J.E. Sawyer

• Baldur's Gate: The Black Hound (Lead Designer)
• Fallout 3 (Van Buren) (Lead Technical Designer)
• Icewind Dale 2 (Lead Designer)

• Josh Sawyer - I thought I could organize freedom. How Scandinavian of me.

• Neverwinter Nights 2 interview
• Interview with JE Sawyer

Enter the spotlight at the Bethblog: JE Sawyer ( Interview )
posted by VentilatorOfDoom on Thu 06 May 2010, 10:17:43
More info on Obsidian Entertainment - More info on J.E. Sawyer

The Bethesda Blog interrogates JE Sawyer. What did Bethsoft do to our favorite devs? Just look at this forced smile, the subliminal cry for help. I think they even tattooed a prisoner number onto his arm.

Thus far, what’s been the highlight of your career?
Growing up, Brian Fargo was one of my heroes. Working for Black Isle was amazing for me because Interplay made Bard’s Tale, the first CRPG I ever played. After Icewind Dale shipped, Brian sent an e-mail to Feargus telling him he played through the whole game and really enjoyed it. So even though the highlight came only a year into my development career, I think it will be hard to top that.

What would you say is your personal favorite game of all time?
I have three all-time favorites: the original Pool of Radiance, Darklands, and the original Fallout. All have their own flaws and idiosyncrasies, but those are the three that have drawn me in more than any others. They’re also the ones that I can go back to without feeling like they’ve aged badly.

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Putting Holes in Stuff the JE Sawyer Way ( Development info )
posted by Jason on Sun 02 May 2010, 23:31:27
More info on Fallout: New Vegas - More info on J.E. Sawyer

Obsidian's J.E. Sawyer let it be known that damage threshold is returning to the Fallout series with Fallout: New Vegas.

Imagine that there is an amount of damage that armor directly subtracts from damage... a "threshold" of damage, if you will. While a small percentage of damage may get through even the thickest armor, damage threshold can effectively neutralize a lot of small arms. Fallout 1 and 2 used numerical feedback to let the player know when their weapons weren't doing any damage. In F3 and F:NV, the player only sees enemy health meters that represent a percentage of total health rather than an exact value. This makes it difficult to tell how effective an enemy's armor is (as opposed to the target simply having a ton of health). In F:NV, the red shield appears next to a target's health meter when you hit it for damage that is equal to or less than the target's damage threshold. A HUD-colored shield appears next to the player's health meter when the player is hit for damage equal to or less than the player's damage threshold.

High RoF weapons typically have a low DAM, high DPS. E.g. 10mm SMG. Low RoF weapons are the opposite. E.g. Hunting Rifle. F:NV's Pip-Boy Weapons tab now cross-fades between DAM and DPS so the player can make more tactical choices about what weapon to use in any given circumstance. Having both of these values visible has also allowed us to revise the calculation of DAM/DPS values to be less abstract and more accurate. Using the weapons previously listed, a 10mm SMG would be best against unarmored/lightly armored targets at close range. The Hunting Rifle is ideal against armored targets at long range. But if the player wants to get fiddly with numbers, the Cowboy Repeater (mentioned in the Escapist preview) is better than either weapon against unarmored/lightly armored targets at long range since it is accurate, has a decent DAM and a better DPS than the Hunting Rifle. Add ammo subtypes and mods into the mix and there are a lot of ways to optimize the gear you carry and use.

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Ask J.E. Sawyer Random Questions ( Interview )
posted by Jason on Mon 05 April 2010, 18:04:42
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Obsidian developer J.E. Sawyer has joined some new social networking site called formspring.me that lets random people ask random questions.

What game were you not involved in developing in any way - that you wish you had been part of?

I think most people would expect me to say "Torment", but I've never really wished that. I can't imagine what I could have contributed to the project that everyone else already covered -- save some combat balance, but for most people the game did not hinge on its combat. The games I wish I could have been a part of are projects that had great potential but some terrible problems with execution, games that had great technology, great presentation, and exceedingly poor system or content design. And I'm not going to name any of them.

