Edgwyn

Well, at the age of 74, my father King Alfonso finally died, now I am King Fernando the Just. He did give me Kingship of Navarra before he died to try to keep it in the family, but things did not work out and so I lost it. I was able to retain all of the rest of his titles, which when combined with the ones that he had given me earlier, meant that I had to find some courtiers to give counties and a duchy to. The last part of his life was busy despite him being concerned about starting something and then dying in the middle of it. He was able to take a little bit of Aragon and Barcelona away from the infidel, giving me a foothold in those realms for future expansion. His wife died, but he stayed chaste afterwards which made succession easier. He did get multiple offers from Aragon for Matrilineal marriages but turned them down. He fought in several holy wars, mostly as an ally for others, but he did initiate one that gave us the Duchy of Valencia. We were already in a war so participating in the crusade for Jerusalem was out of the question. There has been some more consolidation among the infidels that we face with the Hudids getting weaker, but the already strong Almorvids getting even stronger. The reconquista is going to be difficult though we are making progress. We have 32 of the 59 counties in Espana. There are three more in the Kingdom of Aragon that we can pick up from Infidels, which will also gives us a little over half. Our major expansion is going to have to take place in Andalusia where we only have 3 out of 20. Toledo is the next obvious target, but we will see.

My second pick for the type of games would be turn based strategy (e.g. Civilization).

Well, I didn't quite follow my plan. I risked another Holy War and ended up with a couple more counties in Portugal. That allowed me to declare myself King, but I had a long truce period before I could take any more counties in Portugal. Towards the end of the Truce, one of my Dukes started a war for the remaining counties. My truce expired while he was at it, so I was able to jump in and take one of the four for myself. My son has come of age and is engaged to the Duchess of Burgandy. She should come of age soon. My eldest daughter is married to the King of France. Either William the Bastard failed or never launched his invasion of England, so the King of France decided to do it himself and dragged me into it. I was able to contribute around 15% towards his victory and still pull my troops off of the island successfully. I hate fighting on islands since it is so hard to get your army home afterwards. The King of France is awfully powerful, hopefully he will not decide that he wants to take over Spain in the next few generations. I returned to my evil ways and tried assassinating the King of Navarra. Nothing was happening, so I went ahead and invaded and took over. That was probably a waste, since when I die, my son probably won't inherit it. I need to spend the next few years figuring out how to deal with succession in multiple Kingdoms, prevent France from swallowing me, getting my claim established in Zaragosa and how to have a Holy War for another big chunk of Spain without the North Africans coming in and beating me.

I have played CKII a couple of times spurred on by the LP that was here. I had some frustrations with it, but have updated my version and started a new game. I am King Alfonso of Leon. It has been 15 years since William the Bastard invaded England. I was not a nice person and successfully assassinated my brothers to secure for myself the Kingdoms of Castille and Galicia. Before I could assassinate him my brother in Galicia started a war for Zaragosa. I was able to finish the war and secure the county for myself as well. After revoking my sisters titles, I personally control all three counties in Leon and three of the four counties of Castile. This gives me a bit of a penalty, but I want to have as much control of those two dukedoms as possible. I married the daughter of an Italian Doge who had great Diplomatic skill because this was an area that I am poor in. In the last 15 years, I have been able to greatly improve myself and I am an overall much better person than I was. I have a 13 year old Daughter who would make a great ruler, but the succession laws favor my 11 year old son who will be a fine ruler, except for his very poor martial skill (maybe his sister can fight for him). I also have a four year old daughter. My mid term goal for my dynasty is to control all of Spain. My long term goal is to control the Western part of the Mediterranean by expanding into North Africa. I am trying to avoid warfare with my Catholic neighbors. I recently concluded a successful Holy War with the Infidel that gave my the Dukedom of Badajoz. I had to call in a couple of mercenary units to finish things quickly before the Sunni's could overwhelm me. I really cannot afford to risk another Holy War for a long while. Barcelona may end up with a female ruler, but she is too young for my heir and will likely be too old for my heir's son when he has one. Navarra is weak and has limited options for succession. Aragon is divided. If I take a county from the infidel, I could set myself up there as King as well. That particular infidel is a strong ruler however. My immediate ambition is to take one more county in the Kingdom of Portugal through a false claim. With that done, I could declare myself King of Portugal and fight a series of De Jure battles for the remaining counties. I finally had my chance during my Holy War, but I did not have sufficient funds to pursue my claim so now I must start again.

I also have multiple saves, usually at key points where I think that I am going to enter a new area, and then before a big fight in that area. Also, I tend to create some save points based on key plot events as well.

I would play all six Avernum games first then BoA. BoA uses many items that are not introduced in A1, but come later in the series. Also, BoA is essentially outside of the continuity of the Avernum series, especially when you add in all of the scenarios that people have made.

