/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.553634]

What are some good rpgs where you create your own character?

[Anonymous No.553639]

Arcanum.

In Baldur's gate I never had the impression that it matters what kind of character you play outside of combat.

[Anonymous No.553643]

Oh man, what?
Lots of games.
All of Fallout
All of Elder Scrolls
Arcanum
Bloodlines
All Spiderweb Software games
Ultima games, to an extent

That's barely scratching the surface.

[Anonymous No.553652]

hmm.. how about... every single wrpg that came out before 1997

in any case, i wanna thank fallout and the infinity engine games for killing the CRPG

[Anonymous No.553656]

>>553634
Darklands.
Fallout 1&2.
Arcanum.
Realms of Arkania.
Wizardry 8.
Megatraveller.

[Anonymous No.553665]

>>553652
I don't get your frustration. Most WRPGs still allow you to create a character.

I also don't get why you're blaming Fallout for anything. Until it was rebooted by Bethesda, the game had barely any influence on the genre outside of its own niche.

[Anonymous No.553668]

>>553639
It really didn't.

[Anonymous No.553680]

>>553639
Arcanum is easily broken, even more so then Fallout.

Be magical as fuck. Spam harm.
/game over

>>553643
Jagged Alliance 2 (it's got some rpg elements)
Darklands
System Shock 2

Can't think of anything else that's noteworthy, not awful and allow character creation off the top of my head.

[Anonymous No.553684]

>asa

[Anonymous No.553690]

>>553652
People were praising BG and the infinity engine for revitalizing the "dead" RPG genre at the time though. Fallout was great aside from 2's obsession with pop-culture, which I think was a side-effect of it's 1 year dev schedule and new team.
Personally I wouldn't say the genre really "died" until the early 2000s Arx Fatalis et al with the last one being Arcanum. (barring a few indies like Knights of the Chalice and the recent revitalization)

[Anonymous No.553692]

>>553680

>missing the point of creating your own character.

[Anonymous No.553718]

Grimoire is a relatively new one.
Bonus points for being developed by a guy who worked on Wizardry 7.5 (stones of arnhem) semi-racist expat aussie with his own fallout shelter and a great sense of humour.

[Anonymous No.553723]

>>553692
>implying I missed anything, and did not mention how easily Arcanum is bent over the tabled and tenderly loved repeatedly in combat because it's just awfully balanced.

Magic is just fantastic, it has options, it has a ton of useful things in and out of combat for you to do.
Tech is non-option comparitively.

it needs to be mentioned. It's like telling someone to read Torment and not telling them to be max out the conversation stats.

[Anonymous No.553724]

>>553680
>spamming harm
What about magic users who aren't necromancers? Or characters without magic?
Did you forget about the whole "playing a role" part?

[Anonymous No.553727]

>>553718

[Anonymous No.553731]

>>553692
Well,
>What are some good rpgs where you create your own character?
Is such a broad question.

Many, many games allow custom character creation, but not all ccc is particularly impactful, or play any role outside of combat.

[Anonymous No.553753]

>>553724
>not necromancers
Harm can be easily fluffed as any generic spell, if you're that anal about "roleplaying". It doesn't need you to sell your soul, just to have a magical aptitude.

This is just a heads up to people who haven't played the game. You can make nearly every combat encounter trival due to 100% magical aptitude and harm. Be warned.

[Anonymous No.553756]

>>553652
>fallout and infinity engine games
More like Fallout 3 and Bethesda games.

Fallout 1 showed everyone that crpgs don't have to be fantasy.
Planescape Torment proved that wordswordswords aren't seen as an unpleasant necessity between action parts.

They are both very solid rpgs. Maybe even two of the best.

[Anonymous No.553761]

>>553753
So? Just don't use it then.

The game gives you more than enough options.