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Obsidian's JE Sawyer talks about fine tuning ( Editorial )
posted by DarkUnderlord on Fri 13 November 2009, 23:39:25
More info on Obsidian Entertainment - More info on J.E. Sawyer

JE Sawyer types some rambling, drunken words on Obsidian's Forum about tuning RPGs:

At work, I am often directly involved in an aspect of game design that not all designers really deal with: system and content tuning. This is the process by which system rules and content are adjusted to produce a specific effect for the player. E.g. you want the player to feel like he/she really gains a great advantage when he/she gets the raccoon tail in Super Mario Brothers 3, so you space out the frequency of raccoon tail powerups and you make sure that the raccoon tail's flight powers allow access to useful/valuable areas.

RPGs are often difficult to tune for a few reasons:

* There are a lot of statistics
* Many of the statics are derived/connected to other statistics
* There are subsystems that govern access to various abilities (e.g. class systems, racial abilities, etc.) that create a player desire for egalitarianism/balance between those subsystems.

This won't all be coherent, but I'd like to write down a few basic rules that I have developed over time.

* Avoid allowing a base value to be modified by more than three inputs.
* From a single value, avoid deriving multiple values in different subsystems.
* Do not create drawbacks that are "opt-out" for the player if it still gives some benefit to the player.
* When making trade-offs between items/skills/abilities, those trade offs must actually feel different in application or the player's choice isn't very important.
* Show the player what he or she is getting, even if they don't necessarily understand how the underlying math works out.

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J.E. Sawyer Interview By Grupo97 ( Interview )
posted by Edward_R_Murrow on Tue 23 June 2009, 02:01:09
More info on Obsidian Entertainment - More info on J.E. Sawyer

Gaming site Grupo97 has an interview with J.E. Sawyer up (in English), that asks some interesting questions about his views on gaming in general. Anyone looking for New Vegas information will be slightly disappointed, but it's a good read itself. Here's a few juicy quotes.

The threshold of simplicity that a hardcore gamer will accept is a lot lower than the threshold of difficulty that a mainstream gamer will accept.

A hardcore gamer may accept an automapping tool but scoff that in "the old days", he or she had to write things out on graph paper. A mainstream gamer will probably not accept the absence of an automapping tool. He or she will stop playing the game and tell everyone they know that it is terrible.
[...]
- Fallout, Baldur's Gate, Planescape Torment... Great games were developed at Black Isle, kind of games not easy to see today on the shelves. Some of them sold great, as Baldur's Gate. Do you believe would it be still possible to develop similar games to those today?

I guess it depends on how similar they need to be. In terms of mechanics, I think a lot of gamers wouldn't accept the controls or conventions of those old games. In terms of content, I believe it's still possible to do, but it's harder now.
[...]
The current gaming market doesn't typically support big budget games that deal with intellectually mature issues. Mature content is equated with sex and violence. Video games have not often been used as a theme-based or didactic medium, but that's not entirely the publisher's or developer's fault. As with films and books, most gaming audiences simply don't care as much about issues and themes as they do about visceral feedback.
[...]
I only did a bit of design work on the Dark Alliance games, but I think it was good for Interplay and Black Isle to work with Snowblind on those projects. Black Isle consisted almost entirely of PC RPG developers and it gave us a narrow focus. I think working on console titles helped open up some of the developers (myself included) to look at other input systems and gameplay styles.

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Josh Sawyer interview on Character systems at Iron Tower ( Interview )
posted by Elwro on Mon 11 August 2008, 17:24:32
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The notorious Vault "Vince" Dweller has once again provided some high quality reading material for the inner intellectual in us all. This time it's an interview with Obsidian's J. E. Sawyer about designing character systems.

VD: Let's start with attributes. What are your preferences? DnD-like 3 physical, 3 "mental" stats or something more complex? Should you be able to increase them through levels, trainers, or gadgets or not? Why? How should stats affect gameplay? Which character systems influenced you?

J. E. Sawyer:These days, I tend to err on the side of simpler, more abstracted systems. I try to think from the perspective of player action as the foundation for the system. That is, I think "What should the player be able to do in this environment?" and "What will the player want to be able to do in this environment?" and then try to build a system to support it.

