Triumph

So here is the first reveal of the new game - Avadon. Sounds interesting. Although...I think I'll end up confusing Avernum and Avadon. Three-syllable names starting with "av?" I wonder how "Avadon" is supposed to be pronounced?

I look forward to further revelations.

I remember having a computer with DOS (though probably not 1.0) growing up. I also remember Windows 3.1 (and thinking DOS was so much better). And I remember being wowed by Windows 95. Weird.

My grandpa actually worked on computers back in the day when they took up whole rooms...it's staggering to think the average cell phone may be more powerful than those computers now...to say nothing of a laptop...or an iPhone, for an even more staggering size/capability contrast.

From what I know, the first three Avernums much more sandbox-like than the last three, but A6 is a good deal more sandbox-feeling than A5 (not sure how A4 compares).

I bought this computer a bit over a year ago, but within months an upgraded version of it had come out. LOL. Of course, this was still a huge improve over the five-year-old iBook G4 I had at the time. 5 years of use for a computer...is pretty, but one ends up pretty far behind.

I plan to be there, at least to watch the grand finale (and sub if necessay; of course, having Eph nuke characters whose players don't show up would also be fun...).

I think I remember Jeff saying in some interview somewhere that in his new game he's keeping much better notes about characters, so there'll be no more gender-switching dragons.

I, for one, am thankful that it seems highly unlikely terrorists read the Spiderweb forums. I don't want them getting any ideas.

Dantius is right about open-ended endings being the hallmark of Geneforge. Avernum's openness, especially in the first three games, lies in the freedom to explore, to just wander around wherever you want doing what you want, really exploring mysterious locales. The endings never had all that much in the way of variation, from what I know. In the later Avernum games, that freedom to explore was diminished, I think (especially in A5, which seems to me like being forced down one long tunnel consisting of one Avernite settlement after another, despite supposedly being unexplored frontier), but that open feel comes back somewhat in A6.

I know this is random, but over on the "Who's Online" box off to the right side of the forum, it always says there are various registered people (listing their names), X number of guests (I assume these are people who are just visiting the site and not logged in as anything), and always "0 Spiders."

Just curious who or what the Spiders are? I don't recall the GIFTS in Shadowvale or Avernum having an internet link.

I've read the Iliad but not the Odyssey; how do they compare?

The Aeneid rocks.

Fascinating. I'm really curious if the people who play Jeff's games as a whole are so overwhelmingly from the lower quadrant of the compass, or just the the group that populates these forums... And whatever the answer to the above questions is, why?

I took it and ended up surprisingly close to where it says Ron Paul is...and I know I have serious disagreements with Ron Paul, so I'm not sure how accurate it is...

It did...it was just so...words fail me.

You probably planned that entire final encounter last session just so you be able to have that pun for log title. It's even more amazing because it's...I don't, a multi-level pun. Rocs did indeed fall, but actual rocks also fell.

Oh Nioca. That pun. In the log title. Amazing.

I would say I'm rather a conservative in most of my political views, but even I think Beck sounds like a wacko. I don't get the sense, in what I've heard of him, that he is trying to be an entertainer at all (unlike some conservative talk radio figures). He seems to be a very, very sincere wacko...but sincerity does not negate bizarreness. Some of the things I've heard him predict... * shakes head in puzzlement * I do wonder how he's taken seriously, and become so popular. On the other hand, he is neither the first nor the only popular wacko in world, and we've survived to this point, so I try not to let him get to me. Mostly that means ignoring him, and occasionally discouraging others from listening to him.

I think that Linus van Pelt, of Peanuts, would advise not discussing religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin.

Wow. That looks pretty cool!

Rambling ahead...

This was a problem to some extent, but I felt like Eph actually averted it a number times, narratively rather than mechanically, by attributing action failures to the "wounds" characters had taken.

I too like the abilities Eph awarded Boregloaf. What they reminded me of, and what your comments remind me of, are the Battle Disciplines (or whatever they're called) in A5 and A6.

Partly this depended on the campaigns. Eph said at the beginning of the campaigns that Bloodmarsh was to be more combat-focused and Selos less combat more intrigue focused. And think Bloodmarsh has emphasized combat a lot more.

