Is misinformation fun?

[soggie]

I'm halfway through designing the plot of my game when I suddenly thought of one thing - is there too much misinformation in my plot?

I'm building a PA world, where it went through an era where most of written historical records were lost and the only form of history left was oral history passed down through generations. Naturally, in this situation there would be many versions of the same event, which I plan to reward the player for finding out the truth of these events (as a kind of massive side quest).

Thing is, I'm starting to worry that too much misinformation might end up confusing the player instead, given that about 40% of the information are tightly integrated into the main plot line, especially the cause of the apocalypse.

So the question is, do you enjoy being overwhelmed with information, not knowing which is real and which is false, only to be rewarded when you find out the truth yourself through some relatively obscure detective work?

What if your player, upon completion of the super sidequest, gains extra dialog options in dealing with the main plot? You walk around the lands preaching to people about the true nature of the world which later gains you a following and eventually a religion?

Would that be fun? Or banal shit boring?

 

[Undead Phoenix]

I'm halfway through designing the plot of my game when I suddenly thought of one thing - is there too much misinformation in my plot?

I'm building a PA world, where it went through an era where most of written historical records were lost and the only form of history left was oral history passed down through generations. Naturally, in this situation there would be many versions of the same event, which I plan to reward the player for finding out the truth of these events (as a kind of massive side quest).

Thing is, I'm starting to worry that too much misinformation might end up confusing the player instead, given that about 40% of the information are tightly integrated into the main plot line, especially the cause of the apocalypse.

So the question is, do you enjoy being overwhelmed with information, not knowing which is real and which is false, only to be rewarded when you find out the truth yourself through some relatively obscure detective work?

What if your player, upon completion of the super sidequest, gains extra dialog options in dealing with the main plot? You walk around the lands preaching to people about the true nature of the world which later gains you a following and eventually a religion?

Would that be fun? Or banal shit boring?

Sidequests connected to the plot? Different endings depending on how much you learnt? Excellent ideas I say

Siphoning though the information you have and trying to sort the truth from the bullshit, then trying to replace all the bullshit with more truth sounds like a good idea, though getting everyone to believe that an accepted fact is completely wrong should be extremely difficult. Try not to be too ham-fisted about it, as there's no suspense if the player can immediately tell you are being evasive about whether a certain morsel of information is true or not. Good examples of how not to do this is the 'twist' in Jade Empire since you can see it clear as day in the first 15 minutes of the game - avoid doing that at all costs.

 

[soggie]

The inspiration came from Planescape: Torment, to be honest. In PS:T everybody have their opinion on what Sigil is, or of the nature of the Lady of Pain, and the player is bombarded with information (although not as conflicted as I hoped it to be) in the beginning of the game that when he finally unravels the truth, the subsequent satisfaction is simply indescribable.

Execution wise, I believe the best way is to offer contradicting pespectives from everybody, and then allow the PC to assemble the truth form these morsels of information either through skill usage (analytical skills), interrogations (speech skills), finding historical relics (combat + survival skills) or simply through the player's own deductive skills by reading walls of text and then figuring out the conflicting information within.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Misinformation is fun, but I think what's even better is when all the factions concerned have different 'opinions', yet at the same time, all of them are also kinda right in one way and wrong in the other. Example? Risen. The Inquisition might be a bunch of nazi KKKs, but their 'ends justify the means' line of work seems to have the well being of the people of Harbour Town as a priority. While the bandits are True Patriots (TM) fighting for liberation, they're also pretty much simple thugs who only want to fill their coffers, yet some people from the town say that despite this, the town under the Don's rule was a lot less militant and somehow nicer to live in.

Have fun choosing a 'proper' side when both are full of assholes.

 

[Phelot]

I think it depends on how well written everything is. PST is a good example you use were certain people have their ideas about what existence is all about. You may find out that they're wrong, but they were well written and thus respectable as well as being believable. It was fun finding out the truth rather then being nonsensical or confusing.

A bad example of misinformation would be the second chapter in The Witcher. The English translation was atrocious so it was extremely confusing trying to figure out what the fuck was going on with the whole murder investigation when you can barely understand what the various suspects are going on about. It probably COULD have been good, but wasn't for the simple fact that it was too confusing and convoluted.

Though the PST example is of opinion, the Witcher example was of fact so perhaps that wasn't the best examples. Still, misinformation about say, how an apocalypse came about can certainly be fun since solving mysteries is always nice, especially when they have lots of twists and turns.

