[Dialog Mechanics] The Manners/Morality Dichtomy: An Appeal for Tonal Dialog Options in Project Eternity

[Arsene Lupin]

Note:

 

I realize many of us are part of the crowdfunding initiative for both this game, Project Obsidian (which, I'll be honest, I find the most exciting all of the crowdfunded cRPGs) and InXile Entertainment's "Torment: Tides of Numenera." InXile's Torment forums have a very nice set of mechanics in place for contributing game ideas--a mechanic I have made full use of in the past several days. My basic line of thinking was this: What are the things that annoy the hell out of me in isometric RPGs? What are the things that I always want to see an RPGs but never do?

 

That train of thought led me to propose several ideas both mechanical and aesthetic. Because both Torment: Tides of Numenera and Project Eternity are very much being developed in the vein of classic, Infinity Engine cRPGs, I feel that these ideas are applicable--and, to a certain degree, vital--to both titles. As I mentioned, these are things that I believe belong in every RPG of good standing, and while some may read these notions of mine and think, "that's obvious," or, "that's too simple of a thing to bother proposing,"--and while I may agree with those sentiments--I still believe that some things simply need to be said.

 

I will do my best to fully articulate these ideas as best I can--which means I'll be writing as much as I feel necessary to clearly convey both my ideas in specific, as well as their emotional impetus. If you don't have the time or inclination to properly hear me out, please just avoid this thread.

 

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The Manners/Morality Dichtomy: An Appeal for Tonal Dialog Options in Project Eternity

 

Alternate thread title: A Consideration of the Sanjuro/Yojimbo Archetype

 

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In most roleplaying games, there seems to be a very rigidly defined relationship between manners and morality. In short, when you see dialog options, the "good" path is written in polite language, and the "evil" path is written in rude language.

 

Essentially, these games are constructing a false equality between manners and morality. Good characters must necessarily be polite characters; evil characters much necessarily be rude characters.

 

And I hate it!

 

When I approach a roleplaying game, I try to construct a model of what kind of person I want my character to be--what kind of person I want to roleplay. I take a personality type I personally admire, and try to apply that personality type to the decisions I am presented with in the game. Usually, the personality type I choose is Toshiro Mifune.

 

Toshiro Mifune was a Japanese actor who became quite famous for his roles in multiple period films, most notably those directed by Akira Kurosawa. You may have seen him in such classic films as Seven Samurai, Rashomon, Throne of Blood (a fantastic re-telling of Macbeth), The Hidden Fortress (which you may have heard of as George Lucas' "inspiration" for Star Wars), Yojimbo, Sanjuro and Redbeard.

 

 

Mifune's characters' personalities are all essentially the same, and perhaps best exemplified in Yojimbo, Sanjuro and Redbeard. (The latter of which, I must mention, I regard as the absolute best film ever made). In these films, Mifune is the hero of the story--but he is gruff. He is ill-kempt, ill-mannered and ill-groomed. He is curt and dismissive and, at times, insulting.

 

Judged by his words, he is not a character at all--he is no better than the vermin who serve as the villains and/or antagonists of the films. But the worth of man (or woman) is not in what they say, but what they do--and the ACTIONS of these characters are the very definition of heroic. The Toshiro Mifune character is -my- quintessential hero archetype--completely unfettered by social obligations, but possessing a powerful sense of morality and self-sacrifice.

 

Yet in all my years (decades) of gaming, I have yet to play a single game where I've been able really role-play as I want to, thanks in large part to the pervasive manners/morality dichotomy I mentioned earlier.

 

I want to be able to play a game where I can do the right thing, but say the wrong thing. I want to be rude and abrupt and abrasive, but I don't want to be evil. I want to be able to play a game where other gamers and say the right thing, and do the wrong thing.

 

There are a number of different ways to implement this. The worst way is to remove tonality from dialog altogether--giving the player so little voice that he or she is forced to imagine that voice. "Will you do this, player?" An NPC says. "Yes," the player can say; or "No," the player can say. In several interviews, Chris Avellone has discussed the process developers go through when constructing player dialog options. He states that they generally create multiple character archetypes in their mind that the player might want to roleplay, and then write those characters into the dialog options. So the ideal solution would be to simply (greatly) increase the number of archetypes involved in a game--but to do that requires an insane amount of additional work and reactivity which, simply put, is not feasible in any game development project.

 

So, what do I suggest as a reasonable method to implement more versatility and malleability for player voice in an RPG?

