madrigan

Originally Posted By: Randomizer Jeff decided that doors don't close so the game will work better on iPads. I miss being able to loot in privacy without the owners barging in and interrupting. I suppose this is funny, but I always make a point of closing doors in games. It just seems like what someone would do when they leave a shop or whatever. I will feel rude through this new game.

Ok, now that I broke down and downloaded the demo from the FTP site, and now that it became available on the main site right after I did so, can anyone tell me if there is a difference between the two downloads?

Originally Posted By: wasbear The game is available, if you know where to look. The hintbook is also available from the same place. The FTP site? I know, but I have read that sometimes the version on there isn't the final-final-final version. I am willing to wait for the official-official-official version to show up.

Got my code! The actual game doesn't appear to be downloadable yet, but I'm ready!

Originally Posted By: Necris Omega Originally Posted By: madrigan Two words: Gully Dwarf ARGH! No! No stupid pseudohuman races! Dwarves, hobbits, kender, gnomes, halflings... I HATE ALL OF YOU!!! Ahem... One of the strengths of the Avernum/Exile series is that the racial diversity is greater than "standard human with a) pointy ears, b)wacky hair, c)some degree of dwarfism, and/or d) easily recognized foreign accent". No, I can't claim that the Nephilim and Slithzerkai are terrifically innovative, but at least they're not abused, tired clichés. To be fair, more recent versions of D&D made a greater effort to present distinctive cultures and worldviews for the non-human races. Pathfinder also. But mainly I was trying to think of the worst possible PC race for Avernum. I suppose Dralasite would be cool, though. Plausible, even.

I loved the music in Neverwinter Nights, for example, but it was much more elaborate than anything Jeff could afford to do, and in addition it was synced so well that the battle music always ended just as the last enemy fell like in an action movie, and I have no idea how hard that it is to do. I don't think adding in-game music would be an efficient use of Jeff's time, given the scope of his duties, and besides, in RL there isn't appropriate music playing all the time. I would rather just have more area-specific environmental noises.

Originally Posted By: Darth Ernie town of portly hey, I happen to be from that town

Two words: Gully Dwarf

Originally Posted By: Earth Empires at A5 party had 2 helpers against boss at Harkins Landing. I always feel bad abandoning the rat. He gets stranded at the top of the stairs. I never should have named him.

I didn't play much of A1, so I thought the location called "Portage" near the center of the map was a new town. Is that indicating a portage, rather than a town of Portage? I don't remember anyplace called that in A4 or 6. Or does that say "Portago"?

Originally Posted By: Lilith Very, very old editions of D&D expressly advise the DM to appoint a player in the role of crier, but it didn't exactly catch on, mostly because most people didn't have such large groups that one was necessary. I remember that, though I think the term was "caller." I'm pretty sure we used, or tried to use, the idea even with smaller groups. But as you say, with larger groups it would be necessary.

In AD&D 1e, wasn't the standard advice offered in the TSR-produced modules that the party should have two of each main character class? There were four main class categories. I don't know how it was for everyone else, but if I had a total of four people at the table it was a lot. You could run more than one character, of course, or the DM could run NPC party members, but at that time a party of 8+ characters seemed impractical from a gaming standpoint. I think I'd like having six characters in an Avernum game, since the "dice rolling" and the monitoring of health/hit points and equipment is handled by the game. But four isn't an implausible size for a elite paramilitary unit.

Originally Posted By: Skwish-E But at $50 I would have to turn it down since I have a family of 7 to feed, clothe, and school. $45 is my upper limit for a game, and about all I can spend on games in a year, so Jeff pretty much gets all my Gaming $. Understood, but I just picked $50 as a representative higher price. My point would have been the same if I had said $45, or just stuck with $35, which is more than I have paid for any Spiderweb game. I was responding to your statement that if Jeff raised prices in the future he would lose core customers. I don't think that's the case.

My Avernum parties usually include a Slith with a human name, like Lou or Carl. I suppose I could make up a backstory about how the character's name is really Ssssssssth but everyone calls him Frank or whatever. My priest is usually called Cracker, because in 1985 or so I had a friend who always called his AD&D clerics Cracker. I also maintain his tradition of giving the Crackers numbered names so there's Cracker II, III, and so on. I have no idea where that name came from, maybe he was in a hurry and there was a box of Ritz sitting there. Nephils always gets a name like a cat sound -- Mrrrrrrrr -- or the name of a type of cat -- Tiger. Then I get bored with that and combine the two, and now I've had a bunch of Nephil swordsmen named Miger. And then of course there was Miger II, III, IV, etc.

Also, there are a lot of items you can see that are just there for atmosphere which you cannot pick up.

