1eyedking The descriptive text in Planescape would be considered bad writing by novelists

[Shaewaroz]

Video game writing could easily be on the level of literature.

I absolutely believe that writing in videogames can be just as good as literature. Maybe even better.

The reason why it sucks is because we settle for the lowest possible standards. Why not demand companies hire popular authors instead of idolizing people with no formal writing experience?

Wasnt there an RPG game that was at least partly written by RA Salvatore? Perhaps not the best of authors, but goes to show that it has been done and it hasnt really made any significant difference.

 

[Sigourn]

I'm going to hold any writing aiming higher than "good for what it is" to the same standard I would hold literature. Unless your work is [insert favorite author] reincarnated, I don't give a single fuck about your 10-paragraph long description of a sword's backstory, sorry.

Videogames should be more like movies and less like books.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

Video game writing could easily be on the level of literature.

I absolutely believe that writing in videogames can be just as good as literature. Maybe even better.

The reason why it sucks is because we settle for the lowest possible standards. Why not demand companies hire popular authors instead of idolizing people with no formal writing experience?

Wasnt there an RPG game that was at least partly written by RA Salvatore? Perhaps not the best of authors, but goes to show that it has been done and it hasnt really made any significant difference.

Yes, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. Curt Schilling, hall of fame pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies, poured most of his money into making his dream RPG, along with some generous subsidies from the state of Rhode Island. They spent a fortune on Amalur, created a third-rate ARPG, and studio went under when the game flopped.

That said, R.A. Salvatore is the worst kind of hack so I don't think this proves anything. I don't have the patience to do a side by side comparison, but I bet if you looked at his books next to, say, David Gaider's Dragon Age spinoff novels, Salvatore would not come out ahead.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Videogames should be more like movies and less like books.

Yeah well, Torment proved that's not the case, so what are we talking about here exactly? You can't argue for something when the evidence says otherwise.

 

[Puteo]

There's a lot of discussion about what good writing is, but the fact that people would point to Planescape (which I love) as an example of good technical writing is concerning. Maybe if you never read a good novel in your life.

Well friendo, maybe you should look up what "technical writing" actually is

 

[you know what time it is]

Wrong medium and context.

 

[MRY]

I'm more into music, so my exposure to literature is not as extensive as yours probably, and i'm not going to say there aren't a large number of fantasy or sci-fi authors with decent prose, just saying i haven't encountered many.

I just took your post as an excuse to nudge you toward some writers I enjoyed.

But for the record, i have no problem with fiction being what it is, and i don't expect a work of literary genius every time i pick up a fantasy novel. You have to judge things for what their level is, there's no point pretending a video game writer, even someone as talented as Chris, should stand up to the standards of great literature. If such a thing were to be possible you'd be asking why a writer of such an high caliber would waist their time writing for video games, it is just an absurd expectation.

For sure. When Darth Roxor was on his tear about bad RPG writing, I wrote a couple replies, which I wound up not posting out of concern they'd seem defensive about TTON, but the gist was that there are a million reasons for RPG writing to be bad, and no reason for it to be good. The surprise is PS:T, not [insert RPG with lame writing].

For me, Torment is a classic in the same sense a Blade Runner is a classic. It stands as the pinnacle of a particular medium, which is no small feat, for any genuine creative act is an achievement no matter how you look at it, but that doesn't mean it can be compared to more serious works. I mean take something like Predator, which i personally consider to be a near perfect action film, unmatched to this day. Now, Predator is no work of art, and is full of cheesy and silly crap, but for some reason it just can't be replicated, because genuine creativity and inspiration are still a rare occurrence, even when the standards are so low.

I'm not a huge fan of Blade Runner, but I agree about Predator. Part of the problem is people chase Blade Runner pretensions rather than Predator fun, and when they chase Predator, they feel the need to burlesque it because they don't appreciate that it was earnest, not ridiculous, and doesn't really work if you make it ridiculous. (I'm sure I don't need to remind you, but the movie basically starts out as a serious Rambo/Commando-like, which is what makes the direction it goes so fantastic. Of the things that Crysis stole from it, I always thought that was a clever one.)