 

In Planescape Torment, certain dialog options measured the player's intent--you could agree to the same task multiple says. These intent options were indicated with brackets. For example, an NPC might ask you for a favor, and your affirmative dialog options would look like this:

 

• [Truth] "I'll help you."
• [bluff] "I'll help you."
• [intimidate] "How much will you pay me?"

 

(And, of course, you'd have analogous options for the denial dialog).

 

Dialog Intent options gave Planescape Torment's dialog system a great deal of depth, and allowed players to better react to the other characters in the game as they saw fit, rather than simply conforming to specific archetypes.

 

I propose doing something similar. Rather than gauge intent, I want dialog options that gauge tone. Are you being rude? Are you being polite? Are you bored? Are you interested? Players could determine not simply what they say, but HOW they say it--which makes it, to my mind, hugely important to the experience of role-playing. Tonal dialog options also have the potential to better implement realistic choices-and-consequences into RPGs, which is something I think all RPG gamers love seeing (which I'll get into after defining this idea a bit more).

 

Adding tonal dialog options would slightly increase the complexity of dialog trees, but at the same time, allow for the player to almost completely customize his or her in-game reactions to characters. For example, I would suggest at least six different basic tones:

 

[Polite]

[Rude]

[Dismissive]

[Eager]

[bored]

[interested]

 

Of course, even for a yes/no question, six different tones would yield twelve different potential responses! And that's too many to implement, I think. I do NOT think it's necessary for every dialog option to have tonal dialog options, and I do NOT think that tonal dialog options should always include all six tones. Tonal dialog options should be applied to dialog on a case-by-case basis, with potential tones chosen that make sense in the context. It simply doesn't make sense to be [Dismissive] while accepting a quest, after all.

 

[Polite] and [Rude] are general dialog options, which could be applied to any encounter and perhaps work best when the player is asking a question. For example: You walk through the arch of a large, ornate doorway. Inside, you see workers and servants scurrying about their own tasks with haste. In the back of the main chamber, you can see a large man sitting wearily behind an equally large, oaken desk. He is still and silent despite the hustle and bustle of activity around him. Curious, you get the attention of a nearby worker:

 

[Polite]: "Who is the man sitting in the back?"

[Rude]: "Who's the fatass sleeping on the job back there?"

 

Different characters should respond differently to different tones. Most would be more cooperative with polite characters and less cooperative with rude characters--but not all.

 

[bored] and [interested] work best for exposition--dialog scenes where the player is attempting to either receive or convey information. For example: you wake up on a stone slab in a mortuary, and a flying stone skull starts chatting with you. He offers to tell you all about the strange place you now find yourself in. If you ask him to keep talking to you in an [interested] tone, he might give you more details, but if you ask for the same in a [bored] tone he might omit certain details because he perceives that you don't really care. (This way, if players are bored by long-winded explanations and dialog, they can convey that sentiment in the dialog without telling the NPC to stop talking, or skipping the dialog altogether). Conversely, if you decline more information in a [bored] tone, the NPC might get angry at you--you are, after all, spurning free-offered help/advice--which might impact your future relationship with that NPC.

 

[Dismissive] and [Eager] would seem to best fit accepting and rejecting quests. If you're dismissive, the quest-giver might see you as rude, and (if you are declining a quest) not offer you the quest again or (if you are accepting the quest) give you a smaller reward for completing it (less gold, a less valuable item, etc.). Being [Eager] to accept a quest might yield you a better reward, and being [Polite] while declining might make the NPC willing to offer you the same quest again. Of course, no one tone should be the "good" tone or the "bad" tone. Each NPC should react differently to the player's tone.

 

For example, if you accept a quest from NPC Alpha with the [Eager] dialog option, he may feel like it's something so easy for you that you don't have to think about it, and therefore give you the lesser reward, whereas had you been [Dismissive] or [Rude] he would have doled out a greater reward as he thinks the quest was something you had to go out of your way to do, or wasn't easy, and therefore wishes to show his appreciation.

 

I believe every dialog encounter should have at least two different tones for the player to choose from. These tones do not necessarily need to be clearly labeled (we should be able to discern tone from the content of the text) unless they are also tied character statistics that impact how NPCs react to the player in general. (I.E., if you consistently choose [Rude] dialog options, your character's Rudeness Stat would increase, causing some NPCs to refuse to interact with you--or require some coercion to do so--etc., etc.)

