Tendo City

Quote:Your response about Fallout? You seemed to complain more about the perspective and graphics than anything... and said the story was bad. Though I can't figure out how you could say that...

I never got far enough in Fallout to see if the story was bad. I was talking about BG.

I know this died a while back, but I have to say it... Midway was never awful, but the last few years have been tough. They didn't adapt well after leaving the arcade business, I think. But they are recovering now, and have hired some great talent... remember a while back John Romero and Tom Hall joined Midway? J.E. Sawyer of Black Isle is also there... that's good talent.

He has a nice entry in this article about multisystem games (of rpgs)...
http://rpgvault.ign.com/articles/535/535708p2.html

This one is from the first installment of that (from a guy who worked on Arx Fatalis) and is also pretty good I think.
http://rpgvault.ign.com/articles/534/534586p3.html

Quote:I never got far enough in Fallout to see if the story was bad. I was talking about BG.

Ah. BG is a bit light on story, I guess. It seemed great at the time, but looking back... yes, you go long periods of time with no story progression in that title. It defintely could have been a lot better, and they made major improvements in BGII. As for Fallout, why not??

Ok, I may be a little off the track as far as this conversation is going, but I thought I'd chime in again.

OB1 Wrote:The plot in Prime is secondary, not important for the game. It's all backstory stuff and has almost no emotional weight on the gameplay experience.

This I agree with. The game is set up on a very simple premise. In a very Pikmin, or even ICO way, the game is set up for you so you can progress through without having to worry about the story. You don't have any real-time plot twists and backstabbing, and government organisations that you're working for, which is very effective for the overall feel of the game.

However, MP does have a story to tell (rather, a back-story, but regardless..), and I think it does this in a very unique way which leaves it up to the player to discover at his/her own discretion (as we've all discussed). This means that for those of you who just want to play the game, progress, power-up and get off the planet and not have to worry about the story - this is all you have to do. But for those of us like ABF who thrive on the small details, the adventuring, the discovering the little facets of the game it's a perfect way to tell a story so that he can get more out of the game.

Does the game tell a story effectively? Well, there's really not much of a real-time story to tell, so it doesn't need to tell a story well. But it does offer more story depth than it necessarily needs to, which is what I like about it.

All this has probably already been covered and whatever, just thought I'd respond.














Oh, and you're both equally annoying.

Quote:Oh, and you're both equally annoying.

Yeah, that seems to be a common sentiment in threads like these... :)

Quote:This I agree with. The game is set up on a very simple premise. In a very Pikmin, or even ICO way, the game is set up for you so you can progress through without having to worry about the story. You don't have any real-time plot twists and backstabbing, and government organisations that you're working for, which is very effective for the overall feel of the game.

However, MP does have a story to tell (rather, a back-story, but regardless..), and I think it does this in a very unique way which leaves it up to the player to discover at his/her own discretion (as we've all discussed). This means that for those of you who just want to play the game, progress, power-up and get off the planet and not have to worry about the story - this is all you have to do. But for those of us like ABF who thrive on the small details, the adventuring, the discovering the little facets of the game it's a perfect way to tell a story so that he can get more out of the game.

Does the game tell a story effectively? Well, there's really not much of a real-time story to tell, so it doesn't need to tell a story well. But it does offer more story depth than it necessarily needs to, which is what I like about it.

All this has probably already been covered and whatever, just thought I'd respond.

Yeah, I pretty much agree. The actual events of the game you are playing through have almost no story. The story doesn't tell what is happening in your journey but explains WHY things are as they are in your journey by telling about what happened before. That is definitely different from most games... where I'd differ a bit is on how much that is about what is happening in the game. Yes, the events described are not about what is happening as you play, that is true. But what they describe directly explains why things are happening as they are so it tells you why the world is as it is and what your quest is about and why you are doing it in a way that, when you think about it, really isn't that different from if they had had it like most games and had the story that you run across in the game (however you do that) be events occurring during the time frame the game covers. Most games slowly reveal the plot as you progress. This does the same, but it does it in the context of why what is going on around you is going on and why you have to do the quest you are doing, but not in the context of what you are actually doing at the moment... but really, as I said, the effect is pretty much the same, I think. Do I make any sense here?

A Black Falcon Wrote:Do I make any sense here?

Uhh... gamepads?

Did you read that post? Really, I explain it pretty well...

