Dragon Age Forum News (Jun. 08, 06)

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Here are today's Dragon Age forum highlights, taken from the Dragon Age Official Forum. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.

David Gaider, Lead Writer

DA fan contests?

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No matter how justified these people felt, the insults and general flaming they laid on the winners was inexcusible. It was shameful, a nasty mar on the normally pleasant Bio-boards. People just couldn't cope with the fact that what Bio really wanted was some light relief type characters that appealed to their wacky sense of humour.

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Actually, we weren't looking for light relief-type characters, we were looking for characters that were meant to be part of small, one-off plots. And we said so.

Habib was one of those, and if I remember correctly there were about four others as well. His was the most comedic, the others were generally more serious.

The problem with many of the entries was that people submitted characters that were either part of some very long and specific plots (specific to a particular part of the FR or specific to a much larger plot that would have been impossible for us to tie in)... or they submitted what was obviously their personal D&D character along with a convoluted background story (ie. a transcription of their home campaign) with an obvious eye that this character would be a full party member.

Besides the fact that it is unfortunately impossible for anyone to talk about their favorite game character without it being utterly boring (home-brew worlds follow this rule, as well), it also wasn't what we were looking for and we said so -- but people largely submitted what they hoped the contest was about rather than the fact.

But, yeah. Ugly response. Very ugly. The venom was a bit hard to understand. I remember a similar thing when I put the names of a few forum members into Throne of Bhaal on a whim -- a lot of bitterness over what was perceived as "unfair" treatment. I, for one, would simply not be willing to revisit any of it and no amount of "but we'll be good this time" could convince me otherwise.

Personality and the Protagonist

Ummm... probably not.

One does not write personality typologies. Or, hey, maybe some writers do, but I would suspect that as writers those folks would make great psychologists.

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I suppose any given writer might use different methods to formulate a voice for a given character -- so long as they're meaningful to the writer, it will help with the construction. Psychological typologies would be meaningless to me -- and not because I don't get what you're talking about, but simply because I couldn't possibly take such a scientific approach to giving a character voice. They just don't come from the same place, period.

Very often once a character has assumed its own voice inside my head, it will proceed to speak and act as it wills -- quite often differently from how I want them to speak and act, and regardless of whatever little descriptions I have written about them in my crib-notes. Believe it or not, that's how they remain true to themselves. Consistency is not a goal, necessarily -- not if I want the character to seem like a real person.

Of course, this applies only to major NPC's... characters you are going to talk to a lot, and who get an opportunity to develop. For minor NPC's the only way to give them any personality at all is to pick a single trait (maybe two) and hammer it home in nearly every sentence they speak. Experience has taught me that's the only way to make a minor NPC seem like anything other than bland and faceless.

This applies only to myself, of course. I suppose there are writers who could benefit from such a left-brained approach to a creative project... I just can't see how.

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Interesting...but how do you then prevent all those characters inside your head from being mere variations of yourself? How do you keep their personalities from being mere variations on your own personality? How can you ensure diversity in such an approach?

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Prevent it? Why would I want to do that?

All aspects of writing come from personal experience, just as all characters are a facet of some part of myself.

And, really, while I'm by no means the best example of a good writer, I've managed to pull up characters as diverse as Deekin and Carth to Viconia and Jolee Bindo. If all those characters exist inside of me, then I would say that I've managed to ensure diversity.

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Diversity, and the challenge of writing a character that's really different from yourself. And through writing that character and imagining how such a character would view the world, grow in wisdom yourself from the insights that gives you.

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Sorry, I don't buy it. All characters I write must come from some part of myself or I will never truly understand them. My ability to empathize is directly related with my ability to identify -- and I do not see this as a limitation in the slightest, just as a necessary starting point.

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It's an analogy. By diving a whole into parts, and processing each part individually, it is possible for the sum of the parts to become greater than the whole. The challenge of finding the various characters that fit within a specific set of bounds stimulates creativity by guiding your thoughts beyond the trodden path. It allows you to think of characters you normally wouldn't think of, thusly increasing your creativity in character creation.

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You and I certainly aren't speaking the same language. It's like when one of my managers wanted me to write a funny character -- because he thought I was really good at writing humour -- yet he wanted me to write a very different type of funny character, a doltish kind of Peter Griffon from Family Guy. I couldn't do it, as I'm just not wired that way, and my manager couldn't understand why not. To him, humour=humour. In order to succeed, I would have needed to dig down inside myself and find some part of me that finds Peter Griffon hilarious. That's the only way I could have made that electric connection -- putting the whole thing into some kind of abstract framework is not going to somehow induce the needed creativity. That may just be me, but I don't buy it.

