[Unofficial P.E. Relationship/Romance Thread pt. 3]

Chris Avellone said...

 

So if I were to implement a romance subplot in Eternity - I wouldn’t. I’d examine interpersonal relationships from another angle and I wouldn’t confine it to love and romance. Maybe I’d explore it after a “loving” relationship crashed and burned, and one or both was killed in the aftermath enough for them to see if it had really been worth it spending the last few years of their physical existence chained to each other in a dance of human misery and/or a plateau of soul-killing compromise. Or maybe I’d explore a veteran’s love affair with his craft of murder and allowing souls to be freed to travel beyond their bleeding shell, or a Cipher’s obsession with plucking the emotions of deep-rooted souls to try and see what makes people attracted to each other beyond their baser instincts and discovers love... specifically, his love of manipulating others. You could build an entire dungeon and quest where he devotes himself to replicating facsimiles of love, reducer a Higher Love to a baser thing and using NPCs he encounters as puppets for his experimentations, turning something supposedly beautiful into something filthy, mechanical, but surrounded by blank-eyed soul-twisted drones echoing all the hollow Disney-like platitudes and fairy tale existence where everyone lives happily ever after.

I love this man.

[Attributes - Fixed or Increasing?]

 

It's actually really cool, fastest d20 combat EVAR. Makes up for the fact that it can take upwards of 2 hours to make a single character.

2 hours is nothing. You clearly never played Mythus.

 

I had a level 1 wizard with a 9 page character sheet.

[Attributes - Fixed or Increasing?]

My personal preference is for a system where ALL of your attributes (stats, skills, abilities, whatever else) use the SAME POOL OF POINTS. So you can have a character with really bitchin' stats and few skills, or with lots of skills and few abilities, or whatever floats your boat. And, as you get points, you can increase anything as it suits you.

This is exactly what I'm talking about. Throw in hit points and I'm 100% behind you.

[Attributes - Fixed or Increasing?]

I actually like rolling for stats a lot, but I think it should be optional. Rising or fixed I am not so sure about.

The problem is that there are essentially two possibilities: you can roll higher stats than you can buy in a reasonable amount of time, or you can't.

You can also roll lower stats. Also, point-buy systems tend to discourage exceptionally low values in any stat (though I doubt Obsidian would do that).

 

I like fixed or mostly fixed stats. I'd also support a GURPS-like approach where you can buy stat increases with skill points, so instead of learning a new skill you can make yourself stronger or give yourself more hit points.

 

In fact, I'd be interested to see a game where hit points don't increase unless you buy them at level-up.

[Unofficial P.E. Relationship/Romance Thread pt. 3]

As for motivations, again, we have different stances. You insist and insist that they are unknowable, almost as if they should always remain that way. I know that they can't be fully knowable, but I like knowing things, and I like if that unknown can be subverted. Knowing things also lets you build approximations that help you deal with reality, and with people.

I never cease to be amazed by people's capacity to believe what they prefer to be true, rather than what the evidence shows to be likely (or even possible).

Even if you don't agree with this approach and claim that it's for crazy people (in bolded letters, at that) because having a degree totally gives you the right to judge people, these approximations can be pretty damn useful in real life. They're valuable, no matter what you say.

My degree only allows me to judge the field in which I hold that degree, and I find it lacking.

 

Your approximations (which wouldn't need to be approximate if you actually knew things) produce error. That's the sum total of their value. What you're actually doing is projecting your motives onto other people. If those other people are relevantly similar to you, then their motives match what yours would be in their place, and you think you've correctly perceived their motives. But you haven't. If the other people are not relevantly similar to you, then their motives will not match, and you will have drawn a false conclusion.

[Does the player-created character have to act as party spokesperson?]

 

I find this unsatisfying. As the designers have stated (dont remember exactly who posted) dialogue options will reflect the intelligence, charisma and other stats ascribed to the character speaking. In this case, the text does represent what the speaker is saying. If it is an abstraction, this dramatically alters the storytelling power of the game.

Yes, it makes it better.

 

Since the literal meaning doesn't change, the abstraction does affect the Intelligence angle at all, and Charisma would presumably impact only the effectiveness of the statement, which could continue to be true.

