Dungeons and Dragons: "Alignment" part 3

            I have played Dungeons and Dragons for more than 15 years.  Lately, I have not had access to any other players and so I have just been kicking around ideas that normally would be in a game and instead I am just going to post them on my blog.  This is going to be a reoccurring thing as I just keep hammering out things and not all of them can be turned into elements in my “random fantasy novel ideas” folder.

What Have I Got: A Web of Alliances

            Last week I talked about some other morality systems in geek culture, the not so black and white dichotomy of “Babylon 5” and the traditional virtues and vices of “World of Darkness”.  This week I am going to take a look at an iconic franchise in RPG’s, “Fallout”.

            Traditionally in RPG’s a computer or the Guy running the Game, let’s abbreviate that to Game Guy or GG for short, need a way to evaluate in shorthand how the world views the player character(s).  Are people afraid, hostile, friendly, guarded, or horny?  The spectrum of human emotion is a broad one dictated by the personal philosophy of the observer and the reputation of the observed.  How do you try to box in these things?

            Dungeons and Dragons tends to rely on alignment for the default.  If you are a good person and you meet an evil person they will at best see you as naïve at the start, maybe someone to exploit, maybe a direct threat to their interests.  There is variation based on how much depth the GG wants to give them, but that will usually be the rough starting point.  Chaotic people clash with Lawful, Good with Evil, and Neutral people presumably clash with other Neutrals about what not to feel all that strongly about.

            That is the thing about Neutrals.  You never know where they stand. It sickens me.

            Anyway, here are two examples of how the Fallout franchise has handled that question.  One is complete shit and the other is adequate.  I then give a bit of an insight into my own attempts to harness one of these systems in my own games and the pitfalls I found with it.  There is also a lot of "Skyrim" discussion in there too.

 

This is what "Web of Alliances" traditionally means.
This will make more sense later.

Fallout 4: “I didn’t bother”

            I chose not to give any thought to Fallout 4, because I played that game as an extreme loner and therefore missed out on most of what they decided was important, specifically how your NPC allies feel about you.

            Hey, Bethesda, if you want to make interpersonal interaction and team building a core component of the game’s story maybe don’t make “Lone Wanderer” a perk at all.  Maybe gear your game mechanics to couple with your other game mechanics…. and the story instead of having such obvious divisions between each of the parts.  And cut all the bloat, it is impossible that anyone in development thought “Ghoulish” was worth anything, whoever was pushing for it should be purged.

            One of these days I should go on a long rant about “Fallout 4” and its numerous bad decisions and how they kneecap the ever loving hell out of the good decisions which made the game fun.  One of these days.

            Whatever.

 

Endurance 9, are you high?
If you are going to have a shit perk you should at least make it the lowest ranking one.

Fallout 3: “Murdered by an entire village over a fucking fork”

            There is a youtuber I follow who made a 90-minute video delving into the depths of “Fallout 3 is Garbage (and Here’s Why)”.  You don’t have to watch it, but I feel it does present numerous things about not only “Fallout 3” but the rest of the Fallout franchise and its value as a game series and story setting.

            I never really connected with “Fallout 3” for many of the reasons he points to primarily because of the shallow binary choice aspect to it.  Blow up a town that has done you no wrong or don’t do that.  This is not a meaningful choice.  The idea that doing evil, especially in a covert fashion, would have any effect on how people look at you is questionable considering the amount of anonymity that the setting would afford people in it.  “Karma” is a terrible system.

            I mentioned my issues with the bad over simplification of the morality system in 4^th Edition of Dungeons and Dragons, but “Fallout 3” takes it a step even further.  The game’s AI is too stupid to have a rational reaction to minor transgressions.

            Go ahead and steal something, doesn’t matter if someone sees you, you lose karma.  Go ahead and steal something while someone looks, and even if the object is literal garbage they will lynch your ass.  I have been stabbed by the town doctor because I grabbed the controller weird while shifting in my seat.

            This is the limitations of the technology, obviously you can’t make fully thinking individuals, especially in town that could be obliterated at an early stage in the game.  A massacre committed by you.  For no reason.  But, I point to this because this sort of draconian blunt simplicity is used by lazy players and GG’s without thought.

