.

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He might end up losing a noticeable part of his fan base which is already small. Amd move out to a market he has no hope in surviving. Plus it seems that the players have much more to win with the creating games thing. And finally mmo's arent easy to make and most times they have very bad reviews. Even tamriel unlimited was complicated for a very experienced corporation. Too many risks even if jeff actually enjoyed that line of work

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Provide a site where people could develop their own text-based, browser-based RPG games. In other words, Jeff works on the "engine" and provides the database system for player records.

 

Note that the intersection between this and Spiderweb's existing products is basically zero. In order to develop anything involving websites and server backends, Jeff would have to learn about half a dozen new languages and technologies, many of which are fast-evolving. These posts paint a good picture on how much he would enjoy that.

 

(That aside, as Slarty pointed out, text-based RPGs are entirely unrelated to the SW games, involving a completely different set of game mechanics.)

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I've taken it upon myself to create a tabletop Pen&Paper RPG version of Geneforge; initially just the rule framework and mechanical stuff and then just as with D&D people could all do pretty much whatever the hell they wanted story and content wise in their own little groups and not have to code anything. I wouldn't sell it or anything, and idk if I'd even be able to distribute it for free but I want to make it anyway even if I only end up playing it with my friends. And maybe if it turns out well it could get approval from Jeff.

 

I'm aiming to transpose as many of the mechanics and math stuff from the games as possible with minimal alterations into the tabletop system, anything that wouldn't be murderous to calculate by hand or require too many dice. Then borrow ideas from D&D to fill in the gaps like frog DNA in Jurassic Park's dinosaurs. And I plan to create a very elaborate shaping system with more depth and customization than the games have. Probably differentiate the classes a little more with exclusive bonuses and abilities besides the variance in health/energy/essence pools and which skills are cheaper. add some stuff to make melee more interesting. Crafting will work similarly to how it does in the games

 

The time consuming thing is going to be the "monster manual" and doing spells and items, because of the sheer volume. And typing up background and lore stuff for reference. And a lot will probably be vague since there's only so much we can extrapolate from the existing games.

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Indeed. Although remember that being creative is a very difficult thing to turn on and off. As an example, look at that big fat guy writing the dragons books (and tv shows now). His creativity dried up 10 years ago when he released book 4. It takes a damn lot of work to do what Jeff does and I don't envy him the job. Creativity is hard.

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Indeed. Although remember that being creative is a very difficult thing to turn on and off. As an example, look at that big fat guy writing the dragons books (and tv shows now). His creativity dried up 10 years ago when he released book 4. It takes a damn lot of work to do what Jeff does and I don't envy him the job. Creativity is hard.

 

That is too true. And the harder you try to be creative the less likelly it is you'll make something decent. Why many artists have hiatuses. And with jeff the biggest problem isnt computers or even programing from what i read. It is mostly motivation. So mix those two and you find one day you wake up feeling really creative but you cant bother to write your ideas down or be productive. Other days you just feel like being usefull but your brain is having a hard time spelling bananas. The whole process of developing games seems to be hard. Specially since it seems to be all mostly done by him. In big companies we have people responsible for coding, some for the story. Others for graphics. Anyway. Seems a lot to expect from him. But to be honest i was very mislead about his age. As he looks older than my father who is steadilly walking to his sixties. Forty isnt too bad. And he seems to be doing some remakes for the forseeable future. That buys him time to be creative and stuff. But yeah tabletop blades of geneforge is still something i want to see

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I've read through all of the replies to my original post suggesting that Jeff should shift his paradigm to 1) a browser-based RPG, preferably without client software and 2) a site where people could develop their own text-based, browser-based RPG games. I'll respond to a few of the broad themes in those replies.

 

1. To understand the concept of "a site where people could develop their own text-based, browser-based RPG games", you really need to take a look at games in the HoboWars franchise (HoboWars, HoboWars 2, Facebook HoboWars) and Skate Warfare.

 

HoboWars and Skate Warfare are two completely separate games. They are *NOT* mods (or scenarios in BoE / BofA parlance). However, both games were clearly produced with the same engine.

 

The "site where people could develop their own text-based, browser-based RPG games" would allow developers to access the same engine to produce another unique game.

 

Note: HoboWars and Skate Warfare look and feel too similar. The site should allow developers more variety for the interface.

 

2.

