Yeah.... A general RPG discussion thread in the General RPG Discussion section

Basically the idea here is to discuss RPGs in general (duh! ) So if we want to compare RPGs with each other and/or the elements within the term we can do that here


To quote a very good RPG; Please, share your thoughts

*Sniffs*...My title would have been swaggy-er...

Aaaaamywho...

Soooo, about these long-term games...And I'm looking mostly at you Crow-Boy and Acadian...

If you do all the dungeon-farming, each time they respawn...What do you do with all the loot?...Does it respawn too?...And do you sell it all, or keep loads of it in yer houses?...

I remember Nordy-Boy's house in Bruma being so full of books and weapons/armour...And I had nowhere near your level of hours...

Anyone else with long-duration games?...On any other RPG besides the Elder Scrolls ones?...How do you fill the time in?...

Well, as far as I´m concerned Lothran rarely goes dungeon-diving anymore and he almost never collect any loot save from Flawless gems and the like. He prefers the outdoors and the open sky now and he has no real need for the Septims except when he wants to recharge his weapons

As for Fallout 3, I collect everything that isn´t nailed down or blown to kingdom come Not that long ago I passed 100.000 caps and have since gathered another 10.000 and tons of loot. And I very much like dungeon-diving here, if not to find a rare piece of something I overlooked before


And yes, I´m sure your title would have been snassier..

I guess Buffy qualifies here. Her total game time is 3,670 hours (her first game was 1000 hours and her current game is at 2670).

Buffy loves traveling outdoors, visiting her friends all over Cyrodiil, Elseweyr and the SI, and simply adores clearing dungeons. In fact, she gets cranky if she doesn’t get to use her bow – and the powerful weapon wasn’t exactly made to hunt rabbit and deer.

The type of loot she picks up is extremely limited:
-Gold coins
-Scrolls, soul gems and difficult/dangerous to acquire alchemy ingredients to help the MG retail shops with their stock.
-Master alchemy gear – she donates that to the MG.
-Flawless gems and gold/silver nuggets just because she likes shinies. She sells those as well.

Any 'artifacts' she comes across are donated to the Mystic Archives. Buffy actually collects very little (her large wardrobe notwithstanding).

The MG issues her grand soul gems to fully fill – she is one of the few mages with the stones to perform that dangerous task. She also is largely responsible for the fact that the MG’s cartography department produces the most accurate maps in Tamriel.

Just a note here. Buffy lives in a post Oblivion crisis world, but it is Sir Mazoga who is the Champion of Cyrodiil. Similarly, the Graymarch has evicted Sheogorath from his throne, but a fellow MG guild mate who is quite a bit more eccentric than Buffy (Henantier) rules the Shivering Isles. She also freely travels into other provinces – most notably, Elsweyr.

As voracious as she is in her adventures, she does indeed garner quite a good income. Every stable hand in Cyrodiil can attest to how generous she is when providing for the care of her precious mare. She also goes through a fair number of outfits and arrows – and with her tastes and demanding lifestyle, that gobbles up plenty of gold. As a Knight of the Lamp for the MG, she earns a small stipend from her guild (and more importantly, pays no dues) and enjoys use of an apartment upstairs in the Mystic Archives. She sold her Bravil house, so no longer has any property tax bills.

Loads of her gold was donated to Countess Kvatch to help with the rebuilding of Kvatch. And she is the financial sponsor of the 'Heroes of Kvatch' graveyard on the western edge of Kvatch plateau. That is the final resting place of Savlian Matius and a fair number of his victorious army.

Between the beauty around her on the roads and in the wilderness, and neverending challenge of clearing dungeons, it quite simply never gets old.

I have followed dear Buffy for quite some time and I feel honoured for the opportunity Can´t imagine a better friend to have along in my travels even if her attention span is, quite like herself, pretty short


I must bring up Deus Ex and Street Gangs, also known as River City Ransom. While they are not full-fledged RPGs they do contain elements of it where you can become stronger or better at certain things of your choosing. In Deus Ex you spend XP to raise your skills in handguns, lockpicking, running etc and in Street Gangs you eat different kind of food to make you hit, kick or throw harder and maybe get better at taking abuse. That makes for some shifting gaming experience, especially in Deus Ex where you can be a sniper capable of taking out targets from miles away, or become an expert in explosives. You can´t become the best in all areas here simply because there´s not enough XP, so you have to plan ahead and know what you want to focus on.

