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Have you seen the zero punctuation review of the Witcher? I just about pissed myself laughing.

I am slowing compiling pieces for a new machine so that I might play these modern games. My box will run NWN2 (mask of the betrayer is cool, but I dunno, NWN and NWN2 = very low replay for me), but just barely, so to play anything cool I need an upgrade.

I really love Morrowind, though, still. I think it might be the best CRPG ever that isn't Fallout. Arcanum I just can't get into, I keep trying and keep not caring. I felt the same way about Torment and Icewind Dale.

Torment just had too much nonlinearity for me...I can't figure out where to go, what to do. Morrowind and Oblivion at least have some kind of central quest. I need some guidance otherwise I get bored.

Yeah, a stated objective helps...maybe I should give Torment another go, but "Okay, you're in this place, go" doesn't do much for me in computer games, although I like it in my table top experience. And, also, Morrowind still kind of has a number of set pieces even if you ignore the main quest. Actually, the funny thing about Morrowind is that once you're, I dunno, 15th level or so you basically own everyone. With one of my high level characters I got bored and killed everyone in Vivec. Every. Single. Person.

The craptacular side of Oblivion is really, really glaring once you should be an uber badass. 1) Even after you close all the oblivion gates the random monster spawns are Daedra. 2) You never really get any better at capping fools because of the monster scaling, which is irritating when you're bored and you really just want to cap all the guards in a town. 3) Once you have the Cowl of Nocturnal, you're basically completely invulnerable to the law. At least the Oblivion expansion added some cool stuff.

I'll have to pick up a copy of Torment and try it again, then. Although I hope it is not the same experience I had with Arcanum: pay $50 and then basically not really like it. I had that same thing happen with WoW also...because fuck level grind.

NWN2 character generation is really easy for me, but I play tabletop 3.5ed D&D every weekend so it's just the same mechanics on a computer screen. Oblivion's narrower range of options was definitely frustrating because the world just didn't feel as indepth. I really should rebuy Morrowind (I gave my copy to a buddy) but because I can pick up GotY with both expansions for like $40 now I'll just get it after I finish construction of the NightEngine.

I loved NWN and the expansions, but NWN2 was kinda meh for me. Maybe the story, maybe I was just disappointed in what it was really like having your own castle (the linearity there was galling, it turns out it doesn't much matter what you do). I spend hours messing with my town only to find that it was just a pointless side game.

I hated the scaled leveling of Oblivion. I think it could be done well, but I could never really get immersed and on several occasions I actually had to start over again because I was getting insufficient enhancement points at each level. You are penalized for casting spells if you are a spell caster. You level too fast and don't keep parity with the game. The second time I had a character in a dead end that way, I gave up. I was mostly confused about what to do in Morrowind. It took so long to be good at anything, I thought I was doing stuff wrong. It's a shame, because I really like the nonlinearity of those games and the way they built the worlds.

I like Witcher mostly for the vibe. It just feels different. I can ignore the goofy stuff, and I even give them partial credit for trying to do something (even if it fails).

dark brotherhood was the dopest thing the TES series did in a long, long time. (since they removed climbing, really)

the skills thing has always been an issue with the series, but became more obvious with the scaling (which to be fair you could always tune). you basically have to put your least-used skills up front and make your most used skills secondary. it's a difficult sweet spot.

i'm about halfway through nwn (the first) and the dungeon crawling part is good. i like the engine a lot. but the fedex quest stuff is sort of pissing me off. taste my savage steel indeed. i feel like i should finish it (i'm playing as a level 8 monk, which is neat because i very rarely get hit, but sucks because my kung fu is not yet superb.)

In NWN I did dwarf cleric. Darkness, the spell, pretty much takes care of everything if you can see in the dark.

In NWN2 I did arcane archer. Didn't really like it.

JasonL: Boo on the way darkness works in NWN. You can't see through magical darkness with darkvision, one, and two darkness only provides concealment (20% miss chance). Either they implemented it wrong in the game or I totally failed to use this as a strategy.

TOEE is the buggiest game ever to actually make it to market. The patches are as big as the game, and it still fails all the time, and with variety. Crash to desktop, freeze, clipping and pathing problems that game does it all.

well, i know other folks got it to run under xp. i had no problems with win2k.

it's yours if you want it. pm me.

I think Cleric for NWN2 works best, it's a long time before you get an NPC healer. Cleric is, in 3.5 anyway, probably the most powerful all-around class. Good AC from armor, good hitpoints, two good saves, 3/4 BAB, access to decent weapons. A really good domain to pick up is Magic (DO NOT USE THEIR PREBUILT CLASS CONFIGURATIONS), because it gives you access to some Wizard spells at low levels, which is nice. Also, keep in mind that as long as your alignment is Good or Neutral, you can swap out for "cure" spells, meaning up until you're like 11th level you'll never have to waste slots memorizing healing (Heal is a 6th level spell, but not "Cure X Wounds" so you can't swap for it). You'll also have the right chops to remove poison, level drain, stat drain/damage, that kind of thing. Warpriest is a pretty decent PrC once you can get it, but it halves your spell progression in favor of some spell-like abilities and access to better weapons.