 

All the abstraction approach does is free the player's character from the shackles of whatever the writers' foibles happen to be.

Again, I must disagree. The player created character is the only character which presents a true tabula rasa on which the player (me) can infuse their respective values, thoughts and opinions into the game world. If the other characters are to be believable, they have to have sufficient agency (scripted AI agency) to agree or disagree with my player character's decisions. If the other party members simply serve as further mouthpieces for me, this serves to reduce their own agency, and depth as standalone characters. By this, I mean that the other characters cannot simply take over party conversations and retain their own voice without the player surrendering control of all conversations. Yes, in combat the player controls the whole party, but from a storytelling standpoint it makes the game capable of a great deal more depth if the PC is the party leader for conversations.

You misunderstand. I am not claiming that I am in total control of all of the party members individually. I am claiming to be in total control of the group in the aggregate.

 

When the group speaks to outsiders, I (the player) control what it says. This is how you play, as well. But you perceive it as the PC speaking rather than the party speaking. But if the PC isn't an appropriate spokesperson for the group in that instance, why would the rest of the group want him speaking? Why would a low Charisma PC be allowed to speak on behalf of high Charisma companions? It is you, I assert, you is actually controlling the companions individually, as you need somehow to have them allow this suboptimal internal group heirarchy.

 

I suggest that the group, when dealing with outsiders, speaks as a unit, and it is that full group entity who selects the dialogue options. And then, should some individual member of the party disagree with the group's direction, that individual can raise an objection.

 

Yes, the party consists of individuals, and only one of those individuals is entirely my creation, but the group is also under my control. Internally, the party members can disagree, but when dealing with outsiders they work as a unit.

I see your logic here, but I think that players controlling combat is more of a gameplay fun decision than a storytelling one. If the companion characters were completely governed by their own AI for combat (with some player intervention), like dragon age, the tactical depth of the game is significantly diminished. But the fact that you will likely only start with your player character, and acquire companions as you progress, indicates that the player character functions as a sort of "window" into the game world. A window whose absence renders the story unintelligible.

I completely reject the very idea of gameplay/story segregation. The gameplay is part of the story. To describe the two separately is nonsensical.

Consider Baldurs Gate. If Imowen or Khalid dies, you can take them to the temple for a rez (or reform party to keep Jahera). If the player created character dies in any combat, even one your party is winning, the game is over and you are reloading to your last save.

In general, I think that's poor design. I do applaud BG for at least having an in-game justification for that mechanic (the Bhaalspawn's essence was consumed upon death), but I find its necessity unfortunate.

I understand that you feel you should be able to create a player character that is unfit for leadership, or at least should not be the "public face" for the group. I completely understand your reasoning, but from a storytelling standpoint I think it significantly alters the depth of the companion characters if the player is able to control their mouths and thoughts.

I'm not claiming to be able to control their thoughts as individuals. Nor their words. But when they speak for the group, they're not speaking as individuals.

Considered another way, I have a hard time remembering every character in BG1 and 2, but I distinctly remember each in Planescape. This is because in Planescape, each companion character brought a lot of their own personality and baggage to the party, and frequently the Nameless One had to sort it all out. By placing the nameless one as the only possible lead and conversant for the party, the game allowed for a much deeper and more satisfying story than Baldurs Gate. (personal opinion, to be sure, but one that I think is not exceptionally controversial)

Whereas, I think the companions in both games are very memorable. I had a stronger connection with the BG companions, though, because I was allowed to play them.

I really appreciate your input in this forum, you have forced me to examine why I think the way I do about how the player interacts with the game world, and presented me with an alternative view. While I am not persuaded by your view, I find it unique and refreshing.

Thank you, but I'd rather you were persuaded.

[Respec?]

I oppose respec, but I would also like to be able to choose all of the abilities for any party members.

[Characters not in party gaining experience]

 

I hate to pick nits, but that statement is only true if your assumption of a shallow curve is correct. More importantly you're arguing over an out of context quote that does not capture the context of my post. Whether a shallow or steep curve is used, lower level characters are less "powerful" compared to higher level characters.