They sound fun...

Are they hard games?...Make much money?...Although...What is it you actually do?...

As me old chum Treydog was (is) pretty much hooked on Borderlands 2...I did try it out...And failed miserably...Like I said elsewhere, repeatedly dying is not for me...I haven't the patience...But as Treydog and McBoy really enjoy it...It's likely to be my failings that stop me enjoying it as much as they do...

Ooooh, so what you're saying, Acadian, is that Mods enhance the game so much it's possible to extend the life of it by a huge order... ...

Do you (does anyone?) keep track of/make note of where you've been, so that you don't wind up in the same dungeon far too soon after clearing it more recently than others?...

I do loves me Assassin's...They tried to make it a bit of an RPG with AC4 and the pirate life...Not quite there, but it was still a beautiful game though...

Ah, Borderlands 2, now there's a fun FPS. Though it sounds like your experience with it is similar to mine with Oblivion



I quite liked what they did with AC: Brotherhood, where you could recruit and train assassins, which was fairly RPgish, but they lost me with Revelations. That game completely failed to grab me, and I just found it dull and tedious. It's a shame really, because prior to that I loved the series.


I think I'll have to take a crack at Dark Messiah of Might and Magic: Elements. I picked it up for about £2, but I haven't gotten around to playing it yet. A quick look through the manual makes it sound fairly promising, think I'll go mage...

Fair dues, I'd really forgotten how much I loved Oblivion...No, I mean properly love it...

None of the other RPGs (although I admit to only having a few to compare) bar Fallout 3 come anywhere close to the joyous feeling I get wandering around in Cyrodiil...I really have missed this game...

In terms of ranking the joyous experiences (As in, how happy I feel simply wandering and playing the game) in the worlds of the ones I've got, it would have to be thusly...

1 Oblivion

2 Fallout 3

3...Um...Oh yeah...Kingdoms of Amalur

4 Fallout New Vegas

5 Skyrim...



How's about some of the others that others have played...Do they encourage wandering and such like?...

I've never played Dragon's Dogma outside of the demo, does anyone else know whether that's any good?...I've kinda avoided it as it's rumoured to be quite hard in places...And I don't do hard games that are frustrating... ...

I know what you mean about Oblivion. Over at Bethsoft I likened it to sinking into a nice, comfy armchair.

I have to query number 3 on your list. Kingdoms of Amalur? I tried that game but it just got so repetitive, it had some good features, I liked how you were given a choice when it came to completing the questlines, or some of them at least, but it didn't really manage to grab me.

As for Dragon's Dogma, heh one of the things people criticised most about it is that you have to walk everywhere. They changed it in the Dark Arisen expansion, but it's an option they give you to avoid walking, so at least they changed it properly.

It's a damn good game, a fantastic attempt at real time combat in a party based game. The AI companion can be a bit thick at times, but the story's good, the combat's good and solid, and, best of all in my opinion, all the magic oriented classes handle completely differently.

That said, at times that game can be hard as nails. I never played the demo though, so I 'm afraid I can't tell you what it's like in relation to it.

I agree on both points. Kingdom of Amalur was a pretty good game that unfortunately did get repetitive after a few hours. I did think that the storyline and environments were entertainingly different from most other games though. The world is giant and the lore is interesting. It is pretty cheap now so given the cost, I'd say buy it.

Dragon's Dogma was excellent but as noted by half of the people who played it, walking everywhere gets tiring. You can sprint short distances but it uses up the same energy you have for combat so if you wander into a big fight after running (which happens often) then you're going to be in rough shape.

The game is also extremely difficult at times and will require grinding lesser enemies to level up high enough to survive during the random enemy difficulty jumps. For instance you'll get to a point where you can kill lots of things that have pestered you through the whole game with ease but then you walk into another dungeon and everything inside is extremely tough and will kick your backside. The good thing about this game is that it is rather large and keeps you busy for a while, there are also plenty of side quests to keep you going. The three classes are excellent in that they handle so differently, if you choose a specialization, it even plays a lot different than the base classes.