Originally Posted By: Skwish-E Now, he may be in the "How low can you go?" phase, but I wouls hate to see him drop the game to $5, then not be able to sell 50,000 copies, and have to raise the price back up for the next version. He would likely lose even core customers if that happens. I think I'm one of Jeff's core customers, though I've only been playing his games since early 2007 so maybe I'm not the core of the core. But I have registered seven of his games. If Jeff raised his price to, say, $35 a game, that wouldn't make me hesitate at all. I play every one of his games multiple times, which is probably at least two hundred hours per game. At $50 per game that would be an entertainment bargain, far more cost efficient than going to a movie or going out to eat, for example. In addition, there are ethical reasons to buy a game from an independent developer with two employees working in his basement. Maybe there will be some sort of a culture clash between the old-schoolers and the new-steamers on this forum, and maybe there won't be. But as long as Jeff is making great RPGs I will keep buying them, and I will buy them from his site and not off of Steam. The only thing that will change that, aside from personal financial disaster, is if he starts making tiny throwaway games to appeal to the very-very-casual crowd.

The various underworld creatures can perform reverse photosynthesis and convert the dark into energy.

Thanks!

Hello all, I have several Spiderweb games on my Mac. I'm having knee surgery next month, and I'd like to install some of them, possibly A4-6 and Avadon, onto my girlfriend's Windows 7 laptop so I can play them lying in bed whacked out on painkillers. I think I read that purchasing the game once allows you to install multiple versions on multiple computers at the same time. Is this right? Or am I making that up? Just to be clear, what I would like to do is leave my current installs and saved games on my Mac and then also install the full games on the PC. If that can be done, how do I do it? Do I just download the Windows version and install it with my existing key? Thanks.

Originally Posted By: Enraged Slith To be perfectly honest, that sort of thing is nice, but Avadon taught me that I don't really care as much about it as I thought I did. I enjoyed Avadon, but I wanted more options. I played through Avadon twice. I played through A4-6 at least four times each.

Originally Posted By: Necris Omega That's often an appeal all it's own too. Anyone whose played Diablo II with one of the more wacky build that aren't optimal, but unique and fun, knows what I'm talking about. Are all the Diablos like that, or just II?

Originally Posted By: Dantius I'd like to point out that it's not necessary to have a bunch of branching options for character development for a game to be good, or even have character development be an integral part of the game at all. Hell, speaking from my chess soapbox, it's not even necessary to have any sort of level-induced character progression at all! Fun, meaningful tactical decisions don't come from agonizing over whether or not to put points into this stat or that stat- that' accounting, and it's not fun- rather, interesting battles and tactic come from confrontations with interchangeable, carefully selected allies custom-tailored to play to the strengths and weaknesses of the current enemy you're fighting. This is why the Geneforge series will always be, in terms of combat mechanics (and most other things, but let's restrict this to combat for now), my favorite SW game. I see what you mean, but "a bunch of branching options for character development" probably is necessary for a role-playing game. It's interesting to me that you like Geneforge best because of the tactical options. I like the second Avernum trilogy the best because it allows me to customize based on my conception of each character and still win the game. I don't like math and I don't have much of a mind for tactics. I'm terrible at chess, partially because I have no patience. I've played G4 and 5 and there is always some point where I am just buffing my guy and then trying to run past some group of enemies because I tried fighting them fifteen times and made no progress. In Avernum 4-6, there is much more flexibility. Sliths and Nephil are better min-max choices, but you can still win with four humans. Archery isn't that great, but you can still win with a dedicated archer in your party. What I want out of these games is the ability to complete the story with whatever set of characters I feel like inventing.

Originally Posted By: Darth Ernie for advertising How does a medal showing that I destroyed the Nephil bandits help with advertising?

Originally Posted By: Randomizer Since the game distributor companies want achievement systems there will probably be medals added. Distributors actually lean on creators to put in achievement systems? Why do they do that?

Originally Posted By: ProperPseudonym Originally Posted By: madrigan NO. NO NO NO NO NO NO NO [...]having to creep along walls to find secret doors? No way. I want more entertainment value per minute than that. I can compromise. What would you think about a mixture of both? I just hate the fact that every secret door is connected to a switch. I wouldn't mind buttons/levers if there were some headbangers in the mix. In other words I am all for one, and one for all! What I do not want is to have my game held up for an hour while I wander around trying to find a door. I can visualize my characters searching tenaciously for the passage without actually spending the RL time. If Jeff has a way to keep some headbanging without causing long, boring delays in my game, then fine. I know we are talking about an A1 rewrite, but when when I tried to play through A3 I know there was some point where to kill the boss on a map you had to find a secret door. It was the source of the first plague, I think. That was one of the many reasons I never tried to finish that game, I was walking around and around in circles and it was very frustrating.