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View Full Version : A "god" plays that awesome game, "Earth"



Newman
2012-01-06, 08:57 AM
Now, here's this thing that troubles me with RPGs and videogames... it's the detatchment.

See, you get shot and maimed and crippled to an inch of your life, and a couple of "potions" later you're as fine as if nothing had happened? I mean, it's easy and costless for a player to make heroic choices, but what about the PC who's actually risking their lives against pants-wettingly dangerous enemies and obstacles for complete strangers? What compels them?

Hm, how can I highlight what makes me uneasy here... Okay, check this out. Imagine a story, told in first-person, about a god (or such, someone who actually exists outside our dimension) who views the world through an avatar, unbeknownst to the inhabitants of the world, and who has the same powers as the player of a videogame, including getting back to previous states (not to mention cheating, modding, bug exploitation...). While in that world even criminals have to worry about survival and breadwinning on a daily basis, this person views the world in purely "metagame" terms. Even heroic, such a god would be a complete, dangerous, chilling sociopath.

In this spoiler I will discuss a topic that might immediately come to mind. I will argue that that interpretation is trite, obvious, tired, and potentially offensive to roughly a third of humanity. If by now you haven't guessed what it is, you don't need to read it. If you have, you don't either, but I'll leave it for reference in case "Are you pondering what I'm pondering?" turns out the way it does in Pinkie and the Brain.
We will not discuss "This world is analogous to a Matrix programmed by God, and Jesus was God's PC, which is why it was so easy for him to be as perfect and wonderful as he was (and also probably why he was so chaste). His perspective and circumstances weren't those of a human. This cheapens his sufferings."

kamikasei
2012-01-06, 09:12 AM
If you don't want to discuss something linked to real-world religion, you can simply say so without identifying it specifically, since the rules prohibit it anyway.

On the actual topic... well, yeah; if you're not getting in to character, but rather driving your avatar around like a puppet, then they're going to seem weirdly detached from their circumstances... because they are. It's not a necessary outcome, though, and the remedy is simply to think about how things seem from your character's perspective and have them respond appropriately more often; or, if it's just a genre/system convention (as in the "you'll get hurt, quaff a potion, heal, and soldier on unperturbed" example), either don't worry about it too much or play a different genre/system more to your taste.

In general, I don't advocate getting too much in to your character's head, though. It's still fun to OOC-deliberately get them in to situations they may not IC-want to seek out. More or less OOC behaviour for the sake of fun may be acceptable or even desireable depending on the seriousness of a scene. It's fluid.

Newman
2012-01-06, 09:33 AM
Yeah, but videogames in particular encourage this sort of attitude a lot. It's not just munchkinning. It's sort of... you can fake being involved and stuff, but at the end of the day, you're just not on the same level as the NPCs. I'm just saying, try to think of it from the NPC's POV. They can't possibly know you're a PC. I don't know a single game that actually allows you to play as "yourself, playing a PC", and let NPCs know about that. What they'll percieve will be that guy who always seems to know the right thing to do, survives even the more improbable fights, progresses in a matter of weeks what takes others millennia (Vampire The Maskerade Bloodlines is especially guilty) is always very bold about adventure, whether for the sake of good or that of evil, acts like an unconcerned tourist even when he seems to care for you and your loved ones, and generally acts like the world is a toy for his excitement or a tool for his goals and gets very upset when it doesn't work...

TheOasysMaster
2012-01-06, 09:38 AM
:smallconfused:
What's your point?

What you're talking about is one of the finer points of roleplaying; how into the role one gets and realistically they take it.


Logically, once the character party enters the dungeon and activate four traps, release a monster and trigger a curse, any logical person, even a heroic one, would probably decide to call it a day.
But that wouldn't be any fun; so the character's who just had no less than six brushes with near death in less than an hour press on in hopes of treasure.

Roleplaying meets the entertainment value.

kamikasei
2012-01-06, 09:42 AM
You should probably ask a mod to move this to the Gaming (Other) subforum, then, as it's much more about videogames than PnP/tabletop. It sounds like you're talking about issues with the design of videogames that, in a game run by humans, can be avoided if the people involved are bothered by them (though the problem of abnormally fast advancement is one thing that bugs me about D&D relative to other games).