But keep in mind this: one of my favorite parts of any setting are the mysteries left to the player to decide such as what was TNO's real name or in the Myth series, how exactly the cycle of the Leveller works. These are never really revealed. Part of the reason why this is awesome is because the player will ALWAYS have a better idea when it comes to something like TNO's name and the other reason is that it's fun to speculate exactly what something is, how it came to be, why it's there, etc.

 

[Zomg]

I love that shit, and it's an ideal way to use a nonlinear game structure where you might run into conflicting narratives in a random, unbiased order. That's something a book or movie can't ever do.

 

[Elwro]

Misinformation is fun when there are subtle details pointing to the "real" situation which suddenly make sense when you get to know the truth.

 

[soggie]

Misinformation is fun when there are subtle details pointing to the "real" situation which suddenly make sense when you get to know the truth.

What if there's no truth?

Take for example, Fallout's nuclear fallout. Who started it? Why? Let's assume the Chinese fired the first shot. Their own government will have an official justification of the shot recorded in a data tape somewhere but this would obviously be a ruse and a propaganda device. The player digs deeper and finds a diary of one of the officers who was present during the critical meeting that decided the authorization of the launch, but even then the diary is questionable because the officer was later executed for treason, and his diary could very well be fabrications of facts to take the government down with him.

The player then digs around some more, and comes across a diary of another officer who offered an alternative view of the meeting. However, talking to the officer's family revealed that the officer is already dead when the meeting took place.

The player suspects something wrong, and goes to the tombstone of the officer, only to find that the tomb was empty all along, and the officer faked his death.

And the trail ends abruptly.

Assuming that the player can employ these facts to convince the master as to why the Chinese have to be wiped off the face of the earth, he can choose the believe the first officer's (the dude who was executed) testimonial that China launched the missile to goad the world into a fallout so that their protected army could emerge years later and take over the world. Or he can take the official stand and tell the master that the chinese government was just protecting their own self interest, and that blame had to be placed on the united states instead.

There's no truth in these matters, or at least no coherent truth. The player picks the facts he wishes to believe in, and employs that as his weapon in dialogs when using lore and history in his persuasion attempts.

 

[JarlFrank]

I think what soggie means by "misinformation" is that different people have different theories on what the fuck happened when ITZ came and in some of these opinions is a grain of truth, some are pure bullshit, some are quite close to the truth, but none are actually wholly true.

I don't yet know how he wants to make the player character figure out the truth and gain the bonus, but I like the concept.

 

[soggie]

I think what soggie means by "misinformation" is that different people have different theories on what the fuck happened when ITZ came and in some of these opinions is a grain of truth, some are pure bullshit, some are quite close to the truth, but none are actually wholly true.

I don't yet know how he wants to make the player character figure out the truth and gain the bonus, but I like the concept.

What I have in mind are two kinds of trails: trails with endings and trails without endings.

Trails with endings would play out like what you said. There are multiple branches with some leading to dead ends and some leading to bullshit, and among all these branches there's one single branch that leads to the truth, which can only be uncovered through extensive detective work and by paying attention to NPC dialogs (along with making successful skill checks). With these truths the PC gains immense power, where he can leverage these facts to better his chances in specific circumstances.

Trails without endings on the other hand are mostly lore-based, where the player finds a lot of information with a lot of contradiction, and no information have a clear indication of it being the absolute truth. In the end the player will be forced to make a choice of believing in one of the many conflicting facts, just like asking TNO to choose an answer to the question "what can change the nature of a man".

I hope this explains it well.

 

[JarlFrank]

So, just for comparison, the half ogre island quest in Arcanum is like one of your planned open-ending quests?

 

[soggie]

So, just for comparison, the half ogre island quest in Arcanum is like one of your planned open-ending quests?

Precisely.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Sounds interesting.

 

[J1M]

This is a good idea that more games need to make use of. We've all heard the trope about how all 1000 year old myths are always true in games, etc.

One thing I would caution you about though, is that the misinformation has to come from an NPC or a faction and not the gameworld itself or the narrator.

Usually games make the mistake of making it extremely obvious that the player is being deceived. Doesn't sound like you have to worry about that.

I would caution you about doing like FFVII did though, where I simply stopped caring about the story because every 40 minutes I found out that everything I knew about the game world was a dream/lie/fake memory. It wasn't like I could attribute that sort of shitty treatment to a single NPC and no longer pay attention to that person. It was basically all of Japan that was responsible.

