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Incline How to properly enjoy an RPG

gurugeorge

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 3, 2019
Messages
7,437
Location
London, UK
Strap Yourselves In
Don't seek tips

Use your wit and intelligence to overcome obstacles.

Don't metagame

Obsessing over perfect builds can ruin the fun. Flawed builds are cool. However it turns out makes it special. Picked the wrong feat by accident or made a bad call? Don't worry, it might prove useful after all.

Don't save-scum

Obvioiusly, ruins muh immersion. Stick with what you get.

Increase difficulty


The greater the challenge, the more rewarding gameplay will be.

Be spontaneous, not completionist

Don't try to visit every location. Don't try to complete every quest. Leave something for other play-through. I'm not advocating role-playing strictly speaking. But tend to do stuff which makes sense. Clearing five dungeons in a row doesn't.

Don't binge on dialogue options (by eXalted)

Don't exhaust all conversation options if you don't find them interesting. And yes, there could be a quest hidden there, who cares?

Keep cycling savegame slots


Try to save less often. Certainly don't spam the quicksave button. Continuity of experience is key to immersion.

Live with your consequences.

Failed a skill roll? Attacked someone by accident? Jammed a chest? Try this experiment and don't reload. That liberates you from OCD and made my runs much more memorable and distinctive e.g. that time when I was caught stealing, that time when I drank the wrong potion etc.

Role playing

Obviously a subject which can be widely interpreted however just making consistent dialogue choices works.

Play it like it was meant to be played (by Wayward Son)

Sure, you COULD look up that dungeon map or use screenshots to take notes, but the game was built around the lack of easily accessible internet and/or screenshots, so this can ruin the gameplay. Ultimas are a good example of this, they were built around you taking good, concise but accurate notes or you were up Shit Creek without a paddle.

Spontaneity is king

This is where all the fun and good gaming memories stem from.


Do you have any suggestions? I wish more games would encourage such behavior.

Great tips. It's so tempting to metagame but it always ruins the experience (like God mode in an fps), at least on first playthrough. On the other hand, if the game isn't that great, metagaming can be the only way of squeezing some fun out of it.

Or in other words: try to take the game seriously as an rp experience at first, then if the game is turning out to be not all that enthralling, but has decent combat or whatever, metagame; but if the game is offering you a consistently immersive experience and a good story, and you're enjoying it as it unfolds, don't spoil it by metagaming.
 

Tweed

Professional Kobold
Patron
Joined
Sep 27, 2018
Messages
2,842
Location
harsh circumstances
Pathfinder: Wrath
Download maps

Life is too short to spend it trying to figure out non-Euclidian geometry, do you want to tell your grandkids how you finish Wizardry or do you want to force them to finish it for you in your last will and testament?

Seek perfection

If the developers didn't intend for you to game the system they wouldn't have given you all those classes, items, or agency. To do anything else but create perfection is a disservice to their vision.

Avoid needless suffering

You're a gamer, not a Jesuit, there's no need to self-flagellate for the sake of 2% more endorphins in your system.

Do everything you can when you can

If you can fudge a dice roll to get access to more quests then do it, put on all the CHA gear, take drugs, do whatever it is you have to do to score more XP and loot.

Explore every dialogue option

Developers are lazy and most dialogue options end up with the same result, test them all for the best outcome.

Save early, save often

Developers leave their games as crash-prone, unoptimized pieces of shit. You didn't grind for ten hours just to lose your progress and you sure as hell didn't come all this way to fuck up the main quest due to a misclick, if shit hits the fan reload the game.

Don't role play

Only children play pretend. If the game doesn't acknowledge your actions then don't do them.
 

ERYFKRAD

Barbarian
Patron
Joined
Sep 25, 2012
Messages
28,242
Strap Yourselves In Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Life is too short to spend it trying to figure out non-Euclidian geometry,
How hard can it be? Tie some ropes together in convoluted knots, run that through a scanner and print the result.
 

