I don't normally leave comments, but I wanted to take a moment to express my gratitude for the incredible content you share on your channel. As an aspiring self-taught game developer, I'm wrapping up my first complete small project and gearing up for the next one. Your videos have been an invaluable guide, providing insights into the intricacies of project work and decision-making in development that I honestly wouldn't have learned being self-taught. Your dedication to sharing this knowledge is truly inspiring and has been pivotal in my journey. By generously sharing your experiences, you've really helped me with programming, level design, story writing, etc., moving me toward my end goal more effectively and a lot faster than if this information was withheld from me throughout the multiple projects im working on. Thank you again for being this beacon of wisdom and experience in this community. Looking forward to continuing to learn and grow with your guidance! Also, here's to hopefully creating an RPG game one day you'll enjoy playing! 😁 Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family!
Funnily enough, AD&D 1e had 4d6 drop the lowest as the default method. It was the first method given in the DMG, while the Players Handbook simply says that stats will be from 3-18 and that the DM will tell you have to generate them. Gygax specifically advised against 3d6 in order in the DMG with the exception of some NPCs.
Tim, thank you for letting me have a bit of normalcy (in the form of your daily video) despite the holiday. I'm not exaggerating when I say little things like this are really great for my mental health.
Part of what I love about TTRPGs (and video game modding too I suppose) is the ability to make the experience your own, to cut what you don't like and add what fascinates you. Plus there is a great joy in building out homebrew content with your friends, sitting around brainstorming together. Good times.
The great thing about modding is you can tweak a game to make it perfect for yourself. The developer teams made 99% then the last percent you tweak to get your own perfect gameplay experience. Love it!
I like that detailed economy tax sink mod. In game, you could probably create an incentive for the players (to avoid the meta-game tedium) by removing the taxes if the party becomes heroes of the city after fulfilling a bunch of quests for the officials & townspeople.
Hi Tim, it's me, some of everyone. I too have kept all my D&D notes since high school. I got so far into "modding" that I basically have a homebrew campaign setting book in an excel file. I thought I was just being a crazy packrat, but hey, if that's good enough for Mr Cain that's good enough for me.
Your channel is a true treasure trove for everyone... Personally, I hardly play any game without mods, or at least small adjustments made with Cheat Engine. Dein Kanal ist eine wahre Schatzkiste für jedermann ... ich persönlich spiele kaum ein Spiel ohne Mods, oder zumindest kleine Anpassungen werden mit Cheatengine gemacht 😏👍
That huge table in the PHB for attacks adjustments toward armor class makes a fair amount of sense, given that certain weapons on the medieval battlefield evolved specifically to combat certain armor types. I've always felt that maces and axes should get a bonus against chainmail, warhammers should get a bonus against plate, and longswords/arming swords should have a penalty against plate. I suppose you could easily program something like this into a CRPG, but at the table, it's far too much of a hassle.
Tim, I honestly admire you a lot and would like to say thank you very much for doing such a great video! I’m a software engineer who refuses to get into the Game Development industry because of the crunch culture, especially here in Canada, that would ruin my life and my family, but I love doing my own mods for GTA Games and I learn a lot from your videos. As a senior software engineer I can tell you that it would be an honor to have worked with you on a game. I get why some people might have seen you as a “villain” throughout your career working with them, but having the grasp I’ve got from your videos and understanding your point of view, I can easily see that it’s because you ever been in another level of expertise, knowledge and experience that most engineers would never understand. Once again, thanks for creating this amazing channel and sharing with us the experiences you’ve had in your life. Keep it up man, I became a huge fan of yours.
Totally true about modding experiences giving jobs. I worked as World Director at a AAA studio and several of the level design hires I did were people whose resume's were filled with level projects from games like Skyrim & Fallout.
Cool to hear about tabletop mods that have actually stood the test of a group over time. The gods system is really cool... although in a universe with that many downsides I might try to become unaffiliated to avoid the terrible potential consequences. There were a lot of additions to Advanced that were actually not worth the pain, but at least you got to see what sorts of ideas had come up since the game had started. We were confused about editions back when there were perhaps fewer obvious differences, wound up playing some strange hybrid of several editions but it went fine.
