v1.21.0-rc.1 - Story Chapter 2 Redux

[CastIronFabric]

3 minutes ago, Facethief said:

Yeah, that’s what I thought you meant.

As for your second point, a game can be super fun with limited agency; I loved the Halo games in MCC, (except 4, but that’s Halo 4) but I’ll probably never play them again, at least not marathon style- there’s little difference between campaign playthroughs. On the other hand, games like Skyrim where you can never touch the main quests and have fun for ages are so easy to keep coming back to (at least if you didn’t spoil all of the quests for yourself; too much Youtube can RUIN games for me). Of course, games like The Elder Scrolls and Fallout aren’t made overnight: it takes ages to populate a world like that. That’s why I think Adventuremod has a lot of potential, and why I LOVE Rimworld; if you can generate the story, the world, the characters, there’s no limit to the replay value except for the templates you put in the game.

Man, why can’t I write like this when I need to…

 

I just got one thing to say on this topic.

NeverWinter Nights 2 is the only RPG computer game that I felt understood table top RPGs. DM with players, DM can change make things happen at will and thus the 'story' is more of a conversation between the player and the DM instead of a strictly followed script.

Personally I have always thought that the computer gaming industry obsession in thinking that the campaign books sold for Basic Dungeon and Dragons was somehow the cornerstone to the game experience was missing the point entirely. Historically RPG came from table top war gaming, not intrinsic narrative based story telling. The main sellers was not 'oh my god! the stories are amazing I cant wait for the next installment of this highly compelling story!'. Maybe that came later, but in the 80s? no, that was a side note. A 'helper' if you will

If these forums had a 'off topic' section I would create a topic on this. As it is I think I am responsible for us getting off topic, I hope they do not mind. I do not mind, I just do not know if the forum moderators do. If so my apologies.

 

 

[Thorfinn]

35 minutes ago, CastIronFabric said:

If these forums had a 'off topic' section I would create a topic on this.

They do. Clear at the bottom of the main forum page. I'd put it in Other Games.

[CastIronFabric]

7 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

They do. Clear at the bottom of the main forum page. I'd put it in Other Games.

oops. I missed it. I am going to create a topic there on RPG here in a bit. Thanks

[Thorfinn]

Probably because roosters will kill each other, so this gives you a chance to separate them.

[Jacek Babiak]

pigs/boars and sheep/rams have no gender (at least not displayed, and in creative mode there are only sheep and a sexless boar)

[Maelstrom]

11 minutes ago, Jacek Babiak said:

pigs/boars and sheep/rams have no gender (at least not displayed, and in creative mode there are only sheep and a sexless boar)

How do you mean?  Rams are male sheep and eye is a female sheep, meanwhile sows are female swine and boars are male.  Both of which are labelled in game and both have a different visual model.

[Krougal]

Ok, so much as I miss most of my mods, at least the most critical have RC1 updates, which is good, since 1.21 seems to have broken almost everything (I realize there was a lot of refactoring).

Being this is the first time I have played with vanilla terrain generation since my very first game, I have to say I feel it is very much improved. I didn't even have to travel 10km to find Bauxite for a change, and this is the same seed I've been using for a while.

[Thorfinn]

5 hours ago, Maelstrom said:

How do you mean?  Rams are male sheep and eye is a female sheep, meanwhile sows are female swine and boars are male.  Both of which are labelled in game and both have a different visual model.

I assume he's talking about the kids. Last time I did animal husbandry, I thought I had to wait until they were adult to see what sex they were.

@Jacek Babiak, did you delete your post? Or did I reply to something I predicted you would post?

[Jacek Babiak]

5 hours ago, Maelstrom said:

Co masz na myśli? Barany to samce owiec, a oko to samice owiec, maciory to samice świń, a knury to samce. Oba te gatunki są oznaczone w grze i oba mają inny model wizualny.

Ugh... what I wrote, can someone check what the situation is? He doesn't even have a partner. In creative mode, if you select animals from the tab, there's only a sexless boar and a sheep. There's a gay man, but it's unknown. There's no information whether it's a man or a woman.

 

I'll take a picture when I get back, unless there's an update.

[Jacek Babiak]

30 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

Zakładam, że mówi o dzieciach. Ostatnim razem, kiedy zajmowałem się hodowlą zwierząt, myślałem, że muszę poczekać, aż dorosną, żeby zobaczyć, jakiej są płci.