            It is not fun to punish characters who are not playing the way you think they should with wildly disproportionate punishment or knee jerk in game terror.  It is also not okay for players to get a kick out of brazenly derailing the game because, “My character is going to steal, and I am willing to burn this whole village down if they tell me not to take apples without paying.”  Hey, dipshit, while you are trying to shock humor everyone with your edgy character everyone else is waiting to get on with the story.

             (If it is not clear I am admonishing my younger self for having committed these sins, I am trying to help you learn from my mistakes so that you can be a better player).

Fallout New Vegas: “You can tell a lot about a guy by the company he keeps”

            This system… actually works really well.  If you don’t know much about “New Vegas” (understandable, because at the time of its release it was way too buggy and as a result failed to gain the traction I feel it was due) let me tell you a bit about it.

            In it the post-apocalyptic Mojave Desert.  You are a mailman that has survived being shot in the face and buried in the desert.  You are now out for revenge on the guy who did it and along the way you meet a variety of colorful characters and learn the intricacies of numerous factions.  There is a war on and thru chance you are drawn into the conflict as an agent for one of the 3 primary factions… or you are out for you.  You’ll need resources, allies, and an army to win the war for your chosen side and that means either killing or winning over the numerous groups of the wasteland.

            There is no good and evil (well, there is certainly an evil side, kind of hard to spin the faction with all the slavery, misogyny, cultural extermination, mass murder, and luddite sensibilities as anything other than “evil”) instead you are viewed as being on good or bad terms with each primary group.

            The three primary factions differ in notable ways.  The democratic New California Republic are nominally the good guys but they are stretched thin and plagued with numerous frailties, it seems inevitable that if this war isn’t what beats them then something down the line will.  There is Caesar’s Legion, dozens of tribes banded together into a grand autocratic military that is sweeping the nation, they are the aforementioned “evil” side.  And there is the leader of the powerful city state of New Vegas, the notorious Mister House, who wants to run New Vegas as a model of pre-war glory, utilizing his robot army to protect his glitzy city from all threats.

            Taken along with the option of, “None of the above” you can actually populate the traditional alignment system of Dungeons and Dragons with each faction, House is Lawful, NCR is Good, Caesar is Evil, and taking control and pushing out the others is Chatoic.

            If it were at all possible, I think this sort of system would be ideal for Dungeons and Dragons.  It is not possible.  A GG would have to first think up all of the factions, their priorities, and their primary members.  They would have to have a key central conflict, WAR IS A GOOD ONE, and the players would have to understand each one, which is difficult because inevitably one of them is going to look worse than the others from the start.

            For an instance of how difficult it is to create a real parity, think of the Imperial Legion at the start of Skyrim, it is really hard to justify why your character would work with them after they were about to have you executed when you were not even on the list to be executed, and it is really hard to justify joining the Stormcloaks if your character is anything other than a Nord or maybe an Orc.  By the Eight they yell, “Skyrim is for the Nords” when fighting, naked jingoism is not attractive.  Make Skyrim Great Again, I suppose.

            Beyond that, a video game can keep a score card in the background keeping track of favors and favor that the player has done and curried, a DM would be punishing themselves if they tried to keep track of all of that information in any consistent fashion, how do you measure the weight on an action or a trespass?  And good luck getting all the players to agree to help any particular faction, better luck trying to get them not to follow only one, better-better luck keeping them all from descending into backstabbing.

            How do I know?  Cause I tried it.  Woof!

The Red Crusade: “Unfortunately the experiment ground to a halt”

            I had a war campaign that I put a lot of creative energy into and while I still consider it a great idea (I will one day just make a multi-week blog about the details of it once I get past all of these more general topics) the campaign eventually slowed down and then stopped.  It was not entirely the fault of the premise, we all had lives and there is only so much mental energy two lawyers, one physicist, and a graduate student can put into Dungeons and Dragons.  That being said let me show some ideas and my big failing.

            There were two big sides, the Maunder Empire which resembled Rome or Byzantium in a state of confusion and in many ways collapse.  They were the Lawful to Lawful-Evil side of things, but they had their strong points (if you were Human or Halfling and really liked having a well regimented society with great architecture and functional utilities).  They are led by the nephew of the previous emperor and up till recently they were the most powerful military on the planet, it is only because a dozen things went wrong all at once that they did not handily win the war.

