|
Quackles posted:Who or what is Kari the Kobold? Mod NPC for Baldur's Gate - I used to be very active in that game's modding scene, and made two NPC mods myself. Originally it was mostly notorious for being the only furry mod in that community - kobolds in the Forgotten Realms were originally very doglike as opposed to reptilian and possibly related to dragons - but even after that became accepted in the community Kari remained infamous for being an extremely overwrought romance mod that automatically disqualified every other woman vying for the PC's attention if they were in the party because Kari was just that beautiful and wonderful. Pun-Pun, on the other hand, is from the 3.5E character optimization community, and is a thought exercise using a kobold to twist the rules as written until they squealed to make one of the most theoretically broken characters possible in the system.
|
#
?
May 1, 2024 17:47
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 2, 2024 19:36 |
|
|
Gun Jam posted:Is the AI always this bad, or only on easy? The *only* thing the difficulty changes wrt to the crusade is resource income and recruitment numbers. All the battles are the same.
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2024 18:06
|
|
|
Yikes. Kind of glad I missed the baldur's gate 2 era on rpgs. Dare I ask what mods you made? If that's not too personal.
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2024 18:06
|
|
|
Drakenel posted:Dare I ask what mods you made? If that's not too personal. I made two. Darian is a lovely brooding handsome loner dude I wrote when I was in high school. Valerie, on the other hand, remains talked about positively by goons to this day. She was for BG1, and her BG2 component (including ToB) was about 80% finished before stuff happened and the project died. A goon asked for and received all her WIP files for BG2, so maybe she'll get finished someday. Nerdy lesbian sorceress in the awkward position of being a Lawful Good representative of the Cowled Wizards, who are very much not Lawful Good.
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2024 18:11
|
|
|
If anyone is curious about the kind of insanity involved in the construction of Pun-Pun, here you go: https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Pun-Pun_(3.5e_Optimized_Character_Build) There have been a few versions of him, but that should give you the idea of the sort of thing that's involved.
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2024 19:32
|
|
|
Pun-pun is a aesop about the dangers of unchecked rule bloat and feature creep. I've know irl people who wanted to play a character like him. Imagine the 'wow cool robot!' meme but for game mechanics.
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2024 20:13
|
|
|
Pun Pun is hilarious but it's basically purely a thought experiment.
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2024 20:31
|
|
|
If I had 5k to spend on one of these games, I’d make my inserted NPC the following- a) a party member. Complete a short side quest to recruit them, it’s not much drama beyond the immediate and then you have a badass Druid or whatever. b) a decent person. c) a hot no strings attached romance option if you’re into them and easy to shut down if you’re not. You can also friend zone them if you prefer. Minimal drama. I guess my custom NPCs run more towards the dlc types than the usual NPCs we get in these games. If we got the option to recruit Crinukh, Kaylessa, or that pirate backer NPC from Kingmaker as a companion, or any kind of lasting reward, I bet players would be a lot more forgiving of them. Just an idea.
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2024 20:50
|
|
|
If I had 5k to get my own custom NPC, I'd make a random crusader that goes 'wow, look at this cool new thingamabob I got! it'll surely get me through the crusade!' then on the next big battle setpiece you find an unnamed corpse with said thingamabob on his body. Bonus points if whatever it is would have been really helpful an hour ago, like something to deal with the swarms at Leper's Smile long after you've been there.
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2024 07:29
|
|
|
Could go full-on Smith the Horse from Ultima. A character that shows up and gives you mysterious and insightful hints... shortly after you've finished the relevant questline. Every time they swear they'll get you good information next time and run off, only to come back to do it all over again.
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2024 07:53
|
|
|
I probably would have gone with 'Here's a cute couple of married women who give you a magic item and some gold because they're retired adventurers and don't need this anymore' or something along those lines. But I have never backed a kickstarter, and probably never will. I don't have so much money that I feel comfortable paying money for what may prove to be a game I won't actually enjoy when the finished product is delivered.
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2024 14:11
|
|
|
I've backed about sixty games on Kickstarter at this point, including this game and its predecessor. I view it as kind of game agriculture; I'm paying now and I'm getting the results of paying for games a few years ago, so it all kind of works out once the ball gets rolling. That said, I can't imagine dropping thousands of dollars on a game unless I somehow became so rich that that was a meaningless amount of money to me. While the idea of having something I made be in a published game forever is cool, it's not "spend the rent money" cool. I just back at the "get me the game" level; since that's generally 1/2 to 2/3 of the normal retail price, I can afford for a third of the games that I back to fail or be complete duds and still break even. (The actual rate so far is more like one fifth; it'd probably be lower if I didn't back a few goon projects on general principles.) Obviously whether this works depends on how specific your requirements for games are; it's not an approach which will be good for everyone.
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2024 14:40
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:I probably would have gone with 'Here's a cute couple of married women who give you a magic item and some gold because they're retired adventurers and don't need this anymore' or something along those lines. So like Viv from Legends and Lattes?
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2024 14:49
|
|
|
bunnyofdoom posted:So like Viv from Legends and Lattes? I don't know who or what that is. idonotlikepeas posted:Obviously whether this works depends on how specific your requirements for games are; it's not an approach which will be good for everyone. I maintain that I'm actually quite easy to please with video games.  It just seems to be that the big things I find appealing are rather niche.
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2024 14:51
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:I don't know who or what that is. It's a book I just finished, which I think you'd really really enjoy. Goodreads link
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2024 15:05
|
|
|
Imagine having five thousand bucks just laying around you could use to troll every other player by buying the worst, most insipid, boringest NPC you could muster.
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2024 15:44
|
|
|
I'd want to have a regular-looking npc with no portrait or even a name that just stands around in the background somewhere that you can't talk or interact with. And the game to have an achievement for finding and correctly identifying all the backer npc's.
Poil fucked around with this message at 18:39 on May 2, 2024 |
|
#
?
May 2, 2024 18:02
|
|
|
I have backed games on Kickstarter. Maybe I will again someday. As a game audience, I don’t like to think to myself every potential game out there is bad. It still bothers me when backer characters stink, though. I can’t help but wonder if a game writer could not have improved them and if they didn’t, why? “My kobold had to put down every mythic path except Trickster.” “My pirate has to be a misogynistic rear end in a top hat and be thought of as cool.” “Perrin has to accidentally kill his wife.” “This relationship has to break up and go bad.” Etc etc etc. Why does this vicious cycle have to continue? It’s not entertaining to me.
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2024 18:38
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 2, 2024 19:36 |
|
|
I remember reading somewhere that despite being requested and prompted by the backer, the entirety of the quest arc and characters is still written by Owlcat. Broadly I think building your game by committee in order to draw funding is a compromise of art, so if I back anything it's the root tier that is usually just the game at a slight discount.
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2024 19:00
|
|