General Facts Engine Setting Plot Gameplay    
Black Isle Studios

DISCLAIMER: This site is in no way affiliated with Black Isle Studios.
Unless otherwise noted, the quotes in this FAQ were originally made by J.E. Sawyer on the official Interplay message boards.

General Facts

Question: What is Jefferson?
Jefferson is the codename of one of the current unannounced Black Isle Studios projects. The other known codename of this project is FR6.

Question: Yeah, but what is Jefferson?
The short answer is: we don't know. The long answer involves some speculation; current rumors are that the game is set in the Forgotten Realms' region of Dalelands and is using the Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition ruleset. Almost forgot: Jefferson is not a console title.

Question: I am not familiar with Black Isle Studios. Who are they?
Black Isle Studios is the role-playing game division of Interplay. They are best known for isometric, party-based roleplaying games such as Fallout and Fallout 2, the Baldur's Gate series, the Icewind Dale series, and Planescape: Torment.

Question: Why Jefferson? Is the game connected in some way to the American Revolution?
A couple of years ago, Black Isle Studios decided to name all their in-house projects after American presidents (the suggestion was made by lead designer J.E. Sawyer). This is a semi-official naming convention, mainly used in communication with the fans before the games are announced. It is likely that BIS has simpler internal codenames.

Besides Jefferson, there are two other unannounced projects: Jackson (lead designer: Dave Maldonado; Jackson is in some way related to Jefferson), and Van Buren (lead designer: Chris Avellone; possibly Fallout 3).

We don't know what kind of a game Clinton will be, but we're looking forward to it. </bad joke>

Question: I've heard people talking about some game called Fallout Fantasy. Is that Jefferson?
No. Fallout Fantasy was a codename for Lionheart, a pseudo-historical RPG developed by Reflexive Entertainment. Lionheart is probably going to be published by Black Isle Studios at some point in the Spring of 2003.

Even though Lionheart was not an in-house project, Feargus Urquhart (CEO of Black Isle) thoroughly confused the fans by naming it Quincy. Of course, there was never an American president whose last name was Quincy, but this didn't stop the fans from making wild speculations.

Question: When are they going to announce Jefferson?
We have no clue. Jefferson has been in (some sort of) production for at least two years now. It was supposed to be announced at last year's GenCon (the largest role-playing convention in the world) in August, but that idea was abandoned for unknown reasons. Right now, the game is complete enough that it could be announced, but there are some (again unknown) legal issues that must be settled before that happens.

On August 30th, 2002, J.E. Sawyer wrote:
Jefferson began pre-production about a year and a half ago. At that time, there were only about five people on the team and TORN was still in development. When TORN was cancelled and IWD2 started up, it prevented Jefferson from entering full production until the end of IWD2.
On October 21st, 2002, J.E. Sawyer wrote:
Jefferson is not almost done.
Question: Which Black Isle employees are on the Jefferson team?
In the words of lead designer himself:
We are now in full production on Jefferson. The team consists of about 25-30 people.

Senior Executive God Emperor Producer Markgraf of Dune: Chris Parker
Lead Artist: Vance "Vancey Pants" Kovacs
Lead Designer: J.E. Sawyer
Lead Programmer: Brian Hendley
Artists: Glenn Price, Vera Milosavich, Chris Appelhans, Dennis Presnell, John Dickenson, Aaron Meyers, Abdul Brown, Carlos Cheek, Dany Martinez, Mustazar Essa, Trent Campbell, Chris Marleau
Designers: John Deiley, Damien Foletto, Scott Everts, Kihan "K-Pak" Pak, Sean Reynolds
Programmers: Jake "Why Do You Want to Work Here?" Devore, Jay Fong, Yuki Furumi, Mark Murakami, Chris Jones, Dan "Sassy" Spitzley, Dave Vodhanel.
Additionally, Dave Maldonado confirmed Brian Menze's involvement withJefferson:
Oh, Brian's actually done a number of things for the FR6 project -- he's simply not on the team full-time and might not have been doing anything for the title whenever the list you're referring to was made, is all.
Brian Menze is one of the most popular BIS artists, having designed the famous PIP-boy images for Fallout and several hundred icons for Planescape: Torment and Icewind Dale II (among other things).

Question: Are there any other web sites devoted toJefferson? Where can I find more information?
Not at the moment. Black Isle is serving a blank webpage at the http://jefferson.blackisle.com address, and a quick peek at the source code reveals this:

     <html>
     <head>
     <title>Jefferson Project</title>
     <!-- Nothing in here to see folks.-->
     </head>
     <body bgcolor="#000000">
     </body> 
     </html>
Generally speaking, the best source of information onJefferson right now are the Interplay forums, or, more specifically, the Black Isle Feedback forum.

