Dragon Age Forum News (Oct. 07, 04)

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Here are today's Dragon Age forum highlights, collected by NWVault. 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, Designer

Culture Hints
Ha, no, there's no amnesia.

Books are wonderful, but as I said... you'd pretty much want to make them optional information only if you can avoid it (unless the book is part of needed quest clue in-game, but that's kind of a seperate thing).

Bards (as in mummers, jongleurs, minstrels... that sense of the word bard as opposed to the D&D class) are interesting in this use as they can relate tales in-game in a realistic fashion.

We can also arrange to have certain quests you encounter early on be related to key elements of the world that need to be introduced. So let's say I need to bring into play the religious elements of the setting, right? Well, let's have a religious figure play an important element in the early plot and during the discussion the religious background is revealed to the player. Giving player responses that, by their very nature, inform the player while not making their character seem ignorant is also a good way to go. Such as:

religious figure: Of course this trouble with the X faction is nothing new, as I'm certain you're aware.

player response #1: They've fought your church many times, I understand.
player response #2: Perhaps you should stop persecuting them. Just a thought.
player response #3: Maybe if you declared another holy war, you'd wipe them out this time.

Now, this is not from the game (just so you know), but here you can see that even before you select a response, the very nature of those responses have already told you several key things about faction X, right?

You can't rely on that solely, of course, and you need to be careful not to ask the player to make judgement calls on things he knows nothing about (my example would be bad unless you had at least some knowledge of faction X on which to judge the church's treatment of them) but it's a good tool to reinforce info with. And, naturally, you need to make the story such that it doesn't make it obvious that you're guiding the player through a history lesson. Heh.

One question about gods in Thedas for a plot idea

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My question is: if there are no "present" gods and there is no proof of their existance, and characters of Thedas are driven in their motivations by faith, is it possible (i.e. does it make sense) to see in Thedas powerful beings (demons, dragons, charismatic NPCs, etc.) that claim to be gods, with their own group of followers/believers?

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The simple act of creating fire can seem like a god-like power to a primitive tribe without the knowledge. Alchemical knowledge in the Dark Ages could have been mistaken for "magic". It stands to reason that, in the face of nothing to compare it to, there are those that could claim to be gods, especially in a place where the powers of some dwarf those of commen men?

Take Sauron, for instance. What if he claimed to be a god? (Come to think of it, he might have... I assume he did not, according to my knowledge of LotR.) There are many in Middle Earth who would dispute that, or claim to, but at the end of the day what would the difference really be to an orc?

I tingle to say more, but I will stop there.

Playing after completeing
I suppose there are some people who like being able to wander around a world after the main story is over. Without the dialogue appropriate to that ending, however... having your deeds recognized and having the aftermath of whatever happened unfold as it would... it would seem really hollow, to me.

And if the response is "well you should write that dialogue then", I can only say that this is why stories are ended. At some point you do have to stop writing and the story is over, and while I can appreciate the sentiment about wanting to continue on and live in the world that you've enjoyed so much, we can only do so much.

I would suspect, as well, that this kind of "continue after the quest" scheme works better in the Morrowind-type milieu where it is more open-ended exploration and the main quest is fairly optional. As has been mentioned many times, that is very much not the type of game Dragon Age will be. It is story-driven, and while there are exploration elements to the game they exist in the context of that story.

Georg Zoeller, Designer

why transparent dialogue skill checks in DA would be a bad thing

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It kills the roleplaying and reduces conversation to a set of dice-rolls.

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I disagree. Apart from issues with presentation, words can be ambiguous and things are not always perceived the way the writer imagined it to be. What might be a clear attempt to intimidate someone for one person could be perceived as "just normal talk" by someone else playing in the same situation, and if the result of the intimidation attempt is being mopped up by the town guards, I better want to know about the fact that I am intimidating someone in the first place.

While
[Intimidate] I could fry your dog
might be a bit less hardcore roleplaying than just
I could fry your dog,
keep in mind that people could also perceive it as
[Joke] I could fry your dog.

In human communication a lot of meaning is transported between the word by your facial expression, tone and body language, which we are unfortunately not able to simulate accurately from your mere keyboard/mouse interaction with our game at this point in time, so using bracketed words to allow the player to chose their "tone" for important lines is a bandaid until the FaceScan2020 Conversation Controller hits the shelves.

As for the "results", the [success] thingy is part of the reward presentation (the part where we make your brain dispense some chemical substances to make you happy about what you have just achieved), think of it as a way to tell people who are not so deep into RPGs that something "important just happened". Think of it as a reminiscent of how PnP RPGs handle ooc situations:

Character: I could fry your dog
Player: "Inimidation", (*Roll*)
DM: (checks notes), "Success"
NPC: "Oh no, here, take my gold"

Granted, when you are really into "role playing" (opposed to roll playing), when your DM measures the success of an action by your acting performance, this seems kind of cheap, but face it, it's very hard to get good PnP group for that these days.

Optimal solution would be a [x] show dialog skill result text in the options I guess.

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realistically,

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bad word

Why isn't Dragon Age an mmorpg?

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The toolset of NWN wasn't that bright either.

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Lets put it this way, I think from a "power" vs. "ease of use" - rating point of view, NWN's toolset is the best ranking tool on the market, by far.

I've gone through so many "toolsets" over time, from the first Doom editors to the Build Engine, from making "rpg" maps in WarCraft and StarCraft to building with "Unlimited Adventures", from Vampire to the tools for UO shards to Morrowind to Far Cry, and the only thing that comes somewhat close to NWN on my radar is Morrowind's construction set.

Stanley Woo, Quality Assurance

BioMod
BioMods are chosen from veteran community members who have demonstrated, by their posting history, that they are mature, professional, helpful, friendly, and above all, within six degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon. Potential BioMods are recommended to Jay by current Mods whenever there is a need.

hope that helps.