Druid is also a pretty good class, same good saves as Cleric, 3/4 bab, neat abilities, good spells for offense and defense, wild shape. Druid probably has a few more low-level offensive spells, whereas most of Cleric's spells below 4th or 5th level are buffs, defense, &c. And from Druid there really isn't a good PrC available (this is true of D&D and NWN2, Druid just rules so hard that deviating is lame). There are plenty of NPC spell casters, though, so you don't have to worry too much about direct damage. Also, the NPC cleric settings never get healing working the right way so you end up having to micromanage. Actually, my biggest beef with either game is that the NPC spell casters are FUCKING STUPID so you have to micromanage them all the time or they do dumb shit like waste Meteor Swarm on a bunch of goblins.

JasonL - Nah, that isn't Bioware, that's 3.5e D&D. It's a pretty big tossup between Druid and Cleric for most powerful overall class. The Cleric has a bit more protection from undeath stuff, but the Druid has more direct damage spells, can swap for summoning (although Nature's Ally is not really as good as Summon Monster, or at least not as flexible), and gets Wildshape.

Glad to be of extremely dorky help!

Prestige Class vs PrC. Dude, that's not even a contest for keystrokes.

RE that slate piece: I think the dude either really doesn't even like fantasy killing, is trying to be sarcastic (and failing) or he's only ever had really terrible DMs. Terrible. Hell, I've played entire campaigns in which there were maybe five or six combats over the course. And I'm talking campaigns that went on for a long time. Now early D&D was basically just a combat system, but that doesn't impose on the roleplaying aspect (although I suppose other systems are more condusive to some RP experiences), but modern D&D allows for all sorts of non-combat options. In fact, my very first D&D character was admonished by the other party members specifically for his elf-centric view of the world during an encounter in which he was slaughtering goblin children, so I think the guy's off a bit.

There's nothing in the rules preventing the handing out of XP for things that aren't combat. I'm going to run an investigator game later in the year (or eventually) where I won't likely even really have combat.

Now, admittedly, Steve Jackson is also a total genuis and I'm not that familiar with GURPS but it is supposed to be a pretty good system. I bet Eric or Jake know more. And I will admit that D&D is not without flaws, obviously.

To be fair, the only non-computer D&D I've played was one session using Cyclopedia rules. I played a second-level thief on his own, and the closest I came to combat was running like Hell from an animated skeleton that ambushed me on the way to a town. (Considering my HP, this was entirely sensible.) I spent the rest of the session getting in contact with the local thieves' guild in that town and getting a job to go undercover as an goods appraiser in order to rob some merchant. It was fun, if I found myself flailing a bit at the question of how does a medieval crook act - I settled on playing a confident little shit with an easy smile.

I think this phrase has real potential. For something.

Yeah, the first thing in NWN is just dumb and annoying as hell.

so nwn is all bugged out and my hired companions won't follow me anymore, which makes the game fairly fucking impossible.

onto nwn2, which at the very least is much nicer to look at and not so grey.

With the 4e it's just a good rule set, for simulationists at least. If you're into a looser, more narrative thing, you'd have to remove rules wholesale, but in that case FUDGE is probably better for you anyways. It's not perfect, but it'll get you up and running in almost any genre you want to play. Maybe any genre.

Heh. When I was getting divorced about ten years ago I spent entire days converting the GURPS Vehicles system into metric. I hope to actually have a playtesting credit in the 4e version of the vehicle design rules; it's been like two years since the playtest, so I hope that they're just released at some point, because there's some niiiiice stuff in there. The rules are still crunchy, but if the playtest has any effect there'll be plenty of provision for people without advanced engineering degrees. :-)

And they've been trying to get a GURPS video game done ever since. If I ever won the lottery, some of it would go towards helping SJ Games get a GURPS video game made.

It's not an old-school game, but Mass Effect is damn good. I'm almost done with it, and I can't wait to play it on PC. Bioware's next RPG, Dragon Age, will be awesome if they get even half of what they want in it. Less transparent good-or-evil options, for one, though that's hard to implement (they promised that with Jade Empire too, and Open Palm vs. Closed Fist was just good vs. evil).

I really enjoyed The Witcher, even the sex parts, even though they seemed like something a twelve-year-old boy would write. The one where a half-elf invites you back to her house to have sex after you save her from being raped . . . really? Is this really how you think women react to being raped?!? And the whole elven terrorist thing was interesting, but not interesting enough. The non-human races were just written to be morally ambiguous, with little else to make them interesting or different from typical elves and dwarves IMO. More the fault of the original author than the game devs, but still annoying.

almost done with nwn2 i think. third chapter, have my little animal crossing house and all that.

god the voice acting is fucking terrible in spots. why did they get liberace to do the little gay bard's voice? (actually it's some asian guy but whatever)