Denim Destroyer

Learned
Joined
Mar 20, 2021
Messages
425
Location
Moonglow, Britannia
What's curious is that no games encourage such healthy playstyles.

Warhorse the developers of Kingdom Come Deliverance limited saving, a good way to encourage healthy playstyles, but this lead to an outcry of people complaining about bad game design. I have multiple friends that played Kingdom Come and of the two who finished both played with a mod that allows you to save anywhere. It is fair to say that your average Codexer is enlightened and cares for the finer parts of RPGs but the same cannot be said for the majority of the game playing populace which dictates the market.
 

deama

Prophet
Joined
May 13, 2013
Messages
4,352
Location
UK
What's curious is that no games encourage such healthy playstyles.

Warhorse the developers of Kingdom Come Deliverance limited saving, a good way to encourage healthy playstyles, but this lead to an outcry of people complaining about bad game design. I have multiple friends that played Kingdom Come and of the two who finished both played with a mod that allows you to save anywhere. It is fair to say that your average Codexer is enlightened and cares for the finer parts of RPGs but the same cannot be said for the majority of the game playing populace which dictates the market.
Same with me, I had a friend who beat the game but used a save anywhere mod, and another friend who only played it for a few hours and gave up cause of that saving thing.
I myself quite liked it, which is interesting considering I remember playing a game with a similar approach somewhat recently, but I didn't like how they did it in that one at all (forgot the name).
 
Self-Ejected

c2007

Self-Ejected
Joined
May 24, 2017
Messages
1,091
Location
404
This is my plan with Nox Archaist, OP.

I have a blank notebook. I have the guide book and included map printed out, next to the notebook. I have mechanical pencils loaded and ready, and some graph paper just in case I need to remember secret doors in a dungeon or something.

I have only the game thread here to go off of, and remember little of it. Just going to dive in, probably die a lot, get lost, and hopefully find something that has been missing from my gaming experience for a long time - a sense of adventure.
 

Zed Duke of Banville

Dungeon Master
Patron
Joined
Oct 3, 2015
Messages
11,760
Warhorse the developers of Kingdom Come Deliverance limited saving, a good way to encourage healthy playstyles, but this lead to an outcry of people complaining about bad game design. I have multiple friends that played Kingdom Come and of the two who finished both played with a mod that allows you to save anywhere. It is fair to say that your average Codexer is enlightened and cares for the finer parts of RPGs but the same cannot be said for the majority of the game playing populace which dictates the market.
After losing an hour of play due to a crash, I installed one of those save-anytime mods, though eventually it was easy enough to brew save-potions that the mod was no longer necessary. Aside from all other considerations, Kingdom Come: Deliverance was simply too buggy and crash-prone to justify its limitations on saving. :M
 

Harthwain

Magister
Joined
Dec 13, 2019
Messages
4,690
Aside from all other considerations, Kingdom Come: Deliverance was simply too buggy and crash-prone to justify its limitations on saving.
I didn't encounter many bugs or had any crashes, but I played it about two weeks after the initial release so this could be the reason why my playtime was much better. As a result I didn't have any issues with save limitations (other than no save on exit).
 

deama

Prophet
Joined
May 13, 2013
Messages
4,352
Location
UK
Aside from all other considerations, Kingdom Come: Deliverance was simply too buggy and crash-prone to justify its limitations on saving.
I didn't encounter many bugs or had any crashes, but I played it about two weeks after the initial release so this could be the reason why my playtime was much better. As a result I didn't have any issues with save limitations (other than no save on exit).
I didn't get many bugs either, though I played about 6 months after release.
 

KeighnMcDeath

RPG Codex Boomer
Joined
Nov 23, 2016
Messages
12,874
have fun getting drunk
There, cut out all the extra stuff. You're welcome.
Oh come on......everyone has fun getting drunk :).
Even Sam Drunkguy?

New SJW games haven't changed much from old games. (Well inspired by old games... the old games are too much to actually show.)

