Why is there no cloth map add-on, has it been addressed somewhere? They've churned out just about every other random piece of merchandise imaginable (mousepads?! I didn't know people still used those), but the one thing I'm interested in and have asked for since day one is still not available.

Bit more time consuming and expensive to make especially for a small run perhaps?. Prefer the book/almanac or t shirt myself to be honest...

Q&A with Adam Brennecke:

Question: This might be a silly question, but are the playing cards going to be almost paper thin like the red dead redemption playing cards, really disappointing, or something like bicycle playing card level of quality?
Adam: The playing cards should be good quality.

Question: I've gotten some very good answers from my fellow backers here, but since you are here, Could you briefly explain the differences between the various books you offering. Specifically the Collectors Book / Campaign Almanac / Strategy Guide?
Adam: The collector's book will not be offered as an add-on. Sorry. For a simple answer: Strategy Guide = Tips and Tricks on how to play the game. Collector's Book = Art, Concepts, Making Of/Behind the Scenes, Monster Info, additional lore, and info on companions/characters Almanac = All about the World, History and Lore of Project Eternity

Question: what are the plans for the game keys will we be locked in to a version of the game or can they wait till they redeem it to choose Linux/Win? Another one was about combining orders with friends so they could all get collectors editions but not have to pay $30 each for shipping.
Adam: We are not sure if the physical game disc will contain all platforms yet - we are still looking into it. No combining orders with friends, sorry. We don't have any way of tracking that.

Question: Are subraces a possibility? I know that for me, they were one of the highlights of IWD character creation.
Adam: Yep, subraces are in.

Question: Question regarding the Audio Novella, For those of us who are in tier(s) which have the PDF, is there a smaller add-on that we can do that gets both the audio and the PDF. After having the pdf, $20 for the same content in audio format seems a little steep. Just for clarification, I meant the opposite, the audio being an add-on (hopefully at a reduced cost) to the tier(s) with the Novella PDF. The thinking being, the tier(s) already has the content, and paying $20 for the same content in a different format seems a bit steep. So to sum up having something similar to the "physical tiers". The "Novella" tiers would have the option of adding the Audio Novella for a nominal charge (say $10?) Well thats what I would suggest anyways
Adam: Sorry, we don't plan on having the Novella PDF be an add-on with the audio. I'll discuss this with Feargus, but I can't make any promises right now.

Question: Is there any way to watch a recorded version of your IWD2 game? Same question for the D&D session tomorrow and a potential recording.
Adam: I have the recordings from Friday and Saturday. I'll look at posting them for download once things calm down a bit :)

Question: If Obsidian could find a way to confirm that the physical disk WILL have all three platform versions on the disk, then I will upgrade to the physical tier pledge.
Adam: Sorry, I can't confirm it. We will try, since it's a much less of a headache for you and us, but I can't guarantee it at this point since it's so far down the road.

Question: If anyone is interested, I've created a fairly comprehensive information guide for Project Eternity here: Clicky… Cheers!
Adam: Hah. I think that's a great idea.

Question: Is it possible for the almanac and/or the strategy guide to get physical printed versions?
Adam: Right now there are no plans for physical versions. That might change depend on demand.

Question: Not all platforms on the physical disc?! *brainmelts*
Adam: I think you are confusing my statement. You will choose your version, and we will ship that version to you, or you don't get to choose and you get all three versions. I'm not sure if we can have all three versions in the same box/disc set yet. Does that make sense?

Question: Can we confirm (at least) that there will be a physical edition for each platform? In contrast with Claudia, physical copies of Windows & Mac versions are meaningless to me. Worse, in fact, since I'm pledged at a healthy level in support of Linux gaming. If I have to buy a Win/Mac only box, I'd probably need to reduce my pledge to a digital-only level. And possibly cry a little. :-P
Adam: Physical edition for each platform, yep.

Question: Please please please tell me there's been discussion about a physical almanac?
Adam: We will look into doing a physical almanac if there is a demand for it. Books are very expensive to make and ship, so we wanted to cut down on overhead of doing more books.