[Anonymous No.553763]

>>553643
>All of Elder Scrolls

All the main series ones

Redguard you have to play as Cyrus
Not that that's a bad thing
Cyrus is a beastly mother fucker

[Anonymous No.553780]

>>553756
>Fallout 1 showed everyone that crpgs don't have to be fantasy.
Please don't say shit like that. There are tons of older CRPGs that have other settings. Sentinel Worlds, Wasteland, Starflight 1&2 etc.
>Planescape Torment proved
Very little. That fanbase has grown exponentially recently and mostly by word of mouth through the non-gamer wants-to-fit-in crowd like Felicia Day. (my not so keen on RPGs shooter-loving friend asked me about it recently because I played it once when he was around)
It used to have a small crowd of huge fans and a lot of apathy surrounding it. It only really happened because of them selling it differently to the company heads at that.
I mean I like that we're seeing new ones under InExile but let's not pretend it was all organic.

But yeah, they're both solid and on many people's favorite lists near the top.

[Anonymous No.553807]

>>553780
I could say the same about Wasteland.
It only got real mainstream recognition after Fallout became a huge financial and critical success.

[Anonymous No.553812]

>>553763
~Sail on my Cyrus, sail on ...~

[Anonymous No.553823]

>>553807
Well obviously. Hell Fallout didn't even make it very well-known despite the "spiritual successor" label.
It was only really known to people who played RPGs in the late 80s, people who looked to the late 80s/early 90s for RPGs to play and the No Mutants Allowed forum crowd of Fallout fans prior to this whole Kickstart deal.

[Anonymous No.553858]

>>553753
>Harm can be easily fluffed as any generic spell
No it can't. It's Black Necromantic, it should be pretty fucking obvious what it's about.

If you can't play a single-player game without immediately latching on to the most overpowered choices, that's your problem.

[Anonymous No.553908]

>>553858
You are misunderstanding me.

I'm not telling everyone to harmspam.

I'm trying to tell someone that the game's combat is easy to break in the player's favor. Easy.

Harm is the cheapest direct damage spell to snag. It's not deep in Neco Black and it scales seriously well with magical aptitude, while staying cheap in fatigue.

This is like tripping over a gauss pistol in Fallout after you kill the first few rats.

It's good right then, and only gets better as you work at it. It can suck any fun you may get out of battling without any warning. This is all assuming you go magic, but given how awful tech is compared to the spells, it's not a difficult thing to imagine.

I also like the irony of you bitching about roleplaying but deriding a comment about refluffing a spell choice.

[Anonymous No.553938]

>>553908
>I also like the irony of you bitching about roleplaying but deriding a comment about refluffing a spell choice.
No amount of mental gymnastics will make Harm anything other than a Black Necromantic spell.

[Anonymous No.554021]

>>553938
Again, the irony of "B. . . B. . .BUT MAH ROLEPLAY!" and "No, this cannot ever be" is amusing to me.

[Anonymous No.554039]

>>554021
There is no irony, dimwit. Roleplaying doesn't mean you just make up whatever shit you want in direct opposition to the established setting.

[Anonymous No.554060]

>rpgs where you create your own charecters
Almost every PC RPG ever?

[Anonymous No.554068]

When I played Arcanum I didn't think harm was that great, especially towards the late game where it does pretty low damage actually. I didn't bother with harm anymore in the second half of the game.
I get the early game spam/kite problem and all but form my experience just heavy melee and a good sword and maybe the time spells was so much stronger

[Anonymous No.554071]

>>553858
>>553753
>>553724
>>554039
>>554021
>>553938
>>553908
jesus christ... how is this even a thing to argue about in the first place? get a life guys

[Anonymous No.554083]

>>554068
who fucking cares? it's a spell in a video game, I don't understand how the fuck everyone is making such a huge debate over a single fucking spell, jeez, it's like having an arguement about whether it's better to kick or punch on street fighter... dear lord what is wrong with you people?

[Anonymous No.554090]

>>554021
>Why is there no water elemental combat spell in the game?
>Hurr, just refluff the fire spell and pretend it's water
Balderp's_Herp_2.jpg

[Anonymous No.554116]

>>554068
Harm is really only OP early on and by the time you hit Tarant you can get more OP tech stuff.

Really though Arcanum is only challenging for new players for the first ten minutes. Past the bandit bridge no one tends to have any big issues.

[Anonymous No.554134]

Strange question but ...

