Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning....

No offense taken, I appreciate your comments. Kids are about to go to bed and I'm going to fire up Amular. This is what we did all day :)
playing3.jpg


They have a ways to go still
dm_mode_full.jpg

I have no idea what they are doing there :D. Is that a tabletop RPG of some sort?

Thinking back on Amalur, I really enjoyed the various guilds in the game. If any MMOs out there have quests like Reckoning I would love to play those games. I especially enjoyed the House of Ballads. I thought the lore of the summer fae overall was extremely interesting. The other factions were very good as well.

Man, just talking about it makes me want to fire up Reckoning again. Awesome game :)
 
Its my ghetto high tech D&D setup. The Sager laptop is projecting the portion of the map they are playing onto a 39" 1080p LCD being used as a game table. They use their cardboard player tokens right on the "table" while everything else is digital (monsters, props, etc). The app is called MapTool which has a Fog of War system so they can only see explored areas. The second pic is a Maptool screenshot showing "DM Mode" where I can zoom out and see everything with unexplored only partially shaded in Fog of War mode.

This is D&D 4e but it would work great for Pathfinder or anything with a map, like a game that uses hex etc...

The Sony laptop I'm using to run the campaign. The one thing missing is I need to get a clear plastic film so they can roll dice right on the LCD.

I played Amular for a few hours last night. A pack of wolves nearly killed me. There were about 6 of them and it was pretty touch and go. Its easy to get overconfident!
 
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Huh, that is really cool. So basically it projects a board that they can move their characters on, but you can move the monsters digitally using your computer screen, as well as presumably creating zones and things like that. That sounds really fun, and is particularly well suited for 4e. I wish I had that to play around with!


Its my ghetto high tech D&D setup. The Sager laptop is projecting the portion of the map they are playing onto a 39" 1080p LCD being used as a game table. They use their cardboard player tokens right on the "table" while everything else is digital (monsters, props, etc). The app is called MapTool which has a Fog of War system so they can only see explored areas. The second pic is a Maptool screenshot showing "DM Mode" where I can zoom out and see everything with unexplored only partially shaded in Fog of War mode.

This is D&D 4e but it would work great for Pathfinder or anything with a map, like a game that uses hex etc…

The Sony laptop I'm using to run the campaign. The one thing missing is I need to get a clear plastic film so they can roll dice right on the LCD.

I played Amular for a few hours last night. A pack of wolves nearly killed me. There were about 6 of them and it was pretty touch and go. Its easy to get overconfident!
 
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That's exactly it. Maptool also supports a grid and you can have the tokens snap to it for movement control, but I disabled that. I'm using it for map management and probably am only scratching the surface. The real beauty of the app is that you can add any number of maps to the campaign and put 100's if not 1000's of art artifacts to stage the dungeon. That map is bone empty by default. All the art is free (type "dundjinni skeletons" in google images for example and check out the hits).

You can go crazy creating a campaign. I think that's half the fun.
 
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Hijacking my own thread duh. I'll get back to Amular shortly :)

Here is the opening map for the campaign - you can clearly see the cardboard tokens vs. digital. They are darker. Another thing that is great is I can hover over a token and it shows tooltips - which helps the players remember who has the most damage by name. That surrounded Kobold shows the name right below it.

farm.jpg
 
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Wow that is very slick. Things have changed from the days when I had a giant plank of plywood with extra large grid paper on it we used to draw "life-size" maps and painted all our little figures and moved them around. Both are fun I think but certainly this offers a whole of flexibility - thanks for sharing it.
 
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The game is average and the sales speak for itself. It didn't sell well enough to keep the developer open. It's not bad but it has a bunch of flaws that become apparent that it is in fact designed as an mmo. Sadly this discussion has been done plenty of times.

My final advise is to play it with no expectations and you will enjoy it.

1.4 million sales is bad for an rpg?
 
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It's not bad, he hinted sales were average just as the game is. And average sales in this case weren't enough to keep the developer open.
 
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Hijacking my own thread duh. I'll get back to Amular shortly :)

Here is the opening map for the campaign - you can clearly see the cardboard tokens vs. digital. They are darker. Another thing that is great is I can hover over a token and it shows tooltips - which helps the players remember who has the most damage by name. That surrounded Kobold shows the name right below it.

farm.jpg

Wow, can I come over and play? :D
 
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As long as you can tolerate my 8 year old saying he is going to back stab whether or not there is an ally opposite the target or not. Every freakin time! LOL.
"I'm going to backstab!"
"you can't"
"awwww. why not?"
*sigh*
 
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Man, my ol' uni AD&D group are well and truly behind the times it seems setup wise.
That's a really cool system you've got there. :)
It takes me back to playing HeroQuest and DMing a game for my younger brother and his mates. Fun times.
 
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HeroQuest was updated & re-released a few years ago, if I remember correctly.
Same with "Talisman".
 
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I played D&D in the late 70's and 80's on graph paper. Only Baldurs and the other licensed PC games kept me aware of the rules changes. Still, 4e was a big adjustment. I played the Starter Redbox for 4e and it quickly became apparent that pretty tactical map would really enhance the experience. Plus, the modules don't come with big maps if you can believe that. So you either start drawing digitally or manually or head in this direction. This direction is allot of fun.
 
