Editorial RPG Codex Editorial: Darth Roxor on the State of RPG Writing

[naossano]

Did you read *War and Peace* seven times to know if it is better than *Torment* ?

 

[Once more unto the Codex]

Feargus also gave this article a shout-out in the comments section of the PoE2 Figstarter. Hopefully that means they'll take some of the criticisms to heart while writing PoE2...probably not, but a man can dream.

 

[Fenix]

Because there was a demonic train in one of the books about 40k. I think one about ultramarines.

Histories about ghost train is quite common, I remember I read some Russian horror-sci-fi (I believe) where existed one of them.
LOL you woudn't believe, but I just found it after LONG time of fruitless search.
At least for Russian codexers (and those who can read in Russian) https://4stor.ru/histori-for-not-life/41102-desant.html cheap-but-good shorts story, mix of Roadside Picnic with some vague mystic with something resembling vampires, and Slav swamp mithology bestiary but not exactly. Hard to describe.

I think that most people should be obligated to learn very basic things such as reading, writing, basic arithmetic, notions of geography, legal duties and rights, etc. Anything more than that should be optional.

Well, you suggest exactly where it goes. It bring no good to everyone.

If you are a natural singer, dancer, gardener or artisan you are fucked because most school curriculums won’t support your vocation.

That's not true. Instead of relying on one talent, classical education give person a chance to succseed in EVERY field of activity, more than that classical education enriches that talented person in every way, thus making him better even in his talent.
Education is a good thing, and if someone have only animal needs and desires - it is task for a society to help raise man ABOVE such desires.

So we'd need to shift to some form of aristocracy / meritocracy political system, where better educated individuals rule.

Didn't you think that it is one of the reason why it all happened?
I came to conclusion that European civilization (or transatlantic if you wish) and its societies moving back to medieval feudalism in a terms of organization of society, no matter if it is natural or forced proccess.
Changes in education, which known as Bologna system is a part of privatization of eduaction worldwide.

 

[Wayward Son]

For sake of post size, quotes are in spoilers.

Spoiler

It’s only hard because you take for granted the illuminist concept of universal education without considering the preferences and dispositions of actual people. Let’s make this clear once and for all: most people hate books and have no other interests besides cheap entertainment, food and sex. The “problem” of education only appears when you take all these people and shove them in classes and say, “Hey, guess what? Now, you have to learn 2000 years of knowledge* to learn in X years”. I think that most people should be obligated to learn very basic things such as reading, writing, basic arithmetic, notions of geography, legal duties and rights, etc. Anything more than that should be optional. That way high school would stop being prisons were fathers imprison their kids while they are working.

But even if most people wouldn’t be wasting teachers' time by being forced to learn a bunch of stuff they don’t want, there is still another problem in the meagre diet of classes that are offered. If you are a natural singer, dancer, gardener or artisan you are fucked because most school curriculums won’t support your vocation. This represents a huge loss for society, which instead of developing or channeling these talents, it’s forcing these people to be something that they don’t want. That’s also one of the reasons why students are uninterested.

* That’s assuming teachers are actually teaching their respective disciplines, which is no true in 9 out of 10 cases. A math teacher, for instance, should educate students to proof conjectures, instead of instructing them to memorize a bunch of operations with formulas they don’t understand. It’s ridiculous. I think the same thing could be said by the other areas. Any way you look at it, it becomes clear that how education should be it is incompatible with how most people are. And that's fine. Most people shouldn't be forced into books. The problem is when we assume they should. That's the main problem.

Thing is, though, can you trust kids to make the choice of how much they want to learn, instead of just choosing the easy way? Do they have the hindsight to chose well?

I agree that schools function like prisons, they're obedience teaching machines. And kids hate that, naturally. But I believe that it's not because kids don't want to learn, it's the delivery system that sucks and is constraining, which then makes them suffer through education instead of enjoying it / developing themselves. The idea would be to change that delivery system, instead of abandoning the idea of giving kids a solid education. School curriculums being too uniform is a problem, and ultimately you'd want something where education / what is learned is at least partly driven by each student's own motivations / interests, as long as they all cover the bases.

Maybe we're saying the same thing basically. You need to teach a solid base to everyone, and let them explore for the rest, but not without a certain framework, guidance to help them and hold them accountable for their progress. That is not an obvious system to design. Rigidity is easy, flexibility requires good conditions to exist.