Most interesting of all however is the pawn system. Each player creates a "pawn" who will follow the player though the game as what more or less amounts to their personal sidekick. The pawns will gain experience which can be distributed to skills like most RPG's but unlike most games the pawns will also gain knowledge of quests and enemies that will make them more effective companions.

The player will also enter an area known as "the rift" and choose two other pawns that were created and customized by other players to help them their journeys. There are thousands of pawns with different skill sets, looks, and experiences that can be extremely helpful to you. You can change your secondary pawns at any time (just find a rift stone) to suit your needs for particular quests or enemies. It is an incredibly unique and well designed system that makes this game one of the most memorable RPG's I've played in a long time.

The enemies are incredibly varied, the story is entertaining, and replayability IMO is very good. I would however pick up the newer version that allows for a sort of fast travel system to be more easily implemented. It isn't like ES fast travel so don't worry, you'll set stones that cost money that will allow you to warp to that place using crystals that you also pay for. No free rides here.

The base game also has these but they're much more rare and expensive.

I've seen the two-in-one package about the place...Perhaps if I start small, y'know...Baby-steps and all... ...

It does sound a pretty good game, just hard...

Just to show how arsey I am with it...I just got stuck in a poison trap in Sardavar Leed...I got very frustrated as I was over-encumbered and out of magic...I was unimpressed muchly...And that's just a minor annoyance...I just don't do frustration in games well, at all... ...

Oh, Thorny...The demo had you creating yours and your top pawn's characters...then there was a bit of a dungeon crawl and fighting some lion-esque thing, maybe...I'm unsure about that, I think it was lion-ish anyways...Then that bit finished and you could play this other bit where there's a city in the distance and you and your party have to take down a Gryffon thing...It was flying about anyways...That was about it...

If you're thinking of getting it, defintely get the Dark Arisen version. That expansion can't be gotten seperately, so they resold the game with it built in.

It's a fantastic game, and some of the difficulty can be dealt with by setting up the party properly, and most importantly your pawn. You have a greater degree of control over how they act, nothing direct, but you can adjust their behaviour.

Well, it's pretty cheap in Tescos and places like that... ...

Oi'll have a look next time we're about...Even if I don't play it straight away, at least it'll be in the house, and that's a start... ...

Likely I'll be the Knight-ish one again...Ooooh, look! A sword and a shield!...Magic some?...Yes please!...CHAAARGE!!... ...

I'd recommend the Mystic Knight class then. All the fun of a sword and board warrior, with special magic tailored to match.

Of course, you'll have to wait a while to get it, but it's tonnes of fun.

Hey everyone. I just discovered that Gog.com is giving away the original Mount and Blade for free. Yep, for free, and as always, with no DRM. It is an old game, but with that price, it is definitely worth the download.

I know I should be happy about this, but mostly I'm annoyed that I got NWN2 for full price about a week ago, and now it's 60% off.

I'm just hoping they'll do a deal for Divinity: Original Sin. That game looks amazing.

Well, I've no idea if it'll run on my laptop, but since it's free...

*Downloads*

I think the original M&B would run on a literal potato.

Hey man, potatoes are powerful things. You can run GLaDOS on a potato

Oh, my. How did I overlook this?


They´re not difficult games per say. But you gotta be a bit careful and especially in Deus Ex (PC) you really have to plan your moves. I have a thread discussing Deus Ex in more detail if yer interested


Street Gangs is a beat ´em up for the NES. I see it as the perfect version of the Double Dragon games and I highly recommend it. The least RPG-y of these two games but it still has an element of it.
You get money in both but not nearly as much as you can get in Beth´s games. In Street Gangs you use the money to buy books and food which act as upgrades so that you hit harder and get up faster if you get knocked down. In Deus Ex you use it mainly to buy ammo and information.



Sorry for the delayed reply...

I find it sort of strange that this thread hasn't seen activity in almost a year and a half. Let's liven it up, shall we?

