Implementation of good and evil paths in RPGs

[Shemar]

Or rather, Shemar cannot into thematic qualities.

Or maybe I find "the dichotomy of good and evil, or of order and chaos" not only horribly simplistic but also a cop out from delving into actual behavior resulting from believable motivation.

It has also been done to death.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Fucking storyfags

Eh, this is more of a fucking C&Cfags discussion.

Paths imply linearity, linearity implies storyfags.

 

[Shemar]

Beyond showing that you're a good guy, what is the reward of rescuing the kitten? Beyond showing you're a fucking bastard, what is the reward of burning it alive?

I generaly agree. I just have to add to this that actually rescuing the kitten (or seeing it burn) could be its own reward. If the game is immersive enough, the reward can come from accomplishing in-game goals, without something more measurable or tangible. So choices that lead to interesting or rewarding outcomes do not necessarily need to have far reaching consequences to have meaning.

Those are evil choices that make sense, and actually make the player consider doing it. I get lots of XP and a badass spell if I permanently slay one of my companions and give his soul into slavery? Now, that is a tough choice...

However for that to be done right, such an act should also affect the behavior of rest of your companions and/or anyone else that would know of the act, towards you, in a believable way. One of the things I hate most about 'evil paths' is how much abuse you can usually heap on your companions and still have them risk their lives for you (or your goals).

 

[OminousBlueDot]

I do wish the paradigm of "Games must be a reflection of the audience" would just die ...

Producing choices and consequences to those choices in relation to what gamers will feel comfortable with seems most flawed.

(I will now fail to back up my point and leave it for the rest of you fine gentle-entities to comprehend)

 

[JarlFrank]

Er... I didn't see anyone here mention at all that C&C should only include choices the playerbase is comfortable with. Nobody here ever said that games should be a reflection of the audience. How in the fuck did you get that impre...

Joined: 07 Jan 2011

Nevermind.

 

[OminousBlueDot]

Er... I didn't see anyone here mention at all that C&C should only include choices the playerbase is comfortable with. Nobody here ever said that games should be a reflection of the audience. How in the fuck did you get that impre...

A reflection of the audience would be inherit in the labeling of a path as good or evil.

Though it seems, on reflection, that I mistook a few posts, particularly

I just have to add to this that actually rescuing the kitten (or seeing it burn) could be its own reward

Apologies.

 

[Erzherzog]

Or rather, Shemar cannot into thematic qualities.

Or maybe I find "the dichotomy of good and evil, or of order and chaos" not only horribly simplistic but also a cop out from delving into actual behavior resulting from believable motivation.

It has also been done to death.

Seriously man? Even some of the most critically acclaimed movies and books can be boiled down to having a theme of two opposing...ideologies.

Hell, for example, The Great Gatsby features heavily on a theme of new rich vs. old rich, and I'd love to see you bash it as a 'simplistic cop out'

Just because games have so far failed to be written well does not mean we shouldn't strive to.

 

[Unradscorpion]

Or rather, Shemar cannot into thematic qualities.

Or maybe I find "the dichotomy of good and evil, or of order and chaos" not only horribly simplistic but also a cop out from delving into actual behavior resulting from believable motivation.

It has also been done to death.

Seriously man? Even some of the most critically acclaimed movies and books can be boiled down to having a theme of two opposing...ideologies.

Hell, for example, The Great Gatsby features heavily on a theme of new rich vs. old rich, and I'd love to see you bash it as a 'simplistic cop out'

Just because games have so far failed to be written well does not mean we shouldn't strive to.

Good and evil is simpler than any other dichotomy, it is a simplistic cop out to be fair.

 

[Shemar]

Or rather, Shemar cannot into thematic qualities.

Or maybe I find "the dichotomy of good and evil, or of order and chaos" not only horribly simplistic but also a cop out from delving into actual behavior resulting from believable motivation.

It has also been done to death.

Seriously man? Even some of the most critically acclaimed movies and books can be boiled down to having a theme of two opposing...ideologies.

Hell, for example, The Great Gatsby features heavily on a theme of new rich vs. old rich, and I'd love to see you bash it as a 'simplistic cop out'

Just because games have so far failed to be written well does not mean we shouldn't strive to.

