Why do you play RPG's? No, really, why?

[pippin]

I mentioned Bioware because for me they are the worst offenders when it comes to morality. In the case of Twitcher, Geralt is often faced with choices that put his witcher status and the neutrality of the faction in jeopardy, but it does not feel like the developers were tying to judge you because you sided with this or that faction. One of the reasons why Morality is broken in BG1+2 is because you can guess the devs wanted you to be "good".

What kind of choices did you felt that they were missing from these games? I don't see how exactly they would be offering evil choices in Mass Effect for example, since your main goal there is to stop Saren. Wouldn't make much sense to let Sheppard going around killing children, no? I would understand if you wanted more choices, like joining the enemy instead of opposing him, but I don't see how the lack of such choice legitimises the criticism of Bioware as the worst offenders when it comes to morality. Besides, if these games lack truly evil paths, then how it can be that they also pass judgment on you? I feel like I am not grasping your point of view here.

That's the thing though, as Zombra said, some games are made with you being good by default. I think my criticism is not only related to choices but also related to narratives, think about Thief or Hitman, games which are based around morally despicable activities, yet both Garret and 47 don't feel like they should explain themselves. The first time this black/white motif bothered me was in BG1, in the part where you find a faerie and two thugs who were tying to cut down her tree. It was an isolated case in an isolated location, but you knew you were doing a "wrong thing" if you sided with the thugs. You could have rephrased it by having the faeries being opposed to an entire town trying to survive by making wood, for instance. The main plot and the secondary missions are not connected, and you are mostly judged by the secondary stuff (because in the main quest you must be good). In Dragon Age Origins, there are some merchants selling overpriced stuff to refugees, the options are telling the merchants to fuck off or telling the nuns protecting the refugees to fuck off. The issue is Bioware asking you what do you think about tree huggers or refugees. In Deus Ex, every choice you make is justified by the stuff you do in the game world, and by its logics. You react to the gam world when you decide to kill or support the owner of the Hell's Kitchen hotel, or if you decide to preserve or destroy the internet, or whatever. In fact, one of the weakest aspects of the new Deus Ex games is due to Squeenix's devs having an opinion about racism and the human condition, and they are asking you if you agree with them or not. It's difficult to explain because it's a subjective matter, but I hope I made myself more or less clear to you.

 

[Trojan_generic]

Is it escapism if you have nothing waiting for you in the real world? Are all hobbies escapism? I would categorize many avid book readers more escapist than gamers (you can even play with friends, but read with friends? Aloud?).
On the other hand, the 'full immersion into the protagonist's role" is an interesting one. I believe this is much easier (fully) when you are a child. It becomes another story if you are playing a party.

 

[Zombra]

Is it escapism if you have nothing waiting for you in the real world?

Some would say that human life has a responsibility to make itself worth living. Escaping that responsibility is the greatest crime a man can commit against himself.

I would categorize many avid book readers more escapist than gamers.

Agreed, depending on the content of the books and games. The printed word does not come with a monocle guarantee. One can consume great works of literature or endless trashy romance novels, just as one can play Planescape and Talos Principle or Candy Crush Saga and Farmville. With each game, book, movie, soapbox racer, we must ask ourselves: "Does this enrich my life? Am I growing, becoming better, happier? Or does my soul sicken and spirit shrivel?"

On the other hand, the 'full immersion into the protagonist's role" is an interesting one. I believe this is much easier (fully) when you are a child. It becomes another story if you are playing a party.

Agreed. Important: there are those of us who enjoy portraying more than a single role at once. Ask your dungeon master.

 

[CryptRat]

Besides numbers, party building, combat and exploration, another thing I really like (in games like Realms of Arkania or Wasteland as well as Quest for Glory or Fallout) is the mutliple available solutions to puzzles.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

pippin & Zombra

So, by this logic, a game like Dungeon Keeper is a bit crap for you because it only offers an evil path?

And when a game does offer evil paths you then complain that the game offers you the wrong type of evil path or wrong type of chaotic path, but you don't ever mention them potentially having the wrong type of good path. It seems to me that the desire to have 'correct' evil/chaotic/good paths is something more akin to choose your own adventure type games than traditional role playing games.

I mean, if you read through any given monster manual, the more quantity and quality of adversary is going to be described as evil, right, or possibly chaotic, and often neutral. I'm unaware of any monster manuals where the best encounters are to be found via filtering lawful good monsters from the assembled hordes. Which suggests to me this has nothing to do with game devs attempting to 'force' a certain narrative and more to do with them accurately following the inherent concept of p&p RPG.