Yes, but with a shallower curve that penalty is lessened in size.

 

And with an exponential XP curve, the penality is lessened in duration.

[How does the stamina/health mechanism apply to the enemy?]

It had better apply exactly the same way. There's no defensible reason to have the rules that govern the PCs be different from the rules that govern other characters.

To be fair, "PC and companions at zero stamina = game over" and "all enemies in a group have zero stamina = dead group" is a consistent application of the rules as we understand them...

But if there's some mechanism for my party to revive their unconscious comrades, then the same should be true of my enemies. And if some of the enemies are unconscious, and then I retreat, the enemies should be able to revive their unconscious comrades while I'm gone (just as my unconscious party members are revived at the end of any battle I win).

[RPG cliches you hope to see avoided and/or mocked]

 

Yeah, I'm the person who's fouling it all up for you because I want the option of being reluctant. Being forced to be an eager champion (or more likely at the beginning, a happy lackey) tends to make it hard for me to play my favorite character types.

I don't mind at all if you're allowed to be a reluctant hero. But I don't want to.

 

I want to be a proactive PC who sees something he wants to change and sets out to change it.

 

This is usually how villains are written. There's something about the world they dislike, and they take it upon themselves to make it different. I'd like to do that. I don't want to be the guy tries to clean up someone else's mess. I want to make the mess.

[RPG cliches you hope to see avoided and/or mocked]

Reluctant Heroes. I hate reluctant heroes. Why can't the heroes be the one with ambition once in a while?

 

Instead, it's always the villains with ambition, which, to me, usually makes the villain the more sympathetic character.

[Do you care about a realistic world map?]

The map of Faerun makes no sense. There's deserts in places where you'd expect jungles, rivers with no credible source, badlands where by rights should be forest.

 

I know, it's a fantasy world. so maybe I shouldn't care. But I do notice these things, surely I'm not the only one?

I think a world map where everything makes sense given the physical laws of the world would make writing easier.

 

Having rain shadows downwind of mountains makes sense. Having jungles there doesn't, and it would always make me wonder why that jungle exists.

[Unofficial P.E. Relationship/Romance Thread pt. 3]

It seems like we're working with different definitions here. You make a distinction between your real motives and the motives you claim, but most people I know equate the two as the same.

I can't imagine why anyone would ever think that.

The problem is, the game needs a way to know your true motivations if it wants to do something with them (such as changing your alignment, for the systems that have it), and the least immersion-breaking way to do that is making you say them in the game. But for you, if you're saying them then they're not your real motives, only claims.

If you're going to ask the PC to state his motives, then he does need a way to lie, yes.

How should the game know them, then? Should the game screw off and not be allowed to try to do something with that? That seems like a waste of potential.

What potential? What possible value is there is such a system? I don't see why an alignment system of that sort would be at all valuable, especially given the limitations it would necessarily place on roleplaying.

KotOR2 used a different style, yeah, but it was interesting in its own way, and it didn't interfere with player agency anyway. That's why I suggested to try out different roleplaying approaches - if you see that the game is going for a different style with the PC, drop your approach and pay attention to the method the game is showing. If it wants you to learn your own past during the story, then take it in stride, instead of trying to have your character already planned as if it were a D&D session. Besides, waiting until you know the story and the setting properly seems like something you'd need before fleshing out your characters, anyway. It'll certainly bring you less frustration.

I ask again: By what mechanism can you make decisions for your character if you aren't allowed to know his state of mind?

 

And if you aren't making decisions for your character in-character, are you roleplaying?

 

I don't play these games for the story. I play these games to roleplay. If I can't roleplay, I don't want to play them. Every one of my design preferences is selected to advance roleplaying, from dialogue systems to UI design to visual effects.

Your character is a pretty poor people person then. He can't, I don't know, guess?

Sure he can guess. But he can't know. Therefore, there's no basis for saying that an NPC's reaction is ever inappropriate.

Try to match past behaviors and known actions into a model of behavior that could help him anticipate the kind of responses he could cause?

