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newer entries...
06-30-00 Diablo has declared hostility toward you
06-29-00 days and days
06-26-00 confession
06-23-00 moodswing
06-22-00 smackdown
06-18-00 it's all over now
06-13-00 it's beginning to look a lot like SimuCon
06-11-00 the good, the bad, and the PKers
06-10-00 quickie post of the geek, -20% light radius
06-05-00 [/root]#
06-03-00 Woo hoo!
older entries...
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Diablo has declared hostility toward you |
| 06-30-00 |
 Diablo II rocks.
This game is very slick. Replayability exists in the form of tons of training options this time, rather than in the map randomizer. I'm starting to hope that Blizzard will make an MMORPG one of these days, 'cause with this game they've proven they know what they're doing. They could easily blow away UO and EQ, and if they put some emphasis on roleplaying in addition to the excellent advancement/quests/items side of things, they could give HJ a run for its money as well.
This game is gonna cut into my EverQuest time. It's not going to kill all interest I have in EQ, because believe it or not, there are things I like about EQ that can't be found here. But for the next couple weeks there's only one game I'm gonna play and it starts with a D.
I'm doing single-player (and LAN... the characters are interchangeable) right now, so don't look for me on battle.net yet. Though I did manage to snag the name DoctorBones for a necro on USEast... Cherry Poppin' Daddies fans should appreciate that ;)
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days and days |
| 06-29-00 |
 Happy Stephday!
You know, I never did the "my god, I'm turning 25" thing. It didn't feel like a milestone to me. 30 might... but age just doesn't seem that important to me. There's not much difference between 30 and 29, any more than there is between 2000 and 1999. Is that an odd thought for a son of Seshat, or do I just know too many people from online?
I wanted Tuesday and Wednesday off so I could spend some time with my parents before they go back home, but I sure did pick a weird couple of days. For one thing, I was on call. Tuesday morning was when Jim, Jeff and Mike brought down all our servers to rearrange things and hopefully solve some of the problems that come up when we lose power. That night though, we had the opportunity to discover the flaws in the new setup. Luckily we were playing EQ at the time (sitting outside the Neriak Cleric's guild waiting for Daikaisho to memorize his new level 5 spells) and were right there to deal with it. Who says playing games at the office is a bad thing?
Wednesday we had a short scheduled shutdown to hopefully straighten out the power problems for real this time, but wouldn't you know it, as soon as the games were brought back up our internet connection went down... and stayed down. For some 14-15 hours. Our ISP, with whom we are not particularly pleased at this moment, apparently took 6 hours just to figure out what the problem was, and several more to get it taken care of. It finally came up around 8 AM our time and I headed in to see what was down at our end of things thanks to this mess. Nothing, as it turns out. So, being 3 hours early to work and having already put in some extra time this week, I figured I'd play EQ... nope, they're down for an 8 hour maintenance period. Doh!
My folks are driving back to Florida as I write this. It was nice having them here, even though the idea of people, even family, messing with my stuff bugs me for some reason. I was almost annoyed that they washed the dishes and put stuff away, and then I came to my senses and realized that was a sinkfull of dishes I didn't have to do myself. :) They may kick me out of my own bed, but they make up for it by buying me food and cooking for me (though I did treat them to dinner at Tachibana). Wish the Sardine could make it up here at some point, she hasn't met Poco yet.
Poco is gradually turning into Godzilla. I've switched him to adult bearded dragon food -- pellets almost the size that his body was when I first got him. Yesterday I switched from paper towels to alfalfa-based bedding/litter stuff, which looks nicer, should smell better and be easier to clean. He didn't quite climb up my arm when I picked up his basking rock, but he did dig in his claws a little bit. They're not like a cat's -- they're just meant to help in climbing, not for rending flesh -- but they're still a good deal more substantial than the geckos' claws are.
We rented more movies. "Anna and the King" was the only one that wasn't dark, creepy, freaky and/or depressing (including "Messenger" and "End of Days" which we rented earlier). "The Green Mile" was very faithful to the books, quite good, but very long, and of course a movie about Death Row is not going to be heartwarming and uplifting. "Snow Falling on Cedars" was a dramatic romantic murder mystery that dwelled a lot on how crappy people treat each other. "A Stir of Echoes" was something along the lines of "Sixth Sense", maybe not as slick but probably a neat thing for Wepwawet kids. All of them were entertaining but I think I enjoyed Green Mile the best, with Anna and Echoes close behind. End of Days had a couple of moments but overall just wasn't that compelling, and Snow without the brooding would have been a little better but still not really my kind of thing.