My general impression of games is that, after a certain amount of development, they are way more complex than they need to be for what they do. ADnD definitely had this issue. The complexity issue is usually (not always) a side-effect of development of the game over time, where new niche rules are often not as well integrated into the overall system than if it had been written at once. Not surprisingly, a lot of changes complexity, such as AC vs armor types (and we tried making this work and had the same problems) just go by the way-side. There has been something of a push for more RAW interpretation in games than there used to be, mostly brought on by organized play (Adventurer's League, Pathfinder Society, etc.) They just can't have mods and even rail against a certain amount of GM judgement calls, due to the need for uniformity in the environment. I get it, but I still find this rather unfortunate, particularly the way the behaviors spill over into regular play. Anyway, thanks for the video. It's a great topic.
RUclips is bugging out on mobile, my comments on shorts are being sent to the previous full video I selected instead. Kind of explains some of the weird comments I see.
7:40 it does sounds fun. I'd make it 100% optional, if you wanna gamble, go for it. I would definitely let players roll on this table as much as they wanted to. Like, you want to roll 5 times, roll away, but you'll keep every outcome you get. One thing I'm not sure about is whether I'd put a price on roll or not. Maybe you pay with an attribute score. Maybe you are allowed to roll once per level up. Maybe after a certain story event.
Hello, Tim! Speaking of mods, what do you think of fan remakes of old classics? For instance, about a year ago, I played a mod for Neverwinter Nights 2 that was a complete remake of Baldur's Gate. Of course, the mechanics were different, since NWN2 is based on the DnD 3.5 rules. However, all the story, NPCs, dialogues, and overall level layout were maintained. The same team is currently working on a remake of Baldur's Gate 2 as well, also as a mod for NWN2. Would you like to see something similar made for Fallout or Arcanum? In my perspective, it's a great thing. It never substitutes the classic game, but adds to it as an interesting new way to play. Cheers!
@@GeomancerHT Keep in mind that they didn't charge for it. It's a free mod. Edit: Also, they didn't try to disguise it in any way. The description of the mod is "[this] is a fan-made tribute to and complete remake of Baldur's Gate (1998), originally developed by BioWare and published by Interplay Entertainments, for Neverwinter Nights 2." Not trying to defend them, just addressing your response.
There are some games i wouldnt even touch if it werent for mods, so im very grateful its such a common thing now. Games like skyrim ive put over a thousand hours into because ive modded them almost to the point of being different games entirely. I dont think any of your games had modding tools, but what do you think about that from a game developer's perspective? From Bethesda's Creation Kit and other official tools to community services like Steam Workshop and Nexus, do you think its something that's good to plan for in development, or should it be left entirely up to the community? Some games have definitely benefitted from making modding more accessible, but id like to hear your thoughts.
No creatures in the Monster Manuel had no more than AC 9. A unarmored player with no defensive adjustment had AC 10. Many creatures for whatever reason had a base of AC 7. The problem this caused was not being able to use the rules for player calculations for AC to determine monster AC. The "to hit modifier" for weapons striking a specific armor type would be very challenging, because there is no way to cross reference it. This issue caused many referees, and players to ignore these rules. There was no base line to derive a logical AC for monsters. It required a referee to grant all monsters a +1 to +3 bonus to AC without any consideration as to why. Then, if a referee had to figure out adjustments because of player positions when they landed an attack. The referee had no way of knowing how much to adjustment monster AC. This rule concept never made a return in any future edition. I believe the problem stems from when the Monster Manuel. The Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide were written later. The concept for weapon "to hit modifier" was not originally planned to be used, and therefore the necessary information was excluded in the Monster Manuel.
Tim, have any of your places of work had to make changes to accommodate disabled employees and what was that like? On a similar note, any obstacles in development related to one's mental illness (to any extent that you'd be able to share, of course)?
Is the pathological liar implemented in any actual game's mechanics? I figure it would be a really fun thing. All the dialog options would be outrageous lies and you'd have to pick the ones that better move you towards your goal.
Hey Tim, How often do bugs come up in modern software like UE4/UE5, Unity, or Visual Studio? I started using UE4 when they had the subscription plan many years ago. Replication was bugged in the version I started with. They fixed it in the next update only to break all my animations. Also is there a version of these engines that worked smoothly for the systems you implemented that you would suggest, or just the newest one? Molly Rocket says never udate your toolset. Also for me they've broke Visual Studio so many times. Whats your favorite version? Why does Microsoft name everything the same name? I'll look up Visual Studio issues and it will pull up Visual Studio Code documentation. Thanks for being here on Thankgiving.