Of course he can do that. But when the result isn't what he expects, that doesn't cause me to throw up my hands and declare the game to be broken, because in the real world we don't ever know why people do the things they do, moment to moment. If I laugh, what did I find funny? Was it something you said? Was it something of which I was reminded by something you said? Was I not listening and my mind wandered off and remembered a joke I heard yesterday from someone else entirely? If I'm short with you, am I angry? At you? Or maybe I'm upset because I just heard that my sister died and, because you haven't yet heard the news, that would never occur to you as a possible explanation?

 

Other people's minds are unknowable.

I mean, I've seen your "motivations aren't ever knowable!" spiel, but I have to say I disagree. You may not know that in an absolute sense, but in practice most of us are more predictable than we think.

Predictable in the aggregate isn't useful in the instance.

Trying to understand people at least a little is pretty necessary in order to function in real life, so it seems to me like you shouldn't have trouble translating that to a game.

Being able to predict behaviour is necessary. Being able to explain that behaviour is not.

By the way, what do you do if you're in a setting where mind readers and magical lie detectors exist? How do you pretend that your PC is lying to one when the NPC should realistically be able to tell that? Wouldn't you say that a [Lie] option would be necessary there, thereby needing to express your real intentions in some way?

I think that game would likely offer very limited roleplaying opportunities, by virtue of leaving less implicit content wherein the player could resolve ambiguity as he saw fit.

[Unofficial P.E. Relationship/Romance Thread pt. 3]

Since I didn't get to rest of this post earlier (I had to go), I now return to it.

 

Here's where the division of opinion comes: should the PC be a part of this controlled simulation? Should the game give the player some limited means to interact with the rest of the simulation, or should the game leave that to your unlimited imagination? Both approaches are probably valid, but Obsidian favors the former. It's just what they do, so of course people in these boards are going to defend it.

Of course the PC should have some limited means to interast with the rest of the simulation.

 

But the question is, should those limitations extend beyond the content that is made explicit? Is the player ever expected (or permitted) to use him imagination to fill in gaps, or is he expected never to do this, and instead always wait fo rthe game to tell him what is true?

 

The latter is how books and movies work, and if I wanted that, I'd be reading a book or watching a movie.

 

I insist that roleplaying games should be the former. If the game solicits input from the player regarding his character's actions, the player needs to know why his character might choose one option over another. And knowledge requires certainty.

Personally, I think that, if you have accepted that you're playing an imperfect simulation, you could accept that the interactions you'll get with the world and with the NPCs are only going to be "good enough": broad enough to cover as much as possible, but maybe not as nuanced as they could be if you were playing with real people.

I would first deny that there is any such thing as interaction (there is action, and there is reaction, but the tw odo not combine to form some sort of gestalt). Second, I would accept the imperfection of the medium. There is always a chance that none of the available options will be compatible with your character design. But, I find this to be extremely rare. A a single line can be intended many different ways. And an unvoiced can be viewed as an abstraction of the actual words spoken, so the player would then have even greater control over his character's words. Just as keyword dialogue systems (like Morrowind, or Ultima IV) don't claim to display the exact words uttered by the PC (the Avatar likely wasn't shouting NAME and JOB at everyone), there's no need to assume that the detailed options offered by Torment or Baldur's Gate are exact representations either.

 

So, yes, I accept that the format has limitations, but those limitations are very small.

So, if you've already accepted that you're playing a simulation, why not make it as reactive as possible to all its elements, including the PC?

I have no objection to the world reacting to whatever the PC says or does. I object to the game telling me what the PC says or does, or why. The game should always seek my input on what the PC says or does, and since NPCs cannot know the PC's motives, there's no reason ever to ask me what the PC's motives are (and thus those need never be limited by a finite list).

if your character's motivations aren't a very important part of the game, then they shouldn't have big repercussions on it (like cutting access to quests or using autodialogue to take over the PC). If they are a significant part of the game, they should have some repercussions, which means that special effort should be invested in both giving a broad selection of choices and accounting for them all. Maybe not everything will be in, but you know, you've already accepted the limitations of the medium if you're playing it.