Good and evil is simpler than any other dichotomy, it is a simplistic cop out to be fair.

Exactly. Good and evil are not ideologies. They are completely abstract and subjective. Pretty much everybody who has ever fought in a war, ever, in human history (excapt mercenaries) has thought of themselves as good and the other side as evil. The same with order and chaos. I find it especially silly when I see a setting with the followers of chaos so damn well organized! Having a faction/side being evil for the sake of evil is a total cop out. It basically means "I can't find a believable motivational approach so I'll just make them worship an 'evil' god and do evil 'stuff' to make sure the children reading/playing this (and the adults that tend to think like children) would have no issue with massacring them en masse". Real evil has motivations, reasoning, nuances and degrees. Not just a simplisting 'alignment' entry.

 

[JarlFrank]

I much prefer there being no evil and no good at all, just different views. Add a lot of prejudice and racial supremacy ideologies to a fantasy setting and you got a better explanation for why humans and demons hate each other than LOL DEMONZ R EVULZ. Maybe the women got all butthurt because succubi like seducing human men, so they told the temple to do something about it. Them looking all nasty with their reddish skin and horns on their heads doesn't help their image, either. So the temple organized great cleansings, sending knights to mercilessly kill all demons in the country.

Which is why the demons got all butthurt in turn and developed a deep enmity towards humans, who slaughtered their people. Therefore the few surviving demon tribes attack human villages, raping and pillaging and murdering without mercy out of revenge.

If you consistently implement such things in fantasy worlds, it all becomes a lot more interesing than just "lol u r good dey r evul nao go kill them hurrdurr". One race/faction wanting to completely annihilate another can always have a proper justification if you think about it for a while, and if the only reason is that race X is totally xenophobic and therefore wants to have race y gone from their lands.

 

[Azrael the cat]

Or rather, Shemar cannot into thematic qualities.

Or maybe I find "the dichotomy of good and evil, or of order and chaos" not only horribly simplistic but also a cop out from delving into actual behavior resulting from believable motivation.

It has also been done to death.

Seriously man? Even some of the most critically acclaimed movies and books can be boiled down to having a theme of two opposing...ideologies.

Hell, for example, The Great Gatsby features heavily on a theme of new rich vs. old rich, and I'd love to see you bash it as a 'simplistic cop out'

Just because games have so far failed to be written well does not mean we shouldn't strive to.

The best thing that could happen to game writing isn't to say that games CAN'T have good/evil dichotomies, but to drop all the genre-trappings that choke the writing to death. I mean story-genres, not gameplay genres.

Right now, it seems that when making a game, developers start off with the assumption that the story has to fit a particular patten. A fantasy rpg must be 'epic', where epic simply means that you are some sort of 'chosen one', whether that means a Jedi/Spectre/bhaalspawn - just someone who is 'marked' for greatness but starts as a small wandering warrior, with a known villain to defeat, where you must go and collect the mcguffins and use them to venture to the big-bad-place and defeat the foozle. Ok, we all give Bioware crap for that, but it's much wider than them.

The impression I get is that writers think firstly, what genre they're writing: fantasy, space-opera, horror, scifi-horror, adventure and then lay a story out within a confine that's already defined pretty strictly. That doesn't HAVE to be a bad way of writing stories, but it usually does. Think this way - why is it that literary critics divide works into 'literature' and 'genre-fiction'. They aren't saying that 'genre' is bad, but it's a good sign that it won't be of the heights they expect for 'literature'. Film critics do the same thing - they'll take a film seriously if it looks like something that has been written as a story first and foremost, rather than a studio having picked out a market segment and then commissioning a story to fit it.

And that's the problem. With games, the developer desides first what kind of game they want to make, and THEN they write the story. Cliche becomes inevitable. You have a developer thinking 'the game is going to have X look, and there'll be Y set-pieces and Z action' and because there isn't a script yet X,Y and Z will be plucked from cliche, and only then do the writers get to work and create something that fits those cliches. Problem: deciding the genre first, designing in the trappings and restrictions of the genre, and then getting the story to match it.