 

[pippin]

So, by this logic, a game like Dungeon Keeper is a bit crap for you because it only offers an evil path?

And when a game does offer evil paths you then complain that the game offers you the wrong type of evil path or wrong type of chaotic path, but you don't ever mention them potentially having the wrong type of good path. It seems to me that the desire to have 'correct' evil/chaotic/good paths is something more akin to choose your own adventure type games than traditional role playing games.

Nope, Dungeon Keeper is alright. The problem comes with teasing an opportunity to "roleplay" in an "open world" which "respects your decisions" and then do almost nothing with that. I do think that having correct good, neutral and evil paths would benefit rpg development simply because you will be able to have content to back it up. I think it's probably best described with the appearance of unkillable characters in recent games.

 

[Drowed]

What I actually like the most about RPGs is the kind of situation that comes up very rarely, which reminds me when I played tabletop RPG with my friends in my late teens and early adulthood.

To serve as context, it's important to say that I played GURPS 3rd Edition. Using supplements like Martial Arts, Fantasy, Magic and some things from Supers. The basic idea of my GM for the session was, "if it's not against the rules, go for it". It's certain that he always would adapt the adventure in some way to combat certain excesses, but he never really "punished" players by creating overpowered character or anything. Sometimes when the result really went far beyond what was tolerable, he would "promote" the character status to a major NPC within the game world, and the player could create another character with a different concept.

One of the funniest and most interesting things about our sessions was the opportunity we had to simply break the expectations of the "world" in some way. As for example, having a mission to invade a castle to assassinate a commander, and we simply invaded the castle from the front gate alone and destroyed everything and everyone, an army of 5 individuals. Or a mission that had to stop the invasion of monsters coming from a mountain and we ended up simply destroying the whole mountain with a "atomic" magic explosion made from a special artifact, burying the exit forever (Fallout cave feelings). Or again, that time when we needed to accompany a group through a dangerous valley that would surely have some bad guys ambushing us, so we simply created a huge tunnel through a mountain, creating a permanent passageway - which eventually became an official kingdom road - to the other side.

Basically, the feeling of accomplishing missions in an unexpected and absurd way. Either get to a place I shouldn't be (yet, or ever), or defeat an enemy "seemingly" far beyond my abilities, or reach a goal in a very creative way. Few games offer this kind of situation, and even the ones they offer aren't always able to "recognize" what you've done (like the fact that you kill an unlikely opponent but no one in the world seems to care, or you get somewhere by an improbable route and all the dialogues assume that you went by the conventional way). Fallout offer some of those things in the way you can complete some quests, and some open world games offer other things but most of the time the game isn't able to recognize most of what you did.

Even so, playing RPGs, creating ridiculous overpowered characters and making impossible routes, beating unlikely enemies is a big part of the fun for me. I do like the challenge in the combat, but I like the feeling of creating a character who is capable of simply break the world. Especially when the world reacts in some way to what I chose to do, or who I chose to kill (or not kill).

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

So, by this logic, a game like Dungeon Keeper is a bit crap for you because it only offers an evil path?

And when a game does offer evil paths you then complain that the game offers you the wrong type of evil path or wrong type of chaotic path, but you don't ever mention them potentially having the wrong type of good path. It seems to me that the desire to have 'correct' evil/chaotic/good paths is something more akin to choose your own adventure type games than traditional role playing games.

Nope, Dungeon Keeper is alright. The problem comes with teasing an opportunity to "roleplay" in an "open world" which "respects your decisions" and then do almost nothing with that. I do think that having correct good, neutral and evil paths would benefit rpg development simply because you will be able to have content to back it up. I think it's probably best described with the appearance of unkillable characters in recent games.

So on the one hand zombra complains that playing evil isn't just about killing people but your first reaction to a response to this as evidence of weak evil options is to highlight unkillable NPCs.

Excuse me if I approach the debate with extreme cynicism as a result.

More to the point we're still back my original point, that you are more concerned about having games that validate your own personal idea of what are valid and monocled player choices than games which have a large number of options generally. That you are more interested in a choose your own adventure or sandbox mindset than a traditional questing mindset.

In that a developer could go to great lengths to provide what you ask, but still piss you off because the exact philosophy of their interpretation of good/evil doesn't match yours.