And the vicious circle someone brought up, regarding skill distribution: I felt it. By the final battle of Selos...Lanrezac failed to raise his combat skills to anything like par with the other characters...and the effect of this was that he seemed to be by far the least useful in the final battle, since everyone else's combat abilities/key attribute (INT or STR) so far dwarfed him. Even while I was putting points in Diplomacy and History, I consciously worried that I would fall too far behind in my combat skills. By the end, I actually did learn a variety of interesting details thanks to history, although nothing game-altering. Part of my difficulty using History was thinking in terms of expecting some challenge to come up where I'd roll for history to deal with it, rather than looking for topics on which I could try to gain information. Once I started doing that, it got more useful. One thing I found helpful in raising Lanrezac's stats was to focus on the my concept for the character, and not just on becoming more powerful. He's a bit of an historian, so he needed history. He liked to act diplomatically, so I needed to raise Diplo. to reflect that. Perhaps having more fleshed-out character ideas would help give people the motivation to raise the skills their characters should logically have, and not focus so exclusively combat power? ...of course, there are exception: for example, in the case Kurex, MORE POWER is the character's goal. I know that I definitely hope do better with skill allocation in any future games I play...

Regarding skills: Would I be correct in estimating 10+ in something is mastery of a skill, and 4-6 is a competent or professional level of training? This is based on a couple comments Eph made and the levels of his epic spells. Having a guideline like that would really help me in developing a character's concept (e.g. if I want I competent Dwarf Thief who knows how to deal with all sorts of locks and traps, 5 Thievery and 4 Artifice would be good levels to aim for) from role-playing point of view. I don't want to "waste" skill points by getting 2 in some skill if it'll never good enough for me to use it effectively. So I tend to focus on just a couple skills trying to make sure I can do them well. If I know in advance that getting 4 points in a skill = competence, and gives me reasonable chance of succeeding (as long no one else way over-maxes that skills and breaks the challenge level) I can develop a comfortable level of ability in multiple skills. If I think that I MUST have at least 7 in a skill to have a chance of it working...then I'll only end up raising two skills.

Something that could help character development is just having us all realize that we tended to overinvest in combat, and try to dispel the "arms race" mentality that thinks we have to load on combat skills to get ahead. Unlike a computer game, where the challenges are fixed, Eph has made it clear that this is an adaptable game. When everyone raises combat, he includes more and tougher combat, and leaves out opportunities for thievery, etc. If more people neglected combat for multiple level-ups and raised their other skills, presumably Eph would scale back on the combat and give us other kinds of gameplay challenges.

I hope not. One of the things I liked most about this system is that it isn't complex. I don't want any intricate and complicate class systems and branching talent trees and convoluted calculations to max out characters. I know a complex system can do things a simple one can't...but I'd prefer to stick with the simple one.

Part of my experience is definitely tied to the fact that I, like Rowen, was playing this sort of game for the first time. I know inexperience was definitely an issue for me in terms of how to use my skills.

Regarding Eph's comments about there being other paths: good to know they were there. I'll try to keep on the lookout for them in future. Although...that raises a challenge I struggled with in the game, that I'd love to hear other people's answers to. How does one balance imperative against splitting the party, and of not disrupting the choices of others, with feeling that the party is going the wrong way? One example: when the slave-driver was talking to us after we accidently blew up the prisoner's head (that just sounds wrong...) and we failed in talking to him, he asked for a bribe. I wanted to give a bribe, but had idea what to pay. Others in the party dismissed the idea of buying him off as useless, and decided we needed to just visit Rikkla. From that point on, I just tried to support that decision, even though it seemed like a bad idea (why couldn't we bribe the slave-driver? Or just disappear in the crowds of the city? why did we need to go apologize to Rikkla?). Ye more experienced RP-ers: any advice on how when to just along with the party versus when to take some kind of stand? Other examples: Nixak going off on his nearly killed him, but just moments later, Vitze made some poor choices in dealing with the mob where it seems other characters probably should have stood up and stopped her. Yet outside Sarden, dissension (along with bad dice roles) hurt our diplomatic efforts. I realize there's no one magic answer, but surely experience offers some lessons?

LOL. Well, it was one of the more spectacular Fails in AIMHack so far.

Hmm...this is long. Yeah, in case you couldn't tell, I like to talk. Sometimes I do it...a lot. Hopefully, if you read this, you found it intelligible, intelligent, and constructive.

More thoughts:

Shopping: I tend to favor what Nioca has chosen to do by making shopping a purely PM activity. Every single time shopping came up in either campaign, it just seems to bog down the session and add little, if anything, of interest. Now, the shopping take place by PM in session, or outside of session, and can still rely on the players to take initiative in asking the DM to shop. But it won't bog down the sessions as much that way.

Sense of direction:

This varied widely. I have no answers here, no solutions. Sorry. Just reflections.

Sometimes I felt like we had a clear sense of direction and freedom to achieve it; for example, in the canopy-drake-hunting session we met Khielek, giving us the "mission" but I felt we had a degree of freedom in exploring the jungle and how we chose to hunt the creature. The final session set a clear course of action too; we run in to a crazy murderous lacewing and we start chasing him. The traveling sessions (e.g. the one that began in Quera and ended with us meeting Khielek) were good; definite goal/sense of direction, and some freedom in how we got there.