 

Jeff's blogged a bit about online gaming before. His assessment is that firstly, it's not really where his skills or interests lie as a game designer and programmer

 

Jeff would have to learn about half a dozen new languages and technologies, many of which are fast-evolving

 

I thought IT people *liked* to learn new technologies. (However, I once interviewed a young lady for a programming position who actually said, "I don't want to learn anything new". Needless to say, she didn't get hired.)

 

he's mentioned repeatedly that he prefers to work on his own

Yeah, I don't particularly like IT people either. :)

 

Jeff doesn't necessarily want to spend his time vetting other people's work even if there were money in it

Are you serious? If it's a choice between

  • the grind of software development

or
  • letting others grind for you while you simply need to show a thumbs up or a thumbs down and take a percentage of the income from all of the thumbs up

Jeff would actually prefer to grind?#@!

 

3.

 

there are a lot of bigger and more experienced competitors in that market, there are high costs of entry and ongoing expenses

 

Spiderweb Software and HellBored Entertainment have *A LOT* in common. Specifically, although they had excellent games--the best in their class--they are both dying a slow death, and in the meantime, they are milking their veteran, devoted, loyal players for income. However, even these players see the handwriting on the wall...as the existence of this thread indicates. Very few new players.

 

Spiderweb Software and HellBored Entertainment should talk to each other.

 

Their resources and skills are very complementary.

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Spiderweb Software and HellBored Entertainment have *A LOT* in common. Specifically, although they had excellent games--the best in their class--they are both dying a slow death, and in the meantime, they are milking their veteran, devoted, loyal players for income. However, even these players see the handwriting on the wall...as the existence of this thread indicates. Very few new players.

I don't think this is true at all. Spiderweb is doing fine. The closest Spiderweb ever came to dying was when it last released something like what you're describing (BoA). That's why Jeff probably isn't ever again going to try to create something for users to design their own scenarios. But right now, Spiderweb is reasonably financially secure (for an indie developer).

 

I think you may have misunderstood something about Spiderweb. Jeff isn't a great programmer. Jeff is barely a programmer at all. He writes well, and he draws towns from premade graphics pretty well, and he's good at working on combat mechanics. But in terms of the actual coding, by all accounts, he's mediocre.

 

Jeff has survived for 20+ years doing indie games (a feat accomplished by almost no one else) by being essentially cautious. I'm not sure what he has to gain when right now he's doing fine, and you're suggesting that he change directions in a manner that utilizes the weakest part of his skill set, even though the only time he's ever taken a step in the direction that you're advocating, he had a commercial failure.

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I note that you are not responding to the broad theme of people observing that, as Aran put it, "the intersection between this and Spiderweb's existing products is basically zero." Is there any reasoning for why you think these two companies should work together that has to do with the substance of those companies -- how they operate, or what specifically they are skilled at making -- rather than an interpretation of current circumstances ("had excellent games, now dying a slow death")?

 

It does seem like you have a different idea of what Spiderweb Software is, than what it really is. I could be wrong about that, but in the absence of good answers to these points, that's the simplest conclusion.

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Jeff hates coding when it's hard for him. His willingness to add a feature in his new game depends upon how much of a hassle it will be for him to do it.

 

Jeff was originally no longer going to make iPad versions of his games until he found that it wasn't going to be as hard as he thought to learn the latest changes.

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Some people live and breathe programming, but when the going gets tough... I definitely can understand where he's coming from.

 

UI and graphics can get particularly nasty, mobile support can be a complete mess, and when you start jumping platforms... I've had a taste of having to singleton a company like Spiderweb's technical sector. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, honestly.

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This is the last original game currently scheduled before he goes back to remakes.

So presumably the next thing after Avadon 3 is the remake of Avernum 3. If he does his usual alternation between new games and remade old games, we'll probably get a brand-new series after that, which will alternate with Geneforge remakes.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Update on the pen and paper thing: It's the last month and a half of the semester and Chem and Trig are both getting pretty heavy. I still plan on doing it, but I probably won't get a chance to really sit down and work at it until the summer. I am still brainstorming when I get a chance.