On the topic of mods, I recently found in the Arcanum files a short guide (written by you!) on how to add custom portraits to the game. It made me wonder, does the option of player modifications, be it small things like portraits or even extensive modding tools, level editors, etc. influence the design or way you code your games in a noticeable way?
It is hard to find mods that don't ruin games for me. I usually just look for bug fixes and sometimes graphics improvement, but I know adding something (like quests, places, factions, items etc) especially things that devs did not plan, no matter how good it is, knowing it is not in the game feels like cheating and I lose interest.
No, it's dumb, because the game logic doesn't work. Sure, you can say it should be there because of 'realism'. Then, I ask you why you haven't done the same thing with the other attributes? Powers and Perils did this, so at least they played out the concept without bias. What happened? Characters just got pigeon-holed by sex. A smarter fix is to throw the entire concept out, because it's too poorly executed to be used (read: dumb).
I don't normally leave comments, but I wanted to take a moment to express my gratitude for the incredible content you share on your channel. As an aspiring self-taught game developer, I'm wrapping up my first complete small project and gearing up for the next one. Your videos have been an invaluable guide, providing insights into the intricacies of project work and decision-making in development that I honestly wouldn't have learned being self-taught. Your dedication to sharing this knowledge is truly inspiring and has been pivotal in my journey. By generously sharing your experiences, you've really helped me with programming, level design, story writing, etc., moving me toward my end goal more effectively and a lot faster than if this information was withheld from me throughout the multiple projects im working on. Thank you again for being this beacon of wisdom and experience in this community. Looking forward to continuing to learn and grow with your guidance! Also, here's to hopefully creating an RPG game one day you'll enjoy playing! 😁 Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family!
Funnily enough, AD&D 1e had 4d6 drop the lowest as the default method. It was the first method given in the DMG, while the Players Handbook simply says that stats will be from 3-18 and that the DM will tell you have to generate them. Gygax specifically advised against 3d6 in order in the DMG with the exception of some NPCs.
Tim, thank you for letting me have a bit of normalcy (in the form of your daily video) despite the holiday. I'm not exaggerating when I say little things like this are really great for my mental health.
Part of what I love about TTRPGs (and video game modding too I suppose) is the ability to make the experience your own, to cut what you don't like and add what fascinates you. Plus there is a great joy in building out homebrew content with your friends, sitting around brainstorming together. Good times.
ok am i crazy or did anybody else read the title as "my adhd meds" i thought tim was about to tell us all about adderall 💀💀
Ditto, made me want to click the video just to comment this lol. Tim’s thoughts on Vyvanse when?!
Exactly the same! Maybe because I’m on them myself lol
I read ADHD mods and figured it was going to be about how to keep players engaged. 🤷♀
Same LMAO
Might be revealing something about yourself! I didn't think of that
The great thing about modding is you can tweak a game to make it perfect for yourself. The developer teams made 99% then the last percent you tweak to get your own perfect gameplay experience. Love it!
Blind hemophiliac is an awesome challenge mode setting 💪
Exactly, I immediately began speculating on how that character would get on!
I like that detailed economy tax sink mod.
In game, you could probably create an incentive for the players (to avoid the meta-game tedium) by removing the taxes if the party becomes heroes of the city after fulfilling a bunch of quests for the officials & townspeople.
Hi Tim, it's me, some of everyone. I too have kept all my D&D notes since high school. I got so far into "modding" that I basically have a homebrew campaign setting book in an excel file. I thought I was just being a crazy packrat, but hey, if that's good enough for Mr Cain that's good enough for me.
Your channel is a true treasure trove for everyone... Personally, I hardly play any game without mods, or at least small adjustments made with Cheat Engine.
Dein Kanal ist eine wahre Schatzkiste für jedermann ... ich persönlich spiele kaum ein Spiel ohne Mods, oder zumindest kleine Anpassungen werden mit Cheatengine gemacht 😏👍
That huge table in the PHB for attacks adjustments toward armor class makes a fair amount of sense, given that certain weapons on the medieval battlefield evolved specifically to combat certain armor types. I've always felt that maces and axes should get a bonus against chainmail, warhammers should get a bonus against plate, and longswords/arming swords should have a penalty against plate. I suppose you could easily program something like this into a CRPG, but at the table, it's far too much of a hassle.
