Vault Dweller
Commissar, Red Star Studio
- Joined
- Jan 7, 2003
- Messages
- 28,038
I was thinking about games and the way they handle good, evil, and reputation:
1. Most games have only one side of the story present: you are a good guy fighting something bad.
2. If there is an option to play an "evil" character, this character must follow the same path as a "good" character but for his own totally "evil" reasons.
3. An evil character is usually a psychotic mass-murderer or a character who always charges a fee for his/her services
It seems to me that designers usually just think of an evil way to solve a quest, and therein lays the problem. What one person can see as evil, the other sees as psychotic or greedy or as Dr. Evil said, “semi-evil, quasi-evil, the diet-coke of evilâ€. The solution to that is not to define something as evil, neutral, or good ways to solve a quest, but to provide all logically fitting options and let a player figure out what’s good and what’s bad in every particular situation. Here is an example:
You are asked to deliver a sealed letter from town A to town B within 10 days making sure that the letter would not fall into the hands of agents of town C and remains unsealed. Your payment is 100 coins, 50 with the letter, 50 upon delivery in town B. Possible options are:
1. Complete the quest as asked
2. Get 50 coins, throw away the letter
3. You forget about the letter and missed the deadline (same as #2 but has a lighter shade of grey)
4. Contact the agents of town C and see if they pay you more
5. Demand more money from town A and/or B, threatening to deliver the letter to town C
By now, some of you have already labeled actions as good or bad, or neutral. So let’s add another option:
6. Open the letter and find out that town A is seeking an alliance with town B to attack town C because recently discovered silver mines have shifted trading routes from A and B to C effectively killing A and B’s economies turning their citizens into beggars and thieves.
Now that changes a lot of things and put them in a different perspective while opening up a lot of new options:
7. Complete the quest and offer you services as a mercenary to A and B - gives you an opportunity to save some town folks after the town is taken
8. Contact the agents of town C and warn them about the attack, charging a lot for the info (now that you know about the silver mines) or for free – if you do that town C hires mercenaries, ambushes and slaughters A and B’s forces, invades now unprotected town A and captures the citizens to offer them a mandatory career change – mine labors.
9. Do #9 and offer your services as a mercenary
10. Do #9 and offer your services as an assassin to kill those behind the attack plan – if you succeed, the towns are doomed, they slowly crumble away without the leadership
11. Contact town A and suggest a more subtle way – to sabotage the mines.
For those who like happy endings, #12. A very skilled negotiator can convince town C to involve towns A and B into the growing trade operations, negotiate A and B’s labor rates, and try to negotiate a higher rate with C pocketing the difference
In my rather simple, free of more complicated manipulations, example, some actions that seem good lead to bad result and visa versa, and often there is no way to tell an outcome untill you do something.
So now here is an issue of a reputation, and a way to measure it. I don’t like the overall "goodness" system like in Fallout and Arcanum, I don’t like alignments, and I don’t like location-specific ratings like in Fallout 2, instead reputation should be tied to specific events. For example, if my character made choice #8, and then ran into a NPC who heard about the slaughter, then the NPC would associate my character with it regardless of what actually took place and what my character intents were. If the NPCs approves the events or my character actions, then he would look favourably on dealing with my character. No other checks or attempts to judge or label anybody in terms of good or bad.
Any comments?
1. Most games have only one side of the story present: you are a good guy fighting something bad.
2. If there is an option to play an "evil" character, this character must follow the same path as a "good" character but for his own totally "evil" reasons.
3. An evil character is usually a psychotic mass-murderer or a character who always charges a fee for his/her services
It seems to me that designers usually just think of an evil way to solve a quest, and therein lays the problem. What one person can see as evil, the other sees as psychotic or greedy or as Dr. Evil said, “semi-evil, quasi-evil, the diet-coke of evilâ€. The solution to that is not to define something as evil, neutral, or good ways to solve a quest, but to provide all logically fitting options and let a player figure out what’s good and what’s bad in every particular situation. Here is an example:
You are asked to deliver a sealed letter from town A to town B within 10 days making sure that the letter would not fall into the hands of agents of town C and remains unsealed. Your payment is 100 coins, 50 with the letter, 50 upon delivery in town B. Possible options are:
1. Complete the quest as asked
2. Get 50 coins, throw away the letter
3. You forget about the letter and missed the deadline (same as #2 but has a lighter shade of grey)
4. Contact the agents of town C and see if they pay you more
5. Demand more money from town A and/or B, threatening to deliver the letter to town C
By now, some of you have already labeled actions as good or bad, or neutral. So let’s add another option:
6. Open the letter and find out that town A is seeking an alliance with town B to attack town C because recently discovered silver mines have shifted trading routes from A and B to C effectively killing A and B’s economies turning their citizens into beggars and thieves.
Now that changes a lot of things and put them in a different perspective while opening up a lot of new options:
7. Complete the quest and offer you services as a mercenary to A and B - gives you an opportunity to save some town folks after the town is taken
8. Contact the agents of town C and warn them about the attack, charging a lot for the info (now that you know about the silver mines) or for free – if you do that town C hires mercenaries, ambushes and slaughters A and B’s forces, invades now unprotected town A and captures the citizens to offer them a mandatory career change – mine labors.
9. Do #9 and offer your services as a mercenary
10. Do #9 and offer your services as an assassin to kill those behind the attack plan – if you succeed, the towns are doomed, they slowly crumble away without the leadership
11. Contact town A and suggest a more subtle way – to sabotage the mines.
For those who like happy endings, #12. A very skilled negotiator can convince town C to involve towns A and B into the growing trade operations, negotiate A and B’s labor rates, and try to negotiate a higher rate with C pocketing the difference
In my rather simple, free of more complicated manipulations, example, some actions that seem good lead to bad result and visa versa, and often there is no way to tell an outcome untill you do something.
So now here is an issue of a reputation, and a way to measure it. I don’t like the overall "goodness" system like in Fallout and Arcanum, I don’t like alignments, and I don’t like location-specific ratings like in Fallout 2, instead reputation should be tied to specific events. For example, if my character made choice #8, and then ran into a NPC who heard about the slaughter, then the NPC would associate my character with it regardless of what actually took place and what my character intents were. If the NPCs approves the events or my character actions, then he would look favourably on dealing with my character. No other checks or attempts to judge or label anybody in terms of good or bad.
Any comments?