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Just a brief update: I took a diversion from the main game to punch out the Teeth of Naros expansion. That was a nice tight area with reminded me a bit of Night of the Raven. The textures and color palettes in the ruins are great. The creatures in that area are fun to fight and unique…. except the Silver Back Trolls, which can be tedious and there are quite a few of them. Good plot, very creative, loved the trapped dungeons.

Honestly my overall impressions are unchanged. It still feels like a single player MMO with a revised combat system. All the quests are trivial, MMO ish kill X number of Y, get whatever artifact at the end of instanced cave, or kill some creature. Wash rinse and repeat. I'm not bored with it but I'm not itching to play it either. Its a solid game, that's about it. I worry a bit about the 8-9 levels I progressed in the Teeth, and what that means in terms of the level 40 cap (I'm around 21 now). Levels are becoming more distanced which helps.

One final note on skills. There really isn't much to select surprisingly, at least for a fighter. I'm tapped out on what I can do with my longsword already, so I'm left with little to choose from other than other weapon types I don't intend to use and magic AOE softening stuff which I do use, but that is pretty much maxed at this point as well. Strangely limited. Other than that I keep pumping points into Alchemy, Smithing and lock picking but the drops aren't exactly epic. Everything I craft is better than drops or loot in chests. I only really need health potions and I've had that recipe for ages.

The game needs more depth but it is solid and fun.
 
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The skill tree is brilliant for a Ranger type build. You get a bunch of interesting passives that causes bleeding damage, poison, etc, as well as upgrading your bow quite a bit. I loved playing as a Ranger in Reckoning.

The Might tree is a bit bland I'd say. I didn't care for any of the skills in the Might tree, really. Just not very interesting. It was much more interesting to play a Might/Finesse hybrid with a focus on Finesse. Then the skill trees really shined.

I'd say the depth in Reckoning can be found more in the lore and dialog system. If you like talking to NPCs you can do a lot of that in Reckoning, and everyone has interesting things to say about the lore, the world, etc. I thought that type of thing had good depth.

I still don't see the MMO comparison, but maybe I just haven't played enough MMOs. Which MMOs exactly is Reckoning like? I guess graphically it looks similar to what I've seen of World of Warcraft, but Reckoning is much more beautiful. Gameplay is nothing like Warcraft.

I don't see how the quests were anything other than standard RPG fare. I thought they were well-written and served their purpose. Some of them were very interesting and sent you to beautiful locations. The guilds in Reckoning were phenomenal if you ask me. Those quests ranged from good to amazing, imo. House of Ballads, the Warsworn, Scholia Arcana, those guilds were very memorable.

Try Legend of Dead Kel, it was some of the best content I've ever played in an RPG. I really liked the characters, the setting, the quests, etc. It was done extremely well.

I dunno. I really think Reckoning was one of the best games I've ever played. I know that's saying a lot but it really was. I have played tons of RPGs and for some reason Reckoning really captivated me with it's gorgeous, vibrant world, interesting quests and stunning locations. The combat was pretty good, too :D. Easily a 10/10 for me.
 
I played D&D in the late 70's and 80's on graph paper. Only Baldurs and the other licensed PC games kept me aware of the rules changes. Still, 4e was a big adjustment. I played the Starter Redbox for 4e and it quickly became apparent that pretty tactical map would really enhance the experience. Plus, the modules don't come with big maps if you can believe that. So you either start drawing digitally or manually or head in this direction. This direction is allot of fun.
Thanks for showing your digital D&D set up - it looks fun! I love seeing all the different ways people play tabletop with recent technology. One day I'd like to get a big touchscreen to play on, if I ever get a group of my own going.

We should have a dedicated tabletop D&D thread somewhere on the forum.
 
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Fluent at this point I'm just talking about the quest structure. In many RPG's today you have multi layered quests, such as making X number of people happy (with side quests) to earn a reputation to qualify for another quest that earns the end goal. Or simply chaining quests together. There isn't much of that. MMO's have generic quests so they can have lots of content. LOTRO is my MMO haunt of choice and the generic quests are very similar.

My disappointment in the Might skill system is because I love the combat and want it to be even more dynamic.

Like I said, its a solid game. Teeth of Naros did *not* feel like an MMO, the story was strong and the quests were less generic for sure. I'm hoping more of the main game will be like that. I'm still playing :)
 
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Fair enough, but I don't understand what you mean by generic quests. I've never encountered a generic quest that I can recall. That goes for pretty much any RPG I've ever played. They usually have some sort of story to them that makes them interesting.
 
Destroy all kobolds in cave x. Destroy head of bandits in cave x. Destroy x number of crates of whatever. Gather x number of herbs for potion whatever. Also general Fedex delivery quests.

If you notice, you can plug in just about anything into that type of quest. Any type of leader to kill, any type of object to gather, any type of object to destroy. Any type of object to deliver to any type of NPC. That's a general MMO type of "volume" quest system.

There are notable quests in Amular, so this isn't a universal thing, but its pretty apparent as the generics are plentiful.
 
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