Chris Avellone Neverwinter Nights 2 Interview at RPGDot

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RPGDot has interviewed one of the founding fathers of Obsidian, Chris Avellone formerly from Black Isle Studios at Interplay, who has worked on Fallout 2, Planescape: Torment and Knights of the Old Republic 2 before Neverwinter Nights 2 currently in the making. The interview is nicely laid out, easy to read (prace goes to Dot for professionalism) and concentrates on what's the most important in an RPG, which is the story and dialogue. Here's a snip:

Moxie: You've had a thorough amount of experience in writing for RPG's. What have you learned along the way that you want to incorporate into Neverwinter Nights 2 (NWN 2)?

Chris: There are a few things we do with dialogue at Obsidian, most of which we developed and honed during our days at Black Isle Studios. The most important point is that dialogue is not only a means of communicating quests and ambiance, info about the world, creating drama, and a compass point for what to do next, but more importantly, it should be a game in itself. Players should get some sort of feedback and bonuses/penalties from their reactions, but not necessarily penalized for the way they want to role-play. Evil characters shouldn't be screwed if they want to act a certain way - they should get an equal amount of fun and rewards (though usually different) as a good character does.

As far as these reward systems go, there are a number of things we introduce in dialogue. One is alignment-based responses, trying to give at least three responses per node that have meaning rather than a single railroad response - and even if they link back to the same thread, try to make each divergence have different repercussions for alignment, reputation, and potentially companion influence. Skill and stat-based responses really ego-stroke a player who specialized in certain skills, even if it's just Lore and Spellcraft, and you can really have a lot of fun with Taunt and Perform-based responses in the right circumstances.

In addition, modern day slang is something out of place in most RPGs, but it's always fun to play with Realms lore and the pantheon to come up with creative curses and expressions - it also serves to add a lot of flavor to the world without having to spell out everything.

Also, this is something of a fine line to do in RPGs, but sometimes there's a tendency to force the player to adopt a certain tone, which has always bothered me - I think it takes player out of the experience. As a result, sometimes the player responses in our games tend to the more understated than over the top, and let the player imagine how they'd like the delivery to go.

And lastly, always make sure dialogue doesn't get in the way for people who don't like it. If they want to short-circuit a conversation and just get a journal entry so they can go fireball the next person, they should be allowed to do so - we don't want to enforce a certain playstyle or force someone to listen to an exposition when all they want to do is throw magic missiles in some troll's face. They may not get as an emotionally satisfying experience as a more hardcore role-player, but that's not what they're there for, and a designer or writer shouldn't hamstring them.

Read the whole thing at RPGDot and do me a favour and contribute to the KotOR 2 to NWN 2 discussion I'm trying to start here.