The Gamer's Quarter

[dhex]

i've started, stopped, and re-started this joint a few times now, never quite settling in. i'm just about to get around to pharod's secret hideaway or whatever it will turn out to be, so i'm not too far into things i presume. i feel like i'm missing a lot, but i also assume that's because of the whole alignment thing (like, wtf is chaotic good? virtuous deeds for the hell of it?) changing your experience as you go. i've seen some glimpses of some seriously ill, won't hold your hand type shit, and i hope that it carries through as i progress. planescape also seems to presume you'll take notes about your notes.

it also reminds me that should finish fallout 2 at some point.

anyway, i could hold it up as the perfect example of the difference between na and jpn devs (a 15 year old who wants to be old enough to buy beer is also old enough to keep track of coalitional relationships and causality, be titillated by the expansive array of "harlots" and enjoy a wisecracking skull simultaneously) but i'm really not that far into it yet. i am probably attached to that particular dichotomy for all the wrong reasons anyway.

as a setting, the planescape "universe" is very interesting. is sigil hell? a limbo? there's an entire cosmology, including divine interrelationships and rivalries, that one character in a bar explained to me. that's pretty crazy.

i never had any interest in d&d, my only exposure to it being geraldo, a tiny miniature wargames type shop in the basement of the bergen mall (across from a haggle-tastic baseball card shop) and a middle-school friend who really liked the tabletop battletech game. not even remotely the same, but you get the idea. i'm still not totally clear on how all that stuff works, really, and i'm sure i'm missing some crucial information. but i am impressed/staggered by how much work has gone into crafting these rules, relationships, scenarios, politics and everything else required to make this stuff a participatory social gaming thing for what? two decades now?

[speaking of which, has anyone ever written a good outsider text/explanation of d&d as a social, or perhaps more correctly, socially anti-social phenomenon?]

next up i think i will tackle my impulse purchase copy of temple of elemental evil, though that may take a few months. it has one of those old-style manuals that all pc rpgs used to come with (3000 pages worth of setpiece-invoking insanity) which at this point kinda frightens me. but it's spiral bound, so it appeals to the sensible printed materials chap that lives in my left elbow, and i shall slog on through.

http://crap.planescape-torment.org/tattoo.htm



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[Shapermc]

[dhex]

i'll see what ebay can offer me.

also: why the fuck did they pick that boxart? it's awful.
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[Scratchmonkey]

[dessgeega]

[Alc]

One of the deepest games ever made, the level of mythology eclipses any other RPG I've played. You really do spend the majority of your time reading.

*Minor gameplay tips ahead, no spoilers*

The way to get the most out of the game in my opinion is to put really ramp up intelligence and wisdom, and a fair amount of charisma. That way you get loads of dialogue options, can tell when people are deceiving you, and people tend to like and respect you and will want to join your group. I initially went into Torment playing Diablo style, killing everything in sight, which can make for a long, boring game. It certainly fucks up most of the quest options.

Which leads to the alignment stuff: it's kind of important. If you go around attacking townspeople then you'll become chaotic evil pretty quick. Chaotic being the opposite to lawful, evil being the opposite to good, with neutral in between. Being Lawful Good doesn't mean you're the best character, it just affects your options and sometimes people will be nice to you because you're nice to them. Alternatively, you can screw everyone over, steal their money and be rich enough to buy nicer items (chaotic evil). There really is no right or wrong way to do it, just consequences. It's a very thoughtful game made by very intelligent people, certainly (for example) the only game I've ever played that assumed I knew about Occam's razor. I won't even start on the religions/philosophies.

One little tip, if you want to pick a fight with someone but not affect your alignment, use Morte's Taunt ability - if Nameless One picks a fight it affects his alignment, but Morte's stays the same throughout the game. If Nameless One is attacked by someone who's being hostile to him (red ring around them) while he's neutral/friendly to them, he can go hostile and kill them without getting any change toward evil/chaotic alignment.