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I'm more into music, so my exposure to literature is not as extensive as yours probably, and i'm not going to say there aren't a large number of fantasy or sci-fi authors with decent prose, just saying i haven't encountered many.

I just took your post as an excuse to nudge you toward some writers I enjoyed.

But for the record, i have no problem with fiction being what it is, and i don't expect a work of literary genius every time i pick up a fantasy novel. You have to judge things for what their level is, there's no point pretending a video game writer, even someone as talented as Chris, should stand up to the standards of great literature. If such a thing were to be possible you'd be asking why a writer of such an high caliber would waist their time writing for video games, it is just an absurd expectation.

For sure. When Darth Roxor was on his tear about bad RPG writing, I wrote a couple replies, which I wound up not posting out of concern they'd seem defensive about TTON, but the gist was that there are a million reasons for RPG writing to be bad, and no reason for it to be good. The surprise is PS:T, not [insert RPG with lame writing].

For me, Torment is a classic in the same sense a Blade Runner is a classic. It stands as the pinnacle of a particular medium, which is no small feat, for any genuine creative act is an achievement no matter how you look at it, but that doesn't mean it can be compared to more serious works. I mean take something like Predator, which i personally consider to be a near perfect action film, unmatched to this day. Now, Predator is no work of art, and is full of cheesy and silly crap, but for some reason it just can't be replicated, because genuine creativity and inspiration are still a rare occurrence, even when the standards are so low.

I'm not a huge fan of Blade Runner, but I agree about Predator. Part of the problem is people chase Blade Runner pretensions rather than Predator fun, and when they chase Predator, they feel the need to burlesque it because they don't appreciate that it was earnest, not ridiculous, and doesn't really work if you make it ridiculous. (I'm sure I don't need to remind you, but the movie basically starts out as a serious Rambo/Commando-like, which is what makes the direction it goes so fantastic. Of the things that Crysis stole from it, I always thought that was a clever one.)

this post is pretentious garbage

 

[laclongquan]

Videogames should be more like movies and less like books.

Sez who? Video games should be like video games, period fucking dot.

 

[MajorMace]

The specificity of the medium is already a fascinating topic regarding other "young" arts like cinema, but when it comes to video games, we're still in uncharted waters.
This specific field still lacks its defining pieces of work, I mean on the side of the critics not the games themselves. The rpgcodex papers are actually quite alright, like the last one from roxor about writing, and can serve as a solid basis to carry on but they're so focused on crpgs in particular that they'll never reach a lot of people or affect the whole medium.

Anyway, I think one key to approach the video game's specificity is to immediatly cut ties with the two other medias it tends to borrow from (mostly, by convenience) ie literature and cinema.
Sometimes, the author will find no good ways to tell or communicate what he wants to without resorting to traditional medias' forms and means. And I'm fairly certain, even though it's been years, that it also concerns games like ps:t.
Soul Reaver is another interesting case. It relies a lot on cutscenes, whose direction and writing could be interchanged with cinema anytime. Yet it has some interesting ideas with the parallel worlds gimmick, which convey its gothic steampunk apocalypse through gameplay and level design.
Video games convey more than a narration, a story or a photography. These are the most obvious aspects of the medium, the ones you can experience even without playing. Yet gameplay can tell something on its own. You can have video games who show absurd things on the screen and tell you absurd stuff right on or indirectly, but which make perfect sense once you play them. We should call it the super mario principle or something. Typical case right there.

Another example I like to jerk off to is Dark Souls' design. The game conveys a lot through its design alone, with this damn learning curve and ruthless oppositions coupled with the most popamole mechanic ever of no game over whatsoever. The only game over in Dark Souls is dropping the pad out of boredom/rage/despair and quit the playthrough altogether. Which kind of mirrors the insignificant narrative premise, ie. you're an undead fuck and if you lose sight of your objective you go hollow, in a satisfying mise en abyme.

