The Bard's Tale Update 9: Mangar, Lagoth, Tarjan and…Monte Cook?

[ZiN]

"And so it came to pass that eight new stars burned in the night sky. The last of these, the companion star was named Hawkslayer after a hero of legend. The other seven together known as the Company of Heroes, are each named after the New Gods. Each night they can be seen is betokened a good night, and adventurers know these gods smile especially on them..."
Gospel of the New Gods (Chap I, verses 5-9)

Yeah, Gospel. The quote is from Bard's Tale 3.

What they need to to is a parser which parses your savegames as you import them from the PC version of BT3. It then names the stars after your party, and every reference to them will be named accordingly in the game. Also your heroes' names should appear in temples, on icons, murals and perhaps statues (which are modeled after the character class, also parsed from the savegame) and sung by bards every now and then. There goes an actually good stretch goal idea.

[thebruce]

That would be pretty cool, and certainly personalize the game. ...If people still have their save games
And the curious could have some fun editing their old characters to do funny/strange things in BT4 story... Mad-libs?

[ZiN]

That would be pretty cool, and certainly personalize the game. ...If people still have their save games

Well, since the Burger-enhanced BTs are coming out years before BT4 we'd have enough time on our hands to give it a go.
What would be especially cool, is that depending your old team, each "star" would unlock some small bonuses for your team. For example i would have 4 archmage "stars" which could increase the mana regen of my mages, even at night, or give extra spell-power, etc. The possibilities are many. The bonuses could be even greater if your team also finished BT1 and 2. I'm sure Burger could easily and gladly implement these tracking/importing features in the enhanced editions.

The game is fully funded. I would say that it's met expected results. As for people reducing pledges, you're just assuming it's your personal bugbear causing issues and not, say, the lack of defined combat, the 4 member party, or any number of other things people have been complaining about.

Sure enough it is funded, but i honestly expected a much stronger campaign and much greater funding. Am i alone with this?
Also you're mistaken: i'm not assuming that the low funding is only due to the shoddy story. I have a pretty comprehensive understanding of why it is so, due to spending a considerable amount of my free time to follow the campaign and the events related to it.

[Zombra]

The game is fully funded. I would say that it's met expected results. As for people reducing pledges, you're just assuming it's your personal bugbear causing issues and not, say, the lack of defined combat, the 4 member party, or any number of other things people have been complaining about.

Sure enough it is funded, but i honestly expected a much stronger campaign and much greater funding. Am i alone with this?

For whatever it's worth, everyone anticipated that E3 would kill Kickstarter interest stone dead for a while. I don't know what's going to happen in the next three weeks, but you can bet that Fargo still has a few surprises up his sleeve to get some major attention before the finale.

[sear]

We've got some more plans to help pick things up. Had hoped for cool stuff today but looks like it bled into tomorrow. But don't worry, we've got some nice updates to share very soon, and that extends beyond just The Bard's Tale...

[thebruce]

Beyond the Bard's Tale, but hopefully relevant to fans of Bard's Tale, and backers of the Bard's Tale kickstarter ... ;P

[Zombra]

We've got some nice updates to share very soon, and that extends beyond just The Bard's Tale...

FINALLY

[DHCRoss]

This is a reaction I see shared by more than a few. I wouldn't say the story is "a load of shit" myself, because I think the story can work with xenophobic, racist theocrats (as a faction), but to make them as prominent and powerful as it sounds may be a bummer. Must our "heroes" be reduced to skulking around everywhere, feeling total paranoia from the very beginning? I'm not sure I like the sound of that as a starting point. And yeah, those ungrateful Skara Baraeans! Do they even remember those constellations mentioned at the end of BTIII? How depressing!

The Old and the New

Uhh, so the Skara Baraeans have a pretty shitty memory then i guess. Didn't the heroes of not-so-old became gods themselves, including constellations on the night sky? What kind of god-fearing town it has became if not those?

This story is simply a load of shit, there's no way to put it milder than that. Complete with measly stereotypes (from the real world, no less), disregard for the old series and inconsistency. I don't know who came up with this, but i'm pretty sure both of the Michaels, especially Cranford, plus Burger would be pretty sad, just like i am. Sticking to $20.

This is my personal opinion, i guess some people will like that story (which is no surprise, after all they buy anything these days) sorry if i sound too anti-enthusiastic, i am...

[Freeman]

I'd like to see my elves and dwarves remain in. I don't mind an authoritarian church forcing adventurers underground (literally), even if it's a little trope-y. The Bard's Tales have always seemed a little trope-y. Kill the wizard at the end, Tolkien elves (literally, read the manual!), grind through sewers, crypts and towers fighting monsters that can't fit in the space provided.

