"Down time" in RPG's

[King Crispy]

There's a funny thing I find myself doing in my latest ToEE run: I actually enjoy just hanging out in Hommlet. Now before too many monocles get dropped, allow me to explain.

There is an appeal to having "down time" in RPG's. We've all done it: spending time just admiring your characters, making sure you've talked to all NPC's even if they're not giving any extra quests, etc. I don't mean 'sperging out about finding every little nook and cranny in the game, I mean just slowing down and contemplating how much you enjoy the game or just "getting into the moment".

The Village of Hommlet was by far one of my favorite AD&D modules. That has a lot to do with my willingness not to just skip over all the boring FedEx quests in the town while playing ToEE. But it's more than that. There's a thing called "bench racing" when you're talking to car nuts -- guys who are into building up and tuning muscle cars or are into some other kind of backyard racing often enjoy the act of bragging to one another or just comparing notes, etc., sometimes even moreso than the actual activity itself. A lot of their time is taken up simply talking about their craft and hobby. I think that applies to playing CRPG's, sometimes, too. If there's enough atmosphere in the game to sit and enjoy, or enough depth to the characters, or, in my case, an appreciation of the source material beyond that which the computer adaptation provides, it can be fascinating just taking a few extra minutes to let things sink in, for lack of a better term. Kind of like bench racing.

This is also often true of certain MMO's, as well, but we won't get too far into that discussion.

Suffice it to say that for me, sometimes half the fun of playing a decent- to good RPG is that down time, the calm between encounters, the planning, even if that borders on LARPing, and the anticipation of what's up next. Bad- to horrible CRPG's, like Dragon Age 2, are simply not capable of inciting these kinds of feelings, because they're far too shallow and insipid of games to give a damn about.

I'm certain I'm not alone in this.

 

[Jashiin]

I smoked many a reefer in gothic 2 admiring the view. Old camp in risen was nice too at night.

 

[Whisky]

Of course you're not alone. Atmosphere is a great thing for a game to have.

 

[Alchemist]

Monocle is still in place and I get what you're saying. I do something like that sometimes - especially in well-crafted games with quality artwork, environment, sound and music design. Interesting NPCs would also be important for this. It is harder to do in really old games - like, I can't imagine just chilling out in the town screen / wireframe dungeons of Wizardry 1. But once games reached a certain graphical fidelity (like around the Ultima VI-VII, Might & Magic III era) I can appreciate the idea of letting the atmosphere "sink in".

I think the town in Diablo 1 is a good example of this. There isn't even much to do there - but I would spend time hanging out just to hear Matt Uelmen's amazingly evocative music.

 

[shihonage]

Downtime is very important. I also believe it should be linked to some simple activities, like repairing/identifying your items.

Diablo3 was built around the idea of discarding downtime, and I hate Jay Wilson and how he's watching a stupid reality show right now he's so stupid with his lame boots and his ugly wif-

GET THIS DOG AWAY FROM ME

 

[agentorange]

I love Hommlet too. It's like the polar opposite on the spectrum of hubs from a game like Fallout, where the towns though large in number only have 2 or 3 quests a piece and just enough detail to give the town a sense of life, but the brevity of the content encourages the player to keep moving. Morgoth brought up Diablo, and I think ToEE is actually closer to it than any other isometric rpg; Hommlet is there for the player to return to at any point throughout the game, to resupply and rest and maybe do a few of quests to net some extra experience, which is the way it works in the PNP module; it's meant as a jumping off point for exploration, rather than a collection of exciting content that will immediately engross the player in the game (unlike Sigil in Planetscape). The purpose of Hommlet is to get you out of Hommlet. I think one mistake a lot of people made is that they played ToEE the way I play a game like Fallout 2 - which is by picking up every single quest in a town and trying to complete all of them before moving on - and if you do that then I can see why Hommlet would grow tedious. Which is a shame because the town is very atmospheric, filled with interesting and believable characters (they're still fantasy characters yeah, but there's a kind of realism to their behavior and problems), many of which have hidden agendas and dark secrets that you need to discover on your own - mystery, a concept I love and that is lacking in so many fantasy games.

 

[Ninjerk]

Monocle is still in place and I get what you're saying. I do something like that sometimes - especially in well-crafted games with quality artwork, environment, sound and music design. Interesting NPCs would also be important for this. It is harder to do in really old games - like, I can't imagine just chilling out in the town screen / wireframe dungeons of Wizardry 1. But once games reached a certain graphical fidelity (like around the Ultima VI-VII, Might & Magic III era) I can appreciate the idea of letting the atmosphere "sink in".

I think the town in Diablo 1 is a good example of this. There isn't even much to do there - but I would spend time hanging out just to hear Matt Uelmen's amazingly evocative music.

The music for the first dungeon is probably the best mood music in all of video games. Even if I was sure everything on the level was dead it still kept me on edge, and frankly there's still nothing quite like it.

 

[Gurkog]

I used to spend hours discussing theory crafting WoW. It was more fun than actually playing that shit.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Plenty of time wasted in Khorinis just getting drunk on free beer and listening to the Khorinis soundtrack.

 

[himmy]

Just hanging out on the stairs behind the High Fane in Vivec was pretty cool.