[Dracko]

Planescape is perhaps the best use of the RPG umbrella term ever. Even more in depth than the Fallout series. I love how you essentially create your character class as you go. And that you can beat things up with a floating skull or a crowbar.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[wourme]

[Scratchmonkey]

[dhex]

gotcha.

the one big disappointment so far is the whole "women are only allowed to wear stripper outfits" rule. bleh.
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[dessgeega]

[Dracko]

They're only trying to remain faithful to the original Dungeons and Dragons material. Wouldn't want to disappoint the cell-dwelling fanboys, you understand.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[dhex]

well, it's not entirely true, some of the women are dusties, and just wear robes. though i'm sure there are chainmail bustiers underneath.

edit: this shit aggravates me because it pushes me out of the otherwise immersive aspects of what i like from this kind of pc rpg. even though you're basically clicking a mouse, the interface is unobtrusive, and it allows you to focus on reading the pages upon pages of dialog. and then something like that grabs me by the head and yanks me out. it's sort of like the console equivalent, where you have to raise magical sheep in order to get wool to trade to some guy whose house needs insulation and he'll give you some beans and a pork shoulder to give to hungry soldiers who will finally let you pass into the dark mountain or whatever.

but it's not only dnd stuff, even fucking darklands had that silly cover. and the first TES game, too. not that we're looking for realism here or anything - a realistic hand-to-hand combat game using weaponry from the 13th century would go something like "you receive a ration of moldy bread and a half-sharpened stave. your head is crushed by a horse for -4000 hps in the first 10 minutes of the battle. you are dead" or "you have died in the womb. would you like to restart the game?" - but you can't go thieving about with 50% of your body uncovered, much less fight people with knives. it's just silly. as far as i know, darklands is the only rpg i've ever played that did calculate semi-realistic things like how large swords work versus small swords versus blunt trauma weapons and how they interact with armor types.

there's probably not much of a market for that, anyway.
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[Dracko]

Now there's a concept for a game: Uber-realistic medieval military simulation. Though I'd rather play Homo Sapiens Sapiens against Home Sapiens Neaderthalis.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[dhex]

a human origins rpg would be pretty awesome.

so yeah, planescape is a mindfuck. it's a bit overly complicated in terms of relationships, but i like how i have a conception of what the story "is all about" and an equally strong sense that whatever i think it's all about is going to be wrong in some way. clearly previous incarnations were either insane or deeply malicious, but like...huh.

the fetch quest nature of the game is handled well in some places, not so well in others. it's somewhat submerged in a relationship building thrust which dominates a lot of the storyline, which also biases the character towards playing as good so you get the most memory opportunities.

the outifts are still annoying, though.
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[dhex]

aw for fuck's sake.

annoyed the lady of pain. got mazed. finally got out of maze after like, a really long time. video game logic re: puzzles sometimes takes me a while to figure out.

and now my party is gone. including mort, who has the gate to ravel.

is this part of the game? if so...why? do they think this is funny?
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[dessgeega]

you've been staggering your saves, right? right??
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[dhex]

of course.

i was just so happy to get through that stupid you got mazed section.
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[dhex]

more weirdness. i can no longer talk to mort. dunno why. ignus refuses to leave my party - rather, i get no option to kick him out - and killing him still leaves him in my party.
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[wourme]

You might have run into some of the script problems addressed in an official patch and then an additional fan-made patch.

If you have the later 2-CD version of the game, I think that you don't need to run the official patch. And although I have the old 4-CD version, I never ran into any big problems, myself.

I also don't know whether it matters if you run the patches before you have already saved your game with an issue present. I'd do some more research right now, but that would make me late for work.

[dhex]

i'm gonna go find out maybe sunday. this really fucking sucks though cause monday is da da da oblivion!
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[dhex]

i finally finished planescape (near end bug had been fucking me up, but i faked it out!).

holy shit. best writing in any game i've ever played.
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[Shapermc]

I should play fallout.

I mean, I have the discs.

Then I should play Torment.
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[dhex]

you should!

i can send you torment if you like.
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[Intentionally Wrong]

Despite the prevalence of options in Torment--in terms of statistics, class, equipment, partners, behavior and alignment--I find I play through in largely the same way every time. I know I'm missing out on stuff because I always join a certain subset of the factions in a certain order, and only keep certain characters in my party. ("Hey, Ignus. I got this decanter for you. Now fuck off; I've got to study the Unbroken Circle of Zerthimon with Dak'kon.")

Torment is my favorite game, but it's not without its flaws. The clothing, like Dhex said. And the bugs. (I'd been trying to keep all plot items with the Nameless One, but I was running out of space, so I gave the Decanter of Endless Water to Morte. Then I went to the Clerks' Ward, where Morte vanished--he was stolen by a wererat in a plot event. After dealing with that and getting Morte back into my party, I discovered he was no longer holding any of his inventory; all those items (including the unique Decanter) were permanently lost.)