Also, another issue is, if you don't want kids to develop a minimum of critical thinking, then we'd better not be ruled under a democratic system. It's already pretty bad right now, which is why we vote every 4 years on something only marginally important as the face of the system. So we'd need to shift to some form of aristocracy / meritocracy political system, where better educated individuals rule. That's a big shift. You couldn't even have the masses vote for it, "b-but muh democracy".

Lurker King I actually agree with this post. In my school district and nearby ones, they offer for Juniors and Seniors to go to vocational school to learn what they want to do for half the day every day. And everyone that I know that takes a class there it's the favorite part of their day. Some of these people can't stand normal schooling, and as such, fail or do poorly. Once they are placed in the vocational class, on the other hand, they start doing better in all their classes, because they see how it can be applied to something that they really enjoy. For those that stay in the school, it's not all bad in that respect either. In Junior and Senior year, at least half of your day is open, so you can take whatever classes interest you. It's a great arrangement. Everyone can start focusing on what they are passionate about, while still receiving general ed., early on.

Ismaul I feel, as a student, by tenth or eleventh grade, you should be able to trust the individual student. Like I said previously, it works out great for students if, while still giving them general education, you give them some freedom in determining their course of action. And this comes from personal anecdotal experience.

 

[Infinitron]

Feargus also gave this article a shout-out in the comments section of the PoE2 Figstarter. Hopefully that means they'll take some of the criticisms to heart while writing PoE2...probably not, but a man can dream.

Wow. I think if he liked the article enough to share it like that, they're probably passing the link around at Obsidian.

 

[Lurker King]

I actually agree with this post. In my school district and nearby ones, they offer for Juniors and Seniors to go to vocational school to learn what they want to do for half the day every day. And everyone that I know that takes a class there it's the favorite part of their day. Some of these people can't stand normal schooling, and as such, fail or do poorly. Once they are placed in the vocational class, on the other hand, they start doing better in all their classes, because they see how it can be applied to something that they really enjoy. For those that stay in the school, it's not all bad in that respect either. In Junior and Senior year, at least half of your day is open, so you can take whatever classes interest you. It's a great arrangement. Everyone can start focusing on what they are passionate about, while still receiving general ed., early on.

Of course! I think there two things to consider here. First, the amount of talent that is wasted on traditional curriculum. My fiancé taught philosophy in a public school. She had a student who didn’t care about the class but was obsessed with horses. He knew everything about it. If the education system worked, there should be a way to cater to his interests, but there isn’t. Second, people are more creative and productive when they are following their interests, instead of having to meet deadlines and obligations imposed by a third party. There is data about this. That’s why you have the Codex hobbyists can make interesting things in their spare time, but suck at their jobs. That’s why you have people working for free on open software, etc. That’s why many modern companies have flexing working hours. Now, if you decide to shove information down your student throat because you know what is good for him, chances are that you are making someone miserable for nothing. In high school, I spend most of my time reading philosophy books on class, because I thought it was a waste of my time doing otherwise.

Now, to go back to the topic of the thread, I don’t know how the actual education system in most countries (read, elementary school and high school) have any indirect role in the bad writing we see in cRPGs. I have the suspicion that the “you need a diploma” mentality associated with compulsory education and lack of different disciplines provides social incentives to the wrong people. That’s why you have incompetent teachers, writers, etc., because they have no talent for it, but decide to follow this path because they “wanted to feel important” or need a diploma. Contemporary universities are clogged with book haters and talentless imbeciles wasting resources and time.

 

[sser]

My impression of a lot of these writers is this: they are not especially well read, they have no sense of humor, and they’re emerging from intolerant communities. I list these out, but they're very intertwined.

Read it if you want. TL;DR at the bottom.

Not well read: see the Tyranny interview. Plain as day that their conceptions of evil are cartoonishly deterministic, despite the concept carrying an enormous amount of literature and philosophical debate. And you know, that’s fine and all, but it gives a big fat hint that the very core of the game is going to go completely unexplored.


No sense of humor: I think this is something being looked over, though Darth Roxor basically implied it as an issue.

It is subjective, but I personally find most of these games to be largely unfunny despite having strong foundations for good comedy. People might like Durance not only because of his stories, but because he was so utterly surrounded by boring dullards that he became this sort of fantasy Samuel L. Jackson yelling about whores and giving a god an atomic shinin'. Humor is an amazing way to flesh out a character, even the somber, ‘downer’ characters, but a lot of the writers seem kinda humorless whenever I read their interviews (or a little too Tumblry, like getting people to “fight a polar bear” to settle court cases, because lululululul). And by humorless, I mean it seems like they could never really take the piss. This lack of humor rolls over into the writing. There’s a rigidness that then parlays itself into jokes that slide into the "holds up spork" territory, because anything beyond that might - here it comes - offend someone. Which leads me to this...