Anybody here familiar with the Divinity series? I recently played and beat Divine Divinity, and I immensely enjoyed it. It was a phenomenal game at an incredibly cheap price (an absolute steal for US$0.89 on sale, and was worth significantly more) and I didn't have any particular expectations going into it. I want to start up Divinity II in the near-future. If I enjoy that, I may consider getting Divinity: Original Sin even though I'm not really a fan of turn-based gameplay.

Has anybody played Beyond Divinity, though? I was thinking about starting that up sometime (not necessarily soon) and it is sitting in my library, but quite a few of the opinions on it are lukewarm or disappointed in it at best, especially for those coming from Divine Divinity. I have other games in my backlog that I want to get to and it isn't a priority game at the moment, but some of the reviews and opinions worry me a bit about it. Did anybody here who played enjoy it?

Heh, my problem is that when I get into a game (currently ESO), I forsake all others and stay 'mono-gamous' for years at a time. For example, the last two decades of my gaming have involved no more than 5 games, typically played exclusively for 4-5 years each.

Really? Interesting. Personally, I couldn't do that. There are definitely times I can get caught up in a game (e.g. Half-Life, Divine Divinity) for a stretch, but I also need some variety.

But hey, you're dedicated!

My problem is similar although I don't limit myself to 4-5 years per game. I usually play whatever game I find interesting until I don't find it interesting anymore. For some games this means just one playthrough (Bioshock 1 and 2), some multiple playthroughs (Deus Ex and VtM:B ) and some games just seem to go on forever. Early this year for example I celebrated ten years playing Oblivion; same character, no restarts.


I may miss out on other great games and experiences but hey, I let the adventures come to me...

Funny thing I find is that I find I stay with the same couple of games for years and years, like many here, but flip backwards and forwards between game types. On RPGs now, which means Oblivion and FO3 (well, sometimes Morrowind). But I know I will feel the urge soon to go on a big TBS binge, which means Civilization 4 and/or Europa Universalis 3).

Funny thing is I'm always one or more in each of these series behind, in some cases stuck there. Bounced right off Skyrim, but I wouldn't mind checking out FO4, I'm not sure it'll be my thing though. (Not strictly relevant to RPGs, I know, but Civ 5, I think, is a crime against humanity - on the other hand, EU4 sounds cool, just haven't got round to it, probly because I'd likely play nothing else for 6 months.)

[There is, actually, some mild relevance to TBS, in that I find I always play the games in an RPG sort of style. (You know, total world conquest OR higher living standards for everyone, plus free beer.) This style is frowned on by many players, who argue that the only issue is winning big and counting points. In other words, 'beating the game'. That's fine if it floats your boat, but I generally just like to build lots of cool stuff and do much big science...]

Substitute gaming company for "game", and that's how I am. Since discovering Oblivion in 2008, it's rare that I step outside of Bethesda stuff. Which is kinda bad in a way because there are probably so many great games out there I'm missing. The only other game I've regularly played since 2008 is Sims 3..

Before 2008, I was trying a LOT of different games too, but mostly because of a game I saw way back in 2002, which I now believe was Bethesda. I was at a party in 2002, and somebody was playing something on Xbox (which was new at the time) and I began watching the TV. This game (whatever it was) had a lot of fog in it. I remember that I kept thinking a load-screen would pop up, as the game moves on to the next "level," but I was surprised that this game (whatever it was) kept going on and on and on. I kept thinking the player-character would run into an invisible barrier, as so many other linear games would limit us to from that era. But this game (whatever it was) just kept going on and on. No invisible barriers.

Knowing how I am, I would have asked the guy playing what this game was, and his answer (The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind) would be too complicated to remember. Maybe I wrote it down. If so, I definitely lost that piece of paper. But this was okay, that game (whatever it's called) can also be found on Playstation, right?



Yeah, I didn't know MW was Xbox and PC-only at the time. I spent most of the 2000s looking for it though, convinced that the next RPG I'd find at GameStop would be THAT game I saw at that party long ago. .

Can anybody point me in the direction of some good, isometric, real-time (with an option to pause combat, preferably) RPGs where you play as a single character? I'm not as interested in party-based ones, although I am not averse to them. (I still have yet to get my old files for Planescape: Torment off of my previous computer...) Also, if they are on Steam or GOG.

