Diprosopus

I'm sure your next effort will suck the air out of our lungs. I suppose what I'm saying is, it'll take our breath away.

That took less than a minute. Was I cheating?

Not to question an adult perspective, but by "adult perspective" I assume you mean "perspective of having the most rudimentary of religious indoctrination"? For clarity's sake, you understand.

I'm aware of the short in question. I'm simply wondering if 3 or more player character parties are uncommon enough that I would be inconveniencing a large number of players with even the politest insistence on such parties.

Question: If I was to design a scenario that doesn't use a prefabricated party, would it be reasonable for me to assume that there are at least 3 player characters in an average party? Not that I plan on making any party size mandatory, but it would enrich the storyline a great deal.

I would not suggest this. There does not seem to be much of a point. Although if you are interested in scenario design, an original tale would be vastly preferred!

Congratulations on making yet another very pretty scenario! Very dark.

Oh, hush, you! No need to be so modest--a scenario release is something to be proud of! Flex your ego.

My mother told me, "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." However, I will say that this scenario left me speechless.

Hipsters read Rand nowadays? Well, I suppose it's preferable to Coulter.

I may make something, but I do not claim that it will be of any quality whatsoever given my lack of experience with designing. Ah well, wish me luck: It will be, if nothing else, quite retro.

I believe, sir, that she was talking about Shades of Gray. Did the scenario report any errors in the scripts? (These would be in the text display in the lower-right corner of the screen.)

I'm glad you saw fit to release your gem! I pray improvement allows you to more fully grasp your talent as time passes. ...I really am praying, for my sake if nothing else.

Currently, Pragmatism, Minima Moralia, and a thick but unintimidating summary of psychology of religion.

Amusing piece. I cannot begin to fathom which scenarios you might be lambasting.

Why are you people writing (and reading) so many of each other's pages about retro, shareware RPGs? Could not your time and energy be better spent?

Quote: Computer games and especially RPGs are, first and foremost, adolescent power fantasies, with a very few notable exceptions. What do you expect? More notable exceptions.

Ha ha ha, a trivia game would be nice. Have it ask obscure questions about previous games in the series, games by other software companies, and protein folding. After which, the player can fight the Dryak-zord, with more hit points than Yiazmat from Final Fantasy XII. And that's just the first round of the fight. What, over the top a little? In all seriousness, though: A story's outcome is typically determined (if not revealed to the audience) before its conclusion. Even if the conclusion is unknown, the conclusion should only wrap up missing ends. Rather than focus on an epic fight to make the ending good, why not ask for a vibrant storyline with legitimate conflicts throughout? That does more to make a satisfying ending than any flame-spewing megabeast ever could, and should be what players want more of. Although I recognize that the player must get whatever she or he wants, so if the player wants a big battle at the end, who am I to disagree? After all, the customer is always right.

Quote: It has nothing to do with money. Within a competition, scenarios of hugher quality are likely to be produced, since everybody wants to win. Win? Isn't this supposed to be about being creative? "I'm more creative than you, ha ha?" Quote: Are you sure Diprosopus hasn't already done so, perhaps many times? Yes.

Except, the Geneforge games don't handle it realistically, making it a very uncompelling adventure. Didn't one of you bright people compute how badly you can obtain rewards from both sides of the conflict? You'd think that after betraying one side, you wouldn't be trusted by the other nearly as much. Anyway, all of the moral dilemmas in Geneforge are still nothing but extremely separated political positions with no variation within them, and the game never presents any challenges beyond "pick this overarching ideology" and never really challenges the player once the choice is made beyond putting different colored rogues in front of them.

People shouldn't design for money. Do you people really have that much free time that you cannot wait for the next Geneforge but cannot learn some knockoff programming language and write a little story?

Take this however you will, but he doesn't seem that different from anyone else here. Or wait, should I use one of those graemlins? There, all better.

The combat in A5 is preferable to the combat in previous offerings. Jeff seems to have taken certain high-powered combat antics from scenarios and has done a fairly decent job at capturing his engine's capability for combat. It's simply everything else that I found lacking, especially those stupid, blocky Geneforge graphics.

You misunderstand: I mean to say that initial choices should define the party's character. It makes no real sense for the most ardent supporter of one side to express an opinion contrary to that. Or alternatively, if Jeff still allows the player to contradict her character, it should affect the player proportionate to how much the player is already devoted. The "answer x, y or z to gain however many points" system is uncreative and lowers the "moral" dilemmas from being central features of the game into useless busywork.

Note to TJC Shaper: Designing a scenario requires some degree of narcissism (as certain designers are more apt to show than others), so don't be afraid about angering designers. The Tales are fairly good. Different from "the norm" (although the recent entrants make me question what "the norm" even means), but by no means bad.