Intolerance:

To start,

Being steeped in Twitter and liberal tech culture and all of the flaggelation and ecstatic condemnation that those entail winnows away the capacity to have an unprompted, ugly and reckless thought which is the germ of any creative endeavour. The rote phrases, the abandonment of reason, the emptiness of the whole thing destroys the soul.

[...]

You can't write well if there's a little censorious imp perched on your shoulder, reminding you to investigate your own prejudices after every single sentence. ... There's no way a game made in America or Europe would've allowed the Bloody Baron to exist in the form that we get him. It would be unacceptable to portray him as a human being. In an American game, he would be a demon, a creature of no soul or humanity that exists to embody a vice.

A large part of that is tied to this intellectual zeitgeist where people are incapable of holding, much less measuring, opposing ideas.

Tolerance is not a byword for being okay with progressive attitudes, contrary to the lexicographic manipulations of most online communities, communities where "tolerance" has devolved into pointless high-fiving over agreeing with one another. Tolerance is about understanding viewpoints outside your own, so long as they don't physically infringe upon you. That's it. Despite the amount of epithets and insults thrown around the Codex, it is, as a whole, almost infinitely more tolerant than a place like NeoGAF. This site is frequently labeled as disgusting, but that's because tolerance is quite an ugly and challenging thing.

And that's basically my point: a lot of these writers seem to come out of very intolerant communities.

Example: someone linked to a writer's Twitter page somewhere on here. On that page, they are expressing certain social and political views. Totally fine. However, humans are tribalistic creatures by nature and increasingly unwelcoming to intellectual outsiders. And, if the Gamergate saga is anything to go by, they're impressively vengeful toward insiders who step out of line. The lizard brain knows the most dangerous enemy of all is the one from within. How can this writer create a character that goes against their community without simultaneously being cast out...?

The reason you're not really seeing those "reckless" thoughts is because it's becoming an environment of writing by committee and writing by community -- a committee of like-minded individuals who are connected to a community they can never "confront" even through fiction, because such ideas are untenable in today's culture of hyper tribalistic echo chambers. That big kerfuffle with the trans Baldur's Gate character really had to do with the feeling that it was a sort of shoutout to the writer's community rather than an earnest attempt to make an interesting character. But that's the catch: she couldn't necessarily make it an interesting character because interesting characters tend to have this thing called flaws, and flaws are hard to swallow in a culture which has been submerged in little league games that don't keep score, dodgeball and recess bans, and a sea of plastic participation trophies.

Flaws invite complexities, complexities invite fallibility, and fallibility suggests that, sometimes, the opposing view has legitimacy. But the Tribe (tm) thinks that if you understand something then you must know where it comes from, and if you know where it comes from then you must believe it, too. The (assumed) infallibility of ideas means that the Dragonspear writer can insert this trans character -- and that's about it, because it is very much a prickly holy totem she is putting down. Any further development risks a de facto abjuration of her beliefs.

Ultimately, I think we’re inching toward some sort of bad writing event horizon where ‘good writing’ will be judged solely by its lack of hamfisted politics.

 

[calydon]

Ultimately, I think we’re inching toward some sort of bad writing event horizon where ‘good writing’ will be judged solely by its lack of hamfisted politics.

So, you mean everything besides '1984', and 'Animal Farm'?

 

[Fenix]

My impression of a lot of these writers is this: they are not especially well read, they have no sense of humor, and they’re emerging from intolerant communities. I list these out, but they're very intertwined.

Read it if you want. TL;DR at the bottom.

Not well read: see the Tyranny interview. Plain as day that their conceptions of evil are cartoonishly deterministic, despite the concept carrying an enormous amount of literature and philosophical debate. And you know, that’s fine and all, but it gives a big fat hint that the very core of the game is going to go completely unexplored.


No sense of humor: I think this is something being looked over, though Darth Roxor basically implied it as an issue.