In most videogames it's easy to see some outcomes as strictly better than others and to mix and match those even if the decisions involved don't add up to a coherent character (or do, but suggest said character is prescient and/or omniscient), whereas with a human GM you can be both jerked around and cut slack as appropriate for realism and fun.

Newman
2012-01-06, 10:04 AM
Tabletops are definitely more flexible if that's what the players and GM want. But, well, even if you're as brilliant as the cast of Darths and Droids, your mindset can still be disturbing from an in-universe perspective.

But, yeah, I can totally see how my complaints apply much more to VG's than tabletops. Who do I have to PM?

kamikasei
2012-01-06, 10:13 AM
You can click on the warning icon (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/images/buttons/report.gif) at the bottom left of your first post to report it, and in the text field just say you'd like it to be moved. Failing that, I guess you can PM any of the mods listed here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/announcement.php?f=30&a=1) as covering Roleplaying Games.

Dimers
2012-01-06, 10:19 AM
While you're not wrong, Newman, you've got to consider what it'd take to change that fact.

Imagine playing a game in which you do try to consider the mindset of every creature you encounter (and of course many you don't encounter directly). Even a cursory consideration would take a great deal of time, and completing the job -- if that's even possible -- would probably halt the game indefinitely. Then to interact with every NPC on that level would require you to essentially play out everything that happens during the entire day, right down to grocery shopping and pee breaks and the people you pass in the street while on your way to hire a wizard to telepathically contact your mom back home to tell her you're doing fine and stop worrying and how is your little sister's leg healing?

Now, that might be fun in itself. Thinking deeply about NPCs that way is something I enjoy in worldbuilding, for instance. But it's not what I'm looking for in a tabletop or computer RPG. I want action, excitement ... I want to hear about a couple deep relationships, not every passing glance ... I want to focus on how to make the world a better place all over, not how much to tip the waitress.

jseah
2012-01-06, 10:39 AM
If the video game AI is good enough to make believable NPCs as background characters, then you don't have to play through all the boring bits.

Have a AI play your PC through the non-important stuff.

Newman
2012-01-06, 10:40 AM
While you're not wrong, Newman, you've got to consider what it'd take to change that fact.

Imagine playing a game in which you do try to consider the mindset of every creature you encounter (and of course many you don't encounter directly). Even a cursory consideration would take a great deal of time, and completing the job -- if that's even possible -- would probably halt the game indefinitely. Then to interact with every NPC on that level would require you to essentially play out everything that happens during the entire day, right down to grocery shopping and pee breaks and the people you pass in the street while on your way to hire a wizard to telepathically contact your mom back home to tell her you're doing fine and stop worrying and how is your little sister's leg healing?

Now, that might be fun in itself. Thinking deeply about NPCs that way is something I enjoy in worldbuilding, for instance. But it's not what I'm looking for in a tabletop or computer RPG. I want action, excitement ... I want to hear about a couple deep relationships, not every passing glance ... I want to focus on how to make the world a better place all over, not how much to tip the waitress.

Eh, well, that's not exactly what I'm suggesting. Hm. Lemme see. Think of the difference between how a PC works VS how a main character in a narration piece works. I'm not asking for the game to become The Sims (which is actually a very well-executed examples of PCs being as intimately involved in the game as NPCs... but new, different issues arise... what are you in that game? A babysitter for adults? Some compelling supernatural force? But, well, the game manages to force the characters into being coherent by giving them needs and ambitions and fears. Which they can act on on their own, but you've still got margin to make them do other stuff.) I'm asking it to become a novel, or a movie. Skip the boring parts, yes, but make the hard parts meaningful, make it personal for me.

Of course, there is a compromise: Visual Novels and "Choose Your Own Adventure" stories (those were fun). So, your choices are strongly narrowed-down... but they're much more meaningful to the story and to your character.


If the video game AI is good enough to make believable NPCs as background characters, then you don't have to play through all the boring bits.

Have a AI play your PC through the non-important stuff.

Ninja'd: that's the idea behind the Sims.

Totally Guy
2012-01-06, 11:15 AM
I have sought out systems that do "fight for what you believe" style games. Players define the best interests of their characters and work to attain them. If it's not about those best interests it gets skipped over.

The simplest one that comes to mind is a game called In a Wicked Age by Vincent Baker.

A more complex game of this variety is Burning Wheel.

Check out In a Wicked Age. The PDF is cheap and is a short read.