According to DR GMs, Diablo II preorders are arriving. We'll have to hit computer stores today and see if they're arrived, already sold out, or what.
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confession |
| 06-26-00 |
My parents are here for a visit. I haven't seen them yet this year and I've been missing them, but now that they're here I don't feel like it's been that long. Maybe it's because we keep in touch with email and phone calls and all.
So of course, everything at the office picks this weekend to go haywire. Normally I can go through an entire week-long on-call shift without anything breaking unless I'm at the office anyway. This time, no such luck.
Of course a couple of times I used it as an excuse to start up a session of EQ with Steph and Jeff.
That's right. I'm playing EverQuest. The competition. I actually went out and bought a CD and signed up for an account and everything. If you'd have told me last week I'd do this, I'd have snorted. Last month, I'd have laughed. Last year, I'd have been deeply offended.
I tried EQ on others' accounts when it came out, and didn't get into it. Out of three characters/starting areas that I tried, the only one I started to enjoy gave me simulator sickness. Something about the height of the ground I guess. My navigation skills are less than adequate for just driving around town, much less trying to find my way around Kelethin, and the idiotic Sense Heading skill only makes things worse. And the fact that some race/area combinations are so dark at night that you can't even tell whether you're looking at the ground, the sky, or straight ahead, was the icing on the cake. I just quit playing and lost all interest.
But those two talked me into it. I know that games are more fun when played with friends, and when I tried it I was just soloing to check things out. I read up a little bit on various EQ sites and then took the plunge. I started up a male Dark Elf cleric on Rodcet Nife named Daikaisho, and since that server went down one night when we were going to play, a female Half-Elf warrior on Torvollonius named Yarada. I kinda wanted to start one of those lizard guys with a name suspiciously like DR's S'Kra, but Steph doesn't have a Kunark expansion CD. Maybe I'll try it solo.
There are a lot of things I still don't like about EQ. I'm getting used to the first person view, even though I expect to be able to duck behind trees, boulders, buildings, etc. when some critter is casting at me. With practice and decent maps (NOT the crappy maps in the manual) some of those areas are too hard to navigate. Some of the ways to fail a quest are annoying and unnecessary, such as handing an item to the wrong NPC, who accepts it without returning it. The interface still annoys me on occasion.
 A particular gripe is the lack of ways to customize your character's appearance -- particularly for female characters. I hate the fact that my warrior appears to run around in a leather apron, a skimpy swimsuit, a pair of velvet gloves and a big klunky pair of boots (despite the fact that her actual inventory is a guild tunic and a pair of cloth pants). UO beats EQ by a mile where it comes to giving you options to change your appearance, though of course nothing is as flexible as a text-based game. But the appearance that everyone's stuck with should at least not include exposed butt cheeks and tan lines. :P
It's got about as much actual roleplaying as JumpGate, which is slightly more than UO. It's hack-and-slash, find stuff, etc., like a first-person, less well written, cheesier-looking Diablo -- but there's a lot of stuff in there and the group tactics are more interesting than Diablo. I'm starting to get into it. I've switched from only wanting to play to hang out with Steph and Jeff, to wanting to play for my own sake. I did a little soloing with Yarada to try and gain a level or two and finish a quest. (Unfortunately the ultimate result was to end up as lion food...)
My parents hit Blockbuster to rent a couple of videos... completely by accident my dad picked The Messenger and my mom picked End of Days. I might suggest following it up with Dogma just to stick with the theme, but Kevin Smith doesn't tend toward movies you want to watch with your parents.
Not sure what to think of Messenger -- I like both Luc Besson and Milla, and Jeanne was far from two-dimensional... but the movie seemed to seemed to miss something. It ends on a downer, but then as my dad says, "when you watch Titanic you know the boat's gonna sink." End of Days was not what I expected, but I guess not knowing the plot in advance will do that to you. Up next is probably U-571 and something else...
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moodswing |
| 06-23-00 |
Amazing how quickly I can go from satisfaction in a game to complete frustration.
Last night, only a couple of short flights after the incident at Outpost, I was again attacked while docking. This time it was BerSerk, a player that's pretty much hostile to everyone, particularly those in solitary cargo tows who are trying to dock. This guy is so unpopular that a couple of times, everyone else has put aside their difference to hunt him down. According to Planet Jumpgate, TRI even put a 15 million credit bounty on his head once.
I had a bad feeling as soon as I saw the red dot on my radar. I targeted him and started turning, but I hadn't even rotated halfway toward him before my ship blew up -- in fact I was still facing the station, so I couldn't have hit afterburner and Flashfire to get the living foo out of there. The most powerful shield available in JG couldn't withstand the attack for 5 seconds. There's absolutely nothing I could have done.