Tim, I honestly admire you a lot and would like to say thank you very much for doing such a great video!
I’m a software engineer who refuses to get into the Game Development industry because of the crunch culture, especially here in Canada, that would ruin my life and my family, but I love doing my own mods for GTA Games and I learn a lot from your videos.
As a senior software engineer I can tell you that it would be an honor to have worked with you on a game. I get why some people might have seen you as a “villain” throughout your career working with them, but having the grasp I’ve got from your videos and understanding your point of view, I can easily see that it’s because you ever been in another level of expertise, knowledge and experience that most engineers would never understand.
Once again, thanks for creating this amazing channel and sharing with us the experiences you’ve had in your life.
Keep it up man, I became a huge fan of yours.
Nice to see your stories about modding , thank you!
Totally true about modding experiences giving jobs. I worked as World Director at a AAA studio and several of the level design hires I did were people whose resume's were filled with level projects from games like Skyrim & Fallout.
I love tabletop modding! Fun ideas!
Happy Thanksgiving Tim!!
Cool to hear about tabletop mods that have actually stood the test of a group over time. The gods system is really cool... although in a universe with that many downsides I might try to become unaffiliated to avoid the terrible potential consequences.
There were a lot of additions to Advanced that were actually not worth the pain, but at least you got to see what sorts of ideas had come up since the game had started. We were confused about editions back when there were perhaps fewer obvious differences, wound up playing some strange hybrid of several editions but it went fine.
Hah, funnily enough, I went the exact opposite way from you - I started making mods for video games, and now my career is making D&D homebrew :p
Happy Thanksgiving!
I love the D&D stories Tim the game has chamged vastly but its always been fun
I'm fairly confident that if you were the project lead of a TTRPG it would be on par with D&D, if not better.
Me, with undiagnosed adult ADHD: reads "My ADHD mods" and goes, "oh cool, Uncle Tim's doing another vulnerable one" 😂😂
Although I haven't watched the video yet, this one surely will be interesting one.
My general impression of games is that, after a certain amount of development, they are way more complex than they need to be for what they do. ADnD definitely had this issue. The complexity issue is usually (not always) a side-effect of development of the game over time, where new niche rules are often not as well integrated into the overall system than if it had been written at once. Not surprisingly, a lot of changes complexity, such as AC vs armor types (and we tried making this work and had the same problems) just go by the way-side.
There has been something of a push for more RAW interpretation in games than there used to be, mostly brought on by organized play (Adventurer's League, Pathfinder Society, etc.) They just can't have mods and even rail against a certain amount of GM judgement calls, due to the need for uniformity in the environment. I get it, but I still find this rather unfortunate, particularly the way the behaviors spill over into regular play.
Anyway, thanks for the video. It's a great topic.
RUclips is bugging out on mobile, my comments on shorts are being sent to the previous full video I selected instead. Kind of explains some of the weird comments I see.
My tweak to the to hit ac table is to split the modifiers by how bulky the armor is and average them. So that it can be applied easier
7:40 it does sounds fun. I'd make it 100% optional, if you wanna gamble, go for it. I would definitely let players roll on this table as much as they wanted to. Like, you want to roll 5 times, roll away, but you'll keep every outcome you get. One thing I'm not sure about is whether I'd put a price on roll or not. Maybe you pay with an attribute score. Maybe you are allowed to roll once per level up. Maybe after a certain story event.
Hello, Tim!
Speaking of mods, what do you think of fan remakes of old classics? For instance, about a year ago, I played a mod for Neverwinter Nights 2 that was a complete remake of Baldur's Gate. Of course, the mechanics were different, since NWN2 is based on the DnD 3.5 rules. However, all the story, NPCs, dialogues, and overall level layout were maintained. The same team is currently working on a remake of Baldur's Gate 2 as well, also as a mod for NWN2.
Would you like to see something similar made for Fallout or Arcanum?
In my perspective, it's a great thing. It never substitutes the classic game, but adds to it as an interesting new way to play.