ABF Wrote:I know this died a while back, but I have to say it... Midway was never awful, but the last few years have been tough. They didn't adapt well after leaving the arcade business, I think. But they are recovering now, and have hired some great talent... remember a while back John Romero and Tom Hall joined Midway? J.E. Sawyer of Black Isle is also there... that's good talent.

Yeah Romero is a genius all right. Let's see, what has he made since he left id?
Daiktana... awesomeness
Hyper Space Delivery Boy... awesome... if it were a cellphone game
Red Faction for the N-Gage... supremely awesome

Hudson Wrote:This I agree with. The game is set up on a very simple premise. In a very Pikmin, or even ICO way, the game is set up for you so you can progress through without having to worry about the story. You don't have any real-time plot twists and backstabbing, and government organisations that you're working for, which is very effective for the overall feel of the game.

However, MP does have a story to tell (rather, a back-story, but regardless..), and I think it does this in a very unique way which leaves it up to the player to discover at his/her own discretion (as we've all discussed). This means that for those of you who just want to play the game, progress, power-up and get off the planet and not have to worry about the story - this is all you have to do. But for those of us like ABF who thrive on the small details, the adventuring, the discovering the little facets of the game it's a perfect way to tell a story so that he can get more out of the game.

Does the game tell a story effectively? Well, there's really not much of a real-time story to tell, so it doesn't need to tell a story well. But it does offer more story depth than it necessarily needs to, which is what I like about it.

All this has probably already been covered and whatever, just thought I'd respond.

Pikmin, maybe, but ICO, no way. ICO actually tells a good story through not much more than a few short cinemas, the emotional bond between yourself and Yorda, the predicament that both of you are in, and the twists and turns that happen throughout the game. The stuff in Prime is just background information, nothing that affects the game on an emotional level.

And remember that this is coming from the biggest Metroid Prime fan here. It's my favorite game ever right next to Super Metroid.

Quote:Yeah Romero is a genius all right. Let's see, what has he made since he left id?
Daiktana... awesomeness
Hyper Space Delivery Boy... awesome... if it were a cellphone game
Red Faction for the N-Gage... supremely awesome

Hyperspace Delivery Boy is great for what it was trying to do. And didn't he leave before they finished Red Faction for N-Gage? :)

Tom Hall is certainly better, though. And Sawyer.

Quote:The stuff in Prime is just background information, nothing that affects the game on an emotional level.

Hudson said that exact same thing, OB1. And while I didn't completely disagree, this is what I said... you miss it? :)

Quote:Yeah, I pretty much agree. The actual events of the game you are playing through have almost no story. The story doesn't tell what is happening in your journey but explains WHY things are as they are in your journey by telling about what happened before. That is definitely different from most games... where I'd differ a bit is on how much that is about what is happening in the game. Yes, the events described are not about what is happening as you play, that is true. But what they describe directly explains why things are happening as they are so it tells you why the world is as it is and what your quest is about and why you are doing it in a way that, when you think about it, really isn't that different from if they had had it like most games and had the story that you run across in the game (however you do that) be events occurring during the time frame the game covers. Most games slowly reveal the plot as you progress. This does the same, but it does it in the context of why what is going on around you is going on and why you have to do the quest you are doing, but not in the context of what you are actually doing at the moment... but really, as I said, the effect is pretty much the same, I think. Do I make any sense here?

Quote:Hyperspace Delivery Boy is great for what it was trying to do. And didn't he leave before they finished Red Faction for N-Gage?

Tom Hall is certainly better, though. And Sawyer.

What exactly did those guys do?

Quote:Hudson said that exact same thing, OB1. And while I didn't completely disagree, this is what I said... you miss it?

What of it?

Quote:What exactly did those guys do?

Tom Hall was the main person behind the Keen games, before he left ID. He also worked on Rise of the Triad for Apogee (3DRealms). And Anachronox with Ion Storm. Some Doom level design too, I believe... and other games. Here we go. :)
http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet...perId=891/

Sawyer was with Black Isle. Designer on IWD, IWD2, and some of BIS' work on the external projects BG: DA and Lionheart.
http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet...rId=26242/

Quote:What of it?

That's my position on that issue, that's what...

Quote:Tom Hall was the main person behind the Keen games, before he left ID. He also worked on Rise of the Triad for Apogee (3DRealms). And Anachronox with Ion Storm. Some Doom level design too, I believe... and other games. Here we go.