Add to this that game development uses the writing model shared only by low-grade soap operas, i.e. commissioning inhouse writers to produce a script AFTER the developer has committed to that story. Can you imagine a film studio saying 'ok writer, just write something along these lines and we'll make a film around it, you don't need to compete with anyone, just tell us when it's done?' No way. Even with market-package films where the studio shops around for a prepacked film idea aimed at a market segment, say shopping for a Spiderman script or for 'next year's blockbuster', they don't just rely on their inhouse writers. They call for scripts and maybe commission a few from writers that have proven themselves as independent contractors. They get to look at a whole bunch of scripts by different writers and choose which one they like. And that's with their mass-market writing-isn't-so-important mass production films!

When it comes to GOOD films and literature, the writer writes a story. Not a genre, a story. And then they send it off to a studio or a publisher and it might get picked up. But if it does get picked up, someone has liked it as a script and then gets to make the film around the script. The equivalent in gaming would be for the studio to buy a script fully-made with all the C+C and dialogue in there, to then build a game around.

Imagine that. Instead of even thinking 'I'm going to make a rpg', let alone 'a fantasy rpg', they get a story that might not even fall into a neat genre (and hopefully won't). THEN they decide how to make a game that will bring that story to life, what kind of mechanics will work with the themes, etc.

I'm not saying that all games should be made that way. But we won't get art-quality game writing until we take it as seriously as they do in artforms. And unfortunately, taking writing more seriously might mean less guaranteed work for writers, because they can't just sit inhouse regardless of whether their next script is good. Not less work overall, just less guaranteed work. And writer-selection based on how good that particular script is. Not because the writer just happened to be the guy that studio has inhouse, and is told to write something to meet a particular genre and a particular game. Sure they'd lose job security. But they'd get an artistic freedom equivalent to that of authors. They'd be REAL authors. Some wouldn't make the grade, some new ones would appear who haven't been able to get work in the current system. So yes, some would lose their jobs, but others would get to make real art. If they're serious about writing, they'd have to see the value in that.

 

[Mastermind]

I much prefer there being no evil and no good at all, just different views. Add a lot of prejudice and racial supremacy ideologies to a fantasy setting and you got a better explanation for why humans and demons hate each other than LOL DEMONZ R EVULZ. Maybe the women got all butthurt because succubi like seducing human men, so they told the temple to do something about it. Them looking all nasty with their reddish skin and horns on their heads doesn't help their image, either. So the temple organized great cleansings, sending knights to mercilessly kill all demons in the country.

Which is why the demons got all butthurt in turn and developed a deep enmity towards humans, who slaughtered their people. Therefore the few surviving demon tribes attack human villages, raping and pillaging and murdering without mercy out of revenge.

If you consistently implement such things in fantasy worlds, it all becomes a lot more interesing than just "lol u r good dey r evul nao go kill them hurrdurr". One race/faction wanting to completely annihilate another can always have a proper justification if you think about it for a while, and if the only reason is that race X is totally xenophobic and therefore wants to have race y gone from their lands.

Sounds like the average anime.

Making cartoonishly evil figures into sympathetic figures (either partially or fully) has always completely ruined suspension of disbelief for me, and you can't get more cartoonishly evil that the average demon portrayed.

 

[JarlFrank]

That was just an example. Also, obviously those demons shouldn't be portrayed as cartoonishly evil, then. More like, say, the Daedra in Elder Scrolls.

 

[Leimrey]

Real evil has motivations, reasoning...

Except for Chaotic Evil characters who tend to have outbursts of unmotivated and unprovoked aggression. Such characters are driven by their emotions (hatred, lust, excessive greed that will bring no actual profit or other benefits) as well as self-interest.

 

[Tigranes]

Only skimmed the thread as a whole so call me a moron if I'm repeating, but to me good/evil in CRPGs is more a problem of delivery and presentation to the player than how it's designed, at the moment.

We still have shit like "I'll give you my money, random beggar, cuz I'm good, whereas I'd extort you for twenty cents and a rat's tail if I was evil" (KOTOR 1), but we also have a lot of choices now where a reasonable moral spectrum exists. The problem is that most of the time, the player is not emotionally involved in these choices in a good/evil sense; the choices are, effectively, not presented in terms of good & evil, although it might appear so. Choices like save a dangerous but dying race are often presented in a way so that the player naturally considers the impact on his loot, his equipment, his XP and the allies he gets in the final fight; i.e. he is disposed to be a heartless Machiavellian, only occasionally swayed by certain preexisting feelings (i.e. I hate X because they have an annoying voiceover, or I personally detest any form of slavery). This is made worse by the fact that newage RPGs try and balance Good & Evil paths to the point where you lose little going either way, and that no matter which side you go you will always have supporters in the gameworld that give you feedback about how kickarse you are.