            Beyond the “We are really good at illustrating all of the best things about orderly state run society, but are kind of racist” there were parts that were far more open to reform and even saw the war as a time to push thru new ideas.  It had an evolving status quo.

            The other side was the Alliance, or “Barbarian Horde” as they were called by the Empire.  They were made up of a diverse group of beings from the neighboring continent that had pushed off the colonial yolk of the Maunder and were now on a counter invasion.  They were led by the Infamous Red, a half red dragon who married High Empress Jessica, daughter of the now dead previous Emperor.  The validity of the marriage was suspect (as Jessica was 13 when they got married), Red wanted to install himself as a Governor General with Jessica as a puppet ruler.  He is the Chaotic to Chaotic-Evil side of things.

            That being said, Red’s side was far more diverse, Jessica is legitimately in love with Red and is no longer a child (she is currently 23 and their marriage was non-sexual until she was an adult) and is looking forward to being the figurehead of an empire while most of the real work is done by her friends in the Alliance.  The Alliance was all about democracy, plurality, and choice.  But they were also brutal, and many members had a biological need to destroy many, Many, MANY functional structures and upend the Maunder civilization that would cost millions of lives.  And that is assuming they would all manage to keep moving in the same direction rather than stall out or implode.

            In addition, each side had sub parts, The Empire had 12 different regions, each under siege from some other threat (Yuan-ti, Demons, Undead).  The Alliance had different racial factions (Catfolk, Humans, Goblins), and there was a half dozen smaller satellite countries that had pro-Empire and pro-Alliance positions within each (and I based all of those countries off real life countries).  There were also monstrous powers, churches and cults, and criminal organizations, all of these were exploiting the chaos of the war to push their agendas.  My creativity went into bloated and complex overdrive.  My players couldn’t keep up and became less interested in seeing any nuance.

            The party never even thought that joining the Empire was an option.  Even though one of their first and greatest allies was a Colonel in the Empire and that most of their crew and allies were educated in the schools and colleges of the Empire.  And this really comes down to my fault I guess.  I did the same thing “Skyrim” did and had them start off in an island prison run by the Empire called The Salt Box along with a bunch of other political dissidents.  They escaped the facility, destroying it utterly in the process, and became a group of mercenary adventurers with a crew of political dissidents.  KIND OF HARD TO LOOK AT BOTH SIDES WHEN THE FIRST IMAGE IS OF THE WORST PART OF ONE SIDE.

            I tried to keep the idea of working with one side, then the other, but ultimately it proved a bit fruitless.  The party committed to one side completely, so much so that one player COMPLETELY ignored a major plot that I had designed specifically for his character.  He didn’t think it furthered the interests of Empress Jessica enough and he was playing things Lawful Stupid.

            That issue with his character kind of percolated into why I dislike the traditional alignment system so much.  Because his version of lawful as being so inflexible and single minded and my conception of lawful as being flexible enough to act without direct orders but be conflicted about it were so at odds with one another that it killed the story dead.

Next Time: My Favorite Solution

            I should have kept to a golden rule, “Keep it Simple”.  But “Simple” is the issue I have the problem with.  I like complex, my mind gets off on seeing the linking parts and contrasts between actors in a story, and while I did resent that my player did not take the quest hook I kind of resent that his behavior up to that point hadn’t keyed me off to what he would do when I offered it to him.

            There is no perfect solution here.  But I do think that there is a better system that Wizards of the Coast already has, and has already put a lot of thought into.  So next entry (and perhaps the last on alignment) will be the system that I wish they had just integrated into Dungeons and Dragons back in 4^th Edition.

            WHAT COULD IT BE!?

JOOR ZAH FRUL!

The Beg for Attention:

            If you venomously disagree with me, please tell me why in the comments.  Feel free to leave links to your own blog on the topic or articles that you have found helpful.  Or write your own counterpoint to all this (or parts of it) and come back and post a link. 

            Maybe you had some kind of knee jerk visceral reaction to my bad mouthing of “Fallout 3/4” maybe you would like to air your grievances in the comments.  I actually do read the comments, maybe even respond.  Sometimes I think about them for a while, ruminate on them, and then perhaps integrate them into my thinking and grow as a person.  Not often of course the vast majority of internet comments and culture is toxic waste and really needs to have been spanked more as children.