For example, in the Aliens setting, there is a heavy emphasis on a character's ability to deal with stress. So I've thought about that in terms of the differences between learned skill and something innate to a character in the setting. It's arguable that the ability to resist the sort of mental trauma in the Aliens setting is a learned skill (the equivalent of Combat Cool in Cyberpunk 20/20's "Friday Night Fire Fight") and some of it is more inherent to the character, a fundamental part of who they are that isn't likely to change much over the course of the character's time in the game. So I think "Should this be represented in the game?", "How should this be represented in the game?" and "By what mechanics can the player mess with this representation?". You can see a similar sort of approach in games like Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu and even in the 2nd Edition AD&D Ravenloft supplemental rules. But in other settings, those sorts of mechanics and stats aren't really necessary. The specifics depend entirely on the game, though I approach those specifics from the practical perspective of supporting low-level core gameplay instead of satisfying a high-level set of mechanical ideals.

In terms of advancement mechanics, I have stronger guiding principles that I do believe carry from game to game. I used to be a big fan of "learn by doing", but in practice I think it really works best in tabletop games where the GM can adjudicate exactly what's going on. Now I favor systems where an abstracted earned currency is used to advance the character's stats -- in other words, typical XP systems, whether level-based or not. However, I am strongly against awarding experience points for "ways and means". I.e. killing monsters, picking locks, scribing scrolls, etc. Not only is it extraordinarily hard to balance for designers and QA staff, but it inevitably leads to nasty metagaming that, in my opinion, runs counter to some of the guiding principles of many RPGs. Unless combat is the sole focus of the game, we need to keep the player's focus on achieving a goal in whatever manner he or she sees fit. The accomplishment of the goal, not the method itself, should net the main reward. The reward for "ways and means" is usually self-contained. E.g. monsters drop monster bits, opening locked rooms gives access to otherwise unavailable equipment, hacking a computer gives some interesting data that can tie in with another game system. And really, the biggest reward has already been granted to the player: you allowed him or her to play the game in the manner he or she wanted. There's an idea I don't subscribe to -- that players need to be given tiny rewards for everything they do. If your gameplay is actually fun, you shouldn't need to bribe them! When gameplay simply becomes drudgery motivated by a desire to gain a bonus that makes the gameplay easier, I feel that we have failed as designers.

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Yet Another State of the RPG at GamePlayer ( Editorial )
posted by Saint_Proverbius on Wed 05 March 2008, 17:51:09
More info on Obsidian Entertainment - More info on J.E. Sawyer

GamePlayer has a longish State of the RPG article up which covers various aspects of the genre. Apparently it's this year that the XBox will take over the genre. There's also some fun stuff about Eastern CRPGs(which suck) versus Western CRPGs(which are heaps better). It mentions several CRPGs in development, including this one:

Think Aliens is a weird choice for an RPG? Lead designer Josh Sawyer doesn’t: "It’s always seemed like a perfect fit to me… Somebody has to make an RPG where the moment-to-moment gameplay is both visceral and fun." Exploring a ruined space hulk or a ravaged planet stuffed with those acid-bleeding xenomorphs could undoubtedly be cool.

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The Alien RPG status update ( Game news )
posted by Vault Dweller on Tue 10 April 2007, 17:45:53
More info on Obsidian Entertainment - More info on J.E. Sawyer

J.E. Sawyer, God bless his open soul, has shared some Alien RPG info with the eagerly anticipating community:

Things are going pretty well, but please understand that we're still very early in development. The game is many months off and we're still doing a lot of prototyping/core technology development. The design staff is refining a lot of early work on the project right now. Chris Avellone is the Lead Creative Designer on the project and he has been helping develop our dialogue tool and banter system. We want something that feels "natural" in flow and delivery but still gives the player a great deal of control and good options to take relationships in different directions. Paul Boyle joined us a couple of months ago as our Lead System Designer. Paul previously worked at Maxis on Sims titles and on Spore. He's been working a lot with me on our core system designs. We have good arguments discussions on ideas and he has been building a top-down 2D prototype for our tactical combat systems which is giving us great data on interface and AI/pathing issues. It's also allowing us to do rapid iteration on the crunchy numerical aspects of the game. Finally, Mike Stout joined us from Insomniac as our Lead Level Designer. He worked on several Rachet & Clank titles and as the Lead Multiplayer Level Designer on Resistance: Fall of Man. Mike is working with the art team to develop our level pipeline and establish building metrics. He's also been doing research on different types of non-linear games to see how they handle various aspects of revealing areas, opening up quests, scaling difficulty, etc.