I'd think that one realistic avenue of improvement is leveraging the increasing importance on NPCs, and expanding on the existing dynamic where NPCs might protest against your decisions at key moment. Make this more important, consequential, and most of all, unforgiving. Currently most of them just speak up when you're about to make the final call, asking you to change your mind. I guess all RPG party members are strongly authority-respecting, but seriously, if I'm travelling with you and you spend 3 hours looking for Anthrax I'm not going to wait until just before you pop that thang in the airstream before I say Hang On They should be more difficult to appease or fool; as long as they give clear warning.

For instance, the enduring mechanic in NPC conversations is taht like little voices in a Codexer's head that speaks to him when within 30m of a real woman, nobody else can hear them. 95% of the time, the party mage might cry WHAT ARE YOU DOING WE SHOULD KILL THEM ALL and the 'they' will stand calmly waiting for your answer. What if their wailing makes a peaceful solution more difficult to achieve? What if the NPC actively tries to sabotage your negotiations (woops, was that a fireball)? In controlled narratives of adventures like fantasy books you will see this happen a lot more - the party member steals the important plot ingredient and takes off, etc. This doesn't need to just apply to party members either, but world NPCs, too many of which sort of sit around and say "meh" if you don't do what they want. Point is that NPCs are potentially a useful way of giving feedback to the player in this way and making him think and decide more in terms of the gameworld (what do the people around my PC want to do, how will this impact them) rather than numbers & loot.

While I'm not against improvement in terms of overall story outlines & plot design, I also think that existing narratives & plot structures are also capable of quite satisfying moral decisions - they just need to be tied to game characters / ideologies / etc in more uncompromising fashions. It just comes back to the idea that the PC should not be the most important figure in the universe in any and all things.

 

[Shemar]

Real evil has motivations, reasoning...

Except for Chaotic Evil characters who tend to have outbursts of unmotivated and unprovoked aggression. Such characters are driven by their emotions

A character that "tends to have outbursts of unmotivated and unprovoked aggression" would be unable to function on any level in any believable setting or environment, among any faction or group. But beyond even that, the very notion that a character fits in a conventient little box called 'Chaotic Evil', and acts the way he acts not because there is a reason but because he 'is Chaotic Evil', as if that is suposed to mean anything, in a gross oversimplification.

"Characters have alignment" is for childrens' games, in the adult table "alignment is a general indicator of how a character is likely to behave, based on his history, circumstances and motivations".

Now on to the part where you just contradict yourself:

(hatred, lust, excessive greed that will bring no actual profit or other benefits) as well as self-interest.

Hatred of what? If the character hates something shouldn't there be an explanaton of why he hates it? And of course aggresion towards something because of hatred is anything but 'unmotivated and unprovoked agression'.

Lust/greed for what? How is there no 'profit or other benefits' when an act is motivated by lust or greed? Is there no explanation of why the character lusts after the thing he lusts? Is greedy for the subject of his greed?

Maybe the character hates everything, lusts after everything and is greedy about everything? Oh wait that is also a contardiction...

 

[Cassidy]

It is much better to have a game invovling disputes between morally gray factions the PC may choose to either side with or ignore. In my opinion clear cut good vs. evil is dull, cliché and boring, specially when one of the sides does everything to be unsympathetic from an average player's perspective.

Seriously, a CRPG where you are just an independent mercenary with the goal of getting rich enough to retire in style, doing all sorts of dangerous jobs, without any kind of "epic" forced plot to be dragged into, but instead several smaller plot-lines not involving dull "save the world from evulz" that may be mutually exclusive, and where you can side with several factions or not, would be awesome.

Maybe Age of Decadence will partly deliver something like this,

once it is released.



As for alignment, I don't think Chaotic Evil should necessarily mean serial killer or insane. Many common thugs would fall under it.