Anyway. That's when I started staggering my saves in games.

[The Soviet Onion]

Don't even get me started about Planescape. It was without question Dungeons & Dragons' finest hour. I've never played Torment but I'm glad to hear that it lives up to its source material. It's interesting to see that it can still effect people who've had no previous involvement with D&D, so much of Planescape's appeal was in how it went about undercutting the conventions that Dungeons & Dragons had built up.

Alignment was part of that: In Planescape it was presented more cynically, as more of a political affiliation than an issue of personal morals. The Outer Planes are the afterlife of the ordinary D&D worlds (which are referred to collectively as the Prime Material Plane), and your alignment determines which section you end up in when you die. The Outer Plane associated with true neutral (neutral neutral) is the Outlands, which acts as a central hub that the rest of the Outer Planes are arranged around (chaotic good generally ends you up in Arborea, a sort of prelapsarian greek bacchanal). Sigil is an exception to the normal rules, in that it's sort of in the middle of the Outlands, sort of a plane all of itself, and heavily interconnected with everywhere else in the Planescape cosmos (the Inner, Outer, Transitive, and Prime Material planes). That's basically the simplest I can put it, so here's a picture:




The presentation of women wasn't. Maybe it's just nostalgia speaking, but I can't bring myself to judge classic era D&D harshly on those grounds. It's just too much part of the whole aesthetic. What would in other circumstances seem tacky or crass comes across as somehow peversely innocent, stylised to the point of meaninglessness.

This is all just the tip of the iceberg. I could go on; how it all connects to Spelljammer is particularly weird.

[simplicio]

I always preferred Ravenloft, which was seriously one GIANT missed opportunity. Someone needs to buy the rights to Ravenloft and give them to Warren Spector for Christmas. Great things would ensue.

[dessgeega]

there's an old ravenloft pc game i remember hearing good things about.
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[simplicio]

I don't remember those all that well, but I know they were largely the same as any old D&D first person dungeon crawlers. The beauty of the Ravenloft world was its atmosphere of dread and hopelessness, the sudden vicious mortality imparted on everyone who entered. It was greatly assisted in depth and content by the fan-cum-official community, and ended up a place that more resembled the tone of survival horror games (before survival horror existed) and the System Shocks than D&D fantasy worlds.

[dhex]

i remember playing that ravenloft game, as well as the dark sun game and something involving spider people. i think it was pretty good, though it's been a long, long time.
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[dessgeega]

strahd's possession is the game i was thinking of.
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[dhex]

yup. i vaguely remember that. it's very mid 90s 3d. can't tell you if it was hot or not.

thinking about this a bit more, i guess what i'm really confused about is why other game companies didn't ever bother trying to make relationships like the ones in planescape. not the whole game mind you, but actually taking that extra step to, you know, write something worth reading.

without getting spoilertastic, i think most of all about when you talk to morte (if you ever do, depending on how you play) and find out all the things he never told you, why he travels with you, etc...it's genuine characterization. like in a, uh, legitimate work of fiction.

(for some reason i am also reminded of chad from deus ex, when he gives you that long anarcho-syndicalist ramble about why he fights mj12)
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[Lackey]

[dhex]

naw it was menzoberranzan.
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[extrabastardformula]

[dessgeega]

:(
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[Scratchmonkey]

Seriously game programmers. We realize that you had to figure out a recursive method to the towers of hanoi in university and it sucked, that is not a good reason for inflicting it on the innocents who choose to play your games.

In this post I propose that the most egregious Towers of Hanoi puzzle was in KotOR, where you had to do it with holo-towers of hanoi.

[dhex]

puzzles are kinda lame in general.

i would also like to call bullshit on riddles.
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[Redeye]

Ahhhh, Planescape.

Another neglected gem from Interplay.

An excellent review

With Planescape: Torment and Fallout as benchmarks, the gamescape looks pretty bleak.

Well, part of it.

There are plenty of othre genres.
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I felt sheer anarchic joy when I ran over my first pedestrian.

[dessgeega]

you know i played planescape briefly a while ago and wasn't all that impressed with it.

it seemed basically like a character-driven adventure game bogged down by lots of clicking to run away from enemies.
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[extrabastardformula]

[Redeye]

This is what I was being reminded of

I remember reading about this in Pranks! back in the '80s.

When I played Planescape: Torment and found that tattoo shop, it popped to the surface of my mind.