Question: Is there an office betting pool on how much P:E will raise?
Adam: All of our expectations of the project were blown away, so we would be all wrong by a large margin :)

Question: After the KS, how often do you guys plan to release development updates and videos? Weekly? Biweekly? Monthly?
Adam: As much as we can. I would like to do something weekly, but I don't want it to be a distraction to the team during production. We gotta make a game after all :) We also have to be careful with spoilers moving forward.

Question: Ray finally backed the game and is going to create a custom NPC. :)
Muzicka's tweet

Pretty cool! :D
Adam: Wow.

Question: any idea who is DMing tomorrow? :)
Adam: Josh is DM

Question: is the cooking with tim PDF in the $80 tier, I can't seem to see it on the tumblr rewards list
Adam: All backers get the Cooking with Tim PDF.

Question: What will the tone of the game be? Playing ToEE right now I find it somewhat alittle to funny and less serius. And it was the same with Fallout 2.
Adam: More serious, but still humorous when appropriate. Like most Obsidian games (sans Southpark :)

Question: will there be guilds or factions in the game? And if so, will joining one guild/faction have consequences (additional quests, other faction treats you as a persona non grata etc.). Would definitely increase the replay value.
Adam: Yes there will be factions (one was added in a stretch goal). Can you join them? Mayhaps.


Feargus is on now, so I'll update again later.

Huh. Didn't like how my laser mouse worked on my mousepads so I ended up ditching them. Never had an issue with scratching the furniture and I've been using the same desk for years. Maybe I just have a really good desk, or a crappy mouse/mousepad. *shrug*

I don't know, do small cloth maps really cost more than t-shirts or high quality card decks to produce?

Not a big fan of t-shirts myself, though I did pick up the LSL kickstarter t-shirt. Is the book the novella? I'd like a physical copy of that too.

Some Q&A with Feargus tonight. Darren's currently back on. I'll have his later:

Question: the documentary will have subtitles?
Feargus: Hadn't thought about that. Putting on the list. It's something we should try to do.

Question: so are you sitting in your boardroom chuckling over your hoard yet?
Feargus: :) Actually, the work begins Wednesday a 9AM. Adam said we should take Wednesday off - I gave him a look.

Question: You should just have an in-game reference to the total # of comments when the kickstarter ends. Something like someone had 50,438 gold or whatever. Then, its an inside joke.
Feargus: That's a great idea!

Question: May I know the difference between the COLLECTOR'S BOOK and the STRATEGY GUIDE?
Feargus: The Collector's Book is an overview of the world, concept art, the manual and info on the development of the game. The Strategy Guide goes through how to play the game - strategies and solutions to all the quests.

Question: Strategy Guide = Tips and Tricks on how to play the game.
Collector's Book = Art, Concepts, Making Of/Behind the Scenes, Monster Info, additional lore, and info on companions/characters
Almanac = All about the World, History and Lore of Project Eternity
Feargus: Thanks - great way to say it succinctly.

Question: Adam was just leaving so I couldn't get an answer, or maybe you guys haven't worked it out yet, but, the question that is burning in my mind right now is on character creation. I for one really loved how I could roll dice for my character stats in Baldur's Gate and Temple of Elemental Evil. I was just wondering if that may be something you guys are considering adding as an option to do in this game too?
Feargus: Josh is a fan of point buy systems, so I would expect that is the direction. I'll put it on the list of things for him to cover in an update in the weeks to come.

Question:
Feargus: The reason for the $500K step in stretch goals is because of the big city. As for a release date, we need to look at everything and figure it out - if we get to $3.5M. It is possible, however we do have a few other artists and designers who have made these games, which we could bring onto the project. But, I don't want the team to get too large.

Question:
Feargus: The reason for the $500K step in stretch goals is because of the big city. As for a release date, we need to look at everything and figure it out - if we get to $3.5M. It is possible, however we do have a few other artists and designers who have made these games, which we could bring onto the project. But, I don't want the team to get too large.