Chaotic Evil: doesn't care about the law, doesn't care about agreements, deals, honor, and will break them gladly when convenient to achieve his self-centered ends. Anyone along the way will be damned.

Neutral Evil: Will achieve his self-centered ends either through illegal or legal means, might or not honor agreements, depending on which seems more convenient at a given time. Anyone along the way will be damned.

Lawful Evil: Powermonger who will attempt to become the law or above it by rising as a tyrant, or to exploit the flaws of law for his own ends. Usually he will honor all deals he make and be as loyal to his cronies(provided he formally promises it) as he expects loyalty from them. Most of those who make crime organized would fall into either LE or NE.

 

[Leimrey]

This is made worse by the fact that newage RPGs try and balance Good & Evil paths to the point where you lose little going either way...

There's nothing wrong in trying to balance the Good/Evil paths in an "average rpg" (save the world vs conquer the world/achieve great power ala BG2 ToB), however, this doesn't mean that balance should be acheived by symmetrical means (lose the support of good aligned NPC/gain the support of evil alligned NPC and similar situations).

I prefer scenarious when you lose a fucking lot in one aspect, but gain equivalent or similar benefits in some other aspect.

...and that no matter which side you go you will always have supporters in the gameworld that give you feedback about how kickarse you are.

Nothing wrong with an Evil character having some supporters with similar interests in principle, but this does get boring/unoriginal when these supporters are introduced as an alternative to the lost Good supporters (again, the scenario with symmetrical answers/gamepaths).

What if their wailing makes a peaceful solution more difficult to achieve? What if the NPC actively tries to sabotage your negotiations (woops, was that a fireball)? In controlled narratives of adventures like fantasy books you will see this happen a lot more - the party member steals the important plot ingredient and takes off, etc.

That would be pretty cool. A quest where you have the opportunity to hunt them down and extract terible terrible vengeance on their sorry ass would be also cool.

 

[Shemar]

Choices like save a dangerous but dying race are often presented in a way so that the player naturally considers the impact on his loot, his equipment, his XP and the allies he gets in the final fight; i.e. he is disposed to be a heartless Machiavellian, only occasionally swayed by certain preexisting feelings (i.e. I hate X because they have an annoying voiceover, or I personally detest any form of slavery).

I am quoting the most pertinent part, but it is really a reply to the whole post. I disagree that it is the job of the game (or the game design) to get the player more involved in the plot and the story and not just interested in his XP/equipment/allies/etc. I have no problem, when the game is good, to make decisions based on the actual circumstances of the setting (i.e. Role Play) and not based on what decision will give me more loot (i.e. Meta Game). It is not the job of a game to teach bad role players how to be good role players. If somebody wants to munchkin their way through games, being a 'heartless Machiavellian', why would it bother me?

 

[JarlFrank]

Actually, Dark Messiah of M&M had adequate consequences for the choice at the end.

If you choose to cleanse yourself and become good, you can use some really great new weapons, but you won't be able to assume your powerful demon form anymore.

Nice items vs nice special ability, which is better and why?

 

[Leimrey]

A character that "tends to have outbursts of unmotivated and unprovoked aggression" would be unable to function on any level in any believable setting or environment, among any faction or group.

A character who commands great power/respect and is high in the hierarchy can do whatever he wants (as if history lacks incidents when people with power executed others, who are lower in the hierarchy, on a whim).

But beyond even that, the very notion that a character fits in a conventient little box called 'Chaotic Evil', and acts the way he acts not because there is a reason but because he 'is Chaotic Evil', as if that is suposed to mean anything, in a gross oversimplification.

It seems you fail to understand that alignment is a dynamic concept and may undergo changes very rapidly and frequently. The tag "Chaotic Evil" is attached to the character based on his actions, not the other way around (no character exhibits certain behaviour simply so that he could retain his alignment). Alignment is used to describe the probable behaviour of a character and his philosophy/reasoning.

"Characters have alignment" is for childrens' games, in the adult table "alignment is a general indicator of how a character is likely to behave, based on his history, circumstances and motivations".

There's nothing wrong with the statement "characters have alignment", I don't even understand what's your problem here. Alignment is dynamic and is "attached" to the character based on his actions, not the other way around.