This industry needs to know a change of paradigm in how its products are perceived, similar to how the cahiers du cinéma pushed their politique des auteurs.
More emphasis on the designer, give the good ones the means to work ffs.

 

[aweigh]

Let's post excerpts from books we like that have writing the likes of which will never, ever be seen in a video game (while simultaneously humble-bragging about our literary tastes):

Immediately he saw the firm, he realised what he could do. He had a fight to fight with Matter, with the earth and the coal it enclosed. This was the sole idea, to turn upon the inanimate matter of the underground, and reduce it to his will. And for this fight with matter, one must have perfect instruments in perfect organisation, a mechanism so subtle and harmonious in its workings that it represents the single mind of man, and by its relentless repetition of given movement, will accomplish a purpose irresistibly, inhumanly. It was this inhuman principle in the mechanism he wanted to construct that inspired Gerald with an almost religious exaltation. He, the man, could interpose a perfect, changeless, godlike medium between himself and the Matter he had to subjugate.

There were two opposites, his will and the resistant Matter of the earth. And between these he could establish the very expression of his will, the incarnation of his power, a great and perfect machine, a system, an activity of pure order, pure mechanical repetition, repetition ad infinitum, hence eternal and infinite. He found his eternal and his infinite in the pure machine-principle of perfect co-ordination into one pure, complex, infinitely repeated motion, like the spinning of a wheel; but a productive spinning, as the revolving of the universe may be called a productive spinning, a productive repetition through eternity, to infinity. And this is the Godmotion, this productive repetition ad infinitum. And Gerald was the God of the machine, Deus ex Machina. And the whole productive will of man was the Godhead.

He had his life-work now, to extend over the earth a great and perfect system in which the will of man ran smooth and unthwarted, timeless, a Godhead in process. He had to begin with the mines. The terms were given: first the resistant Matter of the underground; then the instruments of its subjugation, instruments human and metallic; and finally his own pure will, his own mind. It would need a marvellous adjustment of myriad instruments, human, animal, metallic, kinetic, dynamic, a marvellous casting of myriad tiny wholes into one great perfect entirety. And then, in this case there was perfection attained, the will of the highest was perfectly fulfilled, the will of mankind was perfectly enacted; for was not mankind mystically contra-distinguished against inanimate Matter, was not the history of mankind just the history of the conquest of the one by the other?

- DH Lawrence

Right, I can just imagine the RPG where we're gonna be reading something like that. Mm-hmm.

We can also go contemporary:

Five wagons smoldered on the desert floor and the riders dismounted and moved among the bodies of the dead argonauts in silence, those right pilgrims nameless among the stones with their terrible wounds, the viscera spilled from their sides and the naked torsos bristling with arrowshafts. Some by their beards were men but yet wore strange menstrual wounds between their legs and no man’s parts for these had been cut away and hung dark and strange from out their grinning mouths. In their wigs of dried blood they lay gazing up with ape’s eyes at brother sun now rising in the east.

The wagons were no more than embers armatured with the blackened shapes of hoop-iron and tires, the redhot axles quaking deep within the coals. The riders squatted at the fires and boiled water and drank coffee and roasted meat and lay down to sleep among the dead...


They rode on. They rode like men invested with a purpose whose origins were antecedent to them, like blood legatees of an order both imperative and remote. For although each man among them was discrete unto himself, conjoined they made a thing that had not been before and in that communal soul were wastes hardly reckonable more than those whited regions on old maps where monsters do live and where there is nothing other of the known world save conjectural winds.

- Cormac McCarthy

My god the gulf between proper prose and what's necessary to make game play work is impossibly big.