Engine

Question: What kind of an engine will be used in Jefferson?
Black Isle has developed a new 3D isometric engine for Jefferson. Basically, Jefferson should look somewhat like a 3D version of Baldur's Gate (or other Infinity Engine games). The name of this new engine has not been decided yet.

Question: Will this engine be used for other BIS products?
Feargus Urquhart, CEO of Black Isle, stated that they will be using the engine for other products.

Question: Are there any screenshots?
Not yet. J.E. Sawyer has expressed the desire to publish a "tech demo" of Jefferson before the game's release. He has thus far evaded the requests to show a generic screenshot.

Question: I hate 3D! Why did they have to make it a 3D game?
For many reasons, including performance and ease of programming. If it makes you feel any better, Damien Foletto says that the engine looks very good:
We also already mentioned that we are working on a new 3D engine. In fact, the engine looks so good, it exceeds the crispness found in most 2D, anti-aliased engines. We're not throwing out what worked in the IE [Infinity Engine], we are using what worked, and adding even better things. Can't give specifics right now, but it's coming together great.
Question: Why not just use the Infinity Engine? IE games still look better than most newer 3D games.
Whether or not the IE looks better than the newer 3D engines is a matter of taste. After being recycled so many times, however, the IE is a mess. It is difficult to work with, and the programmers constantly find themselves fighting some of the limitations that the Bioware programmers couldn't possibly foresee when they first developed the engine for Baldur's Gate. On top of that, the IE is beginning to show its age, both looks- and performance-wise. If everything goes well, the engine used for Jefferson will be the "spiritual successor" of the Infinity Engine:
At every step of the development of the Jefferson engine, we have examined its components and held them up to Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Planescape: Torment, and Fallout. Our intention is to take everything that was well designed about those engines and incorporate them into Jefferson. At the same time, there are a lot of mistakes that we made in developing these engines -- mistakes that we hope to correct in the development of Jefferson. We are absolutely, positively dedicated to making Jefferson's engine better on every level than all of our previous engines. This includes development flexibility.
Question: What did he mean by "development flexibility?"
Primarily the separation of engine and game logic. Developing a new engine for RPGs is a costly and lengthy process, and it would be nice if the same base engine could be used for games with different rulesets; by separating the engine and game logic, BIS has ensured that they can use Jefferson's base engine for a future game based on the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. rules, for example. The Jefferson engine was specifically designed to be sheared away and rebuilt for other games.

The "base engine" in this context means the part of the engine that processes graphics and sounds, loads the areas, and performs similar tasks common to most engines.

Question: What kind of a monster computer will I need to run Jefferson?
As of yet, that is unknown. We can provide this answer by the lead designer:
We can't give out specs, but I'm pretty sure a GeForce 3 would be fine. Just guessing, though. Today I was running the build with a GeForce 2. Of course, that was on a 2.2 ghz machine with 512 megs of RAM, so that's not a very good measure. Don't hold me to any of this; I'm just giving a wild guess based on what we're currently working with.

Our min-spec isn't going to be a 3 ghz with a GeForce 5 and 1 GB of RAM, I can tell you that much
Question: How do Jefferson's graphics compare to, say, Morrowind or Neverwinter Nights?
They don't. It's apples and oranges, as Josh aptly points out:
Comparing Jefferson's graphics to MW isn't really appropriate, since one is a first-person game and the other is a third-person isometric game. It's also not entirely fair to compare Jefferson's graphics to NWNs. NWN uses an entirely dynamic lighting model. This creates uniformly good lighting, but a lot of the subtlety is lost. It was also a requirement for their engine, since it's also a very flexible toolset. The Jefferson engine uses a static lighting solution for environments because we're not building it to be an enduser toolset like NWN. We just want the levels and characters we make to look dope, fly, and phat. And they do, IMO.
Question: Is the Jefferson engine suitable for modding?
Some parts of it may be, some parts not. Josh says that the data tables are still stored in two-dimensional arrays in text files (called .RLZ, for "roolz"), and those should be fairly easy to modify. The graphics, on the other hand, are a whole different ball game:
The art pipeline is complicated. Pieces of static geometry go through three file formats (two proprietary) a number of times before they actually come together with light maps in the engine. It can be... frustrating... at times, but the visual effect is impressive.

Making new maps would be hellaciously difficult. Sorry.
Question: How interactive will the environment of Jefferson be?
The environment will be moderately interactive: more than it was in the Infinity Engine games, but nowhere near the level of Ultima VI and similar games.

Question: Can the Jefferson engine display cloaks on my character's avatar if they are worn?
Yes.
We have flexible fabric inventory items that display on avatars already.
Question:Are the arrows going to stick in shields or armor like in NWN?
Not likely.
This is certainly possible, but I doubt we will spend time implementing something like this. Features like this fall into the "cool" category instead of the "fun" category. "Cool" lasts a few seconds; "fun" lasts for most of the game.
Question: How will Jefferson handle camera rotation?
Camera rotation will be locked by default. Moving the mouse will cause the camera to move on the XY coordinates rather than rotating it. It will be possible to rotate the camera with the numeric keypad or using a combination of keys and mouse buttons.