It is subjective, but I personally find most of these games to be largely unfunny despite having strong foundations for good comedy. People might like Durance not only because of his stories, but because he was so utterly surrounded by boring dullards that he became this sort of fantasy Samuel L. Jackson yelling about whores and giving a god an atomic shinin'. Humor is an amazing way to flesh out a character, even the somber, ‘downer’ characters, but a lot of the writers seem kinda humorless whenever I read their interviews (or a little too Tumblry, like getting people to “fight a polar bear” to settle court cases, because lululululul). And by humorless, I mean it seems like they could never really take the piss. This lack of humor rolls over into the writing. There’s a rigidness that then parlays itself into jokes that slide into the "holds up spork" territory, because anything beyond that might - here it comes - offend someone. Which leads me to this...


Intolerance:

To start,




A large part of that is tied to this intellectual zeitgeist where people are incapable of holding, much less measuring, opposing ideas.

Tolerance is not a byword for being okay with progressive attitudes, contrary to the lexicographic manipulations of most online communities, communities where "tolerance" has devolved into pointless high-fiving over agreeing with one another. Tolerance is about understanding viewpoints outside your own, so long as they don't physically infringe upon you. That's it. Despite the amount of epithets and insults thrown around the Codex, it is, as a whole, almost infinitely more tolerant than a place like NeoGAF. This site is frequently labeled as disgusting, but that's because tolerance is quite an ugly and challenging thing.

And that's basically my point: a lot of these writers seem to come out of very intolerant communities.

Example: someone linked to a writer's Twitter page somewhere on here. On that page, they are expressing certain social and political views. Totally fine. However, humans are tribalistic creatures by nature and increasingly unwelcoming to intellectual outsiders. And, if the Gamergate saga is anything to go by, they're impressively vengeful toward insiders who step out of line. The lizard brain knows the most dangerous enemy of all is the one from within. How can this writer create a character that goes against their community without simultaneously being cast out...?

The reason you're not really seeing those "reckless" thoughts is because it's becoming an environment of writing by committee and writing by community -- a committee of like-minded individuals who are connected to a community they can never "confront" even through fiction, because such ideas are untenable in today's culture of hyper tribalistic echo chambers. That big kerfuffle with the trans Baldur's Gate character really had to do with the feeling that it was a sort of shoutout to the writer's community rather than an earnest attempt to make an interesting character. But that's the catch: she couldn't necessarily make it an interesting character because interesting characters tend to have this thing called flaws, and flaws are hard to swallow in a culture which has been submerged in little league games that don't keep score, dodgeball and recess bans, and a sea of plastic participation trophies.

Flaws invite complexities, complexities invite fallibility, and fallibility suggests that, sometimes, the opposing view has legitimacy. But the Tribe (tm) thinks that if you understand something then you must know where it comes from, and if you know where it comes from then you must believe it, too. The (assumed) infallibility of ideas means that the Dragonspear writer can insert this trans character -- and that's about it, because it is very much a prickly holy totem she is putting down. Any further development risks a de facto abjuration of her beliefs.

Ultimately, I think we’re inching toward some sort of bad writing event horizon where ‘good writing’ will be judged solely by its lack of hamfisted politics.

Good sir, last 2-3 paragraph is very valuable in understandin what is the real reason behind writing activism in games, and expanding explaining of why and how post modern-induced sjw-cancer affect writing.
Most of all I find interesting part about "totem" - YES, they act visibly like human, but their actions have different sacral mean in their community.

 

[Israfael]

Since the thread is pretty much derailed at this point, I'll ask one question to Roxor and everyone else - even if, lets say, PoE had decent writing, a good nontrivial plot and everything else literature-related, would it be a good game, or the same blandfest bore with decent 'in-between combat' dialogues?

 

[Cadmus]

Since the thread is pretty much derailed at this point, I'll ask one question to Roxor and everyone else - even if, lets say, PoE had decent writing, a good nontrivial plot and everything else literature-related, would it be a good game, or the same blandfest bore with decent 'in-between combat' dialogues?

Increasing the number of enjoyable things from 1 (the graphics) to 3 (the writing and story) would make it fun enough for me I suspect. But that don't mean they should make it "decent" but instead "really good".

 

[Darth Roxor]

Since the thread is pretty much derailed at this point, I'll ask one question to Roxor and everyone else - even if, lets say, PoE had decent writing, a good nontrivial plot and everything else literature-related, would it be a good game, or the same blandfest bore with decent 'in-between combat' dialogues?

prob the same blandfest bore

 

[Jasede]

Of course it still wouldn't be a good 'game' in the same sense that PS:T isn't a good 'game.'
The dirty but charming truth is that many of us will forgive a 'game' for being a dialogue/storyfaggotry thing when the content is sufficiently good.

