Are we talking about NPC's as personalities here or as numbers?
I don't like seeing people as numbers, and since i can solo the game, it doesn't even matter for me what class or stats my companions have. I want to see their personalities instead. Playing a calculating character that only sees benefits in numbers, becomes boring for me after a while. Evil or not, i still want to socialize and i'm gonna flip eventually if i'm surrounded by people capable, but unable to communicate with me.
I understand not liking the new characters, but this stuff about Blackguard fanboyism or useless characters is something i don't get.
Everyone could be potentially useful, or useless, depending on the situation.
P.S. If the new characters have beefed up stats to please more than the old ones, i will actually consider dropping them.
This time around, i'm also gonna avoid having super stats, which are boosted in 100 ways anyway. It's so more satisfying for me that way.
Some times i think it would be hilarious if multiclass was implemented as it really is in 2nd edition. Oh the fun...
@Mornmagor - I can tell you straight that Rasaad is not overpowered. Dorn is the most powerful of the three, and as mentioned by @Tanthalas, he has shortcomings to make up for it.
I'm so not interested in the new NPC's. I see BlackGuard fanboyism as akin to Drow fanboyism and don't 'get' the appeal there. A monk - they take too much babysitting to keep alive in early levels. Neera - I'd like to see that character, but am unwilling to accept the risks of Wild Magic for any long term in the game. Maybe my views will change when I've played more - I've only done one playthrough, so the basic game still has stuff I haven't seen.
@reedmilfam I totally agree with you. I quite dislike pretty much all NPCs in BG because of their class/attributes. I definitely know I will never use a Paladin, single class Mage or Monk in BG:EE since they are outperformed by multi/dual-classed Warriors/Mages. But I like the interactions they bring. So, I usually modify their class/attributes to get the best of both worlds.
Lordy that's painful. Part of the joy of BG1 is making the best of the relatively crappy NPCs.
Kind of agree on both sides - I also view the biggest advantage with NPCs as their personalities and interactions, but having every NPC multiclassed and optimized for every situation from scratch takes away a lot from the story element. Some characters being very capable early on while others only come into their own at a much later stage makes for a varied party and more immersive and dynamic storytelling imo - a bit like the hobbits in Lord of the Rings.
How do you cope with writing within the constraint od what is basically someone else's universe? Have you ever wanted to write about a concept but had it rejected by Wotc for whatever reason?
I rather like writing in established settings like the Realms and Golarion (the Pathfinder setting). Novels set in those worlds feel like historical fiction for which my research material consists of a tall stack of game books. Usually, there are fewer constraints than you might think. For instance, when I wrote Prince of Wolves the source material on the country of Ustalav consisted of six pages. My homework was very easy!
I can't remember any substantial concepts that an editor at Wizards shot down. Always I revise manuscripts for short fiction or novels, but I've never had to scrap anything as substantial as a chapter, and in the outline stage most of the feedback I received from Wizards' editors concerned making the story better. It was a pretty free environment, or else I knew the Realms well enough that I never put my foot in a deep hole.
It's much the same writing for Pathfinder, although the editorial team provide a great deal more feedback to ensure the representation of the setting in fiction matches that of the game world. That could be in part due to the fact that Golarion is a much younger and more rapidly growing setting, so even with fairly constant reading on the setting, I still haven't gotten to know it as completely as I knew the Realms in the late 90s.
@Dave - how come there aren't any Kindle versions of your books (in the UK, at least)? I stopped buying most physical books a while back.
I know that Wizards has recently brought Black Wolf and more of the Sembia series to the Kindle. In their case, I'm sure it's just a matter of gradually catching up on the backlist.
In the case of my Pathfinder books, while they are not available directly through Amazon (the Amazon contract is not favorable to publishers like Paizo), you can buy ePub versions of the novels (and many of the stories and novellas) from paizo.com or iTunes. Run them through a free app like Calibre, and you can convert them and load them directly to your Kindle.
One thing I would like to ask @Dave is: You mentioned Dorn was the hardest character to write for. May I ask you why? Is it because, as you said in another answer, you don't enjoy writing evil characters that aren't also funny (Dorn has been described by Trent and Phil as purely, unapologetically evil)?