Tom Hall was mainly in charge of the business aspect of id, ABF.

Quote:That's my position on that issue, that's what...

So...

Quote:Tom Hall was mainly in charge of the business aspect of id, ABF.

No, he created Commander Keen and was the main designer behind all of the Keen games. And as that says he did level design for Quake and Rise of the Triad and then made Anachronox... heard of it? Console-styled PC RPG running the Quake engine, quite good reviews...

Quote:So...

So you have no response? Fine, whatever...

Quote:No, he created Commander Keen and was the main designer behind all of the Keen games. And as that says he did level design for Quake and Rise of the Triad and then made Anachronox... heard of it? Console-styled PC RPG running the Quake engine, quite good reviews...

Tom Hall did not do very much design work at id. And yeah I heard of those games.

You hadn't heard of him or something earlier today and now you know exactly what he did at ID? Uh...

Anyway, according to Moby Games he generally shows up as either a director or level designer in those games he worked on. :)

<img src="http://www.tcforums.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=913&stc=1">

Well now, somebody prepaired for this photo...

Quote:In September of 1987, Tom Hall (this picture is legendary) moved from Wisconsin to Shreveport to take a job programming games at Softdisk. Tom's games back then were for Softdisk's monthly subscriptions which included such awesome titles as "Duck Boop". In March of 1989, John Romero joined Softdisk and made Tom's acquaintance. John started working on programs for Softdisk's IBM PC line.

Romero's games soon attracted the attention of a free-lance programmer in Kansas City, John Carmack, who had been working in a pizza parlor and programming on the side. Carmack's programs impressed Softdisk enough that he too made the trek to Shreveport to work for Softdisk. The two Johns started working together, and it wasn't long before Tom started sneaking in at night to work with them because Softdisk management would not allow them to collaborate openly.

Then, the first breakthrough. John Carmack devised a smooth, scrolling routine similar to that used for the background of Nintendo games but never before possible on the PC. When Tom Hall saw the scrolling in action, his first thoughts were to pull a prank on Romero. In the course of one night, Hall and Carmack reproduced the first level of Super Mario 3, pixel by pixel, replacing Mario with a character of their own named Dangerous Dave. They finished the work around 5AM, calling it "Dangerous Dave in Copyright Infringement". Tom & John put the disk on Romero's desk, and left to get some sleep. John Romero arrived at Softdisk that day, booted up the game, and did not stop to take a breath until three hours later. More than a prank, Romero saw the staggering commercial potential of Carmack's design.

There was also at Softdisk a project manager named Jay Wilbur. Romero approached Jay with a new Super Mario demo. Allured by the same visions of limitless wealth, Jay approached Nintendo. It is rumored that id's Mario demo (shown here) made it to the highest levels of Nintendo, but this has never actually been confirmed over the years. However, Nintendo declined the idea deciding that Mario wasn't for the PC, it was a console only title. In the end, the Softdisk guys decided to pursue the game on their own - in secret, of course, as they weren't supposed to be working together in the first place at Softdisk. Why? Who knows now?

Tom Hall remembers... "Softdisk didn't want to use the smooth scrolling trick Carmack had discovered (since it didn't also work in CGA), so we thought, well, if they don't want it, we could do something ourselves... So we thought, hey, we'll make our own game. We needed a topic. I asked if they cared what topic - sci-fi, fantasy, whatever. I think Carmack mentioned a kid that saves the galaxy or something. I went off and fifteen minutes later, came back with the paragraph that you see in Keen 1. I read it in a Walter Winchell voice (he's a nasal 40s radio/newsreel announcer). Carmack clapped after I was finished, and we were off and running."

The paragraph of text that Tom refers to is the text that appears at the beginning of Keen 1:

Billy Blaze, eight year-old genius, working diligently in his backyard clubhouse has created an interstellar starship from old soup cans, rubber cement and plastic tubing. While his folks are out on the town and the babysitter has fallen asleep, Billy travels into his backyard workshop, dons his brother's football helmet, and transforms into...

COMMANDER KEEN--defender of Earth!

In his ship, the Bean-with-Bacon Megarocket, Keen dispenses galactic justice with an iron hand!