Question: Will Jefferson have dynamic lighting?
No and yes. The maps in Jefferson will use pre-burned light and shadow maps, which (as seen above) merge with the pieces of static geometry during the rendering process. On the other hand, there will likely be dynamic lights as well as shadows for dynamic objects. The overall effect should look pretty impressive, but the pre-burned maps mean that creating new maps for Jefferson will be a difficult endeavor.

Question: Will there be painted character portraits in Jefferson?
No. Instead of portraits, Jefferson will feature 3D characters heads (somewhat similar to the ones seen in Planescape: Torment). Designers have promised that these heads will offer enough detail and customizability that players will want to use them for their Pen-and-Paper campaigns.

Question: Will the save game format make it easy for future games to import Jefferson characters?
Since the save games will contain all character data, there is no reason why this won't be the case.

Question: What kind of a scripting language will the Jefferson engine use?
A solid scripting language with good documentation so that even stupid designers can write basic scripts.
Okay. That really tells us nothing (other than revealing that some designers have low self-esteem), so let us turn to a more detailed answer (by Chad Nicholas):
Jefferson's scripting language is nothing like the IE's. It's a lot more like C (with arrays, enums, functions, if/else, for, while, switch, etc.) statements and commands.

I'm not sure if end users will have access to it or not -- that decision rests with the producer.
For the more programming-inclined, here's another interesting snippet (same author):
Characters are objects, but you have a script function do something to them via their entityID, which is a unique handle to that object. The Protagonist() is a function -- that returns the entityID of the protagonist -- because the value of the entityID is not known until runtime.

Setting

Question: What is the setting of Jefferson?
We don't know yet, but chances are it is a Forgotten Realms title set in the region of Dalelands.

Question: Huh? If the game hasn't been announced yet, how did you come up with that?
Well, the designers have been pretty liberal with hints. For instance, before Sean K. Reynolds started working for BIS, J.E. Sawyer wrote:
Sean Reynolds is coming to work at Black Isle, and he will be working on Jefferson. However, he will be the last designer to join the team, and he has no previous CRPG design experience. That said, I think he's a good pen and paper designer, and we needed another intermediate-level designer on the Jefferson project. Also, the fact that he was so involved with 3E Forgotten Realms should hopefully help remove me from the odious role of D&D mentat.
We also know what Jefferson isn't (J.E. Sawyer again):
If you want to complain about Jefferson not being Fallout 3 (because it isn't), feel free.
Then there's this little hint (Damien Foletto):
We already mentioned that there is plenty of room for a new D&D game, and that we'll be making quite a bit more between now and when our contract is up in 2005 (we can even start new D&D projects in 2005).
In addition, the "other" codename for Jefferson is FR6, although Dave Maldonado claims that the game doesn't have anything to do with the Forgotten Realms accessory FR6: Dreams of the Red Wizards anymore:
...I can guarantee you that Jefferson now has absolutely nothing to do with FR6. Feel free to burn me in effigy if the game comes out and you still find yourself playing D&D in the Unapproachable East, heh heh!
Still, even though the focus of the game may have been shifted from the Unapproachable East, how likely is it that they would have changed the ruleset and the campaign setting altogether? Not very likely.

To cement the "proof" about Jefferson's setting, I'll refer you to look at the reputation system mentioned under the Gameplay section of this FAQ, where you'll see a quote by J.E. Sawyer mentioning numerous Forgotten Realms groups, such as the Zhentarim, the Red Wizards, and the Harpers.

Oh, and one last clue. If you own Icewind Dale II, start the game and look very carefully at the intro movie. When the book opens, there is a picture of a dog. What's so strange about a dog? Well, aside from the fact that it has nothing to do with Icewind Dale II, the developers have hinted that this dog is somehow connected to Jefferson. J.E. Sawyer even posted a very small illustration of a human character walking alongside a dog.

At the moment the dog picture is shown, the narrator is talking about her travels. Her travels to Mistledale, one of the small states that comprise the Dalelands region.

Plot

Question: So, what's the story like?
Er... not so fast. The story will likely remain unknown until the game ships (what's the point in playing, otherwise?). We can tell you this much, though:
The main character(s) in Jefferson are initially drawn into the story through a coincidence. He/she/they are present, by chance, at an extremely bizarre event. The participants in this event then leave, with the main character(s) as the only witness and unknowing participant. However, this initial association does not define how the story progresses. It simply defines how the main character's take an initial position of importance to other major characters. It is left to the player to decide how their character(s) will inflate or discard this initial position for good or ill. There are no paths or courses that are "designer wrong" even if they may be "world wrong". Over the span of the story, the player decides how things will turn out. The role you choose for your character(s) is definitely of high importance and focus.
We also know that Jefferson's plot is in some way connected to the plot of the Terry Gilliam movie Brazil.