There's a thing called "bench racing" when you're talking to car nuts -- guys who are into building up and tuning muscle cars or are into some other kind of backyard racing often enjoy the act of bragging to one another or just comparing notes, etc., sometimes even moreso than the actual activity itself. A lot of their time is taken up simply talking about their craft and hobby. I think that applies to playing CRPG's, sometimes, too.

I'm pretty sure you just described the Codex.

 

[Whisky]

I think we all feel this, casual and hardcore alike. This is why buying your own house is a big part of many open-world RPGs nowadays, it's the downtime and one of the few good things I can say about Skyrim or Oblivion. It does help build, and I'm sorry for using this word, immerssiveness and helping anchor yourself in the world. Good game or bad game, this is a good feeling to have when playing.

 

[flushfire]

Betrayal at Krondor taverns, man. That feeling of finally having some fresh food after a dangerous journey and some of the best music ever.. makes me want to replay the game for the nth time just thinking about it.

 

[Jarakka]

So where's the line between "down time" and all-out larping?

 

[Weierstraß]

So where's the line between "down time" and all-out larping?

One is a consequence of the game design and the other about pretending you're a dolphin.

 

[LivingOne]

No mentions of Kuldahar/Targos yet?

And yeah it's something I often do even if it's no real town or hub but just some resting spot in the middle of a dungeon.

 

[Jarakka]

So where's the line between "down time" and all-out larping?

One is a consequence of the game design and the other about pretending you're a dolphin.

Why does this thread sound like such a confession then? It's almost like people are feeling guilty about something.

 

[Cosmo]

Why does this thread sound like such a confession then? It's almost like people are feeling guilty about something.

Or maybe Crispy's aware of how easily he'll be misunderstood by idiots ?

Anyway, i think those things are integral to what truly makes a RPG : other than being about combat simulation, plot advancement, and compulsory epicness, RPGs are also about building worlds. And you must feel that those deserve to be explored, that they have their own secrets and an independant life. Sometimes to appreciate this dimension you just have to pause and enjoy yourself.

 

[Arkadin]

I can appreciate this explanation of Hommlet. I've always seen it as one of those cities where you try to do all the quests before moving on, which admittedly is silly. Treating it more casually makes a lot more sense. I've certainly had areas in games where I just liked hanging out, restng, repairing my items, buying supplies, etc. Tarant outside of its many quests can kind of serve this purpose, since you return there so often on your travels.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

in the last years the more advanced the graphics get the less i can feel immersed, especially regarding human models: up to morriwind sometimes i could stop and stare at the landscape, abstracting, imagining, wondering how it would really be. anything more modern than that and uncanny valley kicks in.

last time i went sightseeing it's been with ass creep brotherhood (you know, "know your enemy"...) because i wanted to see how rome had been recreated, but not for a single moment i wasn't aware it was just a game, nothing more than a game.
a 30x20 "wanted" drawing glued to an unreachable second story wall? are you joking? who the fuck would see it?

 

[Cosmo]

I can appreciate this explanation of Hommlet. I've always seen it as one of those cities where you try to do all the quests before moving on, which admittedly is silly. Treating it more casually makes a lot more sense. I've certainly had areas in games where I just liked hanging out, restng, repairing my items, buying supplies, etc. Tarant outside of its many quests can kind of serve this purpose, since you return there so often on your travels.

The fact is that Hommlet was supposed to be much more interesting before Atari's censorship IIRC...

 

[Surf Solar]

Replenishing ammo stock in Kuldahar, identifying new items while you hear that music, strange birds and that bigass oak narling/moving. Awesome.

 

[King Crispy]

Yeah, Kuldahar is another perfect example. Great ambiance in that town.

 

[Zed]

I find myself doing the things described in OP as long as there's still a goal ahead. For instance, I would not just run around in a game like GTA knowing I have already beaten the story and there's nothing to continue on after my "break."

TES games are a good example of where I find myself taking plenty of breaks just doing nothing before eventually continuing the story. But that's kind of what TES is good at.

As for more standard CRPGs... I suppose it has happened. Not too much though. I guess I could say "Baldur's Gate" or something, but that's still exploring to me, and when you explore you still kind of have a goal.

 

[King Crispy]

Perhaps surprisingly, TES games are not an example of games I like to spend down time in. The exception might have been Daggerfall, because I really enjoyed making my own weapons in that game and randomly exploring the hundreds of towns in it, but beyond that one there is no appeal to doing anything but moving forward with the game. I do not LARP in any Elder Scrolls game, beyond slowly creeping around in dungeons and hiking outdoors.

The primary reason for this is those games' empty, dead feeling. Not to imply that ToEE has a particularly vibrant feeling to it, but it's certainly more "friendly", IMO, for the reasons I stated above. There's also just way too much to explore in TES games to ever encourage staying in one place for too long. There's no real hub in which to "hang your hat", and I do include Skyrim's stupid houses that you can buy. They're pointless and creepy, in hindsight, other than as storage closets.

Not to mention the later TES games' utter lack of any gameplay depth. There's just nothing to sit there and contemplate.

 

[Volourn]

Anyone who likes homlette are idiotic morons. And, the excuses given makes you just as bad as scumbag larpers.