Meanwhile, a series of peculiar fan letters had been arriving at Softdisk, praising John Romero's games. At first, seeming to represent the ravings of a wide number of Softdisk fans, Romero eventually determined that all the letters came from the same address in Garland, TX. Discovering the fraud, Romero fired off a threatening letter, and in this manner made contact with id's first benefactor. Scott Miller, anonymous author of the many letters, was a founder of Apogee Software, a pioneer in the shareware approach to marketing computer games. Miller told Romero that he loved the Softdisk games and wanted to lure them into the shareware market. Romero sent Miller a game called Catacombs, which whetted Miller's appetite. But once he got a glimpse of the Super Mario demo for the PC that Carmack & Romero had done, he offered to put up some money to finance their first real game. Hall, Romero, & Carmack asked for $2,000 to get their game off the ground. Miller had $5,000 in his bank account - he promptly sent them a check for 2/5 of that.

For three months, the trio programmed for Softdisk during the day, and slaved away on "Commander Keen: Invasion of the Vorticons" in every free moment. However, they needed some more folks to help complete the game, so they set out to recruit some new blood. They had long admired the artistry of an intern at Softdisk, Adrian Carmack (no relation). They invited Adrian to join them and finished Commander Keen with significant improvements to the look of the final levels.

Adrian Carmack remembers his initial involvement in Commander Keen:

"Hmm...well as I recall I drew and animated one of the characters. I don't recall the name off hand. I think he was some sort of a Ninja type of character. I created some teleport windows, a few awful illustrations, etc. Ugh..bad memories. I had just started creating computer art, so it was definitely not some of my better work. Plus I wasn't a cartoonist. I had quite a learning curve on the Keen series. My work on the later Keens was much improved."

http://www.3drealms.com/keenhistory/

DJ, is that supposed to be a 'Duke wants you to stop stealing our bandwidth' sign, DJ? It's pretty cool though... :)

And yes, I've read that article before. I don't know if OB1 has though... it's good. As I said, Tom Hall really created Keen. And he wasn't a business guy, OB1. That was Jay Wilbur, I beleive... Tom Hall works on games.

Ah nuts... Honestly, it's not stealing when they PUT IT THERE! Eh, oh well...

Quote:You hadn't heard of him or something earlier today and now you know exactly what he did at ID? Uh...

Anyway, according to Moby Games he generally shows up as either a director or level designer in those games he worked on.

No no, of course I've heard of him, we even talked about him a week ago.

Quote:DJ, is that supposed to be a 'Duke wants you to stop stealing our bandwidth' sign, DJ? It's pretty cool though...

And yes, I've read that article before. I don't know if OB1 has though... it's good. As I said, Tom Hall really created Keen. And he wasn't a business guy, OB1. That was Jay Wilbur, I beleive... Tom Hall works on games.

According to several interviews by Carmack, and that id biography, Hall didn't do nearly as much programming as much as the rest of id and was mainly in charge of running the business of id. He may have come up with Keen, but I don't think he directed the game.

And that picture is hilarious. Tom Hall looks like a smarmy Las Vegas magician.

Here's him now. :)



Keen was really Tom Hall's series more than anyone else's, though, OB1. That much I know for a fact. He's said quite a few times that he really liked making the Keen games and that if he could ever get the rights again he'd make a new one (in 3d, like they were starting to think about before Wolf 3D and Doom set ID against platformers) in a second... but that's not happening. :(

Oh, this is his website. http://www.tomtomtom.com

This page is quite exhaustive in games he's worked on. http://www.tomtomtom.com/games.shtml

http://www.johnromero.com/phpubb/viewtopic.php?t=2942 Tom Hall is working on Area 51 (PS2/XBox)... I think Romero is working on Gauntlet, but I'm not sure. No idea about Sawyer.

I miss the awesome magician look already.

What happened?!

Some chainsaw-for-legs rocket-demon burned all his hair off.

He shouldn't have left home without his plasma rifle.

Or his magic wand.

Or his +2/+2 mace of much hurting.

+2/+2?

+2 to attack and +2 to defense. Don't you know anything?

Swords do not usually give defence bonuses, silly!

Man you guys are such dorks.

He's thinking Magic: Da Gatherinating... Or, it's all like "the best defense is a good offense". The best offense is of course multiple tactical missile strikes that totally incapacitate an enemy instantly.

... and I'm thinking of D&D. :)

Where a "+2" sword may be a sword like this: 1d8+4. Yup, +4 can be +2! How so? Because the "+" rating doesn't mean anything concrete except as a ranking for resistances. As in, certain very tough enemy types that can only be hit with magic weapons... I seem to recall one that had to be hit with +3 enchantments only. That guy was really tough because I didn't have too many of those...