Question: I've heard people mention something called "The Jefferson Dog." What kind of a canine are we talking about?
An elusive one. The Jefferson Dog was first mentioned on the old BIS Icewind Dale II message board, where Josh casually observed that he was surprised how nobody had noticed the dog in the Icewind Dale II intro movie. Slowly, hint by hint, the fans have managed to find out that this dog was in some way connected to Jefferson.
I'm still surprised that no one has yet asked about the first image seen in Maralie's book -- the one that isn't seen ever again in the narration...
A few days later, Josh changed his board avatar to this. The caption above the picture was "You cannot kill guilt." One of the other developers again made a casual remark about the connection between the avatar and Jefferson, and this spawned a huge number of highly speculative threads about Jefferson, the Dog, and the meaning of life, such as this one.

Finally, when asked about the kind of computer he uses at work, J.E. responded with this photo. Next to the monitor, which displays a picture of a ranger-like man with dogs, is the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting book, opened to the page which contains a map of the Dalelands.

By the way, the evil-looking stuffed animal on the left is Sassy, the BIS mascot.

Question: Will Jefferson's villains have some motivations beyond the obvious "MWAHAHAHA I WANT TO RULE THE WORLD" one?
[I'd like the villains to be] major characters with clear, simple motivations that the player and characters can empathize with. Do you know anyone who seriously wants to rule the world -- or even a nation? How about someone who wants to just "amass power"? Nope, neither do I. I'm sure they exist, but I can't really empathize at all. But -- have you ever wanted to do something to help a friend (or your nation), even though you thought it might be wrong? Have you ever wanted to get the money to buy something so badly that you'd considered doing something illegal? I like characters with these sorts of motivations because I can empathize with them.
Question: If Jefferson is a Forgotten Realms title, will the plot be connected to some of the (in)famous Realms organizations?
It is much too early to tell, but the various prominent organizations will definitely be a part of the game. See the sub-section on reputation in the gameplay section below.
[I'd like to see the] portrayal of various Realms organizations with a detailed level of depth. Got Red Wizards of Thay in the game? Why do they do the things they do? How are they organized? Do they ever feud, and if so, how?

Gameplay

Question: What kind of a game is Jefferson?
Jefferson is definitely a role-playing oriented, story-driven game. Damien Foletto wrote:
I can't say what kind of game we're working on right now (well, an CRPG obviously), but I can say it is BIG, deep, and should please a lot of our fans out there (we hope).
Question: Is Jefferson an epic game?
In a subtle way, yes. The designers' goal is to make Jefferson a game that has both short-term and long-term appeal, which is a difficult thing to accomplish (to say the least). Characters in Jefferson will not increase in statistical power by leaps and bounds, which means that the plot cannot emphasize things that relate to high-level abilities.
If the characters themselves don't transform on a grand system scale (like in BG1), you have to emphasize other rewarding things.

Emphasize the way in which characters note how the player does things. Emphasize the ability of the player to really choose a WIDE variety of paths through a game. Emphasize that the player's character may be special, but it's what the player DOES with the character that truly matters in the game. Place the player's character at the center of the action. He or she has the ability to save or ruin things everywhere he or she goes -- and it's not always a clear choice to make. But when he or she makes that choice, the die is cast. People pay attention, and they really react to what you've done. Areas may change, groups may change. Power axes may shift. And if you want to be a bloodthirsty town-killer, you can still win. If you want to creep and sneak and steal your way through danger, rock out. Most importantly, if you want to deal with the main problem of the game by facilitating that problem's success -- you should be allowed to.
Question: Is Jefferson open-ended and nonlinear?
Jefferson should be the most open-ended game BIS has done since Fallout 2. Movement will be a bit more restrictive than Fallout, but much more open than the Icewind Dale games.