            Alignment is the most debated thing in Dungeons and Dragons because, as I wrote, we all have personal values.  So share your feelings much as I have and experience the glorious indifference of the internet.

            Have Fun!

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            If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter, Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.

A Game that Surprised Me

            I have not been posting nearly enough this year and I want to steer back from that.  To that end I have found a 30-day blog challenge and will be writing out entries, hopefully I can get all thirty days without any breaks, and if I manage to do that (since August has 31 days) I will think of an additional entry to write about.  I have done a 30-day challenge before, it for movies, but that was a while back, feel free to read those too if you like.

            Today is day 23 and the topic is “Guilty Pleasure Game”.

            What does that even mean?  That is stupid.  I don’t know who feels guilty about liking something but if they are maybe they should rethink their lives.  If they are doing something illegal and feeling guilty fine, listen to that feeling and move past doing the illegal thing, but a video game… That is just stupid.

Cloaking your interests and passions in a veil of irony so that you don’t have to feel the shame of other people knowing that you like things is stupid.  The idea of someone being ashamed of having personality that isn’t defined by group think is a concept that permeates too much of both online culture and real life culture.  Stop feeling you have to explain away what you enjoy to idiots who think that pretending to not like things makes them somehow superior.

Whatever.  The guy writing 30 prompts was probably getting low in the barrel at this point.  I have the benefit of only having to shave off the one’s I think are stupid and replacing them with things I like more.

            So fuck that prompt, and the stupid culture that made someone think it was a good idea.

            Today is day 26 and the topic is “Guilty Pleasure Game” “A Game that Surprised You”.

            This might also be a move of laziness on my part, because I have already talked about this game, the moment that surprised me, and have already heartily endorsed why it should be played.  “Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare” is a game that by no rights I should have enjoyed and yet it totally delivered, pulled me in, and made me feel like a big damn hero.  A feeling that would later be demonized and excised by “Spec Ops: The Line” so I owe my enjoyment of that game (previously discussed) to the foundation laid by “Call of Duty”.

            Umm… This is too short an entry even with me railing against “guilty pleasure” as a concept.  The whole point of me doing this 30-day challenge is to get me to write more and I have already been slacking.

So, what was another game that surprised me?

Ooh!  I know.  The only Japanese Role Playing Game (JRPG) I have ever given a shit about, “Tales of Symphonia”.  This game was introduced to me by two friends of mine that I studied abroad with in China and continued to hang out with in spite of me annoying them far more than I should have (because I was a loser in my early 20’s… Most of my 20’s… and now going into my 30’s).

This is actually a less cartoon version of the originals art.  I just thought it looked cool.

            “Tales of Symphonia” is a story game, basically an entire anime series played out in cut scenes both in and out of the game engine, sometimes text, sometimes video, and all the action is done by the player.  There were multiple endings which made it somewhat repayable different love interests and side missions allowed for a fun little twist on things.  While the narrative was a bit baffling at times “Tales” made up for it with a cool real time combat system that allows for multiplayer input with a variety of moves and visuals spread among an eclectic group of characters.

            The story is derivative when it isn’t baffling, but for whatever reason I liked it, especially the main character of Lloyd, a sword fighting adventurer who lives with his adopted father (who is a dwarf in the fantasy sense) and while skilled in his areas of expertise he is not a golden boy, he can be flaky, selfish, shallow, or just pissed.  Lloyd and the other characters are characters with layers, interests, histories, and their own goals. 

This is fan art.

I would like to point out some basic color theory at work here.  Lloyd's clothing utilizes red for passion and drive, but is stabilized by black which shows his mysterious past (his parents), and a shock of white emphasizing his naiveté and pure intentions setting out on the adventure.  All of the game’s characters make good use of color theory and I think that sets their character designs ahead of most other games (I would also point to Nintendo for other examples of great use of color in character design, and I have already talked about what else I like about them).

The narrative of “Tales” hit all the right notes for me and the combat system was fun enough that it kept me invested even when the story felt a little flat or silly.

