I love the idea of creating a settlement, of getting together a guild/company or multiple companies and founding our own town, it'll be great fun for role playing.
What I'm interested in finding out is how different or unique can we make our settlements. The only mention i found was from an earlier blog entry which said :
The external appearance of each building will be defined by the development team—functionally identical buildings may be graphically different to ensure they are appropriate for the terrain where they're located.
I'm particularly keen on racially themed settlements, so we can have say Gnomish towns that match that races design and culture. I guess what I don't want is all towns to look like identi-kit "Ye Olde Medieval Towne".
Presuming you can theme the buildings in settlements to a different style, how would we enforce this. Would there be a city planner type role that lays out streets and so on, or is it more freeform so everyone can throw up whatever building they like wherever they like, and maybe other villagers could pull it down for not getting planning permission :-)
I agree over 9,000%.
I suspect that the "skins" of buildings will be fairly limited for a while as the game enters development, but in the long run I'd definitely love to see elven or orcish styles.
To put together what's been said, a cool angle for the game to take would be a multi-axis skin system for buildings:
-Racial axis
-Alignment axis
The human design would be typical traditional medieval fare, where the other races would be slight or drastic alterations: Orcy establishments could be covered in spikes, dwarven establishments would be covered in stone, etc.
-Evil buildings could be covered in gargoyles, skulls and junk. Good buildings could have statues of angels, metallic dragons, etc. Neutral buildings might be adorned in um.... something neutral.
Goblin Squad Member
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Seriously though, i like the sound of this. Clearly not a priority at launch, but something that could be potentially lots of fun if they run with it. They could even factor in literal blueprints that would allow a player access to unique or uncommon looking structures. Maybe architecture could be a legit proffesion somewhere down the line. Dibs on "vandelay industries" and "mosbius designs" if it ever does.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Man, what a great idea. It would be kool if the 'administrator' of the city/town had the ability to limit certain skins in the city -- to maintain a common theme!
I'd rather the aesthetics of a settlement be an emergent quality of the game--let that be negotiated socially in game, rather than mechanically controlled meta-game.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Man, what a great idea. It would be kool if the 'administrator' of the city/town had the ability to limit certain skins in the city -- to maintain a common theme!I'd rather the aesthetics of a settlement be an emergent quality of the game--let that be negotiated socially in game, rather than mechanically controlled meta-game.
I would like to see both options Mbando , but I do not have an issue with a more 'natural' growing community.
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Goblin Squad Member
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A big thing I would like to eventually see is not just themed skins, but totally different building designed depending on terrain. This would add onto what they already stated "...identical buildings may be graphically different to ensure they are appropriate for the terrain where they're located."
The idea would be if you had large enough trees, elven crafters with the proper abilities could create buildings in/on the trees. If your not an elf, you would 'never' be able to make them. Totally racially specific, as some items in Pathfinder already are.
If your hex has a larg hill or small mountain, perhaps hobbits and dwarves could dig into it and build underground. These types of racial structures would add a ton of flavor and flair to the game imo.