 

[Murk]

Any plans to integrate some kind of intuition and/or deduction attribute/skill? Or use a composite of mental attributes to determine a character's ability to figure out what to do in the face of hearing 3 different versions of the old the same story?

I ask as I immediately thought of the usual werewolf/puzzle-monster scenario. You come to a village on a quest to kill a monster that is invincible but can be harmed by some special substance (silver, gold, cold iron, true love, etc.) and must figure out what that substance is in either a time-frame or at your leisure. Talk to villagers and one comments on how the monster avoids the farms that grow a lot of vegetation and particularly the leafy green areas of said farms, another villager claims he was beset by the monster and it left when it swiped at his chest breaking his crucifix, another was a furry and scared the monster off with its raging boner, etc. etc.

Unless the situation somehow allows you to just sit there and try them all (bad).

"Well I tried every known metal on the werewolf, guess I'll just have to rape it into submission!"

 

[visions]

Misinformation is fun, but I think what's even better is when all the factions concerned have different 'opinions', yet at the same time, all of them are also kinda right in one way and wrong in the other.

This.

 

[Mhain]

Make the unfolding of plot like Rashomon of Akira Kurosawa, where misinformation does not exist for the sake of misinformation. In Rashomon, every witness chooses to admit to murder rather than telling the truth, manipulating the story so that they look virtuous. The same thing would work perfectly in a RPG, where every faction would claim responsibility for the apocalypse. It would also be a good design choice: the player would judge the groups according to their weaknesses. They would be much more memorable and realistic. For in reality, seldom does the ideology fit the actions.

For example, The Technocracy of Europe would grieve that the wise had isolated themselves in their ivory towers and left others ignorant, triggering the chain of events leading to destruction. However, they would want to correct their mistakes by herding others like sheeps and promoting social darwinism.

 

[soggie]

@J1M

In a way, the player isn't being deceived. Most of the time he's being fed the "truth". Which is relative to the information giver's conviction that it is in fact the truth.

Which is the whole idea of misinformation: everybody holds a set of facts as truth, and facts that are contradictory to that set is automatically treated as false. And these sets overlap, creating a mismatched picture of what is true and what is false. Like the JFK assassination and the 9/11 conspiracy theories.

@Mikayel

There's a stat "Intuition" that defends against NPC's usage of the stat "Deception", and there's a stat "Intelligence" that is rolled to see if the PC can successfully detect inconsistencies in all the facts.

For example, the player finds two recordings of two individuals who witnessed a crime. The game performs an intelligence check, and if successful the player will notice inconsistencies between the two testimonials and will point it out in the game, leading to extra dialog options when the player confronts the two individuals.

When the player confronts the deceiver, a successful Intuition defense (NPC rolls Deception vs PC's Intuition in an opposed check) will allow the player to "feel" something is wrong, opening up a dialog branch that employs an Intelligence check against the NPC's Deception (PC rolls Intelligence vs NPC's Deception in an opposed check), which if successful will reveal the NPC as the murderer.

@Mhain

Precisely what I'm planning with open-ended information. There's a town where you need to find out who is the lorekeeper and everybody will admit that they are the lorekeeper just to keep him safe from "strangers", because they'd rather sacrifice themselves for the village than lose their most important person. This is where you'll never find out for sure who's the lorekeeper. There might be just one, or there might be several. Whichever way, it'll be a nice dead-end, because by the end of the "quest" you'll get an impression of how secretive the lorekeepers are, which makes it much more rewarding when you eventually reach their HQ.

 

[Vault Dweller]

So the question is, do you enjoy being overwhelmed with information, not knowing which is real and which is false, only to be rewarded when you find out the truth yourself through some relatively obscure detective work?

I think it's fun.

We use this approach a lot in AoD:
http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/in ... l#msg25998

 

[Coyote]

Throwing in my hat with supporters of misdirection. Done well, it can add a lot to a game.

Trails with endings would play out like what you said. There are multiple branches with some leading to dead ends and some leading to bullshit, and among all these branches there's one single branch that leads to the truth, which can only be uncovered through extensive detective work and by paying attention to NPC dialogs (along with making successful skill checks). With these truths the PC gains immense power, where he can leverage these facts to better his chances in specific circumstances.