Question: How does Jefferson compare to Morrowind?
Jefferson really isn't anything like Morrowind - whether you view that as a good or bad thing.
Question: How does Jefferson compare to Fallout?
In a way, Jefferson emphasizes a lot of the gameplay elements that Fallout did. Though it was very cool to get Power Armor and miniguns in Fallout, it was much more cool to watch the end cinematic and see how your choices affected each of the areas you touched. And hey, if you wanted to take a dip in the vats, you could. Not necessarily a very satisfying ending, but you could do it. You could legitimately take the evil road to victory.
Question: How does Jefferson improve upon the concepts that were present in previous BIS games?
My design focus has been somewhere between high concept and practical fun. I've never been a big fan of ethereal notions of game design. That said, I've taken a very long look at the way we've done things in the past, and I believe that we are trying to do some very ambitious things that are a step above and beyond what we have done in the past.
Question: A few of the things I've read in this FAQ lead me to the conlusion that Jefferson will be a pretty revolutionary game. Any comments?
I don't think I've ever said that Jefferson would be revolutionary; revolutions can only be appreciated in retrospect. I think Jefferson will be very evolutionary. Jefferson will emphasize roleplaying and increased play options for characters.
Question: Define "increased play options," please?
The ability to do a wider variety of things instead of a small variety of things at rapidly increasing levels of power.
Question: I've heard similar claims before, but it always ends up the same: good characters do things for charity, and evil characters do things for the money. How is Jefferson going to be different?
Greater freedom in dealing with the main plot. The player should be able to take a variety of "good/neutral/evil" stances with regards to the story and still "win". This should be more involved than simply saying, "I do this for charity or money." If the player wishes to say, "No, good folk, I will not help you, but instead help these evil bastards." this should be allowed, even if the end result is something dreadful.
Question: Killing an NPC in a town would turn the whole town against you in IE games, which usually resulted in a reload. Is Jefferson the same?
The world should punish the Protagonist; the game should not punish the player. There should not be a grand karmic designer wheel that makes evil PCs suffer for being evil. However, the world should respond appropriately to these acts. An evil PC should find him or herself disliked, feared, and hunted for known evil acts. If this means that certain aspects are harder or easier for those types of PCs, so be it.
Question: Will I be able to create a whole party of adventurers myself (like Icewind Dale), or just one character (like Baldur's Gate)?
Just one character, the protagonist. There will be other adventurers who can join your cause in the game, like in the Baldur's Gate series, but they are likely to have their own agendas and may disagree with your decisions.
The background of the Protagonist should be left completely open for the player. No prophecies. No supernatural background. No assumed nationality, sex, race, or moral/ethical stance. The player should be allowed to play a wide variety of roles with relative freedom within the circumstances of the story.
Question: What kind of a system will be used for generating ability scores?
Unweighted point buy, just as in Icewind Dale II. For those who aren't familiar with it, the characters will have a set number of points to spend on ability scores (76 in Icewind Dale II, for example), and each point spent will increase the ability score by one point. This system was used in many non-D&D games, most notably the Fallout series.

Question: That's not fair! In Baldur's Gate I was able to roll for my ability scores until I was satisfied with them. Why not include the dice roll?
Well, for one thing, the "dice roll" in Baldur's Gate wasn't a "dice roll" at all. It was basically a system that generated a random number of points to be distributed between the abilities as the player saw fit. Since the number generated was random, it was possible to end up with characters who had really high ability scores by re-rolling many times. On the other hand, people who didn't want to re-roll would often end up with lousy ability scores. It is hard to make the game both challenging and fun for both types of players; thus, the developers decided to set the number of points available for spending to a fixed value.

But fear not! If you want to make uber-characters, there is still hope:
For Icewind Dale II, I wanted to have a button called "free spend" that allowed players to set their statistics to whatever they want -- with the warning that the game was balanced for characters with N points and blah, blah, blah. I'd like to see that in Jefferson.
Question: Will ability scores affect the dialogue options?
It can be safely presumed that high ability scores will result in a wider variety of dialogue options. As for the low ability scores:
Lowering statistics to the severely sub-normal range will make you suffer. The main (player created) character is always the person who starts conversation, and if he or she has low enough social statistics, people will be utterly repulsed by him or her and not even carry on a conversation long enough to switch to a more personable NPC. All mental statistics have penalties that will scale down to the lowest available values and have the full force of their maladies inflicted upon characters of all types.
Note the "carry on a conversation long enough to switch to a more personable NPC." This means that the joinable NPCs in Jefferson will have a much more active role in the conversations than seen before.

Question: How much dialogue will there be in Jefferson anyway?
Seeing as how Jefferson is supposed to be a "deep, story-driven game," there will probably be a whole lot more dialogue than seen in the recent BIS products:
I would say that the dialogue will not be quite as dense as Torment. Probably somewhere between IWD2 and PS:T.