@Jacek BabiakCzy usunąłeś swój post? A może odpowiedziałem na coś, co przewidywałem, że opublikujesz?

I wrote this post with the help of a translator, but I think he translated it incorrectly. I wrote that there are hens and roosters, and that there are female and male ones, but there is a wild one (let's say it's the male equivalent), but I don't see a sow anywhere in the world, there are no pairs, they walk alone. It's probably the same with rams.

[Thorfinn]

The only ones I think might walk alone are the bears. I know there are ewes with the rams, and sows with the boars. You contain the males to draw in the females. Maybe you haven't been aggressively hunting the wolves and bears so they can't kill all the stock? If they get killed off, I do not believe they are replaced per se. I think they respawn as a group.

[Thorfinn]

Went around my homestead late last night and checked all the animals I could get close enough to check. Saw hens and roosters, sows and boars, rams and ewes, male and female wolves, foxes, rabbits, whitetail deer and valais goats. Saw the young of all those species except for pigs, The goats were the only ones that the young were identified by sex. All the rest were things like lamb, fawn, kit, pup, chick, etc.

Yes, of course you can set them to something different. Open up ./assets/survival/entities and  use your favorite text editor to open up the .JSONs of every critter you want adjusted. Look for "damageByType" and change the numbers to whatever you would like them to be. Playtest and adjust as desired. Once you are happy, if you run ModMaker, you may never have to do that again. Just enable your mod and you are in business.

[Jacek Babiak]

Ok, that's all clear now, there is "boar" and "sow", they are separate without additional tags, the same with sheep and rams, it confused me because other creatures have an additional description of their gender, e.g. hare (male), and the ones above simply have it without this additional information.

[Dark Thoughts]

On 7/25/2025 at 4:56 PM, CastIronFabric said:

like I said, AI can not even be coherent on what the attributes of an RPG is and is not.

Because LLMs are fed with all sorts of varying opinions & shifted perspectives from the past decades of where people argued over this very definition as well. They are not arbiters of truth and ultimately still just word prediction trying to sound plausible. You can ask an LLM the same question several times and it will end up giving you various different answers that may contradict each other. That's just the nature of LLMs and consequently you're very much using them wrong if you are looking for them to define such things - especially when the answers are more complex and somewhat nuanced.

RPGs, as in games, do in fact require proper character progression systems, because that's a) the historical birth of them in the tabletop / pen & paper and early text based RPGs, and b) what video games ended up adopting & evolving into various sub genres such as hack'n slash / slay, which offer the same feature but less of a story / lore & consequently less of a roleplaying focus. Hack'n slash is often labeled as action-RPG but people who play RPGs often dislike that term as RPGs are naturally very story & roleplay centric, while hack'n slash is really mostly about living out some power fantasies. Diablo birthed this sub genre and it has very strong D&D roots, but they simply focused on the action parts of dungeon running instead and cut most of the rest out to be some loose background lore that's told on the side (or not). An RPG without a character progression system would simply be an adventure or action adventure, like the Zelda series, which focus more on item progression, despite the story nature that could be used for roleplaying as well. Yes, the story & roleplay is usually more important to most people who come from pen & paper, but ultimately they all had their fat rule books that described such character progression systems. Personally I don't think it's that hard to define the differences if you look at the historical development, and accept that various sub genres simply do blend & mix things up - just like in music, where people also argue like crazy over what is and isn't X or Y.

As for VS' potential upcoming RPG / Adventure mode it will likely also face some sort of character progression system that's tied into the exploration mechanics. At least that's how I understood the direction that Hytale was going (but afaik that was also never really clear and probably one of the big development issues of its core identity crisis)

25 minutes ago, Jacek Babiak said:

Ok, that's all clear now, there is "boar" and "sow", they are separate without additional tags, the same with sheep and rams, it confused me because other creatures have an additional description of their gender, e.g. hare (male), and the ones above simply have it without this additional information.

Gendered hares would be bucks or does, but that's also typically also used for other species - especially deer.

[Jacek Babiak]

When they kill a "boar" it suddenly turns into a "Dead boar (male)"

it confused me that it wasn't there, only little pigs have a note.