            Wow, I spent more time complaining about this game than complimenting it.  Let me give it a few more positive words.  I liked the art style, it is cartoony and bright without being too detailed and chaotic (something I lay at the feat of the “Final Fantasy” franchise).  The setting has a good blend of classic rural fantasy with tiny villages and remote fortresses, but a big helping of Magi-tech, with towers that look like they come off the cover of a 1970’s science fiction novel (if you like classic sci-fi art, here is a tumblr you can follow).  The bad guys have a variety of interesting motivations, ranging from greed, to lust for power, bigotry, and grief that I found myself understanding.

"So, anyone else wondering about the old time European aesthetic... and the 7,000 meter tall towers full of robots?"
"Look, if Marvel's 'Thor' can have magic space vikings and still feels like it makes sense, we can believe this."  

More positive, as I mentioned before the story does have a few instances in which you can change things and have the characters behave how you think they should in certain key instances, rather than just acting out the script handed down by the creators.  The Story train is mostly on rails, but you can switch tracks at certain points to make things more interesting to you.  This minor narrative choice sets “Tales” apart from what I consider to be the biggest sin of JRPG’s: that there is no roleplaying, just playing a role (another thing I ascribe to “Final Fantasy” but that might be a misplaced strike, I have never played long enough into an FF game to see if there are opportunities to split the narrative down an unexpected path).

You could say that I have nostalgia for this game as I sought out a used copy and played it for 25 hours last year.  My interest did peter out, but I still saw all the things I recalled liking and messaged one of the friends who introduced me to “Tales” about how I had gotten it.  Apparently, it is out on Steam, and I think it is worth playing, but they have been catching shit for how the graphics were not optimized for PC, so if you intend to play it on there do look into getting some mods (there is an online fandom that is big on this) to clean up the graphics.

            Do you disagree with me about the idea of a Guilty Pleasure?  If so, please give me some kind of example in the comments because I just do not understand it.  On the other end, maybe you want to talk about being surprised by a game, in which game do share an instance in which a game beat your expectations.  Or do what most people do and write nothing.

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If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter, Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.

Worst Video Game Antagonist

            I have not been posting nearly enough this year and I want to steer back from that.  To that end I have found a 30-day blog challenge and will be writing out entries, hopefully I can get all thirty days without any breaks, and if I manage to do that (since August has 31 days) I will think of an additional entry to write about.  I have done a 30-day challenge before, it for movies, but that was a while back, feel free to read those too if you like.

            Today is day 8 and the topic is “Worst Antagonist”.

            Originally there was no blog entry of “Worst Antagonist”.  Instead there was “Favorite game couple”.  As I hate video game romances, just look back on Kaiden in the “Annoying Supporting Character” blog entry, I dropped the category (I thought about running down each of the love interests in “Zelda: Ocarina of Time,” but that just seemed dumb the more I thought about it, if you disagree however, and want to see me talk about the “Love Interests of Time” in the future, please leave a comment and I will consider it).

There is an episode of Extra Credits that points to a lot of the troubles I have with video game romance plot, like how they are usually just the beginnings of a relationship and are often pretty thin overall.

Anyway, I decided to instead do an opposite entry to yesterdays’ awesome bad guy to provide contrast and for me to bang on about something I dislike.

            “You do not even know our tongue, do you?” it said contemptuously.  “Such arrogance, to dare take for yourself the name of Dovah!”  Alduin joins a long line of all powerful beings who want to blow up the universe because… They’re just a bunch of dicks.  In the world of “Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim” Alduin is a dragon god who will wake the dead dragons of old and then eat all of time to reboot the universe.  You are the Viking Messiah, who can eat the souls of dragons and save the universe by yelling so loud at people they burst into flame.

More than a little Satan imagery mixed into this.

            When I worked in retail I would sometimes leave out little doodles of a dragon bigger than earth with the stupid line of “Beware of Space Dragons”.  The obvious joke being that the dragon was so far beyond humans that to beware it is meaningless.  Alduin is a space Dragon that you beat up after yelling mean things at it.  That is not an exaggeration, some ghost Vikings are there to help, but you seriously just yell angrily in a made up language (there is another thing I can bitch about at a later date) and then you hit him with something until he “dies”.