Anyway, the rating doesn't translate directly to either the damage bonus or the THAC0 (D&D2) bonus, so that nice special magical swords can have damage and THAC0 bonuses above that. Like several weapons I've gotten. Which is actually a bad thing, because if that sword was a +4 and not a +2 it'd be a whole lot more useful against some monster types...

I didn't understand a bit of that... So, why does +4 mean +2?

ABF: *moans and falls backwards on ground anime style*

Because the "sword plus-rating" does not directly translate to the damage bonus, the THAC0 bonus, or anything other than determining what types of protections that sword can hit through. :)

With your garden variety magic weapon, yeah, it will be a +1 longsword that is 1d8+1. But special weapons that have more to them than just normal enchantments can be different. Like 2d4+4+1acid+1cold with a +2 THAC0 and a +2 enchantment. I think. That might be a bit off, I'm not running BG2 right now like I was when I made that last post...

...What ARE you talking about?!

Seriously, I have no idea what that means!

Okay, in D&D you weapons have names. Like 'Frostbite' the Long Sword. This is a magical sword. So, it gets a 'plus rating' or 'bonus rating' or whatever it's called -- the level of enchantment on the sword. +1 through +5, generally. Higher than that is extremely rare. So, if in a store you see 'Long Sword' and 'Long Sword +1', and you know the dice, you'd know that the Longsword attacks with 1d8 and the +1 longsword attacks with 1d8 + 1. As in, roll a d8 and then add one. So 2-9 damage. :) This sword will also give you a +1 to your THAC0 -- To Hit Armor Class Zero, that statistic that they dropped in D&D Third Edition and replaced with the all new armor/to-hit system. I know I've explained the D&D 2nd edition combat system before to you, though...

But when they are special magical weapons and not just normal 'Long Sword +1', the level of enchantment does not necessarially always represent the exact bonuses the sword gives. Instead, it's supposed to represent the CLASS of magical weapons it is in -- like Plus-One Weapons. So that weapon may have a actual damage of 1d8+2. Or maybe a '+2' bastard sword may do 2d4+1 with some additional bonus -- like + 1 fire damage (as in, after doing that base damage roll and adding the point do a test against their fire resistance and see if you will add one more damage on top of that -- since this is tested seperately, it'll show up seperately on screen as a different attack. Same for each one for the instance of the weapon that does +1 fire+1cold+1acid+1lightning. That stupid thing takes up five lines to show each hit... :))

Anyway. So the rating said in the name (or description) for special (as in unique) magical weapons isn't the absolute decider of what actual bonuses it does. It only denotes which class the weapon is in.

As for the thing about magic weapon rating determining which enemies it can hit, this only occurs at upper levels... before the 10th, 12th, or higher level you will not be fighting guys who require much of anything. But eventually you'll hit some guys who can only be hit with enchanted (even +1 weapons)... you can tell when your people try to hit and always fail. :) In those cases you need to find weapons with the correct rating, not a damage bonus of that number. Which in some cases can be a pain if a great weapon can't hit someone tough.

So that + means an enchantment, and I'm to have no idea if this bonus means ice damage or just pure magic damage?

First, I'm basing all of this on Baldur's Gate II/ToB, so it's D&D2.0. or 2.5 if you prefer, it kind of is... from what I've seen in Icewind Dale II (my only third edition game -- Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance does NOT count!), 3.0 changed things quite a bit. That whole new Feat system, for instance... the removal of THAC0, retooling of saving throws, etc, etc... it's still recognizably D&D, but some of the mechanics are different.

You read the description of the item, and look at the detailed list of all its stats of course! Since they generally have different effects (when they aren't just standard enchanted weapons, which are easily recognized by their generic 'Longsword +1' names), you really have to read the descriptions (and then do some arithmetic, in some of these games, to see what it will actually do for damage) to see what the weapon really does. That one line name will give no hint that the Daystar shortsword has three or four special abilities (a bunch of pretty cool fire attacks, usable once a day each... quite a nice sword for that, if not for it's super high enchantment...) it gives you when it's equipped until you right click and read the description. :)