You also said Rasaad was the one you enjoyed the most, which is curious given that he's the archetypical do-gooder. What made him interesting to you, from a writer's perspective? Was it the challenge to turn a righteous champion of good into something fresh and non-clichéd?
What about your feelings toward Neera (not toward her portrait ;-) )?
While I like antiheroes and villain protagonists (like Nucky Thompson on Boardwalk Empire), it's harder making them sympathetic without undercutting their bad-assitude. We decided early that Dorn would not be a Villain in Name Only. He's not a victim. He's not misunderstood. He's not comic relief. He's a bad man. Some players will revel in his unbridled ambition and the carnage he causes; others will need a hook to understand how he became the way he is. The hard part is to offer both kinds of players what they want without either side of Dorn cancelling out the other. When in doubt, we lean toward "unfiltered badass."
And while I like antiheroes, I like classic heroes, too. Rasaad is easier for me to write because he feels love and responsibility. It's easy to sympathize with a character like that. There's some humor in his story, but he's not the clown--at least, not most of the time. As for how he'll remain fresh, that's part of his story that we hope you'll discover in the game. He and the others will all face different sorts of personal crises. Considering his background, you might not be surprised that his could be the darkest of the three.
I enjoy Neera because she's neither the full-on villain nor the devoted hero; she's still trying to find her way. While her story starts with some very selfish and reactive motivations, one day she'll have to decide whether it's good enough to run from something or whether she needs to find something to run toward.
It was Dave and Phillip that wrote the characters together from what we've been told.
Thus, i find it hard to imagine no smartass or funny comments from all of the characters here and there :P
Maybe Dorn would have less, or some more "venomous" lines but anything works
To be clear, Phil and Trent (and possibly others) created all of these characters. When I came aboard, I suggested some tweaks and wrote some of Dorn, much of Neera, and most of Rasaad's lines. Phil also wrote a lot of the Black Pits dialogue, and Coriander wrote a good bit of it as well.
Every once in a while Keith would slip in a line or two, then panic and ask us to make sure it was all right. (It was.)
There's humor in almost every character's story, but Neera is the one who most often cracks a joke or make a snappy comeback. With Dorn and Rasaad, it's more often another NPC (or one of the PC's options) that is funny.
Some of these humorous lines come only if you have the right NPC combo in the party. For example, Tiax has a hilarious (Phil-written) exchange with Dorn. If for some reason you have both (Shar-worshipping) Viconia and (Selune-worshipping) Rasaad in your party, expect some interesting developments.
We tried to make sure the PC had plenty of his or her own snappy comebacks so if you like to be the clown, you often can.
@Dave - how come there aren't any Kindle versions of your books (in the UK, at least)? I stopped buying most physical books a while back.
I know that Wizards has recently brought Black Wolf and more of the Sembia series to the Kindle. In their case, I'm sure it's just a matter of gradually catching up on the backlist.
In the case of my Pathfinder books, while they are not available directly through Amazon (the Amazon contract is not favorable to publishers like Paizo), you can buy ePub versions of the novels (and many of the stories and novellas) from paizo.com or iTunes. Run them through a free app like Calibre, and you can convert them and load them directly to your Kindle.
So my party is going to be Rasaad Dorn Tiax and Viconia. Might chuck Edwin in there for kicks and see how long Rasaad lasts before he wants to kill us all.
The problem with WotC and e-books is that, until recently, they didn't have a good international distribution agreement people from outside North America couldn't buy any of their e-books. They've finally made some of them available in Portugal, but so far its only 5 "recentish" books, their back catalogue is still restricted to NA, and they just released a new book this month, that again, is not available outside of NA.
I hope that if Paizo goes the e-book only route that they make sure their international fans have access to the books. WotC has been failing really hard with this.
So my party is going to be Rasaad Dorn Tiax and Viconia. Might chuck Edwin in there for kicks and see how long Rasaad lasts before he wants to kill us all.
@IchigoRXC b-but, what about Minsc and Boo, it's two people in one character slot.
If the kits and other dual and mixed classes that were in BG2 are now in BG1:EE, I don't really see there being much of Any Limitations on what you can do with the NPC's. Just today, even after playing D&D for years and the original games for years, I never thought of making Imoen into a Thief/Mage, not once. Yet today I saw a thread about just that.