Question: How do you feel about how we're over $100k per day?
Feargus: It is pretty amazing. It's going to be really interesting to see what will happen in the next couple of days. PA did amazingly well the last 48 hours - 20% of their overall funding. So, we shall see.

Question: How important will currency be in the game, and what steps are you taking to ensure that there are enough money sinks to keep it important from start to finish?

Josh: I think currency is really interesting and it says a lot about the state of the world and the cultures in it. My interest is not necessarily shared by everyone, so I don't know how important individual currencies will be. What we use as money sinks will depend in part on how our stretch goals turn out. We already have a player house and that can be a good money sink. If the stronghold is funded at $3 million, that can be a huge money sink. Additionally, some crafting options and the Adventurer's Hall can serve as money sinks. "

@Feargus-

This section made me think about how cool the idea of different currencies was in New Vegas, but unfortunately it was never really fully fleshed out and you basically always wanted caps. Are you guys going to try to make different currencies matter in some way in the game?
Feargus: Josh on currencies: "I think currency is really interesting and it says a lot about the state of the world and the cultures in it. My interest is not necessarily shared by everyone, so I don't know how important individual currencies will be. "

Question: I may be missing something, but why doesn't Josh Sawyer respond to questions from fans like the rest of you are happy to do?
Feargus: Josh goes around the forums a lot and posts in a variety of places. We decided a few weeks ago that we would each try to cover different things. Also, Josh has been spending a ton of time designing the world so that he has great things to update you all on with lore. And, he has the formspring account.... :)

Question: And make sure you set your teams bonus to n+1 of whatever Metacritic score you end up getting for PE. You know, for old time's sake. But really, Just make the best game you can with the money you have, and release it when it's ready.
Feargus: Thanks! And that is the goal - make an awesome game that wouldn't have been made otherwise.

Question: Do you plan to ensure the game includes high resolution settings for those who have high end PC's? CD Projeckt did the same thing for 'The Witcher 2' by including an ubersampling mode
Feargus: We are rendering at 2560x1440 and there will be some options for higher end machines that are pure eye candy. However, like the IE games, we want as many people to play the game and play it in a form that is how it is meant to be played. So, our focus is to make it look incredible on low end machines. Now, like I said there will be some candy for the higher end machines - and only them will probably be able to run it at 2560x1440.

Question: "We are rendering at 2560x1440" I hope the 16:10 master race will be taken into consideration, here.
Feargus: I think that will work fine - we just draw another 160 pixels.

Question: I would caution you, however, from taking the late-night crowd on your comments section as a true represenation of the backers at large. 18 months out and already talking about delaying the project? That's a scary sign.
Feargus: I think you will find that how we talk about things at Obsidian is being honest and pragmatic. In running the project we want to have the right number of people on it and the right number. To fit within the funding that we are getting (more than we expected), we could just keep on increasing the team. We like to be careful about that though and potentially keep the team smaller and go a bit longer. Not saying we are doing that, but it's how we would look at the problem in order to make the best game possible.

Res of the Q&A with Feargus (Darren's is still pending):

Question: have you got anything planned for reaching triple your [starting goal]?
Feargus: At $3.3M we go DRM only. At $3.4M we go DRM Free. At $3.5M DRM only......and so on. :) Oh and Paladins are out at $3.45M, but back in at $3.55M and then out at $3.65M....


More seriously we will talk more about other things tomorrow when we are all in the office again. Avellone is back from his week in Austin.

Question: Are we not getting a secret stretch goal tomorrow?
Feargus: Not sure at this point - but we will spend a ton of time tomorrow talking about the options we have up on the whiteboard. I would hate for one of our last announcements to be the dumb one.

Question: will the roles break down into the traditional "Tank / DPS / Healer / Troller" type of roles - and various combinations thereof? Or is it more complicated / totally different than that.
Feargus: Some of those roles work well from the standpoint of designing classes surrounding combat tactics that make sense. What I know that Josh wants to do is to make sure that our multi-role classes do not feel like they are 50% as good at the normal roles, but still play a core part in the tactics of combat.