I have played Divine Divinity (which I have a serious urge to go back and replay). I have Grim Dawn in my library, which I am thinking of starting up soon. I can't think of other ones I have played or own at the moment. Any other ones people can point me to?

What platform? I only started PC gaming 3 years ago, but I remember on consoles there was Champions of Norrath. I remember really enjoying that one. It is multiplayer, but you can just enter one character as well.

The single player is the hard part. Most of the ones that come to mind are all team-based. Some of the team games can be played with a solo character - like Pillars of Eternity. But it is really, really hard to do so.

There are the Torchlight games, but they are pretty shallow. Basically Diablo clones. There is Heretic Kingdoms, though I never went too far into it to really say how good it is. The first two Fallout games are a single character. You can have a companion in them, but don't have to take one.

I believe there is a sequel to Planescape on Gog. But never looked that much into it.

I am not sure if Underrail is a single character or team game, but you could check it out. Likewise Age of Decadence.

All these are on Gog.

Fallout 1 or 2 perhaps? It’s not medieval fantasy but Khajiit wants to say followers aren’t crucial in those games (this one has never played them)?

The urge to replay Divine Divinity overcame me, and I started a new game.



Yeah, I figured the single-character part would make things difficult. But I am open to party-based ones. It's just that I know what most of those are, and have a couple in the backlog to get to anyways. Thanks for the tips.



Those are pure turn-based though, which I really don't want. I did pick up the original from Steam just because it was free, in case I wanted to check it out. Medieval fantasy is not a pre-requisite either.


Then again, I probably should not be making my backlog bigger at the moment.

Oh oops, Khajiit half read your op and missed where you said “real time�. Sorry

As we don't have an Elder Scrolls Series sub-forum I'm not sure where to put this. I reckon this thread is as good a place as any.

I recently stumbled on a several month old (as of late Dec 2017) roughly three hour interview with the man many consider something of the father of the Elder Scrolls series, Julian Lefay, at YouTube! It rambles a bit at times, but contains much good info. Julian himself seems a most interesting fellow.

An interesting, well made analysis of the evolution of TES titles.

January is the 12th one down

Nice! That was a good gallery! I sent my GF the pic of the Bearperson Monk earlier today (she loves grizzly bears).

I love the idea of a Bear Monk! It is just insane.

This one is probably January's Shadowrun character - Dora the Kneecapper

My Kenku Way of Shadow Monk caught a bad case of werebear lycanthropy. So every full moon he turns into a Werecrowbear!

That image does look like a Shadowrun character!

OMG, a Werebear Rampage!

Lol, that’s hilarious! I guess mine is a bit screwed up because of the crowfolk influence, because he tries to fight everybody in the party every time he turns.

Shouldn't he do very forceful mimes? Or impressions of the other party members?

Lol, probably! The DM controls him when he turns until such time I’m able to pass a check to maintain control.

Kobolds!

They’re super cute. I sometimes feel bad for slaughtering them.

Michael Shea did an anthology of his Cthulhu stories called the Demiurge. One of the stories is Nemo Me Impune Lacessit. It is a tongue in cheek homage to Cask of Amontidillo, with a lot of Mythos thrown in. The butler of the big bad guy is named Koboldus.

Neat! I should read more.

D&D memes

I wonder if Bioshock 1 and 2 qualifies as semi-RPG? They do have elements of it I think, like Deus Ex.


This is stuff I sometimes ponder over.

I never played any of those, mirocu. In general terms, they are all considered RPGs, although if I'm correct, we can't create our own characters, correct?


They are super-mean, though!

Did anybody else get involved with The Fantasy Trip? This was a table-game similar to Dungeons & Dragons, but its rule system was a lot more down-to-earth. Humanoid characters were more fragile and fallible. No humanoids with hundreds of hit-points, for instance. We used DnD to enhance TFT, because DnD had hundreds more characters and additional rules. But for our base game (the actual dice-rolls) we used Fantasy Trip.

We even made our own rules! I added Feudalism to our game after learning about it in high school. IN a way, this was the very first version of modding our game.

No, that's where it fails to qualify. But one can develop the character we get in terms of what powers/abilities we want to focus on and thereby "create" a unique character, albeit in very limited ways.