 

I also think Planescape Torment's intent dialog options (the [Truth]/[bluff]/[intimidate] stuff) is also important, but less so, as the truth of falsehood of a statement should be something the player can conceive of in his or her imagination, and the game should only recognize the truth or falsity of a statement by the players' subsequent actions. (I.E. whether or not your statement is the truth or a lie should not be dependent on what you say, but rather what you do--your actions determine the truth of your word).

 

I think this mechanic would be an excellent way to consider dialog options and player interactivity, as it would broaden the potential for player role-playing and allow for meaningful choices that impact the narrative at a very immediate level, that can be unpredictable without annoying the player.

[samm]

Your ideas seem quite elaborate and I've read them on the Torment uservoice thing. Some cross-posting to further seed your intentions, eh?

 

 

For PE, I think this kind of dialogue flavour is over the top. For Torment, it would be possibly ok, if the time to implement it would allow it. As a person able to read, I recognize the difference between a polite and a rude answer by reading them, and don't need a descriptor explicitly telling me what the tone of the answer is. This is quite in the vein of what you propose, but I really don't think one should have a rudeness stat (or interest or politeness etc.) Instead of tonal descriptors, using fully formed answers in the sense of "[Truth] <rude affirmative answer>", "[Truth] <polite affirmative answer>", "[Lie] <polite affirmative answer>" etc. that are aimed at the dialogue partner exclusively and not influence some stat future dialogue partners will be magically aware of. In PE, this kind of stat again would be over the top, and in Torment, this is already captured with the Tides regarding the consequences of actions including results from dialogues.

 

The above is only true of course if the answers can be read before chosing them (i.e. unlike in MassEffect for example). In a MassEffect-like system, intention descriptors add more to the game than the tonal descriptors that would only multiply the effort of dialog creation without too much gain in roleplaying possibility.

Edited May 4, 2013 by samm

[Solstis]

It would be very nice to see more elaborate dialogue in RPGs. It's something we've been wanting for years, who can deny that? This is a good proposal, and with a little polishing up it could be a key to a great game. I would suggest an alternative model for most dialogue options like this:

 

[Friendly] - the most obvious, a positive reaction which will harbor a good relationship with others of a friendly nature

[indifferent] - a neutral response designed to keep tensions from flaring or a simple acknowledgement of another character

[Aggressive] - a response intended to egg an enemy on, intimidate a weaker character, or an insult hurled at friendly characters

[Hostile] - a threat or accusation which will undoubtedly create a conflict with all but the most cowardly or passive characters

 

If the specific result of each option could change depending on the type of character being addressed (i.e. friend, enemy, citizen, soldier, lord) as well as modifiers from character stats there would be plenty of variety from as few as four options.

[Arsene Lupin]

@samm: I agree completely. The descriptors shouldn't be visible unless they're tied to a specific stat and have succeed/fail states. 

 

I think I kind of forgot to say this explicitly, but the general idea I'm getting at is that designers ditch the "archetype" for dialog construction, and instead focus on different tones. I.E., instead of writing dialog options as "what would this archetype say, and what would that archetype say?" (which is how Avellone describes the process), it would be better to simply focus on tones. I.E., the NPC says X, so what would be the natural responses and in what tones? That kind of thing.

 

So that gamers can use dialog to role-play their characters as they want, rather than being forced to adhere to one of the developers' archetypes.

[Sensuki]

You know I think out of most of the developers out there I think Obsidian know how to do pretty good dialogue, and they've learned a lot over the years.

[mcmanusaur]

The name of this thread reminds me of an academic journal article, but I think I support the concept anyway.

[J.E. Sawyer]

I encourage designers to think of a player's responses in a naturalistic way, where the NPC's line and tone suggest a number of responses that seem to spring to mind -- not quite automatically -- but easily.  I believe the efficacy of a given player response should depend heavily on the character to whom they are speaking.  E.g. flattery and praise may appeal to certain character types, while others can only be persuaded through threats and abuse.

[Arsene Lupin]

What about the manners/morality relationship? I get the feeling it was handled the way it was in the Infinity Engine because the dialog system was used to trigger combat situations (I.E., if you say X, character Y becomes hostile) and the engine itself really wasn't set up enough to handle different variables (I.E. if you turned down a quest, and then completed a quest and spoke to the NPC again, he or she would react as if you had accepted the quest in the first place).