EDIT:

A personal favorite excerpt from Lawrence's Women In Love:

`But I, myself, who am myself, what have I to do with equality with any other man or woman? In the spirit, I am as separate as one star is from another, as different in quality and quantity. Establish a state on that. One man isn't any better than another, not because they are equal, but because they are intrinsically other, that there is no term of comparison. The minute you begin to compare, one man is seen to be far better than another, all the inequality you can imagine is there by nature. I want every man to have his share in the world's goods, so that I am rid of his importunity, so that I can tell him: "Now you've got what you want -- you've got your fair share of the world's gear. Now, you one-mouthed fool, mind yourself and don't obstruct me.'

^ above should be Codex motto.

 

[Life of the Party]

What I posted and what my esteemed colleagues found too long to read was the beginning of Morthylla by Clark Ashton Smith. Mainly because his prose is often described as being extensively purple, but I actually find it to work perhaps better than any other purple prose. One reason for that might be that he possessed an extraordinary, if not photographic, memory which enabled him to memorize the Oxford Dictionary and I guess probably made him functionally incapable of even differentiating between purple and not-so-purple. It's a funny thing, human mind.

He saw himself as a poet first and foremost but wrote short stories as a way of dealing with financial struggles. And he was quite a poet. Also, probably a bit of a necrophile but who are we to judge.

I will repeat a subtle rune—
And thronging suns of Otherwhere
Shall blaze upon the blinded air,
And spectres terrible and fair
Shall wake the riven world at noon.

The star that was mine empery
In dust upon unwinnowed skies:
But primal dreams have made me wise,
And soon the shattered years shall rise
To my remembered sorcery.

To mantic mutterings, brief and low,
My palaces shall lift amain,
My bowers bloom; I will regain
The lips whereon my lips have lain
In rose-red twilights long ago.

Before my murmured exorcism
The world, a wispy wraith, shall flee:
A stranger earth, a weirder sea,
People with shapes of Fäery,
Shall swell upon the waste abysm.

The pantheons of darkened stars
Shall file athwart the crocus dawn;
Goddess and Gorgon, Lar and faun,
Shall tread the amaranthine lawn,
And giants fight their thunderous wars.

Like graven mountains of basalt,
Dark idols of my demons there
Shall tower through bright zones of air,
Fronting the sun with level stare;
And hell shall pave my deepest vault.

Phantom and fiend and sorceror
Shall serve me...till my term shall pass,
And I become no more, alas,
Than a frail shadow on the glass
Before some latter conjurer.

 

[MajorMace]

yeah no i read a piece of quote, twisted its meaning while it was already out of context and made a smart-ass brilliantly retarded comment
don't mind my antics

 

[Lyric Suite]

Yes, let's tell them they were born stupid. A real great compliment.

I know someone who might have been.

They're talented because they work hard, there's no luck in that you goddamn spastic.

My argument is not about working hard. 99% perspiration and all that. The argument is that formal education does not and can not give you talent, especially in the area of arts. You are either born a great artist or not. And even then, if you don't hone your talent you can fail.

Formal education exists to bring the mediocre to a functional level in the society. Think of it as a social service. It really cannot train the truly talented. Which is why the parental role is so important for kids. 9/10 geniuses in modern times would have extraordinary parenting.

That's an issue that came about during the introduction of individualism in art in the Renaissance. In ancient societies, the "creative" aspect of the work of art was determined by the tradition. All the artist had to do is copy the model handed to him, so even people of "average" talent could fulfill their duty. Great artists still existed, but in general you didn't need a Michelangelo to paint a medieval icon. A person of normal talents could paint a great icon provided they had learned the meaning and essence of the forms and models he was meant to reproduce. Many monks in the Orthodox church still maintain that tradition today.

Nowadays that is insufficient, mostly because the art forms themselves are limited. You need true creative genius to brake through those limitations or the art becomes essentially empty formalism. This is a double edged sword because lesser artists would be better off following pre-established models than attempt individualism when they are incapable of creating something unique and worthwhile due to their lack of creative talents. This is the leading cause of hipsterism.

 

[Life of the Party]

Here's something by Wolfe that's actually not from the New Sun.