I like what I'm hearing so far. One thing that would be nice is for some of the dead ends to have utility of their own - i.e. allow the player to draw false conclusions and have the game to react accordingly. For example, take a criminal investigation. After investigating thoroughly, most of what you've found points to suspect A, although there are some bread-crumb inconsistencies, subtle enough that most characters would fail to pick up on them. If you go all Matlock and investigate further, you might find some evidence pointing to suspect B having framed suspect A - or you might not, depending your skills, attributes, and the other clues you've picked up. But assuming that you don't find evidence pointing to suspect B, you accuse suspect A, bring forth all of the evidence that supports your accusation, and manage to convince the local law that you are correct, leading to the same reward you would have gotten if actually correct (or maybe you'd get a bonus if actually correct for your outstanding detective work - the point is, the player shouldn't know that he's gotten a lesser reward). The game should never give any clear indication that your accusation was wrong, although there could be consequences down the road for fingering the wrong suspect.

Trails without endings on the other hand are mostly lore-based, where the player finds a lot of information with a lot of contradiction, and no information have a clear indication of it being the absolute truth. In the end the player will be forced to make a choice of believing in one of the many conflicting facts, just like asking TNO to choose an answer to the question "what can change the nature of a man".

Also sounds good.

One other thing: in the case of trails where there is a definite ending, do you plan to have the player rely entirely on his character's skills to reach that ending, or will it require critical thought on the part of the player as well? One problem with many investigations in RPGs is that if you go around clicking on everything and repeatedly talking to everyone, you can't help but come up with the right answer. There are ways past that, but that's a discussion for some other time.

 

[soggie]

@Coyote

On the second question: I prefer facts to be discovered completely through player skills. Using the investigation RPG as an example, with the same character system (Intuition as defense vs Deception, Intelligence as analytical roll), the character can go around talking to everybody, but if he fails said rolls he'll always end up with little or false information. This is partly a way to prevent metagaming too.

One more thing is where the player collects documents. If all information is presented in these documents, it'll allow the player to perform cross-references manually and would create a situation where the player spots the inconsistencies but there are no way for the player to transfer this knowledge to the character in-game, just because his stats are not good enough.

To resolve this, rather than showing the full content of the documents, reading the document will invoke an Intelligence check and will display the character's interpretation of the data instead. Like instead of a length 10 page history of the world, it would go like "From what you make out, the apocalypse began with...".

 

[J1M]

That approach could probably work soggie, but you are going to be losing out on the fun aspect of solving a mystery and replace it with a different type of fun people get from watching a mystery movie. Similar, but not as potent.

 

[JarlFrank]

Well, it's supposed to focus on character skill instead of player skill. I was a bit skeptical too before soggie explained the concept to me, but I think it's a good way to make high intelligence or deduction skills more important.

An INT1 character will read two different witness testimonials and believe that both are, of course, flawless. None of the two suspects is guilty. An INT10 character might find out that there are actually some logic holes in there.

Another example soggie used was reading something about jellyfish physiology. An INT1 char will get the description "You read a book about the physiology of jellyfish. Some facts are quite interesting, but most of it is just complicated scientific babble you don't understand." while an INT10 character would get a much more detailed description.

I'm still not fully convinced on it (I like reading stuff like that on my own, not get it read by my character only) but the general idea is good.

 

[soggie]

To put it in a more detailed light, assume that the player has just picked up a fragment of history of a faction.

Item Description:

The loosely binded book seem to be falling apart at its seams, and the words are barely readable. It is a collection of viewpoints from multiple historians on the same event, each providing arguments and counter-arguments as to why the great desertion had taken place.

INT Check Fail

You begin reading the book, and your eyes glaze over the tiny print. You skip from one paragraph to another, until you give up and conclude that the book is but a useless collection of debates from inane scholars who have too much time on their hands.

INT Check Success

The tiny print is barely readable, but as you delve into the thick tome you start unraveling chilling facts of the great desertion. While many historians have different interpretations on the true motive of the great desertion, you realize that all shared a common, consistent viewpoint: that the great desertion was reserved only for the rich and powerful. Cross referencing the summaries from the book with the official historical record you acquired from the vaults (assuming if you had this item and read it with a successful INT check), you start to piece together the details... (long winded wall of text on the lore)

 

[J1M]

I believe such an approach will vastly overvalue INT. Essentially you are getting half of the content by neglecting that stat. There is also no way for a player to know how high of an INT value is required for their character to obtain the level of information he expects them to without meta knowledge, etc.

Now, if the only stats available were different types of intelligence it might work. Something like book smarts, cold reading, and mechanical aptitude. Or if the intelligence stats had a different resource pool to draw from than combat abilities. (ie stats vs. skills in most games)