Classless CRPGs systems?

[Borsook]

Arcanum has an interesting character generation system, but it is deeply flawed. You can only be a female of a very few races; no female dwarves, for instance. Also, they got constitution right in that females are given a higher con than males, but then they "made up" for that by making constitution well-nigh useless compared to strength. All constitution does is help you resist poison, basically; it adds a small amount of HP, but nothing compared to what strength adds, and strength helps your carry weight and physical attacks too. Easily moddable, and I modded it, but still not cool.

 

There are a lot of sexist touches throughout the whole game. Temple of Elemental Evil's the same in that area, though of course they weren't able to mess with ability scores; I haven't touched Bloodlines because Troika made it, and every description I've seen has told me that they just kept descending down that dank pit. Thankfully they're out of business now.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Lack of female dwarves was actually started by Tolkien (them being very few and usually not showing to other races), it's fantasy classic, personally the female dwarves are one thing I dislike about D&D. BTW why the hell should females get higher CON? Would INT or DEX be more logical? I've played ToEE few times and don't know what sexist touches you mean...

[Domi]

'Cause women live longer than males, more resistant to deseases and made to bear children.

 

Anyways, at least you *can* play a female, so sexist or not I always wanted to play through it, but never got to it, but once and then those avatars... Gah.

[neriana]

Arcanum has an interesting character generation system, but it is deeply flawed. You can only be a female of a very few races; no female dwarves, for instance. Also, they got constitution right in that females are given a higher con than males, but then they "made up" for that by making constitution well-nigh useless compared to strength. All constitution does is help you resist poison, basically; it adds a small amount of HP, but nothing compared to what strength adds, and strength helps your carry weight and physical attacks too. Easily moddable, and I modded it, but still not cool.

 

There are a lot of sexist touches throughout the whole game. Temple of Elemental Evil's the same in that area, though of course they weren't able to mess with ability scores; I haven't touched Bloodlines because Troika made it, and every description I've seen has told me that they just kept descending down that dank pit. Thankfully they're out of business now.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Lack of female dwarves was actually started by Tolkien (them being very few and usually not showing to other races), it's fantasy classic, personally the female dwarves are one thing I dislike about D&D. BTW why the hell should females get higher CON? Would INT or DEX be more logical? I've played ToEE few times and don't know what sexist touches you mean...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Women aren't more intelligent than men. More dexterous on average, perhaps, only because women tend to do things like sew and type more. and we do usually have smaller hands. But women are longer-lived, more resistant to disease, recovery from injury faster, etc. Of course, I prefer my RPGs to leave sex out of stats completely. It's not like anyone irl, male or female, could carry around an elephant for weeks, like they could in NWN if given the opportunity.

 

I don't particularly care what Tolkein started. I want my female dwarves. I also don't want a game that treats incest as amusing, that lets males solve a problem in many ways but females only by sleeping with a creep, and generally -- Troika had a thorough boys' locker room mentality. Their subsequent games, which got worse in that area, are probably coloring my view of Arcanum slightly. Bioware's positively feminist by comparison.

[Domi]

I agree that I prefer everything to depend on stats only and have a quick reversal of male/female depending on Player1's gender. But on another hands not all fantasy worlds are not sexist. Though I would not want to have "sleep with the creep" as the only RP option.

[Lord Ernie]

I don't particularly care what Tolkein started. I want my female dwarves. I also don't want a game that treats incest as amusing, that lets males solve a problem in many ways but females only by sleeping with a creep, and generally -- Troika had a thorough boys' locker room mentality. Their subsequent games, which got worse in that area, are probably coloring my view of Arcanum slightly. Bioware's positively feminist by comparison.

Actually, it was kind of reversed. Male characters could do nothing but simply solve the quests, female ones could solve the quest, or sleep with everyone to get what they wanted. This has actually been introduced in Fallout 1 and 2, and Arcanum has a few quests that can be solved that way too. If anything, women had an advantage (that's not to say it'a not a sexist one, but still). Anyway, this is a lot less so in Arcanum. In fact, you could call the game women-friendly if you ignore the brothel (which is actually just quite funny).

 

Vampire: Bloodlines, however, does have a rather... sexist feel to it. Again, women have the advantage of seducing everyone, including other women. Not that insulting or anything, but still disturbing.

 

On that same note, if you want an all-gender friendly game, there's always Fable. You could marry both men and women in the game. Of course, the main character is always male, but you can't have everything .

[Evaine Dian]

I don't know what's supposed to be sexist about Bloodlines. I thought it was amusing how easily I could seduce everyone and the non-player-ladies there are far cooler than the guys.

Also, it's a game, nothing else...

[Borsook]

Not that I want to argue or anything... I'm only familiar with statistics from my country and was always under impression that women love longer due to the still stereotipical job devision and amount of alcohol average men drinks (BTW when will scientist learn? Thousands of poles have had 3-5 times leathal dosage of it and lived).

Again not to argue that women are more inteligent it does seem to me female characters should have a higher INT score as the game understands it.

[Sorrow]

I dislike Arcanum's character generation system, because it's plainly stupid.

Can anyone tell me how can I raise my beauty score to 20 by killing people with axe?

IIRC people are born beautiful.

[Borsook]

IIRC people are born beautiful.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Unless they start using make-up later on

[jester]

Con also influences your magick ability which makes women the slightly better spellcasters IIRC, but I agree on the inherently sexist approach. Men should also be able to solve quests by sleeping with people IMHO.

 

The general impression of choice and tradeoff was there for me so it worked quite well.

[Evaine Dian]

Men should also be able to solve quests by sleeping with people IMHO.

 

Yay!

[Borsook]

Men should also be able to solve quests by sleeping with people IMHO.

 

Yay!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

They can in ToEE...

[Sorrow]

That would be a reason to start playing men .

Is there any cRPG that allows to become a male whore?

[Bookwyrme]

Anyways, at least you *can* play a female, so sexist or not I always wanted to play through it, but never got to it, but once and then those avatars... Gah.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Do try to get over the avatar appearance. It really is a magnificent game with several quests played out differently depending on stat choices you've made & the good & evil paths diverge greatly after a certain point.

 

Not all of the followers are well-developed, but the ones that are are fantastic.

 

I just wish more people were interested in modding it.

[NiGHTMARE]

Is there any cRPG that allows to become a male whore?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Depends whether you're including MMORPGs, as just about anything is possible in some of them.

 

I just wish more people were interested in modding it.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

It's not just a case of there not being many people who're interested in modding it; there are quite a few people who would have been interested in modding it, but were prevented from doing so by the lack of decent editing utilities.