Age of Decadence Interview

The Alley of Infinite Angles has a short interview with Iron Tower’s Vince D. Weller, talking Age of Decadence.

You have previously described your team as (picking up Troika’s ball because somebody had to). What is it about games like Troika’s that today’s RPGs aren’t providing, and why is it important to keep that flame alive?

I don’t think that in the last 10-15 years anyone did as much to truly push the RPG genre forward as Troika did. Fallout and Arcanum are two of the best RPGs ever created. ToEE had the best and most faithful DnD turn-based combat and one of the best turn-based combat implementations in general. Bloodlines was probably one of the first successful attempts to fuse action with role-playing. Robust dialogue trees with skillchecks, focus on characters and dialogues, non-linearity, multiple options and paths, choices & consequences – that’s Troika. We are influenced by Troika’s games, by Troika’s design philosophy, by Troika’s ideas.

Troika’s games were different. Troika’s RPGs were actually ROLE-PLAYING games, not games with adjustable stats. Sure, they were buggy and often unpolished, but I’d rather play a brilliant, but unpolished game, than a well-polished, generic and uninspiring game.

Needless to say, we’ll do our best to deliver well-tested and polished games for our audience.