Question: So, what's the first quest in PE? Killing rats? :P
Feargus: Killing barrels.

Question: will they at least be ill-tempered barrels? :P
Feargus:Aren't all barrels ill-tempered?

Question: I'm really hoping the game starts out, where depending on what race/class you choose, you might start in a different town.. or at least different part of the city and have a different start game experience that influences you in certain ways that might not happen if you'd started with a different race/class. People are shaped by their environments and they react to the environment more than they shape the environment proactively.. so having a different environment for each starting race/class would be awesome.
Feargus: We have some ideas to let the main characters earlier life play a role (and be defined by the player), but we are not sure if we will create actual different levels at this point.

Question: I think you should remove the 2.8million and 3.0million descriptions and add the 3.00 stretch goal to the main stretch goal picture.It will make the description size smaller and much more easy for new pledgers to read...
Feargus: We will get that done very soon. Probably first thing in the morning.

Question: I really like how in Morrowind you can answer that imperial agent's questions at the beginning, and have your character defined by the answers. Such as what would you do if someone stole your sweetroll? Or, say you took an arrow to the knee, would you give up and become a guard? Anyways, I think it would be interesting if one could help define their character through a series of questions somehow. Just a little idea. ;)
Feargus: Similar to what we have prototyped - but a bit more visual. It looks pretty cool.

Question: Is the facebook mega dungeon likes going to end when Kickstarter does, or will that get to continue?
Feargus: We might keep that open for a bit, but we will need to shut it down at some point.




Feargus: New Interview
Feargus: Paypal Numbers - $87,7K and 1,813 backers.

Latest from Darren:
Questions: I worry that all these levels of the Mega-dungeon may become a hack and slash fest that grows tedious over time. The first torchlight had endless dungeons which became boring and repetitive quickly. My hope is that you tie enough story telling and lore into the journey to make people motivated to finish
Darren: well, it may take us some time to explain that big huge guy that Rob's been developing in the Mega Dungeon picture... It could take several levels to uncover various bits of lore...

Questions: Can't say I'm thrilled to uncover the "bits of lore" regarding the statue's waist area...=P
Darren: Never know - there might be a big story we could tell there... ok, that was just horrible.

Questions: but, will he be wearing a codpiece?
Darren: I suppose we'll just have to get the dungeon deep enough to find out! To quote Robocop, "I'd buy that for a dollar!"

Questions: Had this game been funded by a publisher... how much of the budget would be gobbled up with non-development nonsense (and not so useless nonsense).. I mean.. how much is 3.5mil budget in a home-grown game compared with a publisher-run game budget of 3.5mil? Can we expect a whole lot more because of the 3.5mil budget as a result of there not being publisher's interests to worry about?
Darren: Tough to answer that one directly, but I'll give it a shot. It's not really going to be much different (in fact, it'll probably be more expensive to make w/o a publisher.) When we do games for publishers, there are extra things that occur (some of which can happen on PE too): Requests to change things by say an art or creative director or producer, or maybe say from a licensor or an executive (we owner types can sometimes be "enemies of fun" but we try to do that only after careful consideration). There are often demos for conventions, executive management reviews, vertical slice demos, a variety of press tours, etc. For PE, we have to take on all of the traditional things the publishers did that weren't managed by us. We have to market the game, design the box, write and layout the manuals, hire QA folks and manage them, hire localization folks and manage them, put together a store and streaming system, etc., so there's quite a bit of extra work actually that comes with that. Fortunately, many of us worked for publishers so we have experience with that side of the business too, and it's something we just plainly *really* want to do.