            I say “dies” because Alduin, being a god will return to blow up the universe at some point down the line, so this is all just a delay tactic.  Let’s ignore all of that though.  Magic is silly, so yelling a spell and Viking ghosts are not that stupid in context, it is all fun.  What is stupid is how laid back Alduin is about the whole end of the universe thing.

I generally disliked fighting dragons in “Skyrim” so much so that I just figured I wouldn’t bother.  I never did any of the quests related to dragons, and thus never saw any of them.  None.  I played past level 40 beating the hell out of DLC vampires and Alduin never came a knocking.  I couldn’t have been happier.  Sure I lost my ability to light people on fire by yelling, but so what, I didn’t have any random roaring interrupting my mountain strolling.

Call me Emo, but I have always been more a fan of vampires in fantasy than dragons.
Vampires have more interesting politics and being that they were once humans but have draw backs and powers they lend themselves to more things thematically. 

            You might be saying, “It is an RPG, play how you want to play.”  And I like that, I like choice, but I also like the idea that if I make the wrong choice, say for instance not fighting the apocalyptic plague of dragons, that choice will result in the world ending.  Not what happens instead, which is nothing.

In“Majora’s Mask” if Link doesn’t stop the Skull Kid in 3 days, the moon slams into the planet and kills everyone, that is what is at stake, and it is always counting down.  Alduin by contrast is an unstoppable dragon god… except you win by default if you never bother to fight him at all.  You don’t see him, you don’t fight his minions, he just isn’t around.  Banished by the player not giving a “Frin Bahlaan Aaz” what his Dovaah ass is up to.  THAT IS A WEAK VILLAIN.

            I hate the common bad guy type of, “I am an asshole and am going to blow up the universe”.  I dislike Galactus, I dislike the Anti-Monitor, I even dislike super weapons that keep cropping up that have the same effect.  I hate the Star Killer Base from “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” so much that I had to look up its boring ass name for this blog.  Motivation is important, I may not like the motivation, but base drives are weak, coupling those drives with great power is also WEAK, it is just weak that is loud and self-important.

I will point to another example, one that is very appropriate because “Skyrim” was very much inspired by it.  The reason so little time is spent with the Wight Walkers on “Game of Thrones” is because their zombie hordes have no motivation, they are just a great mysterious evil, a back drop in front of which Cersei, Ramsey, Little Finger, and all the other complex characters can scheme.  Nobody actually cares about WINTER; it is the fact that WINTER IS COMING that makes everything else meaningful.

            ALDUIN IS THE WINTER THAT NEVER COMES. 

"Winter is--"
"Yeah, we know."

            I should point out, that for all of its faults I have spent nearly 400 hours playing “Skyrim” at time of writing.  What it lacks in immediacy it makes up for in just being so expansive.  It is a very full and rich world loaded down with adventures.  I highly recommend it on that basis, and I do not recommend the main story at all (it is boring).

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If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter, Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.

My Favorite Game Genre

            I have not been posting nearly enough this year and I want to steer back from that.  To that end I have found a 30-day blog challenge and will be writing out entries, hopefully I can get all thirty days without any breaks, and if I manage to do that (since August has 31 days) I will think of an additional entry to write about.  I have done a 30-day challenge before, it for movies, but that was a while back, feel free to read those too if you like.

            Today is day 2, “My Favorite Genre”.

            Genre to me has a lot of different connotations.  It can evoke a style (Found Footage), a place of origin (Foreign Language), subject matter (Historical), setting (Western), or mood (Horror) that the work in question is.  This varies with Books and Movies but one thing neither of those mediums have is the element of Gameplay.

            Video Games can have Strategy, both Turn Based and Real Time; they can have Platforming, which can include a means to move from platform to platform in space via jumping, swinging, or teleporting; they can be Action games, with action based around a third person perspective, first person perspective, or even a far distant camera hooked up to some unseen ceiling.  Games can have guns, magic, or tools to build.

            When I was thinking about this I realized that there are two genres that battle for my affection here, the first is Turn Based Strategy, TBS and the other is Role Playing Game, RPG.  Each have their own strengths and weakness, but often start from a similar point, you are dropped into the world with very little skill and few abilities and gradually grow in power to win the game thru the acquiring of new abilities… I realize that is try of lots of games power ups are kind of important in lots of games that would not be described as RPG or TBS… Batman and Samus both get various flavors of mobility and offensive powers as they go along.  So what are the things about each that I really like apart from that slow gaining of power?  Choice.