[CastIronFabric]

1 hour ago, Dark Thoughts said:

Because LLMs are fed with all sorts of varying opinions & shifted perspectives from the past decades of where people argued over this very definition as well. They are not arbiters of truth and ultimately still just word prediction trying to sound plausible. You can ask an LLM the same question several times and it will end up giving you various different answers that may contradict each other. That's just the nature of LLMs and consequently you're very much using them wrong if you are looking for them to define such things - especially when the answers are more complex and somewhat nuanced.

RPGs, as in games, do in fact require proper character progression systems, because that's a) the historical birth of them in the tabletop / pen & paper and early text based RPGs, and b) what video games ended up adopting & evolving into various sub genres such as hack'n slash / slay, which offer the same feature but less of a story / lore & consequently less of a roleplaying focus. Hack'n slash is often labeled as action-RPG but people who play RPGs often dislike that term as RPGs are naturally very story & roleplay centric, while hack'n slash is really mostly about living out some power fantasies. Diablo birthed this sub genre and it has very strong D&D roots, but they simply focused on the action parts of dungeon running instead and cut most of the rest out to be some loose background lore that's told on the side (or not). An RPG without a character progression system would simply be an adventure or action adventure, like the Zelda series, which focus more on item progression, despite the story nature that could be used for roleplaying as well. Yes, the story & roleplay is usually more important to most people who come from pen & paper, but ultimately they all had their fat rule books that described such character progression systems. Personally I don't think it's that hard to define the differences if you look at the historical development, and accept that various sub genres simply do blend & mix things up - just like in music, where people also argue like crazy over what is and isn't X or Y.

As for VS' potential upcoming RPG / Adventure mode it will likely also face some sort of character progression system that's tied into the exploration mechanics. At least that's how I understood the direction that Hytale was going (but afaik that was also never really clear and probably one of the big development issues of its core identity crisis)

Gendered hares would be bucks or does, but that's also typically also used for other species - especially deer.

Your response is an example of what I am addressing.

Despite what @Echo Weaver says there is NOT an agreement that the definition of RPG is subjective.

You are basically asserting that AIs aggregation of the internet is incorrect in its definition of RPG and that your personal definition is correct.

I am suggesting that unless you can provide me a source other than yourself as to the definition of RPG than I take the stance that its subjective. As such when people say 'RPG Elements' what they personally think that means might not be what their audience thinks it means which is my core point. I am not engaging in what the definition is or is not in this thread. I created a thread for that in 'Other Games' forum

 

[Echo Weaver]

20 minutes ago, CastIronFabric said:

Your response is an example of what I am addressing.

Despite what @Echo Weaver says there is NOT an agreement that the definition of RPG is subjective.

You are basically asserting that AIs aggregation of the internet is incorrect in its definition of RPG and that your personal definition is correct.

Except that's not what they said. They said that the LLM's definition is questionable (true) and talked about various types of RPGs and RPG fans over the history of tabletop and gaming with some mild value judgments -- less so than value judgments you've provided yourself. Then they made predictions about what will be in Adventure Mode.

Everyone on this thread is simply not going to express their opinion in the very narrow phrasing that doesn't bother you.

Everyone here is expressing an opinion, even if it's one that you don't agree with. Heck, even if it's one that there's only one definition of RPG, a position I'm seeing very little of.

It's a much more interesting conversation if people talk about stuff they'd like to see in Adventure Mode. As I recall from previous exchanges, you don't even think Adventure Mode will be interesting for you. With that in mind, I'm really confused as to why you want to keep having this argument.

[CastIronFabric]

2 minutes ago, Echo Weaver said:

Except that's not what they said. They said that the LLM's definition is questionable (true) and talked about various types of RPGs and RPG fans over the history of tabletop and gaming with some mild value judgments -- less so than value judgments you've provided yourself. Then they made predictions about what will be in Adventure Mode.

Everyone on this thread is simply not going to express their opinion in the very narrow phrasing that doesn't bother you.

Everyone here is expressing an opinion, even if it's one that you don't agree with. Heck, even if it's one that there's only one definition of RPG, a position I'm seeing very little of.

It's a much more interesting conversation if people talk about stuff they'd like to see in Adventure Mode. As I recall from previous exchanges, you don't even think Adventure Mode will be interesting for you. With that in mind, I'm really confused as to why you want to keep having this argument.

however, then they proceeded to define what RPG is. They do not say 'to me' either.