 

In terms of balancing the classes, much like in the games, they'll all have access to shaping and to magic, whether they're geared towards those or not. I'll be differentiating the classes more and giving them unique abilities and mechanics, but everything from the original games will be accessible to all classes. The real issue with class balance for me is between the Shaper and Rebel classes, at least the ones that overlap like warriors and guardians or shapers and life crafters. The easy way out is to treat them as identical but that doesn't seem quite right to me for lore reasons. Especailly that I can't see any way warriors would have any advantage over guardians, a guy with a sword who used a geneforge and has to lean on canisters vs. a guy trained in both the arts of war and shaping? Nerfing the warrior's shaping and buffing his combat relative to the guardian makes sense mechanistically, but lore wise, why would a random "warrior" be more skilled at arms than one with the training of a guardian? For life crafters vs shapers, I thought about maybe balancing power against discipline and control, where the lifecrafter is forced to lean heavily on canisters and can make creations higher than their level would normally allow but they have a chance of going rogue, vs a shaper who is more constrained but doesn't have to worry that stuff will blow up in their face when they push the limits.

 

I think that balancing combat (melee vs ranged within that) vs. Magic. vs shaping (including fire vs magic vs battle) in general is going to be the more difficult feat than the specific classes themselves.

 

It also occurs to me that if you've got a party of 4-5 players and they all have creations, it will get messy quick. I've thought of limiting how many creations each class can have, with shapers having the most, life crafters being able to make more than them theoretically but they'd risk losing control, guardians and shock troopers having fewer, sorceresses having less than them, with agents and warriors being heavily constrained. All of them would be able to unlock more slots as they level up, and the late-game will end up with a lot of big pitched battles.

 

 

distributing canisters will come down to how the GM and party want to do it. My job is just setting up how canisters work, which is pretty easy since I'm not going to change them at all. Content creators can have them strewn about as generously or sparsely as they want in their campaigns. Quests work similarly, the basic framework of what a quest is is part of the game system, but I don't really have to come up with much there "quest giver wants you to do x for y reward and z xp (maybe adjusted for quest lvl vs player lvl)" and people just come up with whatever they need for their campaigns.

 

I'll eventually want to create my own campaigns, of course, but I'm not going to worry about that until the rule framework is at least far enough along that it requires play-testing.

 

 

 

 

 

for the Future of spiderweb, not my dreams of mangling of their best IP, I haven't heard anything besides a brief rumor that didn't catch on of retirement. Presumably A3 remake is next up, then Geneforge remakes possibly. I'd love more new Geneforge games, but I suspect that they won't happen. I haven't actually played any of the Avadon games, but it'd be cool to see a new series and setting, Jeff's world building is always great. Or a Nethergate remake, for shits and giggles.

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First off. Im doing exams right now so sincere good luck wishes

 

Second. Make the wariors have better magic than guardian. No need to explain it cause geneforge. I think that would even out.

 

Third. Make lifecrafter rogue chance pretty high but lowers on luck skill.

 

Also would be cool to have origin stories for each class.

 

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Thought of using perks of some sort? A certain number of rebel only or shaper only or even class only perks might be a useful balancing mechanism.

 

The other thing is that in a roleplay game often total balance is not required. Keep things in the same area but let people make what they want from that characters.

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The other thing is that in a roleplay game often total balance is not required. Keep things in the same area but let people make what they want from that characters.

 

 

Yep. Eg, i am partial against vlish so i go to the more expensive less effective searing artilas for no reason other than preference. I also tended to choose shamans in avadon despite their absurd handicap. Balance is good. But by far not too important.

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yeah, you're right that agonizing over balance too much isn't necessary, but I want to strive to have it at least sort of balanced. give each class a distinct feel and play style without the power differences being so obscene that players feel penalized for not picking a certain class or the strong classes trivializing gameplay. The upside of tabletop and having a GM is that at least it's easier to scale the enemies to be balanced with the players on an as needed basis if the GM is willing to put in the effort to tailor the rules to their player but I'd like to spare them from having to do it too much.

 

I plan on giving every class their own perks/feats/whatever you want to call them in order to give them some identity beyond skill costs and health/energy/essence pools. I feel like it probably won't be as hard to come up with unique things to flavor most of them, but the Warrior vs guardian thing still gets me because I can't think of anything the warrior would have that realistically the guardian wouldn't. I may just end up having them be mechanically almost the same and just say the geneforge took care of giving the warrior all the stuff the guardian trained for. maybe take away some of the cool stuff I came up with for the guardian (can shape in combat, passive buffs for creations based off your skills, and certain others distinct from the shapers- aimed at having a small pack of permanent companions and then make weak disposable ones on the fly as opposed to the Shapers who will keep a larger pack all the time that's overall more powerful) and compensate with higher base stats, since that can more easily be explained away with self-shaping. (hmm, looks like I just answered my own question)

 

rogue chance for life crafters will be low/nonexistent for level appropriate creations, and then increase steeply if you try to make ones beyond the limits of your regular ability or make more than you can comfortably control. I'm reminded of pokemon, where if you don't have the proper badge then they'll disobey you. So if they play it safe, they're like a weaker shaper that's a little more physically robust (still not good at melee but less fragile) but if they want to risk it they can push a lot of raw power and pray their unstable drakon-thing doesn't turn on them.