How can the PC's motives ever be a significant part of the game (I'm definiing "game" here as the content that is explcitly portrayed on screen)? Since the PC's motves aren't knowable to anyone but the PC, they can't ever have a direct effect.

 

In the real world, your motives never have a direct effect. Nothing in the world aside from your own nervous system ever reacts to your motives directly.

*By Cool Things, I mean stuff that adds to the integration of the player in the world, things like playing off your motivations and your world views with those of other NPCs, to gain a good insight into their characters and affect your influence with them (and this influence could actually have repercussions in the story, such as making easier or more difficult to side with certain factions or characters). You could also record this motivation choice in your savefile, so that the characters could bring it up later when it's relevant; for instance, if you do something that strays from what you said earlier a companion could call you out on it, which a) would be very unexpected for the player, and b) could let you build even more complexity into your motivations (were you lying earlier? did your character's views change? why?). By Cool Things, I don't mean some examples that have been given, like closing off quests based on an answer of something you were going to do without knowing that it would have that effect. That's bad design, not reactivity.

And here, you appear to backtrack completely, suggesting that the things you were calling motives before might have been lies. If you were only ever talking about the PC's claims about what his motives were, then in fact we never disagreed. Absolutely the PC can be given the option to claim what his motives are. Just don't force a truth value on those claims.

 

Anything the PC says could be a lie. The game never needs to know.

[Unofficial P.E. Relationship/Romance Thread pt. 3]

It is a imagined effect

That's not knowable from within the game. Why he gets the response he gets is always a mystery to your character.

Imagination is what you make beyond what is there and what is told. Therefore your decision isn't about imagination, it is about reason. You reason what is the best or in this case most fitting choice.

An option either suits the character or it doesn't. It's a binary operator.

Games in their imperfection just gives you a baseline to follow and if your imagination fills out more, fine. The more things you imagine about your character, the less will the game aknowledge it.

Fine by me. The problem arises when the game directly contradicts my imagination, after having invited that same imagination.

 

If the game asks me to make a decision on behalf of my character, any reason I imagine on which to base that decision needs to be respected. If there is any limit on what sorts of motives are permitted, that needs to be made clear to the player before the decision is made, not after.

Unless you bend what you imagined into what is.

That solution is often proposed, but the computational complexity of implementing is such that I doubt anyone who suggests has given it much thought.

 

If I retcon a motive, I need then to examine every prior decision made within that playthrough to determine whether any of those decisions are now incompatible with the new motive. Failing to do that risks an incoherent character, and if my character is incoherent then I have failed as a roleplayer.

Could work, if game follows some archetypes that you can play. Normally it is just nice person or ****. but what can we do?

Archetypes are not interesting characters to play. Archetypes are flat characters. Archetypes are shallow characters.

It is hard for me to imagine people playing cRPG were they are "in-character", as in seriously being that. I have a fantastic imagination, but I certainly don't delve that deeply into roleplaying a game.

How do you make decisions for your character if not from his point of view?

You can't like modern games much then, as the trend is "not really interactive movies".

It depends how marrowly you define "modern". DAO was pretty good. I would like Skyrim a lot if it didn't have action combat. Fallout 3 and New Vegas were both good.

If anything it feels like you would be fit for some content heavy MMORPG.

MMORPGs have a lot of appeal, actually. They basically never have action combat (which I loathe), and the game world doesn't behave as if it exists just for me.

 

Sadly, there are other people in them.

[Unofficial P.E. Relationship/Romance Thread pt. 3]

This clearly isn't true, as I do play CRPGs just as I describe, and I do enjoy them.

 

Only when the writers expect me to discover my character as mart pf the story (like reading a book) does my approach fail. This is typically only true in the newer games with voiced protagonists, but it is also true in KotOR2, hence my concern here.

 

Then you might want to try a different approach from time to time. If it doesn't work with certain games, you could try to adapt to what the game gives you. As long as the game still gives you a good list of options to choose, what's the problem?

 

What did you think when you played KOTOR1 and found that the PC was Revan? Did you think "wow, I did not see that coming" or did you think "this is bullcrap, how dare they trash the personality and background I had elaborated for my PC up to this point"? Because if you do the latter, you're going to be unable to enjoy some good storytelling devices. Discovering things of your character you didn't know can be used for good.