In IWD I did make a Thief/Mage (might have been in IWD2 now that I think about it) but never did I do it in the BG series.
Comments
I don't like seeing people as numbers, and since i can solo the game, it doesn't even matter for me what class or stats my companions have. I want to see their personalities instead. Playing a calculating character that only sees benefits in numbers, becomes boring for me after a while. Evil or not, i still want to socialize and i'm gonna flip eventually if i'm surrounded by people capable, but unable to communicate with me.
I understand not liking the new characters, but this stuff about Blackguard fanboyism or useless characters is something i don't get.
Everyone could be potentially useful, or useless, depending on the situation.
P.S. If the new characters have beefed up stats to please more than the old ones, i will actually consider dropping them.
This time around, i'm also gonna avoid having super stats, which are boosted in 100 ways anyway. It's so more satisfying for me that way.
Some times i think it would be hilarious if multiclass was implemented as it really is in 2nd edition. Oh the fun...
Probably the only new NPC that can be considered to have beefed-up stats is Dorn, but even then he does have his shortcomings.
We had to plead to the developers to improve Neera's stats to bring her up to the standards of the other BG1 NPCs, lol.
I'm sure the devs have thought this through.
Lol about Neera, i want to see when the game is out, what did they do with Rasaad, maybe a monk would be more justified to have better stats overall.
I can't remember any substantial concepts that an editor at Wizards shot down. Always I revise manuscripts for short fiction or novels, but I've never had to scrap anything as substantial as a chapter, and in the outline stage most of the feedback I received from Wizards' editors concerned making the story better. It was a pretty free environment, or else I knew the Realms well enough that I never put my foot in a deep hole.
It's much the same writing for Pathfinder, although the editorial team provide a great deal more feedback to ensure the representation of the setting in fiction matches that of the game world. That could be in part due to the fact that Golarion is a much younger and more rapidly growing setting, so even with fairly constant reading on the setting, I still haven't gotten to know it as completely as I knew the Realms in the late 90s.
In the case of my Pathfinder books, while they are not available directly through Amazon (the Amazon contract is not favorable to publishers like Paizo), you can buy ePub versions of the novels (and many of the stories and novellas) from paizo.com or iTunes. Run them through a free app like Calibre, and you can convert them and load them directly to your Kindle.
And while I like antiheroes, I like classic heroes, too. Rasaad is easier for me to write because he feels love and responsibility. It's easy to sympathize with a character like that. There's some humor in his story, but he's not the clown--at least, not most of the time. As for how he'll remain fresh, that's part of his story that we hope you'll discover in the game. He and the others will all face different sorts of personal crises. Considering his background, you might not be surprised that his could be the darkest of the three.
I enjoy Neera because she's neither the full-on villain nor the devoted hero; she's still trying to find her way. While her story starts with some very selfish and reactive motivations, one day she'll have to decide whether it's good enough to run from something or whether she needs to find something to run toward.
Every once in a while Keith would slip in a line or two, then panic and ask us to make sure it was all right. (It was.)
There's humor in almost every character's story, but Neera is the one who most often cracks a joke or make a snappy comeback. With Dorn and Rasaad, it's more often another NPC (or one of the PC's options) that is funny.
Some of these humorous lines come only if you have the right NPC combo in the party. For example, Tiax has a hilarious (Phil-written) exchange with Dorn. If for some reason you have both (Shar-worshipping) Viconia and (Selune-worshipping) Rasaad in your party, expect some interesting developments.
We tried to make sure the PC had plenty of his or her own snappy comebacks so if you like to be the clown, you often can.
The problem with WotC and e-books is that, until recently, they didn't have a good international distribution agreement people from outside North America couldn't buy any of their e-books. They've finally made some of them available in Portugal, but so far its only 5 "recentish" books, their back catalogue is still restricted to NA, and they just released a new book this month, that again, is not available outside of NA.
I hope that if Paizo goes the e-book only route that they make sure their international fans have access to the books. WotC has been failing really hard with this.
In IWD I did make a Thief/Mage (might have been in IWD2 now that I think about it) but never did I do it in the BG series.