 

 

I think shock troopers will focus around the in-combat shaping and powerful disposable creations instead of just being a shaper that also hits stuff sort of like the mechanic I came up with for guardians but built around it instead of being a side-feature. give them a smaller essence pool but cheapen charged creations accordingly.

 

Agents and infiltrators will be mechanically identical probably. minor flavor differences. I feel like agents might favor battle magic for ranged and use knives up close while infiltrators might favor ranged weapons for dealing damage and having to lean more heavily on mental magic and stealth than the Agent will but I won't force them into the niches too strongly. Agents always felt to me like the sort of "James Bond" type spy that's not actually all that discreet.

 

Serviles will be the only class that really has shaping nerfed to the point of strongly de-incintivising it but have really high base physical stats and potent magic slightly weaker than agents/infiltrators. Be a one man wrecking crew. Shaping is probably going to be sort of OP given how it'd be possible to power game using the more complicated and flexible shaping system, so they'll have to be pretty hardcore in order to compensate for missing out on that. probably play up the crazy cultist angle as a sort of subclass vs the modified by shaping way of acquiring power. Always thought that servile magic was interesting.

 

Sorceress will be a glass cannon, really heavy on the battle magic but physically frail, probably use battle creations as meat shields to let her keep a safe distance.

 

 

I'm starting to think this will be best suited to one player and a GM (let's call them a "Gene-master" lol) rather than a party of several players. You could do it either way (ah the beautiful freedom of pend&paper, it's worth the math) but combat would end up really slow if you had like 4 or 5 shapers with a huge pack of creations or something. Plus balancing for a party rather than a single class at a time is harder, since some comps are going to be hilariously OP. (though again, the GM can scale up the power and quantity of enemies as needed). Perhaps after the initial version is set, I can make a multiplayer variant where the classes are all nerved in a way that makes them co-dependent

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  • 2 weeks later...

I mean, if you count a couple of randos making threads about the idea as "talk".

 

I'm pretty sure he mentioned he was considering it in interviews. I found one with RPG Watch where he mentions considering it to fund a new engine:

 

http://www.rpgwatch.com/articles/jeff-vogel-interview-293.html

 

I think I've seen him mention it elsewhere too. But I guess never anything beyond idle speculation.

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He was positive about the idea, but he also didn't bring up the idea, he was asked a question about it. I found a similar instance on one of the reddit AMA's. In both cases though he says that would be in the future. So it's not a complete fabrication, but it does seem to be speculation and consideration, with no evidence of actual materialization.

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Huh... I was going to mention how I thought he was refreshingly* straight forward with his plans (balance included) in the "Avadon 3: The Warborn, Changes and Discussion" thread, but that interview does predate it.

 

 

 

 

*As opposed to other developers, though that may primarily be the fault of other developers I follow. I could also be conflating my own positivity on the changes proposed in debatable ways, so there's that too.

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Let's lay this one to rest:

 

We'll be starting an all-new series soon. When we do, it will still be a big, complex game, but it will be big and complex in a different way. At the very least, there will be fewer than 11 countries for you to keep track of.

 

—Alorael, who appreciates the unambiguity. Looks like Mr. Vogel is not ready to stop eating and/or sending children to college yet.

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Good. I was always a little put off by the promised depth in Avadon and then the lack of presence in the story. So many countries, so little time.

 

I look forward to what comes next. Hopefully it will be something that I can find myself gravitating to. Hopefully something more technological and less cliche magical. If I'd started my Spiderweb experience with Avadon he'd have only sold one game (or possibly none since the demo's exist and I wasn't impressed with the start).

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"So many countries, so little time." Yup.

 

Cliche magical sells. Geneforge was apparently conceived of as a more fully SF game, but was made into a fantasy hybrid due to market concerns.

 

The inspiration for Redbeard was neat. But I do wonder if the next series will have a fifth Giant Iron-Fisted Vaguely Repressive But Horribly Competent Empire That Somebody Will Rebel Against...

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