I want very much to describe the Red Sun Whorl in such a way that you can see it, Nettle-to do it so well that whoever reads this can. Have I made you see Green's jungles? The swamps and their dire inhabitants? The immense trees and the lianas clinging to them like brides? Or the City of the Inhumi, a grove of disintegrating towers like a noble face rotting in the grave?

No, I have given only scattered hints in spite of all my efforts.

What will be the use of trying, in that case?

We stood in an empty street, Nettle. Empty, I say, although it knew a certain traffic of broken stones, which fell from the crumbling houses lining it, rolled into the street, and lay where they had ceased to roll, attended by a guard of rank weeds.

"Look." Mora pointed.

I looked up and saw a shining crimson disk, so large a sun that when I stretched forth my arm, my hand could not cover it all. Stars gleamed all around it, and I felt that the Outsider was trying to convey some message to me by it and them, that this great ember of sun I saw had tumbled from a ruin as the stones had, and that the stars I saw by day here had sprung up around it like the weeds. But I cannot depict the vast city of ruins for you. If I were an artist, I might draw it here, a sketch in my friend the stationer's good black ink upon his thin gray paper. Imagine that I have, and and tell me what would you see in it? What could you? A few hundred ruinous houses, a few hundred dots in a gray sky that is in fact a dreaming purple, and the black sun (for it would have to be black in such a drawing) overlooking everything and seeing nothing.

To understand, you must visualize its sky and hold the vision above you. Not my words. Not my words. Not the smears of ink upon this paper. The sky, a sky purple or blue-black rather than blue, a sky whose skylands were always as visible as those at home, though vastly more remote and colder. It was warm there in the deserted, ruined street; but the dark sky made it seem cold, and I felt sure that it would be cold soon, would turn cold, in fact, before the actual setting of the crimson sun.

"How did we get here?" Hide demanded.

And Mora, "Where are we, Incanto?"

I shook my head and kept my silence.

Inclito's coachman snapped, "Don't do that!" and I turned to see to whom he was speaking. It was to Jahlee, and she was taking off her clothing. "Look!" she exclaimed. "Look at me!" The last worn garment dropped around her feet. She pirouetted, displaying hemispherical breasts, a slender waist, and narrow hips.

Mora muttered, "Is there some madness here?"

"Yes." It was Duko Rigoglio. As he spoke, he fell upon his knees before me. "Free my hands. That's all I ask, free my hands, please, as you love the Increate."

It was a new term to me. I could only peer into his eyes and try to guess what he meant by it.

"I'm a proud man. You know that. I'm begging now. Have I begged you for my life?"

"Your Grandeur-" Morello began.

"I'm begging, Incanto. This is more than life to me. Whoever you are, whatever you are, have pity on me!"

I motioned to Hide. "Cut his bonds."

Sfido exclaimed, "No!"

"Are you afraid he may escape, and remain here?" I asked him. Without waiting for an answer, I told Hide, "Free him, and the others, too. For their sake, I hope they do."

Hide tore his eyes from Jahlee, drew a knife smaller than Sinew's, and cut the cords that had held Rigoglio's hands behind him; Rigoglio rubbed his wrists, muttering thanks.

"You know this street," I told him. "You recognized it at once. You're a proud man, just as you say-too proud to enjoy feeling gratitude for anything. Share your knowledge with me, and I will acknowledge that you have settled any debt."

"I can't be sure," he said, and stared about him with wide eyes. After a moment, a trickle of blood ran from his mouth, so that I wondered if it were possible that he was an inhumu, and had deceived me; but he had merely bitten his lip.

"It's so quiet here," Mora said. Her hand was on the hilt of her sword.

Eco had a needler, and was studying each empty, staring window in turn. I told him, "I believe you're right, someone is watching us," and he nodded without speaking.

Jahlee ran long-fingered hands down her slender body. "This is your doing, Rajan, it has to be. Do you like it? I do!"