IWD2's dialogue is a big step up from the dialogues in IWD, IMO. Personally, I think the dialogue in IWD2 is a bit too light for a lot of hardcore RPG enthusiasts, but the dialogue in PS:T is too heavy for most people who AREN'T hardcore RPG enthusiasts.
Finally,
We have made two full dungeon crawl products. That's enough for now. This shouldn't = "VOLUMES OF TEXT TO RIVAL THE ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA", but it should certainly be more focused on dialogue.
Question: How will Jefferson track characters' reputation?
There are several types of reputation in Jefferson: Regional Reputation, Factional Reputation, Fame/Infamy, and Epithets. The first three all have positive and negative scales.
Some characters may only care about your positive reputation in an area, others might only care about your negative reputation in an organization, and others might try to balance a number of reputations when they speak to you.
Question: What is Regional Reputation?
Regional Reputation is a positive/negative counter that depends on the actions the character performs in a specific region. Using the northwest section of the Inner Sea in the Forgotten Realms as an example, the character would have the following Regional Reputations: Question: What is Factional Reputation?
Similar to Regional Reputation, Factional Reputation is a counter that measures your actions toward certain organizations: Not only will Factional Reputation affect your dealings with certain organizations, it will also affect your dealings with the allies and enemies of those organizations:
Certain characters will care about these different portions, but others might not. Got a good reputation with the People of the Black Blood? The citizens of Waterdeep might not care, but the folks at the church of Chauntea might.
In addition, Factional Reputation may have further subdivisions:
These organizational ones could be broken down even further. For example, the Red Wizards of Thay in FR are currently divided about the existence of Enclaves (no relation to the post-apocalyptic U.S. gov't) and the "conquest through trade" method. If your character did something to reinforce the existence of the Enclaves against the wishes of the "old skool" Red Wizards who blow everyone up, you could increase your Red Wizard Progressive Positive reputation and increase your Red Wizard Traditionalist Negative reputation.
Question: What are Fame and Infamy?
Fame and Infamy are "global" reputations. They are only changed through large-scale actions that affect more than just one area or one organization, and only if those actions would be reasonably well-known through the entire game area.
For example, if you single-handedly stopped a Super Mutant invasion of Vault City, that would likely result in Fame, since everyone in the game area would eventually know about something so important. If you single-handedly wiped out Vault City, you would get Infamy.
Question: What are Epithets?
Epithets are specific reputation tags assigned to your character as a result of his actions. For example:
Old Lady: "Please, sir, could you help me find my cat? I am so very lost without her."
Protagonist: "I don't care about you. I don't care about your cat. I don't care if you and your cat live happily ever after. I don't care if you both burst into flame and are reduced to ash. Leave me alone."

IncEpithet(Protagonist(),"Apathy",1);

When your "Apathy" counter hits a certain point, you gain the epithet "Porcelain Mask".

Porcelain Mask: This character is known for his or her unshakable apathy towards everyone and everything. Stones care more about the rising and the setting of the sun than you care about your fellow man.
Does the character repeatedly refuse rewards even when they are richly deserved? Maybe he should earn the Blessed Charity reputation. In special situations, NPCs could respond to this state and let the player know that they are hot stuff, baby. Did your character kill a man in Suzail just to watch him die? Laugh at the misfortune of widow? Cruel Master. Have you frequently provoked fights or convinced NPCs/CNPCs to attack their enemies? Antagonistic Barb.
Question: Is there a list of known Epithets?
There will be up to two dozen Epithets in the game. Known ones include: Question: Can a character have multiple epithets?
Yes. Epithets are simply specific reputation tags, so you can be both an Antagonistic Barb and a Rapier of Wit (or any other combination of Epithets).

Question: How do the Epithets affect the game?
Epithets may override the Regional or Faction Reputations when dealing with specific NPCs:
For example, let's say you have the epithet "Blessed Charity". You enter the town of Floozel and anger a few people, gaining a negative reputation in the community. The priests at the temple of Flamzel, though, look to see if you have the Blessed Charity epithet before they look at your general rep. If you have it (and don't have a contradictory one -- like, say, Wind of Death), they will greet you with open arms.

Similarly, you may have the epithet "Forge of Rage" in a town where you have an otherwise good reputation. The refined nobles of the community might look down on such an explosively violent individual and have trouble associating with you.

A character who has a good reputation, but is known throughout the lands as a "Cruel Master" would be poorly received by priests of Ilmater, regardless of other factors.
Question: Can we lose epithets?
Right now, it's only an additive system. We figure that a person will generally tend towards one type of behavior or the other (given two polar opposites). And if they don't, we can accomodate that by simply cancelling the checks out when appropriate. For example, we could have a character who responds favorably towards people who are Gentlemen/Gentlewomen of Disctinction, but NOT Forges of Rage.
Question: Wouldn't this severely punish a character that has conflicting epithets since they effectively cancel each other out?
No, it's just not rewarding him/her. The same thing could also happen in reverse. A character might respond negatively to a Forge of Rage UNLESS the person is also a Gentleman/Gentlewoman of Distinction. And yes, it varies from person to person. Responses to epithets are all individual; that's supposed to be part of their appeal.
Question: What degree of control will I have over joinable NPCs?
A few months ago, J.E. Sawyer ran a poll on the forums, asking the fans what kind of control they would want over joinable NPCs. One of the interesting options the poll offered was "trust-based control." This method works by letting player's actions determine the level of NPC loyalty, and, consequently, grants the player greater control over NPC actions. Whether or not this system will be used in Jefferson remains to be seen.