Is there an rpg where you can use your financial means, skills and knowledge to your advantage other than to lower prices?
Like bribing people and making them dependent on you by loans?
Or where you can exploit the economy?

The only game I remember that kind of does this a little is Vampire Bloodlines.

[Anonymous No.554145]

>>554039
Roleplaying is making up whatever you want as long as you can get away with it in regards to people/things playing with you to allow you to pretend to be someone, something, or whatever.

Going to yourself "this is the most useful, to me, sword in the game, but I like using maces" and either modding it to look like a mace or pretending it's one to fit your roleplay prefrences is roleplaying.

Going "harm and disintergrate are two fire spells to fit my pyromancer theme" is refluffing, which people do all the time in roleplaying games. Instead of the typical disintigrate fluff, it's now the target burning to ash from within.

Which is why I said irony, because it's ironic to say something like >Did you forget about the whole "playing a role" part?

>>554083
It's not about Harm, it's about how easily you can render the game's difficulty down without realizing it. It's no different from people in, as i've mentioned, PS:T threads telling people to max charisma, wisdom and intelligence and ignore the other stats.

The other guy's deal is, i'm assuming defensiveness about a game he enjoys and reacting to someone pointing out a flaw people should be wary of going into the game.

[Anonymous No.554168]

>>554134
EVE, could take you a few years though.

[Anonymous No.554175]

>>554145
Arcanum's difficulty is pretty non-existent though.
I remember all of three parts causing me to die, Magnus clan's mine (which is really late game), that demonic sword place and the pirate skeleton. (the latter could be made easier by casting disarm on them)

PS:T isn't about difficulty though, it's more about seeing most of the game as the main interest of the game (the dialogue and related puzzles) is very geared for high-wis, high-int characters.

[Anonymous No.554212]

Most of the time when people complain about an RPG being broken its because they purposely tried to break it or followed others advice when playing. If you look up faqs about what is best to get and how to best max them/get them early the game it should be broken. It's like bitching a puzzle game is too easy because you read the solutions online.

[Anonymous No.554217]

>>554175
But unless someone mentions it, a new reader has a 2/3rds shot at not being a mage, and not maxing out the conversation stats. Which is why it's always common for people, when discussing PS:T to do so.

As for Arcanum, I ran into a bear after leaving that first town. It was the most difficult thing to happen to me, because that bear was a roided out monster dire bear or something.

And evidently i'm awful at the game, because it never got so easy I could sleepwalk through it.

[Anonymous No.554225]

>>554217
>because it never got so easy I could sleepwalk through it.
Generally you'll have an easier time if you specialize.
Charismatic characters can get a shitton of companions, full melee types hit hard as shit, mages get disintegrate and ultra buffs (though one or two trees are garbage), Techs get dex-rings, pyrotechnic axes and power armour.
Gunslingers are a bit weak until lategame though.

[Anonymous No.554246]

I've never heard the term "refluffing" before, and even with the explanations in this thread, I still don't really get it. Is it just pretending and meta-gaming outside the confines of the gameworld, like the way some people pretended they needed food and water in Oblivion?

[Anonymous No.554259]

>>554246
It's a pen and paper term for changing the descriptive parts (fluff) while keeping the mechanical bits (crunch). (something doesn't fit in with your setting? refluff it!)

I don't see the point of pretending/that kind of roleplaying for CRPGs either myself.

[Anonymous No.554263]

>>554246
No, "re-fluffing" means to take an existing element and giving it new context.
Fluff is the background, crunch the rules.

It works in pen and paper rpgs, but not so much in video games.

[Anonymous No.554270]

>>554259
>>554263
It's also mostly used in the 3E/4E communities.
The rest just call it house rules or custom classes/skills/etc.

[Anonymous No.554279]

>>554259
>>554263
Ah, thanks a lot.

[Anonymous No.554289]

>>554246
I come from /tg/ so I hope you don't mind if I go back to give you a few examples to help out your understanding of the term.

say you're playing a pen and paper role playing game. And say your game master gives you a magical weapon. Let's say you're playing a fighter who loves to use a giant hammer to crush your foes.

If the magic weapon is a sword, it doesn't fit your theme. If you talk to the game master and ask if you can refluff it to be a hammer instead, it's a hammer you found.