Further, just flippantly saying Dungeon Keeper is fine just makes you look even more disingeuous. Further, the way you do not respond to the final paragraph of my post just screams disingenuity.

 

[SCO]

Pavlov conditioning and the hopeless hope for quality narrative.

 

[Valky]

Because they really make me think.

 

[Ovplain]

Because I can watch YouTube videos while playing.

 

[Paul_cz]

I play for the stories+choices and consequences+exploration+player agency.
Combat can be fun, but it is just filler, busywork. If done well I enjoy it, but it is not the reason why I play RPGs.
And yeah I kinda prefer set protagonist over blank slate. Though blank slate can be good if done well (Fallout 1/2/NV).

 

[Zombra]

So, by this logic, a game like Dungeon Keeper is a bit crap for you because it only offers an evil path?

Huh? That's the opposite of what I said.

I am totally fine with a game having a framework, e.g. you are a superhero; you are a Desert Ranger sworn to bring law back to the wasteland; you are a psychopathic evil mastermind, whatever! and then giving you choices within that framework. Too many RPGs try too hard to put in an "opposite path" that ends up not being well done. Imagine if Dungeon Keeper slapped on a "good guy" path, or Hitman added a way to complete the game nonlethally. Crap, right? Yet some players expect an "evil path" in every RPG nowadays, even if the game is about saving the kingdom from a dragon or curing the plague, and some devs put in puppy kicking side quests just to meet this completely stupid expectation.

I prefer different paths to be sensible and reasonable for the story being told (if any) - for there to be a reason for me to stop and think about "What would my character really do here?" beyond "Well I'm maxing evil this time so I'll kick the puppy".

 

[Hobo Elf]

I play RPGs so I can be a knight on horseback running around and killing things.

 

[decaf]

Hmm. Why would one play an RPG? It seems that with a sufficiently prestigious life you can attain combat, exploration and character progression. Become a Colombian drug lord, or rule your own country and start the purges...

But with RPGs that have a strong story, or are set in strange times of past or future, are RPGs simply another way to experience a story? Or is it a chance to meet the weirdest of weirdos?

Is it a simply fun way to beat up nerds without the consequences of actually beating up nerds? Or to test your morality without inflicting actual harm?

Or you play RPGs because you appreciate the mechanics and genre of RPGs, and the skill and craft that go into making this type of video game.

 

[StaticSpine]

The first think I loved in RPGs back in the days was character development - you always begin as a weakling and become more and more powerful throughout the game. Several years later I started getting into deep stories, cool settings and interesting characters plus C&C.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

The Masterless Knight, Salt & Sanctuary

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

Because every game is different, even when its the same, and even sometimes when its the same game.

 

[buru5]

So I can LARP and feed my autism.

 

[pippin]

So I can LARP and feed my autism.

and play as a cute girl

 

[buru5]

So I can LARP and feed my autism.

and play as a cute girl

Super kawaii~~~~~!!!

 

[pippin]

So I can LARP and feed my autism.

and play as a cute girl

Super kawaii~~~~~!!!

 

[NotAGolfer]

I chose escapism and nice to look at graphix. Not high end stuff, just nice artwork to convey the setting and the mood. Nice music, sound design and so on are also a plus.

What's sorely missing from the vote is system-driven gameplay btw, that's gotta be the real reason.
I don't really care about RPGs but games that build on solid rulesets and systems to interact with.
That can be the old Realms of Arkania games, Fallout, Baldur's Gate, some well crafted action RPG stuff like the Gothic games or recently the new Zelda. Or strategy games. Or sports management games. Or whatever.
The main appeal is the depth created by those systems. Cinematic experiences (TM) barely manage to make me play through them even if they are good (I managed to finish the first Mass Effect and the Twitcher games, but not much else from that department)

So... I really don't care about RPGs. Never did. Played a few that I enjoyed but now that I think back I played way more games from other genres.

 

[Mo'rauda]

gotta say:I hate vidia games,hate gamers and their inconsequential opinions and gender fluidity....
but ever since i bought a computer from a mate that came with Baldur's gate and Pirate already on it,back in the late 90's.
I've been hooked and I've played a good 60% of the codex top50.love to dig deep in those games and even joined the codex.
I did play d&d when a kid but don't think it's just nostalgia...I don't know...shit I'm a wierdo(but I feel at home here!)

 

[Potato Canon]

To murder everyone and loot their corpses.