Oh, and remember, this is D&D. The base damage, with the die roll, is normal damage if it's just a normal weapon. If it's an enchanted weapon -- with a damage bonus like +2 -- then it does magic damage. That means that you will hurt people who have spells like Protection from Normal Weapons cast on them, but on those rare high level guys who have Protection from Magic Weapons you could have a bit of trouble... :D

Anyway, the ones that have additional bonus damage, namely fire, cold, acid, etc, then after rolling (and hitting, if you hit) for the main damage do a completely different check to see if it does the extra damages. Instead of against AC those are acid, cold, etc. so they check against your resistances/protections, not really your AC... and it's generally a +1 bonus for each so it checks to see if the resistance (it might be a a saving throw, but I think it's the resistances -- like Fire Resistance, Acid Resistance, etc. Most people don't have much, so most people take all of these hits.) blocked the hit, and then either hits the guy or doesn't. :)

I have only one weapon that does elemental damage of more than one point, which is one axe that does 1-4 cold damage. So instead of just taking off 1 point if/when the guy fails his resist cold save (resistances ONLY come from equipped items, BTW. You have no innate resistances to anything. In that way they are different from saving throws, THAC0, Armor Class (which is partially affected by your armor but also by things like your class and Dexterity)... so most enemies don't have any, unless they're some kind of magical creature or they are a powerful foe.) I'd assume that the game will do the virtual equivilant of rolling a d4 to see how much damage that cold damage will do.

Man... as much of a dork as I am, I can never compare to you, ABF. :)

As much a dork as I am I draw the line at becoming knowledgable about D&D.

Honestly, people played this with paper and calculators?! I mean, it's WAAAYY too complicated for it's own good!

Do you understand now, DJ? ... really, I'd like to know... :)

... this is talking about the D&D computer games, not the game itsself... that is more complex. :)

I know, it is a quite complicated game... you have to minimize the math involved. Notice that in this you never do anything other than addition and dice rolling. You really can't go much beyond addition, subtraction, and maybe multiplication by multiples of 2 or something (though that's pushing it some)... yes, the rules are complex, but the math involved isn't. What is complex is remembering what the rules are in the first place. :)

Exactly, but honestly, making +# mean mutiple things is just wrong! Use a magic or element symbol in there so we know right away!

(And yeesh, there are WAY too many rules to remember to make playing D&D in the real world any fun at all. Honestly, I've tried playing it. My friends and I never even got off the ground, we got stuck at character creation when we didn't know EXACTLY how certain stats worked... Readin ahead to the actual gameplay... well yeesh, how do you get ANYWHERE when a single TURN in battle looks to take a frickin' half hour?

Sorry, give me the games where the computer does all the boring stuff in an instant.

It definitely helps to play with people who know what they're doing, for sure. :) I've only played real D&D once, and that was a long time ago... virtually all of my experience with it comes from the PC games. And by that I mean the Interplay-style ones.

But if you get a DM that knows what they are doing it looks like it'd be great fun. My cousin and I used to like to play Hero Quest and DragonStrike, which are fantasy boardgames that are essentially simplified D&D variants... with boards. I loved those games. Quite a bit simpler than D&D, but DragonStrike at least (it was by TSR) had some depth, with feats of strength and dexterity, talking to some monsters, etc. They just make it simple with fully laid out quests in the map... though the most fun way to play probably is to make up a quest as you go (and not be restricted to any one board... or pieces really -- both games have plastic units that are the same size and boards with same-sized squares...).

Oh, and I always liked to be the DM (well, it's called 'Zargon' (for the evil badguy in the game) in Hero Quest and the 'Dragon Master' in DragonStrike, but same thing...). It's more fun than being the heroes, in my opinion.

Quote:Exactly, but honestly, making +# mean mutiple things is just wrong! Use a magic or element symbol in there so we know right away!

It doesn't mean multiple things... well, I guess it does, but each one has a well delineated place and definition and don't overlap unless you don't understand the system.

Oh, in that note, if you ever get Baldur's Gate I or II, this site's patches are invaluable. Lots of (fanmade) bug fixes, stat error fixes, system fixes, and a file that improves the quality of descriptions of exactly what items do... install these after the offical patches and before you start playing. :)

http://www.baldurdash.org/

Oh yeah, and it's not like you have to understand all the rules of D&D to play Baldur's Gate, or know all this stuff... it's not the end of the world if your stuff isn't the best in the world as long as it's decent for where you are in teh game. But it's inevitable that you'll understand the system better if you play the game a lot, which is what it takes to beat one of these games...