To me, the idea of applying such a framework without any kind of context or considering what my own connection is to this -- if you're suggestion is that this somehow would improve NPC's in Dragon Age, I'm telling you that it very much would not. If you're just insisting that you're right regardless of whether there's a practical application when it comes to CRPG writing -- well, okay, but I'm not sure what the point would be of arguing about it here, then.

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Obviously, this is a pretty laborious process and would only be for major characters. Most minor CRPG characters are defined primarily by the context you meet them in. But I do think psychological tests can be valuable to writers, but as a diagnostic tool, not a rigid prescription laid down before the creative process even has a chance to begin.

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Mmmhrrrmmm... okay, I will admit that this idea has some merit to me. I'm not sure I would use something so laborious, but I can see the benefit of a diagnostic tool when you reach that kind of hitch with a major character.

Animal Companions in Dragon Age

And the entire point is moot. Under no circumstances do you actually conjure, summon, transmute, transmogrify, doodle or call any kind of animal into appearing to do your bidding.

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That was for having animal companions of some kind.

I spoke hypothetically about the summoning/conjuring bit earlier, but then it just got silly.

The way to painlessly track the romance status

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So it's not possible for the NPC to take it badly, even if you take the nice option?

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I never said that. It would depend on the character in question.

NPC/Romances Part 5

You know, maybe I'm just prudish, but I find overt sex in a game a bit of a tacky idea. I'm much more in favor of a fade-to-black and implied sex, instead.

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And once we get to the point where such a love scene could be made to look realistic and actually romantic instead of jarringly mechanical, then okay. At best, right now it would require a pretty resource-heavy cutscene to even look passable -- not worth it.

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Will there be romance specific plots like there were in BGII?

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Character-specific, if not romance-specific.

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If there are no same sex romances, can I have a succubus as a familiar?

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There is no such thing as a familiar in DA.

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Not to suggest that there isn't some room for improvement in how romances are written, but I suspect that this person will always be dissatisfied with them in the context of the CRPG. What they seem to be looking for is a romance written in the context of a novel -- or a game where the romance is what the plot and narrative revolves around and not vice-versa. So long as the game is about something else with the romance being ancillary, you're never going to have the depth that she appears to be looking for.

Dragons

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Please put my mind at ease and tell us there will be dragons in Dragon Age

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There are, yes.

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...and if so, could we get away from the cliched colour(bad) and metallic(good) nomenclature.

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Hmmm. How is that cliched? It's used in one place that I know of, in D&D. One use does not make something a cliche. If what you're saying is that you would like us to not copy the D&D system, then that's fine -- we've no intention to.

One additional thing, though: we've really no need for having a multitude of dragon types for everything under the sun. This game is not about dragons. It's about the Age.

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We'll likely just include whatever dragon types and animations we need for DA, period.

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No, I get it. Like you say, the D&D style of dragons is a benchmark simply because it is so popular. It's a benchmark that we've lived with for a long time, and it may even be considered by some to be pretty stale -- but that doesn't make it a cliche.

"Cliche" is one of those words that gets misused a lot -- people like to use it for anything that they don't consider a fresh idea. Just like people like to use the word "tragic" for any event that is sad. I suppose it's annoying for me to be such a stickler for word usage, but what can I say? It's a pet peeve.

Either way, our dragons are just dragons. They don't come in a million different classes and varieties. They come in one: frightening.

Cameos

There will be no Bioware characters inside of DA. Nor will I ever again name characters after real people on the forums, not after the ugly jealous reactions that came out after ToB.

Not to say that we don't inject certain personal bits into our projects, but no out-of-game cameos ever again. So sayeth Alaundo.

Chris Priestly, Quality Assurance

DA fan contests?

Currently there are no plans for any community contests. But you never know whatr might come about in the future. Stay tuned.

Dragons

Mmm.... I dunno. I think it depends on your frame of reference. My first thought when someone says Dragon, the first thing that comes to my mind is the Red Dragon of Wales, since my family is 1/2 Welsh.

I think that probably people who have played PnP DnD or video games based on DnD, like Baldurs Gate, DnD Online, etc or even those who watched the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon back in the 80s immediately think about DnD dragons.

But now adays there are fewer young people playing DnD the way we did back when I was a kid (by crackey!). Now adays, I think many young people probably think of the books Eragon or the Hungarian Horntail dragon Harry Potter fought in the book/movie. And for my father, aside from Wales he immediately thinks of Smaug from the Hobbit by Tolkein.