 

Is the Unity engine capable--and are the designers willing--to build a system where players can be judged BOTH by what they do AND what they say? That's really what I want to see. A sort of 2-state (at least) success resolution:

 

1. The NPC likes how the player spoke to him or her, gives better quest reward items/dialog

2. The NPC doesn't like how the player spoke to him or her, gives inferior quest reward items/dialog

 

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Anyway, in terms of overall dialog design and crafting "natural" response for the player... I agree with you, Josh... J.E.... Mr. Sawyer(?)... Cool Developer Guy Who Always Seems to have A Different Haircut. But, honestly, I don't really feel like that cohesion is too much of an issue considering your involvement in the project and how well everything sort of meshed together dialog-wise in the Icewind Dales, Neverwinter 2, and New Vegas.

 

One of the things that can really ruin an RPG for... or at least stick out in my mind for (literally) decades after playing... is when those player dialog options are NOT natural-sounding... at all. The example I constantly remember is in Baldur's Gate. In Infinity Engine games, I always played a Wizard, which meant high INT. Sometimes, that would let me choose special dialog options that offered greater insight into one thing or another, or allowed me to glean more informative dialog from similarly "intelligent" NPCs.

 

Except for one encounter. At a pub. In Baldur's Gate (the city). In Baldur's Gate (the game). Some of you may know -exactly- what I'm talking about. You encounter a very dull-witted half-orc assassin, and if your PC has a sufficiently high INT score, you're able to choose a dialog option that lets you avoid combat. Thing is, the "tone" of that dialog is -drastically- different than all of the other dialog in the entire game. Suddenly, my wizard became a fast-talking Eddie-Muphy-in-an-80s-movie character... and it was jarring.

 

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So, while I understand that it's important to craft dialog that caters to whom the player is speaking (the NPC), and I'd also really like to see some sort of mechanic that caters to the kind of character the player is role-playing as. 

 

What might well would simply be a "regard" stat for NPCs like what you see in Divine Divinity, (and I believe this was in New Vegas, too), where the NPCs react to the player different based on what that "regard" value is, which is modified by the choices the player makes in dialog (and by a reputation value, too, I think). I dunno.

[Lephys]

I encourage designers to think of a player's responses in a naturalistic way, where the NPC's line and tone suggest a number of responses that seem to spring to mind -- not quite automatically -- but easily.  I believe the efficacy of a given player response should depend heavily on the character to whom they are speaking.  E.g. flattery and praise may appeal to certain character types, while others can only be persuaded through threats and abuse.

 

I really like what someone mentioned in another thread (regarding Speech-type skills, methinks?).

 

It was something along the lines of it being actually fine to have individual skills or capability ratings with things such as Flatter and Intimidate, but that they'd only decide how effectively your character can flatter, for example, and not what kind of effect flattery will evoke in the target. Meaning, someone who doesn't take kindly to flattery would react more potently to a (example numbers) Flattery skill/rating of 100 than they would to one of 15, but that reaction would still be a negative one.

 

Basically, depending on the person, you might actually be better off with a low skill/rating than a high one, if you attempt to Flatter them when they hate it.

 

It's almost like... if someone hates dogs, and you get them a tiny dog figurine, that's not as bad as if you get them an actual dog. Of course, for someone who LOVES dogs, it would be reversed. "Oh, thanks, a dog figurine. That's kinda nice, ^_^"... "ZOMG! A DOG?! SWEEEEEET! *pet pet pet pet pet*"

[TrashMan]

 

 

Except for one encounter. At a pub. In Baldur's Gate (the city). In Baldur's Gate (the game). Some of you may know -exactly- what I'm talking about. You encounter a very dull-witted half-orc assassin, and if your PC has a sufficiently high INT score, you're able to choose a dialog option that lets you avoid combat. Thing is, the "tone" of that dialog is -drastically- different than all of the other dialog in the entire game. Suddenly, my wizard became a fast-talking Eddie-Muphy-in-an-80s-movie character... and it was jarring.

 

Can be jarring, but doesn't have to be.

 

People are anything but consistent. You can talk to the same person on different occasions and he can seem like a different person.

[nikolokolus]

On the bright side, Obsidian is freed from the idiotic constraints that D&D's alignment system puts on game-play; the "good" and "evil" options in dialogue should no longer be a concern.  From what I understand the game is supposedly about interpersonal and inter-factional relationships and hopefully our dialogue choices will reflect that.  

 

But I'm not too worried about it after playing Fallout New Vegas and Alpha Protocol.  The dialogue and its presentation of morality and ethics in those two games was top notch which leads me to think that the dialogue in P:E will mostly sound naturalistic and and won't be tied to "gamey" morality systems that we were stuck with in the past.