 

[Lurker King]

Infinitron, give sser a developer tag, pls.

 

[Lurker King]

Tolerance is not a byword for being okay with progressive attitudes, contrary to the lexicographic manipulations of most online communities, communities where "tolerance" has devolved into pointless high-fiving over agreeing with one another. Tolerance is about understanding viewpoints outside your own, so long as they don't physically infringe upon you. That's it. Despite the amount of epithets and insults thrown around the Codex, it is, as a whole, almost infinitely more tolerant than a place like NeoGAF. This site is frequently labeled as disgusting, but that's because tolerance is quite an ugly and challenging thing.

George Orwell — 'If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.'

 

[Ismaul]

No sense of humor: I think this is something being looked over, though Darth Roxor basically implied it as an issue.

It is subjective, but I personally find most of these games to be largely unfunny despite having strong foundations for good comedy. People might like Durance not only because of his stories, but because he was so utterly surrounded by boring dullards that he became this sort of fantasy Samuel L. Jackson yelling about whores and giving a god an atomic shinin'. Humor is an amazing way to flesh out a character, even the somber, ‘downer’ characters, but a lot of the writers seem kinda humorless whenever I read their interviews (or a little too Tumblry, like getting people to “fight a polar bear” to settle court cases, because lululululul). And by humorless, I mean it seems like they could never really take the piss. This lack of humor rolls over into the writing. There’s a rigidness that then parlays itself into jokes that slide into the "holds up spork" territory, because anything beyond that might - here it comes - offend someone.

Yeah that is not just a problem with writing, but our society in general. We have become too serious, too touchy. Nobody can laugh at themselves, nobody can laugh at others. And that leads to accumulated tensions, never released. Which then leads to direct conflict, instead of recognition that we all believe in and do some absurd things.

 

[Brancaleone]

But the Tribe (tm) thinks that if you understand something then you must know where it comes from, and if you know where it comes from then you must believe it, too.

It's the idea that you are to be judged according to your Good Thoughts™, and anything that is not labeled Good Thoughts™ cannot even be entertained, let alone explored or tested. Since there is only room for the Good Thoughts™, and they are Good™, they also should be crammed into whatever you say, write or produce at every opportunity. Hence the assumption that if you write something that is not an expression or emanation of those Good Thoughts™, that means that it must be derived from the Bad Thoughts™ that you hold in stead of the Good Ones.

 

[Lurker King]

What I find interesting is that Avellone support these SJW prejudices in public, but he doesn’t let this affect his writing.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

 

[Darth Roxor]

What I find interesting is that Avellone support these SJW prejudices in public, but he doesn’t let this affect his writing.

[perception] maybe its because he's a reasonable guy

 

[Darth Roxor]

So many senpais noticing me

uguu~

 

[Lurker King]

What a disgusting fanboy.

 

[Fairfax]

What I find interesting is that Avellone support these SJW prejudices in public, but he doesn’t let this affect his writing.

His approach is all about raising questions, not lecturing or using allegories to push his own view. He can also separate his views and his work, which allows him to write stuff like this despite being a liberal:

Too bad this is increasingly rare.

 

[Black Angel]

What a disgusting fanboy.

C'mon, man, don't say that.

 

[Lurker King]

More on the word count issue. PST's strength isn't the word count per se, it's that the word count is in service of branching/reactivity and exploration, since a lot of text is hidden in optional, sometimes secret branches and sections that some, maybe most players won't ever see. Nor does branching/reactivity always need to be this world-shaking impactful thing, sometimes it can be as little as using the speak to dead ability to talk to an unnamed zombie, and suddenly discovering Tang poetry.

The attempts to pinpoint what made a game great are always reductive and susceptible to counter-examples, because great games are great for many reasons. The same is true about PS:T. You have a bunch of different and lively characters, nice exploration, a narrative concept that hooks you immediately, the unusual setting with unusual items (tattoos, etc.), the connection between this concept, the characters, the exploration, and the setting, the unease felling that you can be making the same mistakes of your past self, or being fooled by a third part, the fact that the game was practically written by one writer with time on his hands, etc. There are millions of reasons that add together to make this into a great game. The problem is that shallow developers will try to imitate this game with a superficial understanding of what made it work. The way they are influenced by the game, will reflect their own limitations, not what made it good. Did PS:T have lots of writing? So lore dumps and verbose writing is good! PS:T protagonist lived many lives? So the theme should be about this. And so on. Cargo cult mentality is synonymous with lack of understanding.