 

Despite the fact that AI basically said basically 'character progression' as well. which can mean even GTA

Example: 'RPGs, as in games, do in fact require proper character progression systems, because that's a) the historical birth of them in the tabletop / pen & paper and early text based RPGs, and b) what video games ended up adopting & evolving into various sub genres such as hack'n slash / slay, which offer the same feature but less of a story / lore & consequently'

 

Edited July 28, 2025 by CastIronFabric

[Echo Weaver]

Just now, CastIronFabric said:

however, then they proceeded to define what RPG is. They do not say 'to me' either.

I see, "RPGs, as in games, do in fact require proper character progression systems," which I don't think is at all controversial.

Other than that, it's a discussion of subgenres branching from tabletop and video game.

I'll ask again -- if you don't think you are going to be interested in Adventure Mode anyway, why are you obsessed with arguing about the existential definition of RPG on this forum?

[CastIronFabric]

11 minutes ago, Echo Weaver said:

I see, "RPGs, as in games, do in fact require proper character progression systems," which I don't think is at all controversial.

Other than that, it's a discussion of subgenres branching from tabletop and video game.

I'll ask again -- if you don't think you are going to be interested in Adventure Mode anyway, why are you obsessed with arguing about the existential definition of RPG on this forum?

In this specific forum actually I am not. It was my mistake to bring it up here and I apologized for that. I actually should not engage more. 

I did however, create a topic in 'Other Games' and as far as why its important to me I will at this time consider that personal.

 

Edited July 28, 2025 by CastIronFabric

[Krougal]

So among the QOL features that I consider essential, inventory tweaks and autorun(because they, like most mods was broken by 1.21).

Why are these things just not built-in???

PS, also hanging oil lamps.

 

Edited July 28, 2025 by Krougal

[Dark Thoughts]

5 hours ago, CastIronFabric said:

Despite what @Echo Weaver says there is NOT an agreement that the definition of RPG is subjective.

You are basically asserting that AIs aggregation of the internet is incorrect in its definition of RPG and that your personal definition is correct.

It's about as subjective as everything. I'm not saying the aggregation of the internet is incorrect, I'm saying that an LLM is simply choosing the most probable tokens for its next word to pick from. If there's a wild variety of opinions on a certain topic, then there's also a wild variety of probably tokens a reply can be formed with - assuming there's been no further clean-up of the data. I'm simply asserting not to use LLMs the way that you've used them.

5 hours ago, CastIronFabric said:

I am suggesting that unless you can provide me a source other than yourself as to the definition of RPG than I take the stance that its subjective. As such when people say 'RPG Elements' what they personally think that means might not be what their audience thinks it means which is my core point.

What people personally think is usually based on their personal experience. If someone played only Diablo, then they will be thinking that Diablo is an RPG, even though it lacks the deeper story elements & roleplaying factors. However, I very much already explained to take the historical origins of the genre into account, and those very clearly have the often mentioned aspects in common, which is ultimately what formed the genre - and that's consequently what the definition boils down to. You can argue about that, but just like TicTok zoomers define the abbreviation of "PoV" to something that it isn't, does not mean the definition of "PoV" is somehow subjective. Everyone who knows what "PoV" means & stands for, and always has been standing for, knows that this is bullshit.

5 hours ago, CastIronFabric said:

Despite the fact that AI basically said basically 'character progression' as well. which can mean even GTA

All RPGs have character progression (excluding maybe LARPING, because real life and it is more like a theater than a game) != all games with character progression are RPGs.

Honestly, it seems you're just here to argue over semantics that other people don't seem to struggle much to understand, for a topic that apparently does not even interest you, which is a bit weird.

[majestik]

51 minutes ago, Dark Thoughts said:

All RPGs have character progression (excluding maybe LARPING, because real life and it is more like a theater than a game)

I just add my two cents here, as a larper, that you can absolutely have character progression in LARP games ! 

[Krougal]

FFS why does everyone continue to discuss topics other than the update in these threads? Fucking rpers!!!

 

[Thorfinn]

This disagreement has been going on since at least the late '70s. Those who wanted to use the rules as written were constantly belittled as "roll players" (due to all the dice involved in RAW) by the more evolved of the players who insisted on adopting goofy voices and annoying, time-wasting mannerisms, insisting their style was true roleplaying.