Another way would be if you were playing a wargame, and using an army list to play an army that in some way works with your rules, but maybe not with the minitures that you would normally use.

It's basically pretending something is something else and operating on that assumption.

[Anonymous No.554305]

>>554289
>If the magic weapon is a sword, it doesn't fit your theme.
Then you deal with it.
I know my old GMs would have been pissed if I was under the impression that magic items was a right.
Then again magic items meant something in early D&D, before they put a price tag on them in the PHB.

[Anonymous No.554307]

>>554289
Yeah, I get it now, thanks.

[Anonymous No.554353]

>>554259
I don't disagree that it's not mostly pointless, but there are enough mods/hacks/reskins around that it's not unheard of.

If someone wants to refluff Cloudkill in Baldur's Gate 2 from a cloud of yellow posion vapors into a billowing cloud of boiling steam, magic missles from force bits into shooting tiny flecks of burning iron or whatever to fit into a character theme they want to do or whatever, it's their copy of the game, let them do what they want.

It's no different then roleplaying a knight in a game that doesn't mechanically allow you to be a person of high social standing, trained in the arts of martial combat and owning enough land to be able to afford the best armor possible.

[Anonymous No.554423]

>>554305
Grognard.txt

If some old, "gygax is the saint and savior of all that is pen and paper gaming" handed me a sword, and snipped if I asked instead for it to be a hammer, it'd still be a hammer every time I described it, noted it on my character sheet and mentioned it to my fellow players.

Part of what makes a game fun is the gm and the players working together to tell a story everyone enjoys, and if something that minor starts a snit fit, i welcome the passive agressive war, because I can fight it as well as anyone else.

But this is horribly offtopic, holy shit.

Uhh. . . Roguelikes are an entire genre of gaming that allows you to make your own character.

Sometimes several times a day.

[Anonymous No.554454]

>>554263
How retarded.

[Anonymous No.554578]

>>554423
>it'd still be a hammer every time I described it, noted it on my character sheet and mentioned it to my fellow players.
Then your character would probably get the epithet "the Mad" pretty quickly.
That too would be amusing I suppose.
>to tell a story everyone enjoys
The main flaw of modern post-White Wolf gamers. The story is one that stems from play and working within the confines of the game world, not changing everything to fit your one true vision every step of the way.
>passive agressive war
Oh there was never anything passive about it. They laid down the law, made it clear that anyone else could GM if they wanted and we were better off for it. No rules lawyering, bitching about the death of special snowflake Drizzt clones or the likes in sight anymore.

[Anonymous No.554710]

>>554423
You know, I kinda want to agree with you,
but that example is just so thatguy that I can't.

I generally tell my players to speak up if there's anything they want or would like to see,
but I wouldn't encourage them to arbitrarily change the world I sacrificed my free time for to invent it.

If I gave one of my players a magic sword (which would be a rare occasion and usually features a backstory and illustration) and they'd be all like "Fuck you, that sword's a hammer now!" I'd be pretty pissed.

But yeah, videogames.

Gotta say Arcanum again,
because it's the game I experienced the diffeence between builds the most.
I really like how many different ways there are to solve quests.

>know quest about stolen painting from earlier playthrough
>get painting first then go to questgiver
>"How did you know about this? We never saw each other before!" You are the thief!"
Based Troika

[Anonymous No.554807]

Daggerfall gets a lot of shit these days for over-relying on procedurally generated towns, dungeons, and quests, but I really do think it is probably my favorite game for role-playing on the PC; Unlike the later Elder Scrolls games, I never really feel like I'm shoehorned into some existing environment/story, and between the character creation and the massiveness of the world it really does feel like your character is doing whatever they want in a living, breathing world. It might not be as grand as running around and having everyone tell you you're the Nerevarine, but it feels good. I'd recommend trying it out if you're the type of person who likes to come up with back-stories for your characters and so forth.