I shook my head. "You must praise-or blame-Duko Rigoglio. There is a city somewhat like this on Green, but we are not on Green; these houses would be the towers of the Neighbor lords there. Where are we, Your Grandeur?"

"We've come home ... To Nessus."

 

[The Great ThunThun*]

That's an issue that came about during the introduction of individualism in art in the Renaissance. In ancient societies, the "creative" aspect of the work of art was determined by the tradition. All the artist had to do is copy the model handed to him, so even people of "average" talent could fulfill their duty. Great artists still existed, but in general you didn't need a Michelangelo to paint a medieval icon. A person of normal talents could paint a great icon provided they had learned the meaning and essence of the forms and models he was meant to reproduce. Many monks in the Orthodox church still maintain that tradition today.

Nowadays that is insufficient, mostly because the art forms themselves are limited. You need true creative genius to brake through those limitations or the art becomes essentially empty formalism. This is a double edged sword because lesser artists would be better off following pre-established models than attempt individualism when they are incapable of creating something unique and worthwhile due to their lack of creative talents. This is the leading cause of hipsterism.

The issue of education required to turn mediocre into the functional did not come due to the introduction of individualism, but rather because of eventual evolution towards industrialism. In the age of Machine, especially, the mediocre man is the cog in the engine of production. If that cog misbehaves it destabilizes the whole machine. You need the reliability of the mediocre man to run the world. The genius is always unstable and harder to contain. He also has less regard for the lives of others. Modern formal education bores and restricts him.

This has some unintended consequences, of course. If the mediocre man can be happy in that position for orthogonal reasons, he lives a fulfilling life. If he can not, he becomes frustrated with his lot. These conditions are not that different from the medieval world, but the one important difference they have is Humanism. Modern man is more aware of his lot in life than the medieval/pre-medieval man. And thus more prone to spiritual loss.

This is all relevant if that was the issue you were addressing.

 

[Lilura]

R.A. Salvatore is the worst kind of hack

There are worse: most game writers.

I don't have the patience to do a side by side comparison, but I bet if you looked at his books next to, say, David Gaider's Dragon Age spinoff novels, Salvatore would not come out ahead.

Hilarious. I'm not a fan of Salvatore (R.E Howard is where it's at), but to imply that Gaider is a better writer than Salvatore is a complete and utter joke; take it back.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

R.A. Salvatore is the worst kind of hack

There are worse: most game writers.

I don't have the patience to do a side by side comparison, but I bet if you looked at his books next to, say, David Gaider's Dragon Age spinoff novels, Salvatore would not come out ahead.

Hilarious. I'm not a fan of Salvatore (R.E Howard is where it's at), but to imply that Gaider is a better writer than Salvatore is a complete and utter joke; take it back.

I will never understand the affection people have for Salvatore, even those who claim to dislike him. As far as I’m concerned, this is all garbage tier work that gives the genre a bad name. But whatever else you might think of him, Gaider can write dialogue that at least bears a passing resemblance to something a human being might say. Salvatore cannot. Bizarrely, over decades in the industry, anytime his characters talk it’s almost stunning how bad it is.

http://media.wizards.com/2015/downloads/dnd/Archmage_Sample.pdf

I just inflicted some samples of both authors on myself. Salvatore tries and fails to establish a faux-epic tone and it’s really fucking grating. Gaider’s prose is smoother, even as it’s very clear that he’s writing young adult fiction with young adult characters for a young adult audience. Gaider knows he’s a hack and he doesn’t make it worse by trying to do things that are beyond his ability. Salvatore is only superior if you think that his work is elevated by the author’s cringe inducing attempts to ape Tolkien.

Gaider tries to do something unremarkable (also undesirable) and he mostly seems to succeed at hitting that very low bar. Salvatore tries to do something better, but he fails miserably. They’re both bad in different ways and YMMV, but sentence for sentence reading Salvatore is painful; reading Gaider is merely mind numbing.