The Reven revelation had no relevance to my character design. Those memories he had of his past were real to him - that they weren't true became new information he needed to consider regarding his opinions and even his identity. That was great story telling. KotOR's revelation could be dealt with entirely in-character, so there was never a problem. At no point does KotOR tell me that the PC's knowledge of a situation was different from what I thought it was.

 

But KotOR2 did it the other way around. He should have known all sorts of things, and knowing those things could well have changed his decisions up to the point where the player learns about his past, but by the time that happens it's far too late. Those decisions have already been made. I would argue that KotOR2 doesn't actually allow roleplaying until the second playthrough (when the player now knows what his character does).

[Unofficial P.E. Relationship/Romance Thread pt. 3]

 

You know, no matter how you put it, a CRPG will never have the same freedom of interaction you'll have in a PnP roleplaying session. Even if you fill in the blanks yourself, the technology isn't there yet to allow your imagination to have an effect on the world.

This is nonsense. Yes, the player's imagination cannot have a direct effect on the world, but as his impagination informs his character's actions, there is an indirect effect on the world.

 

I'm certainly not asking for a direct effect. That would be crazy.

 

But, when in-character, it's not possible to tell what drives NPC reactions. If the PC says something with a specific objective in mind (or with a specific tone or delivery, as imagined by the player), then any NPC response would appear to be a reaction to that. It doesn't matter if the writers didn't intend that PC line to be delivered in that way or for that reason; the NPC response still looks like a reaction. Perhaps not an expected reaction, but a reaction.

This means that if you play a CRPG, you have to get over the fact that you're playing an imperfect simulation in a controlled environment. It's just something you have to accept in order to be able to enjoy it.

This clearly isn't true, as I do play CRPGs just as I describe, and I do enjoy them.

 

Only when the writers expect me to discover my character as mart pf the story (like reading a book) does my approach fail. This is typically only true in the newer games with voiced protagonists, but it is also true in KotOR2, hence my concern here.

[Unofficial P.E. Relationship/Romance Thread pt. 3]

I used PS:T as an example how they can do the "flashback" to remember what one of the many previous owners of the soul did and why, if you remember they did that in middle of the conversations, so they could do similar thing in PE with the remembering what the previous owner did and why.

Sure they could, but that doesn't require that the PC's motives be limited by the writers. Regardless of what happens in the flashback, the player can still be free to determine why the PC is acting as he is.

[Unofficial P.E. Relationship/Romance Thread pt. 3]

Saying that motivations should be based on what 'you' the player have stated that characters motivations to be, isn't truly rping that character. Being a DM on a NwN server, we encountered this problem many a times. It's very hard to move away from something that you want your character to do, but know in your mind that your character wouldn't truly do that, so you're then forced to properly role-play that choice, by choosing the path that your character would take, or you can choose to not role-play that choice and do whatever you want. Thus destroying the whole point and meaning behind the words role-play.

I fail to see how this applies to this discussion at all.

 

Yes, if you're roleplaying then you're making the decisions your character would make, given his personality. No one is disputing this. The issue is whether that personality should be created entirely by the player, or whether it should be handed to the player by the writers. I insist that the player needs to be the one to create that personality, because that's the only way for the player to know what his character should do in any given circumstance. It simply isn't possible for the writers to provide the player with sufficient information on which to base his roleplaying decisions if the player isn't allowed to invent that information himself. Only when the mind of the character is populated by the player can the player be familiar enough with the contents of that mind to make decisions on its behalf while still maintaining character coherence.

[Unofficial P.E. Relationship/Romance Thread pt. 3]

They can do it similarly to what was done in PS:T where the player character remembered parts of his past life as the game progressed, and since PE World has different kind of souls that could affect on what kind of memories etc the soul gives to the player character - they could do it in discussion such as (this is just rough example) "I remember this and this thing from the soul's past doing for these reasons, and then I remember this other previous owner doing this for these reasons" - which would be affected on what type of soul player chose for example.