Questions: any idea about how often can we expect a documentary episode and how revealing it will be? Tim Schaefer's episodes were usually teasing about what might be spoilers of even the most tiny aspects at first,
Darren: you know, I'm not sure yet. I think it will be a combination of bits we leak out through the development, and then a comprehensive one at the end. Once the KS is done we'll start talking more about that (and we're definitely welcoming feedback on our forums - seems like something quite a few folks have interest in)

Questions: I would -greatly- like the ability to annotate my maps and quests as I could in Baldur's Gate II.
-Please- include keyboard shortcuts for everything!
-A minor feature I've not seen elsewhere is the ability to individually name my items.
-A minor addition that could have made a big difference in Baldur's Gate II was macros.
-What's my party size limit? I like the ability to have a small army, meaning 10-20 units. Not all these need to be fully fleshed-out characters, though it would be nice.
-I want the game to be soloable by at least some builds, a la Baldur's Gate II with Monks, Thieves, Rangers, and Sorcerers.
-Unlike Dungeon Siege III, -please- make it unmistakably clear what each stat (and item) does! Don't name a stat "Doom!" Say, "Critical Hit Damage" or "Critical Hit Frequency." On a similar note, make sure people understand the relative importance of each stat. Perhaps put gear tier labels on all items, like in Dragon Age 1.
-A lower priority is making custom classes, a la The Elder Scrolls games. It's still fun to determine my character's mechanical abilities based on -my- picks, not on what the game developers thought was best.
Darren: Let me try to tackle a few of those:
- Map annotation: I agree. I'd like to see that too.
- Keyboard shortcuts: This is a must-have feature!
- Naming items: No spoilers yet. :)
- Macros: That was definitely something we learned in NWN2 too. I'll make sure they're on the feature req list.
- Party size: I think Josh said 5 or 6. Apologies if that was confirmed as one or the other! Note: It's been pointed out by one of the devs (Feargus?) that the party size will be 6: your character and up to 5 companions - Ink Blot
- Soloable: That's very challenging to do balance-wise (and would unfortunately be a "B" feature) but it is a cool one. We'll see what happens!
- DS3 stats: Yeah agreed. With a PC focus too we can do more with the interface to help teach players about any stats we create and what they do.
- Custom classes: Not sure how deep this will get. We've announced specific classes you'll choose (as opposed to older Dungeon Siege that you would evolve) but Josh and Tim will update that over the coming months.

Questions: can we count PayPall backers towards the Mega Dungeon levels? I wanna see the codp... er the sandlas. Yes. Them sandals are on my mind!
Darren: Yep, PayPal will count, but to keep the math easy I've been telling folks it applies once the Kickstarter period ends. That allows us to focus on the KS number, and then PayPal can cover any lost pledges (those unfortunately do happen at the last minute! Some projects have lost [multiple] 10k backers when it comes time to settle up!)

Questions: one thing BG2 did a lot better than BG1 was monsters never came out of nowhere or bunched in a nieche. it felt like there was an explanation of them being there istead of being put there by a level designer. I hope we'll have this feeling in PE as well
Darren: Agreed - I have this weird thing against that too. Something that used to bug me about Doom way back in the day. Even though it's a computer game, I like things to make some semblance of sense.

Questions: an you tell us anything about the Fauna in the game? will it be the same as Faerun when it comes to animals that aren't monsters?
Darren: Hmmm not sure about the fauna. I'd expect several DVD's. The maps are going to be large. VERY large. :)

Questions: I've never been so completely stoked for any game that had yet to be released, let alone one over a year away. Way to go, Obsidian!
Darren: Thanks Ross. I think I can safely say the same about working on the game too. :)

Questions: Quite a few gaming sites have started to add a description for PE to their list of games. A lot of those entries are rather sketchy, incomplete or even partially wrong. Have you thought about compiling and sending out a press package to help them fix that? (this might also help with boosting the coverage a bit)
Darren: That's a great idea. I'll pass that along to Feargus and crew. Also if you see sites that have bad info, we can reach out to them specifically too.

As usual thank you Mr C :).

Wait. They have to hire QA people? .Woulda thought they had their own internal QA team?

I think they do, but I believe he meant they'd have to hire more QA people.

Hope they reach the 3.5 million before the end be cool to visit a city that was not 6 buildings and a shop but something worth exploring.

They will develop a huge city anyway. This tier would add a 2nd one.