And I would hesitate before comparing Salvatore favorably to game writers. We have examples of his own writing within the medium: the lore for Amalur. I can’t bring myself to read more of his shit but I would be surprised if it’s any better than your average RPG writer.

 

[JarlFrank]

"Run, Maric!" And run he did.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

1. complains about bad writing in a widely respected game, writes "would of" in the same paragraph. writes "amatuer" a few posts down the line.

2. provides a bad example of how to improve said game's faulty writing, completely changes the meaning of the sentence inadvertently.

3. unwittingly proves that the problem in torment's case is lack of careful and judicious editing - no easy task, and a problem that is included in the birthing pains of a nascent industry (although it needs to be said, not much progress has been made in that regard, see PoE's insufferable flowery prose that could have used 4 or 5 ruthless editing passes)

4. ???

5. profit in triggering the codex

For sure. When Darth Roxor was on his tear about bad RPG writing, I wrote a couple replies, which I wound up not posting out of concern they'd hurt the feelings of Inxile developers and burn some bridges.

Fixed.

 

[Lilura]

I will never understand the affection people have for Salvatore

Flip-side of the coin, I will never understand the hatred gamers have for RAS. Especially since they have shit-tier taste across the board (they are gamers).

 

[Sigourn]

Videogames should be more like movies and less like books.

Yeah well, Torment proved that's not the case

How? Videogames in the past twenty years have proved developers understand videogames should be more like movies. The issue is they took it a bit too literally and you get shit like the new God of War. When I say games should be more like I movies, I mean less time should be spent on purple prose and more should be spent on actually showing what you are being described.

 

[JarlFrank]

More time should be spent on actually letting the player interact with things.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

I will never understand the affection people have for Salvatore

Flip-side of the coin, I will never understand the hatred gamers have for RAS. Especially since they have shit-tier taste across the board (they are gamers).

Oh, my hatred for Salvatore goes back to well before I played any CRPG; a friend recommended the Icewind Dale trilogy when I was 11 or 12. Having grown up in a house full of genre fiction—we had nearly every paperback SF/F novel from the ‘40s through the early ‘80—my preteen self was not having any of that shit. I used better books as coasters (admittedly, this is not a great idea with paperbacks and my dad got very mad at me for mistreating the works of Clifford D. Simak, but there you go).

There is nothing more ridiculous than watching someone try (and fail!) to mimic something they don’t really understand. If Salvatore just wrote pulp fiction I would find him unobjectionable, but his attempts to imitate Tolkien stylistically are repulsive.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

And even more complex then that in case of true RPGs because the changes in the events are limited and specified through abilities of a character that player cannot override directly. Although it may seem counterintuitive at first, it is these very "limits" that actually give us different options in gameplay. The limits is what literally makes them different and enables different experiences and actions. So the thief can stealth somewhere while the fighter cannot, a charismatic talker can turn enemies into allies and have completely different events play out. And its these limits that allow us to choose different dialogue options that result in various different outcomes we cannot then change. Its the limit of not being able to have an apple and eat it too.

I think it would be best to come up with a new term for writing in games, to stop confusing the previous solid medium form with this kind of live changeable experience that is created by playing.

This is motivated by the fact that even the most traditional cRPGs have an inner simulationist vocation in the character system and the use of stats, skills, etc. These things are models to represent peoples abilities in the game world. Since you try to implement people’s abilities and limitations in the game world, is natural to assume that the story should be more realistic too. What I find curious is that this is also the main reason why cRPG gameplay is so poorly received and misunderstood, by both casual players and developers that streamlined the genre with action games. cRPG gameplay is mainly determined by the ability of the player to make good builds, giving less importance to decisions in moment to moment gameplay. It’s a more autistic abstract type of gameplay. So the inner simulationist vocation in the character system attracts pretentious storyfag hipsters while it chases away players that want the usual type of gameplay. Personally, I think there is room for better characters and setting (better writing) without compromising good gameplay (builds, resource management, etc). I want C&C without sacrificing the tactical aspect.