Torment never directed TNO's motives, though. At no point did Torment tell the player how TNO felt about anything, or why he had done anything.

[Unofficial P.E. Relationship/Romance Thread pt. 3]

 

I agree with you that NPCs can't know the PC's motivations, heck I couldn't even say that I absolutely knew the full extent of my own motivations. Having NPCs react to what the PC says are her/his motivations actually happens in games, yet doesn't negate the fact that NPCs don't actually 'know' with certainty what those motivations are.

Games are sometimes written such that convincing someone of a statement becomes easier when its a true statement, even when the truth or falsehood only exists within the PC's mind. If the options "Yes, I will help you," and "[LIE] Yes, I will help you," have different success conditions, that's a problem.

 

Also, sometimes the PC claiming a preference will make that preference mechanically true, and that's also a problem. I'm trying to guard against that. I know most people, when they think about it, are aware that they can't know each other's motivations, but that doesn't help if they don't think about it.

 

Also, some players perceive the dialogue options not just as things the PC can say, but necessarily true expressions of the PC's state of mind. So, if the PC can claim to have seen something, then it is the case that the PC has seen it. These players are relying on the game to tell them about their characters, and I think that has dangerous ramifications for game design, as well.

I don't think that making the distinction between Deontology and Consequentialism was helping argue against this. However, saying that people are crazy for caring about 'the whys' seems disingenuous to me, and I don't think any branch of ethics deserves to be described as crap.

 

I don't often post in forums yet this has motivated me to respond, probably because I'm normally such a big fan of what you say ( mostly ;-) and I care about ethics. Yes ethics has epistemological problems, so does pretty much all of philosophy, hell, human rights are especially problematic, but they are valuable all the same.

Studying ethics turned me into a big logic and epistemology guy. I'm forced to ask how we know that ethics or human rights are valuable, given those epistemological questions.

 

As Wittgenstein said, "At the core of all well-founded belief lies belief that is unfounded."

And caring about the questions is hardly crazy, even if those questions aren't really relevant to the topic at hand. The only way to find that out is to ask them.

I care about the epistemological problems. Only once those are solved can the ethical questions become relevant.

* Incidentally, would it be better to role-play a character as if you know what your motivations are (because you the player have determined them), or to role-play as if the PC doesn't know the full extent of their motivations because that's not possible?

I would think that should be left to the player. I have played both, and they're differently rewarding.

[Unofficial P.E. Relationship/Romance Thread pt. 3]

To use my FONV example (because I'm tired and don't want to think of another), when Vulpes tells me to kill him if I feel strongly against what they've done to Nipton, the fact that I can pull out a gun and shoot him in the face is part of the games design. They could have made him unkillable, or scripted Vulpes and crew to leave Nipton without the PC reacting. That they didn't allows me to choose that reaction (and subsequently the world will react to that action).

But killing Vulpes can be part of ordinary gameplay. When the conversation ends, you can pull out a gun and shoot him.

 

There's no need to make that an explicit option in conversation, and there's no need to make killing Vulpes impossible if you don't happen to choose that explicit option in conversation.

 

They should give us the freedom to act as we see fit within the game's mechanics, rather than writing out specific actions for us and having us choose from a list.

[What type of quest journal would you like to have?]

The thing I don't want is I don't want the quests in the journal grouped by importance or plot relevance. That's metagame information that shouldn't ever appear in the game.

 

All the in-game journal is is a labour-saving device. It should never provide any information that I couldn't have written down myself. In modern games, I've actually taken to keeping my own hard copy notes outside of the game because the journals are just a disaster. And then a bunch of quests don't make sense because the designers didn't ever take the PC's perspective into account.

[Where is everyone from]

Saskatchewan, Canada.

Cool. When I was a kid, I could see Saskatchewan from my house.

[Conversation Log & Combat Log]

Please include these. I can't imagine you wouldn't, but a recent discussion over at BSN brought the issue to mind.

 

I really miss the ability to go back through dialogue or combat events to review what happened.

 

I'd especially like to be able to review the conversation log during conversations, so if I don't remember specifically what someone said a minute ago, I can go check.

 

Thanks for listening.