I would think the two cities would be capitals of the two major states in the game, mentioned in the lore update, the Aerya Empire (or whatever it was called) and the Dyrwood

More from last night with Darren and Feargus:

Question: will the production documentary be released episodically (possibly with little side quests, a la Double Fine Adventure), or monolithically nearing release? If this has not been fully determined, please consider my vote on the side of an in-progress, episodic affair. It rocks, over at DFA, and I can't stress how involved it makes us feel, regardless of how one-sided it actually is.
Feargus: We want to deliver some episodes during development, I don't know if we will do one every month at this point. However, we are going to be updating you all frequently outside of the documentary with web blogs, chats and posts of info

Question: guys are you going to do any live steams though this project at all ? sorry if question has been asked before ?
Feargus: We do plan on doing live streams from time to time. After KS is done, we are going to work on the whole plan.

Question: Is Adam not invited to the $10k games?
Feargus: He is.

Question: If some one has alreaqdy pledged via Paypal but want's some additions, can he just upgrade by paying the difference?
Darren: yep, you can either select the addons at the bottom of the Eternity site (I don't have xlations for those in German though, so not available on DE page!) or the person can use the custom donation option at the end of the tiers.

Question: What's with the little green 'troll' on the $50-$750 pledges on the front page? Why doesn't it apply to $1000+
Darren: We just need to whip Rob more to update that art. :) 1000+ get the pet too. He's busy drawing the dungeon faster than we can keep up!

Question: Any chance Obsidian would consider selling some high quality prints of the artwork of the 5 adventurers battling undead? That would be awesome to have framed, and hanging on the wall in my office!
Darren: I like that idea! I'll pass that along!

Question: Have you thoughts about selling Original Concept Art over E-Bay one page at a time? Web Cartoonists do that sometimes for paying bills or for charity. If the proceeds went Half to the Expansion and Half to something like Child's Play, I think there would be no one who would disagree to bidding on it.
Feargus: I like that idea. Might even be something to consider for a store of our own too. I know I love concept art. Although now come to think of it, almost all of our concept art is created digitally now. Signed Prints!?

Question: I have a question about the playing card quality is it like Fallout New Vegas Collector's Edition?
Darren: Dunno who Bethesda ended up using for those - we're likely going to use one of the companies one of our designers has used in his board / card gaming business. Depends on the quality though.

Question: what is your main task in Obsidian actually? is that the website?
Darren: Well I'm one of the five owners, and am sort of the back office guy. My official title is "CIO/VP of Operations" but that's a very stuffy title basically for just business cards. Right now my job is lots of web stuff, and likely will be helping design and set up the fulfillment and store stuff. I used to do game production though - produced NWN2 and DS3 (and before that programming.)

Question: what was the reaction in the office to the obsidian order? as a curiosity.
Darren: Complete and utter astonishment, and I mean that in the best way possible. Sometimes when reading the internet, it can uh, well, you know... But when I saw Dlux and the guys getting this going, it was **really** invigorating and inspiring to us. I immediately thought, "We gotta do something for these folks. This is incredible" - I've been such a stickler about not having titles on our forums (for many years) but thought, this is a great way to give a little something back for all of the support. It's really unbelievable. It feels amazing when I'm browsing other Kickstarters and I see OO folks in the comments. Really special and always perks up a big smile.

Question: What means the green face in the rewards?
Darren: That indicates you get a special pet with that tier. :) It's included in the 1,000+ tiers too, even though the art doesn't show it.

Question: Once the game is finished, will we have information about which Inn, item, Npc, have been created by backers? Including some of the process in the documentary would be great.
Darren: Yep, we'll point those out (assuming the backer is OK with it - some might want to remain anonymous!)



Darren: Quick PayPal update: $89,641. It takes quite a while to get unique backer count from PP, so using a previous average of $48.37/pledge, that's roughly ~1853 backers or so.

I think I'm gonna pull my pledge. Not because of anything to do with the project, but just because I want to free up some money. I'll repledge via Paypal once I get the chance. Who knows, maybe I'll actually get a job at some point. That'd be pretty crazy. I'll probably keep $1 in so I can get the backer-only updates and then do a full $25 into Paypal once I get enough money to dispose of.