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jSxNyCe.jpg

mHYvn1n.png
 

Sykar

Arcane
Joined
Dec 2, 2014
Messages
11,297
Location
Turn right after Alpha Centauri
Thinking about it, the best way to enjoy most cRPG (as in all the crap out there) is not to play them but instead read about all the butt-hurt they generate among Codexers.

I know i had fun reading about BT IV and Deadwater, although i played the latter a little (too much).
That only applies to games like Mechajammer, for which our esteemed member Dhaze has sacrificed his sanity to give us an in-depth look into the pits of game development.
 

Dhaze

Cipher
Joined
Apr 1, 2022
Messages
527
Location
Belgium
For every dreadful, bug-ridden, devil-begotten game out there, there's at least one dude stupid and stubborn enough to play it to the end; might as well entertain others while doing so. I know I've had my fair share of fun over the years, reading Codexers' impressions or playthroughs of various shitty titles.

On topic: jump in blind and enjoy the discovery. Works for me much more often than not.
 

Sykar

Arcane
Joined
Dec 2, 2014
Messages
11,297
Location
Turn right after Alpha Centauri
You are mentally tougher than me then. I would have probably gone Unreal Tournament kid mode on that piece of shit game.


Okay maybe not quite as rabid. :lol:
Gosh it has already been over 1 and 1/2 decade since that came out. I feel like I start getting old!

Edit: Oh my, the kid is still aorund:


So from the comments, it seems like the piece of shit newspaper/tv program "Focus" made a smear campaign about him and gamers in general and he got a lot of harassment because of that as a young teenager which he did not handle well and spiraled out of control. Not surprised about our Lügenpresse though. It also seemed that he had trouble getting an apprenticeship or work after school. Seems like he hit the gym later, got a girlfriend and moved on with his life. Respect. :salute:

Edit2: I totally missed that he was also the kid who did the "I am a real gangsta" videos. I did not connect him to those. Now I really feel old. :o
 
Last edited:

Dhaze

Cipher
Joined
Apr 1, 2022
Messages
527
Location
Belgium
Makes we want to replay Return To Na Pali.

Back then that kid's video made it into a couple of shitty morning talk shows in France. But with games today being more popular than ever, it seems the old 'thrashing video games because satanism/violence/sex/drugs' so common during the 80's and 90's has pretty much died, at least in mainstream media.
 

Sexy Beast

Novice
Joined
Oct 13, 2022
Messages
19
whenever I start an rpg blind I find my build to be super weak in the midgame and I get discouraged, so I have to start over and seek meta knowledge. this genre sucks.
 

Tweed

Professional Kobold
Patron
Joined
Sep 27, 2018
Messages
2,842
Location
harsh circumstances
Pathfinder: Wrath
have fun getting drunk
There, cut out all the extra stuff. You're welcome.
Oh come on......everyone has fun getting drunk :).
Even Sam Drunkguy?

New SJW games haven't changed much from old games. (Well inspired by old games... the old games are too much to actually show.)






mHYvn1n.png

Hey! I've played this, it's fun. Actually I've played several the games listed in that video. Amazon Warrior is a horrible and impossibly hard ripoff of Forbidden Forest. He missed Killer Games, a fun party game where several players go through rounds of things like escaping from an asylum while slashing inmates, sniping children outside a school yard, and breaking into a woman's home to stab her to death, good soundtrack too.
 
Joined
Jan 14, 2018
Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
Don't seek tips

Use your wit and intelligence to overcome obstacles.

Don't metagame

Obsessing over perfect builds can ruin the fun. Flawed builds are cool. However it turns out makes it special. Picked the wrong feat by accident or made a bad call? Don't worry, it might prove useful after all.

Don't save-scum

Obvioiusly, ruins muh immersion. Stick with what you get.
Doing all of these greatly increased my enjoyment of RPGs.
Just unbind the quicksave/quickload keys. Learn to roll with what you get. At worst, it gives you a reason to play the game at a later point when you haven't got shit to play.
 

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