[Anonymous No.554843]

>>554807
>between the character creation and the massiveness of the world it really does feel like your character is doing whatever they want in a living, breathing world.
This is exactly the opposite of what I felt while playing Daggerfall. Despite the world being massive, it doesn't feel like there's anything to do in the entire game except for killing shit (with a pretty damn bad combat model to boot) and... doing quests to kill shit for money; which you spend on gear and spells so you can kill shit better.

[Anonymous No.554880]

>>554843
This, Daggerfall is a pretty bland game
It has a massive world, sure
but it's just filled with uninteresting cardboard people.
Exploration and quests don't feel rewarding as it's just the same randomized quests in the same randomized dungeons with the same randomized loot everywhere.

And there's just not enough variety.

[Anonymous No.554946]

>>554710
>but that example is just so thatguy that I can't.
It didn't start out that guy. It started out as "reasonably going to the guy who is the word of god in this game and asking if, for the sake of my character's theme if he can change the word 'sword' to 'hammer', because it's such a trivial thing for him to do, what with the power he holds, if it's not too much trouble."

And frankly, if the gm can't meet me at least in the middle and wants to play "hey, fuck your desires, this is my fucking game, don't like it, run your own" I wouldn't be playing there in any real way anyway.

"Oh, you're hammerguy, here's a magic sword, you'll never find a better weapon because i'm too in love with the phallic imagery to let anything change my one true vision of how this goes."

Granted, most of that is hyperbole, but still.

>based troika
Too bad Arcanum is meh, Bloodlines is buggy as fuck, but captivating also not retro and ToEE was just awful.

[Anonymous No.554980]

>>554843
>>554880

Ok, I'll take back the "living, breathing world" comment. I guess my main point is that if you're into role-playing enough that you can have fun relying on your imagination for 75% of the experience, Daggerfall is a good stage for it.

[Anonymous No.555021]

>>554980
Single character RPGs never felt as good soft-roleplaying material to me at all. Staging a role with a character only feels appropriate if there's some kind of a response to it, which in party-based RPGs you can provide by yourself. Not so much in the solo ones.

[Anonymous No.556323]

>>555021
I won't lie.
The best roleplaying experience in a crpg I ever had was Oblivion.
This wasn't because it's that good a game thogh.
More like I had nothing better to do.

My character was a redguard pirate who looked really boss since I managed to give him a really cool looking red and white face paint.

I disregarded the main quest completely.
I'm a pirate. Why would I give a fuck about the emperor?
I would've sold the necklace too if it had been possible,
so I removed it with the console and added 100 gold to my inventory.

I remembered that I had magic from the start, but ...
I'm a pirate! So I got rid of those as well with the console.

Since I was stranded in this boring fantasy land, I wondered what to do next.
Well, I'm a pirate! So I decided I need a ship.
I took the Marie Elena with easy and sold of all the loot I found.

The ship looked rather dull though, so I needed plunder and stuff.

I started doing some odd quests if they sounded lucrative and started doing arena fights.

My ship quickly filled with gems, golden trinkets, silver rings, lot's of fruit, other food and wine bottles everywhere.

I also did some odd jobs for those darkhood dudes and the grey fox gang.
They quickly declared me their leader.
I'm just that bad a dude.

After that I pretty much just followed my daily routines.
Mainly filling the waterfront with floating corpes of those who dared enter my ship.
Fucking imperial guard. Who do they think they are?
They water around my ship became a real mess with all the corpses, bones, garbage and wine bottles floating around.

I also started collecting books. My favourite one always at the side of my bed.
"The Lusty Argonian Maid"

Too bad I don't have the screenshots anymore.

[Anonymous No.557219]

>>556323
Found a thumb of his face. Sadly the only image of him I have left.
If you tried you could do some pretty neat things with the character creator.
Too bad Bethesda didn't.

On a more /vr/ related note.
Did Oblivion remind anyone else extremely of Daggerfall?
I mean it's like it's the same game, just smaller and with better graphics.

[Anonymous No.560878]

Which rpg is the most fun to play as a thief?

[Anonymous No.561035]

>>560878
Thief classes are usually pretty bad in vidya RPGs, and the most fun ones to be a "thief" in are generally those without class systems. I had some good fun in Fallout 2 this way.

[Anonymous No.561069]

>>556323
lol