Cheers!
That is 100% plagiarism, no matter how much they want to disguise it, that''s not new art, that is the same art in a different engine.
@@GeomancerHT Keep in mind that they didn't charge for it. It's a free mod.
Edit: Also, they didn't try to disguise it in any way. The description of the mod is "[this] is a fan-made tribute to and complete remake of Baldur's Gate (1998), originally developed by BioWare and published by Interplay Entertainments, for Neverwinter Nights 2."
Not trying to defend them, just addressing your response.
I was diagnosed with ad&d
There are some games i wouldnt even touch if it werent for mods, so im very grateful its such a common thing now.
Games like skyrim ive put over a thousand hours into because ive modded them almost to the point of being different games entirely.
I dont think any of your games had modding tools, but what do you think about that from a game developer's perspective? From Bethesda's Creation Kit and other official tools to community services like Steam Workshop and Nexus, do you think its something that's good to plan for in development, or should it be left entirely up to the community?
Some games have definitely benefitted from making modding more accessible, but id like to hear your thoughts.
No creatures in the Monster Manuel had no more than AC 9. A unarmored player with no defensive adjustment had AC 10. Many creatures for whatever reason had a base of AC 7. The problem this caused was not being able to use the rules for player calculations for AC to determine monster AC. The "to hit modifier" for weapons striking a specific armor type would be very challenging, because there is no way to cross reference it.
This issue caused many referees, and players to ignore these rules. There was no base line to derive a logical AC for monsters. It required a referee to grant all monsters a +1 to +3 bonus to AC without any consideration as to why. Then, if a referee had to figure out adjustments because of player positions when they landed an attack. The referee had no way of knowing how much to adjustment monster AC.
This rule concept never made a return in any future edition. I believe the problem stems from when the Monster Manuel. The Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide were written later. The concept for weapon "to hit modifier" was not originally planned to be used, and therefore the necessary information was excluded in the Monster Manuel.
Have tabletop wargames ever influenced your designs, or do you have any stories on them? You kind of strike me as a Battletech player for some reason.
Tim, have any of your places of work had to make changes to accommodate disabled employees and what was that like?
On a similar note, any obstacles in development related to one's mental illness (to any extent that you'd be able to share, of course)?
Hi Tim
As a D&D player, do you watch Critical Role? Did you and your friends ever do voices or dress up?
Is the pathological liar implemented in any actual game's mechanics? I figure it would be a really fun thing. All the dialog options would be outrageous lies and you'd have to pick the ones that better move you towards your goal.
Hey Tim, How often do bugs come up in modern software like UE4/UE5, Unity, or Visual Studio? I started using UE4 when they had the subscription plan many years ago. Replication was bugged in the version I started with. They fixed it in the next update only to break all my animations. Also is there a version of these engines that worked smoothly for the systems you implemented that you would suggest, or just the newest one? Molly Rocket says never udate your toolset. Also for me they've broke Visual Studio so many times. Whats your favorite version? Why does Microsoft name everything the same name? I'll look up Visual Studio issues and it will pull up Visual Studio Code documentation. Thanks for being here on Thankgiving.
On the topic of mods, I recently found in the Arcanum files a short guide (written by you!) on how to add custom portraits to the game. It made me wonder, does the option of player modifications, be it small things like portraits or even extensive modding tools, level editors, etc. influence the design or way you code your games in a noticeable way?
I think there are files written by tim for Arcanum about dialogs, making your own module etc. Read em when i modded Arcanum.
What was the Skyrim mod that the new employee made?
It is hard to find mods that don't ruin games for me. I usually just look for bug fixes and sometimes graphics improvement, but I know adding something (like quests, places, factions, items etc) especially things that devs did not plan, no matter how good it is, knowing it is not in the game feels like cheating and I lose interest.
Spooky Tim out of season.
the women str cap isnt dumb, it just hurts feewings. 😅
No, it's dumb, because the game logic doesn't work. Sure, you can say it should be there because of 'realism'. Then, I ask you why you haven't done the same thing with the other attributes? Powers and Perils did this, so at least they played out the concept without bias. What happened? Characters just got pigeon-holed by sex. A smarter fix is to throw the entire concept out, because it's too poorly executed to be used (read: dumb).