Topic: Iron Tower's Huge RPG Roundtable Discussions With Many RPG Game Designers

[MysterD]

Iron Table's Roundtable Discussions on RPG's
Iron Tower has a huge RPG roundtable interview/discussion with numerous well known names and game companies. And of course, some new companies, too. And some modders, too.

Some of the guests in these discussions are....
Chris Avellone, George Ziets, and Josh Sawyer of Obsidian;
David Gaider of Bioware;
Alan Miranda (formerly with Bioware) who is the founder of Ossian Studios

Part 1: Setting
Part 1 talks about the importance of The Setting in a RPG.

Part 2: Story
Part 2 talks about The Story being important in a RPG game.

Part 3: Characters
Part 3 of this discussion talks about the Characters and their importance in RPG's.

EDIT, 6-19-2008:
Leonard Boyarksy has been added to the commentaries for the three pieces. Leonard worked w/ both BIS (on Fallout series) and Troika (on Arcanum)

[gpw11]

ahaha.

"When thinking about the setting, I like to think about what the world would have looked like during the dark ages.  I then throw in some dragons and maybe a magic statue here and there.  What we're left with is a vivid and imaginative world.  I think the main problem with RPGs is that players don't get attached to the actual world enough to feel the need to save it.  In order to combat that, PC rpg developers got together years ago and signed a treaty ensuring that we'd all just recreate the world from Ultima 1 over and over again, just moving around the the cities, mountains, and lakes.  So far, it's worked out well."

[idolminds]

haha, awesome quote.

[MysterD]

I was looking for a thread on RPG games, in general.
This fits perfectly, if you ask me.

Chris Avellone of Obsidian has a piece on talking about "Morality" in RPG games
Part 1
Part 2