The humans are leaving because without the "magic" mushroom life in the caves is much less pyschedelic.

I try to play with all of the companions in rotation to force me to equip them well for the end game.

As soon as you complete your current quest by reporting in to Redbeard he will give you your final quest, so you need to make sure that you have everything else you want to complete done first.

I would not choose to leave my family, friends and fellow humans behind, I do not think that I could maintain my sanity in that environment.

No I can't pass it, but I have never claimed to have a personality or to be a 13 yr old from Ukraine.

That was it Lilith, thank you, I have been struggling to remember what it was for a while now.

Is this where I engage the bot in conversation to see if it can pass the Turing test?

I am a fan of the Civilization series (and its off shoots) which have a degree of randomness to them. I have not played any random CRPGs in a long time. I seem to remember one on the Mac in 1987 that had tile based graphics with random drops of loot. The potions were identified by color and what a particular color did one game was not necessarily what it did the next game. Unfortunately I cannot remember what the name of the game was, but I did find it enjoyable. The rest of the CRPGs that I played had distinct plots and while they had some random encounters and items, they were pretty fixed.

You will find piercing crystals in different treasure areas as you explore, in the strategy central area there is a post of Synegizer's Item List that can tell you where each one is located. The key from the Goblin Shaman will open a door in a different dungeon that you will get to in a quest from the mayor of Formello.

I would categorize it as [rating]good[/rating]. I found the rebels excessively evil, with the empire as a whole portrayed much more positives than Exile 1/A1/A:EftP it was hard not to stay loyal. I do think that spells are a bit overpowered.

Years after the original modules were published TSR (or Wizards of the Coast) had a couple of authors turn several of the classic AD&D modules into novels. I expect that the process of doing that would be very similar to turning a SW game into a novel. As I remember, they added personality and backstory to the protagonists and simplified the adventuring piece.

One of the reasons that I tend to stay loyalist is that most of the answer to the OP is 2. None of them seem to have a good post Avadon plan.

I found the scenario to be good. It is expansive and I did not need to follow the sequence in the hint book until the end. However, I see some balance issues. Enemies spells are too powerful, almost to the instakill level. Additionally, there are two optional encounters that are just too over powered. It would have been nice to be able to purchase more spells, but the mix of items to find and purchase was good.

I do remember them, but there still needs to be more from the protagonist. I do think that it would be possible to flesh out the story of the evil empire exiling people into the underground cavern and the various things that happen. For that matter, there is even room for a couple of prequels, but it would be as Alorael said, a lot of adaption. I do think that it is possible that SoT's "essential ingredients of a fine story" are there, but there would have to be major additions of dialogue, protagonist development and backstory.

I think that the various Spiderweb titles could be turned into novels, but I do believe that more dialog would need to be added. Most novels provide some insight into the characters during fight scenes (dialogue or character thoughts) that Jeff, true to the RPG trope leaves to the player. In my opinion, if any game had some much dialogue that it could be turned straight into a novel, there would not be much point in playing it as it would leave nothing to the player. Avadon would be a little easier than Exile and its spinoffs simply because there is only one blank slate without a personality in Avadon versus 4-6 in the Exile series'. I do not think that you could write an interesting novel without fleshing out the blank slates that are the PCs by providing them personality and dialogue (which I assume that the players do in their heads, but a reader is less likely to do).

You are not mistaken, A:EftP is more modern (developed) than A6. It is a remake of A1, which is a remake of Exile 1, and reflects a much more refined user interface due to it being recently re-programmed. A:CS will come out towards the end of the year and is a remake of A2 which was a remake of Exile 2 and will have the newer user interface as well. Jeff is slowly modernizing the Avernum series so that it runs on modern computers which provides a side benefit to us of a better user interface.

With Avadon 1, you were not expected to beat Redbeard, that was an optional ending. For Avadon 2 and A:EftP, I would suggest looking at some of the tactics guides in these forums. Do you do the side quests? If you do all of the side quests you will max out your characters abilities prior to the final fights, especially in Avadon 1 and 2. I would also suggest holding back on using many of the expendables to save them for the final fights, which is more doable on normal or casual than on Torture. I do not believe that starting on torture would make it easier to win in the end, I suspect rather the opposite, but I only play on normal.

I have a two year old MacBook and a six year old IMAC so I use both a laptop and desktop at home. At work, I use a laptop with a docking station so the user experience is very desktop like. I passed on our latest tech refresh as the new laptops were very small and I do not want to deal with a very small screen and very small keyboard on the road.

I have finished as a rebel and as a loyalist. I basically did the rebel version just for Silke. While I am convinced that Avadon is a problem, none of the various factions opposed to it have managed to convince me that they are anything close to the solution.