As for me, I'm re-learning Flash to implement several prototype interfaces. The last time I had anything to do with Flash was when I made this. Yay!

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The Black Hound lives! ( Development info )
posted by Role-Player on Tue 09 January 2007, 17:49:53
More info on Baldur's Gate: The Black Hound - More info on Obsidian Entertainment - More info on J.E. Sawyer

Former Black Isle all-star J.E. Sawyer has recently confirmed that he is reviving his The Black Hound project with a module for Obsidian Entertainment's Neverwinter Nights 2. Speculation began after this thread at Obsidian's forums. Here's a snippet about the Epithet system, one of the more promising features:

I'm going to pretend this is a toolset/custom content thread! I've been working on a personal project in recent free time (mostly spent recovering from wisdom teeth being removed). In addition to learning a lot about mapping, I'm starting to get involved in scripting (which I've actually never done much of) and creating custom icons.

Today I worked on aspects of the epithet system for the campaign I'm building. Epithets are specialized reputations that are built over time across the campaign. Unlike local reputations that may only affect interactions with NPCs within a set of maps, epithets draw reactions from characters all over the campaign -- though they are very spread out.

The system itself is pretty simple. Each epithet has a global variable that is incremented in coversation (and occasionally outside of conversation). When the character has increased that particular variable enough, they will be "awarded" with the epithet, which takes the form of a feat. The feat has no statistical bonus, but is occasionally checked in NPC conversations.

I don't really want it to become a premium module. I'd rather work on it by myself as a personal project with all of the inherent benefits and limitations that come with that. I think it will probably take me between 1 and 3 years to fully build.

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10 reasons to buy NWN2 by JE Sawyer ( Editorial )
posted by Vault Dweller on Wed 11 October 2006, 14:31:21
More info on Neverwinter Nights 2 - More info on Obsidian Entertainment - More info on J.E. Sawyer

JE Sawyer has compiled a list of 10 Things to Do in NWN2 to entice you to buy the game:

1. Cool Tutorial - I never get tired of playing our tutorial. Actually, that's a lie. I've played our tutorial about 30 times, and when I start it up now, I long for the sweet release of death. However, I do not want to murder everyone involved in the creation of our tutorial after 30 sessions! That means that if you play through it once or five times, you'll love it! Seriously, it's a lot of fun. You get to help a child engage in theft, and you can expose the fraudulent flimflams of an old man and his pig. What else can you ask for? You might be asking, "But can I beat up some jerks with clubs?" You got it, pal.

2. Role-Playing - When I made my character, Sass Afrass, I gave her the tale-teller background trait. I decided to role-play this by "bluffing" (lying) any time I had the [LIE] or [BLUFF] options in dialogue, regardless of how terrible the results of failure might be. I had a lot of opportunity to do this! Also, I had a lot of opportunity to fail my bluff checks because I didn't put many points into bluff. Often, people got mad at me and attacked me with magic missiles, and my character slowly started telling the truth. I think my character learned a little something about honesty and I learned a little something about life!

5. Take Back the Streets! With Money! And Fire! - One of the routes through the game can be achieved by joining the city watch of Neverwinter. However, you can be a really corrupt watchman, which is pretty sweet. Bribery and graft are awesome! Alternately, you can side with the thugs and burn down the watch headquarters. Arson is awesome! If you're a pyromaniac with a heart of gold, you even have the option of burning down the watch headquarters and going inside to warn the residents so they don't get roasted alive. Merciful criminal torch-jobs are awesome!

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