However, several times in the campaign I felt really lost. The Quera-challenge session, yeah, I didn't fully understand what we were supposed to be doing. I really, seriously, thought our goal was to put out fires for a while, and was kind of confused by the other stuff that kept seeming to get in the way of that. So yeah, I missed the point. But even at the beginning of the session, at E'Tarn...we seemed to dawdle with no apparent purpose (unless there were people/shops that we failed to exploit???) before getting on our way. The session when we reach Sarden...oh, fail. Once we got there...I don't think we had any clue what to do, which probably part of why we failed. After the failures with the slavemaster outside Sarden, I felt like the rest of the session was a railroad ride. I tried to stop clashing with others and just support finding, oh, whoever, Rikkla, I think; it didn't seem like there were any other options, or if there were, that no one was considering/aware of them. Oh, another example of failed sense of direction...the session in Bloodmarsh after the party first returned to Mekos. I was playing Alexander most of that round...and felt so clueless. We seemed to just be standing around town, and had no idea what to do. The circus showed up...did it mean anything? I just had no sense of goal or direction. So, at the beginning of each session, and throughout major turning points, it is important that the party have a clear sense of direction (or else know that they are just supposed to wait or aimlessly explore).

I LOVE having a sense of exploration, and freedom to choose from a variety of means to achieve our goals. But it's no fun to feel lost and helpless because I have no clue what I'm supposed to be doing, or what is possible. If I'm just supposed to explore aimlessly, cool! If I'm pursuing a specific goal, cool! If I'm just waiting for important event to happen, cool! I know this isn't all the DM's job...part of it definitely relies on the imagination of the players, an area I can improve in.

I suspect this is a very difficult thing, balancing giving the players a sense of direction with not railroading them. Getting railroaded is no fun, of course. But feeling lost is not much fun either. This is not meant to be a complaint, but a reflection on things did or didn't seem to work. And I still want to emphasize that I had a lot of fun along the way. Again, I hope this is constructive.

And the final level-up of the campaign for Lanrezac, balanced and not super-excelling and any one field to the end, but hopefully a valuable contributor nonetheless(?):

I really enjoyed the campaign, and had a lot of fun. Some of my questions/concerns have already been raised, but I'll mention or summarize a few thoughts.

--------

I think some of my difficulties came from never having played a game like this before. Sometimes I just really didn't know what I was doing. Lessons:

Don't make unnecessary diplomacy rolls; you'll ask if they're need.

There are no visual cues (like in computer RPG) that anything/anyone is important, so it's best to pay close attention to detail and assume everything is important.

Sometimes a party member's diplomacy will lead to disaster and must be stopped, other times intervening to disagree will really make things worse and it's best to be silent (I failed the first way with the mob in Quera, and the second way in the session where we got to Sarden).

In Eph's games, shops actually apparently carry GOOD equipment, and we are expected to look there to acquire stuff, rather depending on enemies to drop loot (as happens in just about every computer RPG I've ever played).

Also, don't assume the first shop you visit is only available.

Also, badger major, friendly NPCs about training??? They might have something to share.

-------

In terms of dissatisfaction, nothing of these takes away from the great fun I had playing...but I did have issues with the plot/ending. I hope this criticism is entirely constructive.

I have no idea how we could possibly have determined that Chak-Tha was the guy sent assassins to Khashen, Hakkel, Rikkla, and Trassak. He was just a random a lacewing we suddenly encounter and start fighting. Beside not knowing that HE was the leader of the assassins we fought, we never learned why he was doing anything, either. I totally understand the desire to leave plot hooks for the future...but I really felt like very little was resolved and that the campaign seemed to just arbitrarily end, rather than reach any kind of resolution. Leaving a return to Quera/meeting with Zarusa out of the ending was also unsatisfying...if our goal in going to Sarden was working for Zarusa, it seemed weird that we would not get see our characters reporting back to her.

Again, none of this should be taken to be taken mean that I did not have GREAT FUN playing this game. Because I did. But it's hopefully constructive criticism.

------

In terms of future campaigns: reusing Lanrezac and continuing the Oracle story would be interesting, but I'd also like trying out other characters. Bringing in the old Labyrinth characters rocks. Exploration sounds most interesting to me, followed by intrigue. I've no interest in gritty or horror...I play for fun, so I prefer something tends toward the lighter side. No particular thoughts regarding plot right now.

Well, I hope this is helpful. I'll post again if I think of more.

Usually message boards want to discourage spam, not train acolytes in how to produce it.

On a related note, did you know you can order Spam at McDonalds in Hawaii?

So that would translate to 7:30 p.m. Eastern time, correct? Bah. Temporal anomalies are SO confusing.

I! Shall! Be! There!

...As! Long! As! Nioca! Posts! The! Link!