 

[Leimrey]

Hatred of what? If the character hates something shouldn't there be an explanaton of why he hates it? And of course aggresion towards something because of hatred is anything but 'unmotivated and unprovoked agression'.

Lust/greed for what? How is there no 'profit or other benefits' when an act is motivated by lust or greed? Is there no explanation of why the character lusts after the thing he lusts? Is greedy for the subject of his greed?

What I meant to say here is that emotionally driven actions may contradict with the character's self interest and may be harmful for him/his standing. You also fail to understand that many Chaotic Evil characters are monsters of low intelligence that are aggressive simply due to their nature (ex. they may be very territorial). You also seem to imply that I presented a Chaotic Evil character as a person who is devoid of reason. When I wrote "unmotivated", I meant that the character will receive no real benefit from his evil actions, he may act in such a way simply because he enjoys doing such acts or observing their consequencies.

Lust/greed for what? How is there no 'profit or other benefits' when an act is motivated by lust or greed?

Lust is the craving for emotional satisfaction and thus, actions driven by lust may have no real (material) benefit and may even be harmful for the character.
Actions driven by greed may also bring no real benefit or may even be harmful for the individual, as a person driven by greed may not be able to correctly assess the situation/possible consequencies/danger or act in spite of his good reasoning simply because of his emotional state.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

From my experience, evil alignment => serious psychological disorders.

 

[Shemar]

What I meant to say here is that emotionally driven actions may contradict with the character's self interest and may be harmful for him/his standing.

Motivation and self interest are not the same thing. There is always motivation in any concious act.

You also fail to understand that many Chaotic Evil characters are monsters of low intelligence that are aggressive simply due to their nature (ex. they may be very territorial).

Maybe you fail to understand that 'monsters of low inteligence' are not characters?

You also seem to imply that I presented a Chaotic Evil character as a person who is devoid of reason. When I wrote "unmotivated", I meant that the character will receive no real benefit from his evil actions, he may act in such a way simply because he enjoys doing such acts or observing their consequencies.

Again, you contradict yourself (or maybe you are not using the correct words). "because he enjoys doing such acts or observing their consequencies" seems like a prefctly good MOTIVE to do something to me, which directly contradicts "unmotivated".

Lust is the craving for emotional satisfaction

No it is not. Look it up.

and thus, actions driven by lust may have no real (material) benefit and may even be harmful for the character.

And again you seem to be confusing motive/motivation with '(material) benefit'.

Actions driven by greed may also bring no real benefit or may even be harmful for the individual, as a person driven by greed may not be able to correctly assess the situation/possible consequencies/danger or act in spite of his good reasoning simply because of his emotional state.

That's a new one. So if your motive towards a goal is so strong that it may blind you to the realities of the situation and lead you to failure, that means your actions were unmotivated?

 

[Leimrey]

@Shemar

Well, I didn't really meant to include the intrinsic part into "motivation" when I wrote all that (didn't even think about it to be honest). Just replace "motivation" by "extrinsic motivation" in all of my posts to get a better idea of what I was trying to say.

So yeah, greed and lust (or should I say emotional satisfaction from indulging in such behavior) are not extrinsic motivators. Basically, this doesn't change anything I wanted to say. My main idea was that a Chaotic Evil character may experience a conflict between extrinsic (material rewards or recognition among his peers) and intrinsic motivators (pleasure which he experiences during the act). Really, I didn't even think that you would use such definition of "motivation" in your post because it hardly makes any sense this way.

Having a faction/side being evil for the sake of evil is a total cop out. It basically means "I can't find a believable motivational approach so I'll just make them worship an 'evil' god and do evil 'stuff' to make sure the children reading/playing this (and the adults that tend to think like children) would have no issue with massacring them en masse". Real evil has motivations, reasoning, nuances and degrees. Not just a simplisting 'alignment' entry.

What's wrong with being evil for the sake of being evil if you really enjoy it? Because that's a very common motivator for evil characters used in rpgs. These characters do evil stuff because they enjoy it. Sure, that motivator is pretty cliche and overused, but it is also fairly realistic. For example, the infamous Rostov Ripper experienced sexual pleasure (orgasm) during the act of killing as he plunged his knife into his victims (he was impotent and could not experience it in any other way).