I think Dragons are based on what you have seen and your personal reference. If you've never played DnD, you don't think about DnD dragons.

Jennifer Hepler, Writer

Personality and the Protagonist

As a writer who is pretty left-brained and fairly well-read in psychology, I have occasionally used personality tests like the Meyers-Briggs in my writing, but not in the way being discussed here. Deciding ahead of time that you will use this, that, or the other archetype for a character usually acts as a straightjacket which prevents you from letting the character react naturally to a situation. There's a quotation that I'm forgetting the attribution for right now that I've always used as a guide for my writing: "Begin with a character and you will soon find that you have created a type. Begin with a type, and you will find you have created nothing."

No one sets out as a child to decide to be an INTJ, it is something that they become over the course of thousands and thousands of decisions...and more importantly, it is something that is only measured through a questionaire that asks how they would decide between a hundred or so different choices in life.

And that's how I've found the tests to be useful for characters. If I have a character who ISN'T working for some reason, if I can't get a handle on them or make them sound unique, I'll sometimes take the Meyers-Briggs test AS that character, and try to think how they would answer all the different questions. Often the characters I'm struggling with come out as XXXX, which tells me that I don't have a clear idea of what values they would use to make decisions. At that point, I can start to think about guiding them in whatever direction to make them more extreme and distinctive.

Obviously, this is a pretty laborious process and would only be for major characters. Most minor CRPG characters are defined primarily by the context you meet them in. But I do think psychological tests can be valuable to writers, but as a diagnostic tool, not a rigid prescription laid down before the creative process even has a chance to begin.

Brenon Holmes, Programmer

How much mysticism?

Yes, in order for systems to have rules and limitations... you sort of have to have an idea about how they work.

However, just because the system is known doesn't necessarily mean that it will be presented that way. I'm sure there are plenty of folks in the world of DA that will have their own theories on how magic works... where it comes from... etc.

Some of them may even be right...

Awkward Combat?

Assuming we had those weapons, personally I would love it if all dagger users were so disadvantaged that in most cases they simply died (Don't bring a knife to a sword fight). But I've been told that that sort of view might be construed as a bit "extreme"... especially for a game which is supposed to be fun .

Anyways, while the various styles we end up with may excel in different areas, it would probably be safe to say that no one style is inherently "better" than another.

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A shorter weapon doesn't have an inherent advantage over a longer weapon... unless you're throwing it. You can't hurt someone unless you can get close enough to actually hit them. Which means you have to move your body... in most cases, range is king.

In a fight between equally skilled combatants, I'd always put my money on the one with the longer range (assuming that it's a significant range and that we're not talking about a ridiculously long weapon to the point of impracticality).

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Yes... but if you take skill out of the equation, then it's really fairly elementary. You don't bring a sword to a gun fight... you don't bring a knife to a sword fight. (Or go unarmed, for those crazy "monk" people... )

As for Dragon Age, don't worry... if daggers are one of the available styles, they will be a valid choice... perhaps not as strong in some areas, but most likely stronger in others.

DISCLAIMER: The above does not indicate in any way/shape/form that daggers are or are not a weapon style in DA, they're simply used as an example.

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This is more what I would be interested in discussing, the other bits of discussion (not to be mean or anything) aren't something that's really worth talking about. It [dagger vs. swords] was presented as my personal opinion with some caveats... *shrug*. It's basically equivalent to arguing whose Dad could beat up another guy's Dad. I'm sure everyone has their own personal experiences, movies, sources... etc. that lead them to believe what they believe.

Regarding daggers and their gameplay value, things like flanking (assuming we had flanking) bonuses would probably be ideal. Perhaps bonuses to parry lighter weapons or perhaps they could be a pre-requisite to certain abilities...

The main idea is that if they're going to be a weapon that is represented by a style in DA, then they're going to have to be useable in an effective manner. Perhaps not in the same way as other weapons... but that's all part of the flavour.

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Learn by doing will not be in Dragon Age. There are issues with both types of systems, we've chosen to do an experience/level based system. That's not something that's liable to change.

Ferret A Baudoin, Senior Designer

Ferret Baudoin in DA?

Mr. Elusive gets a cookie. Yuppers, I'm on Dragon Age.

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I definitely will be hanging out on the boards from time to time. And Edmonton is extremely different from Southern California - overall I'm really enjoying it. Ask me again once winter hits. As people keep reminding me, it gets a little cold around here. Then they laugh maniacally and start calling dibs on my stuff. I *really* enjoy the project so far and the people here are great.