I'm glad they're pushing things though, I feel like they did a good job remaining true to Wasteland, while still updating it. I know they'll do a good job with this.

I would, however, love to see that save games from BTIII can be brought in as the constellations. That would be a fantastic touch. Especially if they had the constellations have in game effects.

[Drool]

What they need to to is a parser which parses your savegames as you import them from the PC version of BT3. It then names the stars after your party, and every reference to them will be named accordingly in the game.

Now this is an idea I can support fully.

I would love to have people praying to Thewmeister for strength or Wizzo the Chronomancer for guidance. Of course, I'd love even more to import my level 125 party. "Adventurers are outlawed, eh? Suck NUKE!"

[jrodman]

PC-only import would make me quite sad.
Writing imports for ProDOS floppy images seems ... like not the best use of time.

[ZiN]

PC-only import would make me quite sad.
Writing imports for ProDOS floppy images seems ... like not the best use of time.

Yeah, it would take quite a few hours of work, for the likes of Burger or Cranford. For others, yes it might be a bit more complicated.
I'm fine with PC only though, gonna play the Enhanced Editions when they come out.

[thebruce]

I'm sure we could whip up some data converters to take other OS save games and convert to PC-importable data (presuming you want to play on PC of course)

[Nanocephalic]

Lots of people have been bouncing back and forth trying to convince themselves that 150 years isn't a long time for incredibly important history to be forgotten. It's happened right here in the past 50 years!

Think about vaccination rates. Your grandparents were afraid of measles, influenza, polio, etc. Those diseases killed MILLIONS OF PEOPLE. Really, that's a real thing. You all know people who were alive then, and your parents probably all had polio vaccines (remember the little circular scar on their shoulder?)

Once vaccination wiped out these incredibly dangerous diseases, there was little reason to fear those diseases any more. You get your shots and occasional boosters, and devastating diseases get wiped out (like magic, only real!)

However, the lack of fear has bred contempt for vaccines, so you have people refusing to vaccinate their kids. And that didn't take a century and a half. People who know what vaccines are will tell people like Jim Carrey that they are acting stupidly and putting people at very real risk, but the only way to beat the stupid out of people like that is to have diseases wipe out populations again.

...and like I said, that didn't take 150 years. There are probably quite a few people on this board who have polio vaccines.

[Ether]

First of, as I've mentioned before, I have no issues with the currently proposed plot, as long as there's some meaningful reference to the original trilogy.
Second, I have no idea how feaseable - from both a legal and programming perspective - the following ideas are.

I'm starting to think the best course would have been a quasi-reboot.

Instead of doing a remastering of the original trilogy, I think Bard's Tale 1 should have been remastered. And by that, I mean implement the BT3 combat system into it, along with some of the other features of that game. I would also have expanded upon the story little bit, such as who is Mangar, how'd he get in power, what is he ultimately wanting to do, why is the "good" wizard Kylerean just sitting in the guesthouse tower, where's Baron Harkyn, etc. Maybe even make a new level or two as some sort of side mission.

From there, Bard's Tale 4 takes place around the same timeframe, but somewhere else, like Arboria. Or Gelidia, before it froze over. etc
There could even be a dungeon/mission where a character from BT1 is imported and joins your party for a while.

[_noblesse_oblige_]

I'm starting to think the best course would have been a quasi-reboot.

Instead of doing a remastering of the original trilogy, I think Bard's Tale 1 should have been remastered. And by that, I mean implement the BT3 combat system into it, along with some of the other features of that game. I would also have expanded upon the story little bit, such as who is Mangar, how'd he get in power, what is he ultimately wanting to do, why is the "good" wizard Kylerean just sitting in the guesthouse tower, where's Baron Harkyn, etc. Maybe even make a new level or two as some sort of side mission.

I partially agree with this and have mentioned something similar in another thread before. I don't feel any desire to see the story expanded though, except maybe to have some vague references as to how Tarjan came to be locked away in stone (which could be lead to a prequel). Nor am I certain I want the BT3 combat system. (I know people have made the argument that the ranges in BT3 helped balance the spells, so maybe I could be swayed there. But I feel like the ranges ruin some of the abstraction of the combat. If you're putting one dimension on a grid, then why not put two dimensions on a grid? Oh, wait....)

Basically, I would have been content to see the dungeons of Skara Brae reconfigured and expanded somewhat without any "150 years have passed" story glue.