I can't remember if you can actually merge symbiotically with skins of your past incarnations, but I do remember you can get your own guts and eyeball, etc.

Flashbacks accompany the recoveries.

Think of how gorgeous a remake would be.
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I felt sheer anarchic joy when I ran over my first pedestrian.

[Intentionally Wrong]

[dhex]

no i mean i don't like puzzles. life is a puzzle. i don't particularly like playing them.
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[Intentionally Wrong]

Well, there you go. I tend to disagree, but it's cool.

[Intentionally Wrong]

Dhex, you mentioned a bit of curiosity about D&D as a social phenomenon? I've always felt this magnificent essay was the definitive history of how D&D came to inhabit the position it does. The tabletop role-playing scene is mired in traditions, considering how young it really is, and it's good to have a sense of perspective about just how unregulated those early days really were, no matter how many TSR adherents try to insist otherwise.

It's pretty relevant to people with no interest in tabletop gaming, too.

[Mr. Mechanical]

So, I borrowed this from Select Button's haircute (who is a great guy btw) a couple days ago and just now finished sinking my teeth into the first few hours. Aside from Morrowwind/Oblivion this is the first cRPG I've really played and I'm pretty blown away by how awesome it is so far. I really like the writing and the story and all that, it's all pretty intersting on it's own and the way they tell it to you just makes it that much more compelling. I'm still in the mortuary so I know I'm probably just barely brushing the tip of the real iceberg here, but the fact that I've been tinkering around this one little area (1st through 3rd floors) for like three hours just getting my bearings and such and having a great time doing so really bodes well for the rest of the game the way I see it.

I spent the first couple rooms on the second floor where you start out just killing the zombie workers mulling about. Then I figured out how to initiate dialogue so instead of just running around bashing their skulls in I started interacting with them via the dialogue menu. This is pretty great! This is where the level of depth and detail started to really shine for me. The descriptions of the characters, their dialogue, the interactions that blossom from the things you say or do to them. It's all just great that it's even there, because there's a huge chance that you can just miss out on a lot of it depending on how you play. I even did my first quest on that second floor for the one zombie woman, who I probably would have just killed if I hadn't started talking to everyone beforehand. Speaking of which, is it even possible to kill her?

Now, though, I'm at a bit of a crossroads. See, I was having a great old time doing the whole nonviolent aproach and just taking my time with things by talking and interacting with everyone I came across. Problem is I said the wrong things to the Dustman guy I encountered and he raised an alarm before I could take him out. Is this supposed to happen, or was there a way that I could have gotten around him without him noticing I wasn't supposed to be there or what? I equipped his robes and the weapon he had but it seems once the alarm has been raised there's no un-raising it since everyone attacks me now while I go about exploring. I'm pretty sure those Skeleton Warriors I encountered (and just narrowly escaped from) on the first floor are probably impossible to sweet talk my way past and I'll have to deal with them eventually. But that first dustman you encounter on the 3rd floor; it's really nagging at me the way things turned out for me.

I guess my real question is: Should I just keep going the way I am now or would it be fruitless to restart and try the first Dustman encounter some other way? I have a feeling that alarm is going to get raised no matter what eventually, but can I do something that puts it off for a while longer? Because for every zombie worker I kill I can't help but wonder to myself which number he was and what kind of interactions I could have gotten involved in with him and was he the one numbered "42" that I'm currently looking for or is that part of the "main" quest or what.

Anyway, I started out with a lot of character points distributed to Intelligence and Wisdom, enough to bring them just up to their highest levels, and the remaining few went to Constitution. Haircute told me to make sure Wisdom was at least above average so I went ahead and went overboard with it since it expanded the dialogue options and therefore led to a wider variety of possible scenarios to be played out when encountering other characters. I bumped up Intelligence too because I figure in a game where the actual combat is mostly automated hacking and slashing then magic attacks will probably be a lot more interesting and cooler. Though if every other RPG I've played has taught me anything then the rewards of a magic user character won't come into play until a bit later on. If that's true then it's cool, I can just tough it out I guess. I gave a slight bump to Constitution so I wouldn't have to rely too much on items for healing. It's a lot easier to just sit around for a few minutes to lick your wounds than be totally screwed when you're low on health and just run out of bandages and such. However I think on a subsequent playthrough (or maybe just a second quest I start in tandem with this first? is that possible?) I'll focus on Dexterity for the thief skills. But really who needs lockpicking skils when they can just bash open locked cabinets with an iron prowbar they found, eh? *winkwink* Though focusing on Strength and Charisma would be cool once you get into buying and selling stuff since you'll be able to carry more loot on you when you're exploring and merchants will take more kindly to you. Maybe. I don't really know right now, that's just speculation on my part.