If the Protagonist says to a CNPC, "SHUT THE HELL UP." or "I WOULD LIKE YOU TO DO YOUR OWN THING IN COMBAT." The CNPC should say, "Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full." and DO IT.
Hopefully, if Jefferson uses AI-scripted joinable NPCs, they will work better than Neverwinter Nights' henchmen or suicidal (and homicidal) Fallout NPCs.

Question: Are joinable NPCs going to have depth, with their own goals and agendas?
Of course.
There should be CNPCs in the game, whether the player chooses to make use of them or not. The CNPCs should have detailed personalities and methods of interaction. Their responses to PC and CNPC actions should be based on personal biases, not alignment. A humble, pious, tolerant paladin should have a big problem with a zealous worshiper of Torm -- even though they have the same alignment. In many cases, evil CNPCs could get along with good CNPCs if neither shows any behavior that is particularly abhorrent to the other.

And if they do have problems, or come to some crisis between each other, it should be the role of the Protagonist to resolve these issues. Does the Protagonist have a high Charisma? High Bluff/Intimidate/Diplomacy? How will he or she deal with these situations? Will those solutions last?

Similarly, the Protagonist should have the capability to change the characters -- both from a role-playing standpoint and in a "game" sense. Maybe that keen rogue can be convinced to become a cleric of Mask. Maybe he can be reformed and go in another direction entirely. This makes the characters part of the gameplay.
Question: Will there be romances?
In a limited fashion, yes.

Question: How many hours will it take to complete Jefferson?
We have no clue. The game is supposed to be very deep, with many sub-quests and alternative ways of solving them, but there were no hints thus far as to how many hours of gameplay that translates to.

Question: What level will my characters reach in Jefferson?
The current maximum attainable level is 8. This is subject to change, and the limit was already moved from level 5 (as was originally planned). Characters will not be able to reach the maximum level unless they complete all the optional quests in a most optimal way.

Question: Only level eight? I don't like playing low-level characters. Why should I care about Jefferson?
Jefferson emphasizes breadth of character development. The goal is not to make the player focus on rapid advancement and getting phat loot, but on using a wide variety of abilities to solve problems in the way that they want to. And in solving those problems, they should not only feel systematically rewarded for their efforts (XP, etc.), but they should feel as though the world really reacts to what they have done, and the way they did it.
Question: Will there be prestige classes?
No. Even though some characters may qualify for a prestige class by the end of the game, the game's level eight cap means that no character would be able to acquire more than two or three levels in any given prestige class, whereas many would probably only qualify for one level, or none at all. For some player characters, this would also mean that they have to plan their every feat and allocate every skill point in a certain way in order to qualify for the prestige class, which is generally not viewed as "fun."

Question: I am concerned about replayability. Will Jefferson offer something new in this department?
Apparently so. During the course of the game, the protagonist will have the option to ally with different factions, and those alliances will affect the possible outcomes of the game and the way the storyline progresses. According to Sean K. Reynolds, this is just one of the reasons the game is very replayable.

Question: Presuming that Jefferson is a D&D game, how will the cleric domains be implemented?
As per the rules, it seems, although not all the domains will make it. In a "hypothetically speaking" post, Josh said the following:
Personally, I would try to implement them close to the book, with a bit of toning down for the more powerful domains (like Time). I'd go through the deity list for the setting, find the most common domains, followed by the less common domains, trailed by the extremely rare domains. I'd focus on implementing the domains in order of use to get the most out of them. Demi-human deities were sorely missed in IWD2, so I'd make sure that they were all WELL represented. With the proper approach to implementation, I don't think that getting 50-75 deities in would be unreasonable.

It's not a matter of getting all domains in for every deity, it's a matter of getting at least three solid domains in for every deity. Take the domains implemented in NWN, for instance. If you were to make genuine deity lists using those domains, you couldn't actually cover a lot of ground. It's not as outlandish as it sounds.

You can still have a wide variety of appropriate dialogue options for clerics of 50+ deities. There are a lot of cases where deities overlap in their outlook on a situation. For instance, you could check to see if the character worships Tyr, Helm, Torm, or another super lawful anti-thievery deity, then give this dialogue option:

     "By <DEITYNAME>, I swear you will not get away with this vile theft!"

Not too crazy, and perfectly appropriate.
Question: What will the inventory in Jefferson look like?
J.E. Sawyer recently commented on this, provoking a huge debate on the merit of weight/volume based systems (or the lack thereof). Anyway, his initial reply was:
Weight limited only, effectively infinite slots, no inventory Tetris.
Question: Will Jefferson feature a barter system like the Fallout games, or will it have straight items-for-gold conversion (like the IE games)?
The developers are hesitant to give a straightfoward answer to this question for some reason. Apparently, gold (or whichever other currency Jefferson uses) will still be weightless and won't factor into the characters' encumbrance. There may be banks or similar establishments for the character to store acquired wealth without running the risk of getting robbed and losing all the hard-earned cash.