            Let’s look at TBS with “X-Com: Enemy Within” a game I played about 130 hours of (and have talked about before).  In that game I am given a small team for each mission, I choose the members.  Each of those team members gains new abilities as they gain levels, I chose the abilities.  Everybody gets new gear, new weapons, and carries new equipment, all of which I chose to research and prioritize at some point in the game.  When I get the laser weapons is not pre-set by the game, what abilities my snipers’ choices are not preset by the game (though there are certain abilities that are so much better than others that there isn’t a “real” choice in some cases, I mean come on, who doesn’t pick squad sight?)  These things all happen because I chose those things to happen.  And sometimes those choices kneecap me like a mob enforcer.

I chose to have a soldier cut their limbs off so as to better fight aliens as a cyborg mecha.

            Let’s look at RPG with “Fallout 3”.  What does my character look like?  I get to choose.  Am I smart?  My choice.  Am I strong?  My choice.  Am I lucky, charismatic, or perceptive?  My choice.  What weapons do I like to use, be they bombs, knives, guns or lasers that can turn a gunman to dust.  Where do I go?  Wherever I want.  There is a story but it can simmer on the back burner till I get around to it.  (What is funny, is that while I am using it as an example of what I like here, I do not like Fallout 3 nearly as much as many people do, and precisely because it lacks a lot of the more nuanced choices I want in a story of this setting.  Many of the choices are too binary and often done with too little motivation.)  What I make of the world is shaped by my decisions and who I chose to work with.

I chose to let a lot of narrative problems go in order to enjoy the setting.

            I will talk about one last game while I am here that kind of strides the two of these categories that is fine but never really grabbed me deeply (so I won’t mention it too often for the rest of these blogs), “Pokemon”.  Pokemon has both an RPG element, in that you can choose what monsters you catch and train, what items you use on them, what moves you choose to teach them (which I find painfully thin on the ground), and contains a multitude of color and variety and drips with personality and consistent tone (even when it steps outside of those elements it doesn’t do so in a way that is not immediately reversible, so yeah there is a graveyard and a group of terrorists, but they are silly ghosts and goofy terrorists, just don’t think too hard about any of it).

            Pokemon has turn based combat, and this is where it differs from my tastes in a small but important way.  Where as in “X-Com” you would deploy a team of soldiers to the field, explore the area and engage the enemies, making placement and group tactics a much needed element to deepen and enrich the experience, Pokemon doesn’t.  Pokemon is a turn based combat game, which has very little strategy beyond picking the monster whose type trumps the enemy’s type, and they stand at the opposite end of an empty screen and shoot energy blasts at one another.  I am not a fan of that.

I think we can all agree that they have some of the best theme tunes of all time right?

            Here is where this blog will take a strange digression to talk about some broader things.  There are lots of fandoms that I have never got into, “Harry Potter” is perhaps the biggest pop culture thing that left me by, and Pokemon is close to that.  While I did enjoy two and a half of the games released over the last 20+ years it is not something that cuts deep (never played the card game, only saw one of the movies, never collected any toys, posters, or clothes) even though it has things I do like.

            It is important to know, that not all things are for all people.  That many things exist outside of one’s own tastes and experiences and that is okay.  In fact, it is great.  Having lots of different ideas contributes greatly to the strange mutations in fiction and games that allow them to grow and change to serve the needs of new people.  I see a lot of vile things online about certain movies, shows, and books, and while I do not like many of them, and see others as containing questionable messages, they are not harmful, and they serve a point.

If you find yourself looking at a game that doesn’t fit in with your world view, maybe instead of saying that you hate it, you just shrug and move on.  And the same goes for movies and TV you do not like.  Because you spewing hate at something might ruin the fun of someone who did like it and would like more of it.  Instead, maybe pay attention to things that are a lot more real and hurtful that you can do something about, and focus your energy there.

So yeah, after that long sidetrack because I have felt kind of sickened by the nerd culture’s treatment of certain things lately (and for a while).  I will just go ahead and repeat that I like RPG’s and TBS games the most as far as mechanics are concerned.  I would say that my tastes vary wildly in other areas though, and I will talk about those this month too.

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