So, yeah! This is attached to Advanced D & D, so that means there's all this lore and stuff automatically built into the backstory. The great thing for me is since I've never played AD & D or read any of the trainers or anything all this stuff (lore, backstory, etc.) is totally new to me. It's not hard to see why some people are so into Planescape then. I mean, this shit is like an onion that you could just slowly peel away at until your hair turns grey and your teeth fall out. This all leads me to believe that nerds are not born; they are made. Made by games like Planescape: Torment.

Man this game is awesome.
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Mr. Mechanical

[Intentionally Wrong]

Yes. Absolutely.

Some things about talking your way through: each of the mental stats (Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma) allows access to certain conversational options. Your other stats, particularly Dex, can occasionally come into play as well. It's worth noting that not every stat-based approach is available for every conversation, and some conversational gambits aren't keyed to any of the stats. Different approaches can have different consequences, especially with regard to your alignment. For this reason, a lot of FAQs suggest you quicksave before every new conversation, and I largely agree with them--Torment isn't really the sort of game that's made more interesting by unexpected consequences. The consequences are interesting, but I'd guess you're playing more for the experience rather than the challenge.

As for your experiences in the Mortuary...

There are some conversations that you can't "win". The Dustmen on the third floor, for example: the most successful chat you can have with them involves walking away without arousing their suspicions. You're right that you can't talk your way out of fighting the skeletons on the first floor, but it is possible to examine them before the alarm is raised, and either make them less of a threat or destroy them entirely through actions in the dialogue box. As for whether you should retry the section--it's not really a big deal, this early in the game, so it's really up to you.

As far as stats are concerned, putting as much into Wisdom as you can is the single strongest thing you can do both in terms of character strength and roleplaying options. You're right about spells being more interesting--as a spellcaster, the Nameless One becomes far more powerful than he can be as either a thief or a fighter. But yes, that's still a ways off. I usually favor Dex over Con myself, as a better Armor Class makes HP less important, and Dex gives you just a couple more options. It's not like it's a huge issue, since death is so inconsequential.

One other thing, which you may have noticed if you've read this thread already: I wouldn't give too many important items to Morte. There comes a point where you're just walking into a new area and before you can react, he's not in your party anymore. When he comes back, he'll have lost everything he was carrying, and those items can't be reclaimed.

[Mr. Mechanical]

Ok, I restarted just because. It was pretty great, as I found out how to do the zombie disguise from that one dude on the 2nd floor. Must not have been a very good disguise though, as I got attacked right off the bat the moment I set foot on the 3rd floor. Hrrmph. Now I'm debating with myself whether I should start over again or not. I think I might, since I know where all the keys and the right sequences to take with certain conversations to get the best rewards so far. Wouldn't take too long since I'm still at the beginning of the game. Even found a hidden portal out of the mortuary but once I got to the other end I was stuck in a tomb and couldn't find a way out or back to where I came from. Stop me if this is all like common knowledge or major spoilers or whatever, because I don't know really know.

I'm going to get some sleep for right now, then later I'm going to start up a new game and not use the zombie disguise when I decide to head up to the 3rd floor. I'll still do the quest to get the disguise, since I think it gave me exp. I'll just equip a weapon or whatever to fudge up the disguise. Yeah, that's the plan now.

Man, I'm hoping these were just some false starts for me early on like this, because if I keep trying to go back and replay the game to get a "better" or even "different" outcome to certain key events I've encountered (which has happened so far, the whole two times I've sat down and played it) I just might drive myself insane.
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Mr. Mechanical

[Intentionally Wrong]

Did you try running in the zombie disguise? 'Cause that destroys it immediately.

The best way I've found to get through the third floor... (highlight for spoilers)

...is to disguise yourself as a dustie. This means finding one of the dustmen near the entrance of the third floor who's standing well away from anybody else, engaging them in conversation, and taking the option to snap his neck before he can raise the alarm. This probably requires a bit of DEX. The other option is to just avoid the Dustmen altogether--keep away from 'em, and don't let them get near you.

And yeah, I've also played through the opening section of this game a whole bunch. It gets a bit less demanding (in parts) once you get out of the mortuary. Just keep frequent saves.