Question: What about stolen goods and contraband? Will there be a black market?
I think it would be appropriate if evil characters could use/traffic drugs and/or other contraband by making special alliances. These alliances could also help them sell stolen goods -- when selling stolen goods at a "legit" store would get the town guards after them.
Question: Will there be places to store stuff? What about strongholds?
There will definitely be "places to store stuff." Whether or not these will be true "strongholds" is unknown, but many fans have expressed the desire to have some place they could call home in the game.

Question: Is Jefferson going to be a Monty Haul game?
It's hard to tell, but there were few CRPGs so far that weren't Monty Haul (in other words, where the adventurers didn't end up filthy rich by the second half of the game, thanks to loads of expensive magic items found in the dungeons). Jefferson may include some cool new ways to spend the hard-earned wealth, though.

Question: Turn-based or real-time combat?
Real-time with pause at the moment, just like in the IE games. The Jefferson engine can use a turn-based mode, but whether or not the game ends up with a turn-based combat option depends on the time and resources. If they have to stick with one system, it will be real-time with pause.
It may have a turn-based option. To be honest, I would like to make the game straight-up turn-based with smaller, more contained battles, but that ship doesn't sail far beyond my office. The engine can use a turn-based mode, but we still have to gauge if we will have a healthy amount of time to fully implement and test both systems. A lot of people (correctly) say that it takes extra time to implement a turn-based and real-time combat system. When we get into serious combat testing, the amount of time and work we have left will determine whether we push for two well-implemented systems or just stick with one. Two mediocre systems -- that doesn't make anyone happy.

We've been allocated a pretty healthy amount of time, but I'm not too keen on making promises about things that are uncertain.
Question: Will Jefferson include all the D&D weapon types (if it is a D&D game)?
While it is doubtful that the game will include all of the weapons found in the D&D rulebooks, J.E. Sawyer seems to think that there will be plenty enough:
There are so many weapon types in Jefferson that it's honestly pretty crazy. It's like Matrix walking out of the surplus store in Commando. There are dozens of different weapon types.
Question: I thought adding new weapons was difficult. How come they're adding all these new weapons all the sudden?
In a 3D engine, putting in wacky weapons is usually pretty simple as long as the body motions of the character match up to the weapon that's being used. For example, if a character has a single-handed slash animation, it's as easy to socket a longsword in there as a scimitar, sabre, khopesh, kukri, or hand axe. Animated weapons (like whips, flails, etc.) are more difficult, but still easier to do than in 3D.

This would apply to any set of similar weapons. Hell, if you had a pistol animation, you could put fifty pistol-ish weapons with different models and weapons in the character's hand with no difficulty at all.

In 2D, this is a little more difficult, since it involves making overlays. A lot of them. In general, 3D avatars really do offer a lot more customization and flexibility.
Question: Will there be horses, riding, and mounted combat in Jefferson?
Not likely. Unfortunately, making the animations for mounting, dismounting, and mounted combat for a number of different racial avatars of varying appearances is not trivial. It is probably on the wish list, but doesn't have a high priority.

Question: What about flying, swimming, and climbing?
Flying is in, but the characters will be limited to a reasonable distance above ground (they will appear to be hovering rather than flying). Climbing is also in, in a more limited fashion (i.e. there will be certain places that can be climbed and others that cannot). Swimming is currently not in, and its priority is likely even lower than riding (if it is being considered at all).

Question: What are the chances of seeing near-death rules from D&D finally implemented in Jefferson?
J.E. thinks that near-death rules (where characters are disabled at zero hit points and lose one hit point per round if they fall below zero, before finally duying at -10) are important in any multi-character game. Characters who are "hovering on the Death's door" can be revived by party members before they die, and it makes the Heal skill an important aspect of the game.

Question: I hated it when my characters died in IE games and I had to manually re-equip all their gear. How will Jefferson deal with this?
The developers are well-aware of this particular frustration and we are likely to see some sort of an improvement. There have been several good suggestions, including the one to make dead bodies "objects" that can be carried around and act as containers for the dead character's gear. Something similar to this may be implemented in the game.

Question: Are we going to be able to resurrect any dead body in the game?
No. It is ultimately pointless and likely to create continuity problems. Resurrection spells will be still limited to party members.

Question: Will the game have mature content?
This certainly depends on your definition of "mature." We don't know what rating BIS is aiming for.
I think that D&D games can, and should, have mature content. But it should be mature, not immature. Evil should be presented with motive and bit more complexity than some games show. Moral relativism should be implicit (but not explicit, since that gets really grating) and this should definitely play in to how the the story unfolds.