I don't like being rendered helpless by game mechanics. I'm either not going to play JG again until prerelease (at which I'll give the tweaks and new features a chance), or else I'll start playing again in a few days but never again in a cargo tow. Maybe I'll transfer from FTL's Merchant Service to its Combat Service, or maybe I'll just do all my trading in high-dollar stuff in a heavy fighter. Or maybe I'll forget the game entirely when Diablo II comes out? I kinda hope not, because despite the frustration of unwillingly playing the role of sitting duck, I've had fun in there.
When one jerk can ruin the game for several people though, there's a problem. While every player is responsible for their own actions, the game designers share in that responsibility. Sometimes I think of game mechanics as a big funnel or a pachinko machine through which all kinds of player behaviors are funneled and filtered.
In the Diablo II stress test, people tend to create games titled something along the lines of "8ppl exp", hoping to attract players to just come in there and bash critters for fun and profit. The more players in the game, the tougher the creatures get, which makes them worth more experience and give out better loot -- an important boost when there are only a couple of hunting areas available and they're populated with low-level creatures.
Inevitably, there are players who log into these games just to make trouble. Fortunately in Diablo II, you don't have to get beat up by PKers if you don't want to. In order to attack another player, you have to be level 9, and while still in town, you have to declare your hostile intent toward that player. Towns are safe areas, so wherever the intended victim is, he gets the warning in plenty of time to prepare for battle or to exit the game and find a friendlier one.
That sort of thing works well for an action RPG like Diablo... in fact I wish the creator of the game had the option of forbidding PVP just as he does for limiting player levels. I'm thinking about how the "declaration of hostility" might apply to a serious RPG though. Right now I still think a good justice system is the way to go, but this deserves some thought.
As fun as a game is for any individual player, the most important factor to consider in multiplayer games is how the players interact. For that matter, the biggest reason why people keep playing multiplayer games in the long term isn't the gameplay as much as it is the other players. As Thorin from GS3 commented on the SimuCon boards, "the reason I play Gemstone is not nearly so much the game itself, but the people in it." This is not to say that gameplay isn't important too -- but no matter how much fun the gameplay is, the game has to encourage people to have fun together and prevent them from abusing each other.
Now off this game stuff for a bit and on to something more vague and mystical -- an "I just woke up and my brain is in a weird state" sort of though. I started rereading Glen Cook's "She Is The Darkness" for the third time (it's good, what can I say) and just happened to find the next in the series ("Water Sleeps") in paperback a couple days after I started.
Anyway, there's this blurb thing that gets repeated between chapters a few times that goes something like "Death is eternity. Eternity is stone. Stone is silence. Stone cannot speak but stone remembers." This time it kind of reminded me of Nebt-Het.
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smackdown |
| 06-22-00 |
Steph and Jeff are playing EQ again. I'm not... yet. They're trying to talk me into joining them. I might. I was more annoyed than entertained by it when I first tried it, but it might be more tolerable when it's played with friends.
 So while they were running around getting repeatedly killed, I went back into JG. Seeing a new member of Dark Path jump out of the gate I was heading for, I warily targeted him and had a finger hovering over the missile launch key. He sped for another gate without doing anything suspicious so I relaxed... and accidentally hit the Launch key instead of the Next Target key. Oops! Luckily for both of us (or so I thought), our combined velocity was high enough that those poor missiles never had a chance of catching him. He didn't say anything so I assume he never even noticed. Whew.
After a couple more cargo runs I made level 5. Finally! I'd been "almost level 5" for almost two weeks now. Now I "only" need 995 more experience to level 6. I'm not too motivated to get there 'cause all it means to me is the ability to buy nastier missiles, and the ones I use now are plenty nasty enough. As I had occasion to demonstrate later in the evening...
 I bought myself a cargo tow -- something I said I would never do, but I decided that the extra speed and power would be nice. Since I don't care about experience gain any more I can painlessly refuse any missions that want me to deliver 5500 metric tonnes of radioactive crap, simply playing the market instead. So I made the purchase and got it all outfitted and took it out on its maiden voyage.
On my final approach to Outpost Station, who should appear on my radar but that new Dark Path guy? He gave me a friendly greeting, which I answered, and asked what level I am, which got me wary again. I finished lining up with the docking tube and answered him... and sure enough, my shields flared with a hit. My brand new, size 5, top of the line "Mortar" shields. Heh heh heh.
Slowly I turned -- because slowly is the only way you can turn in a cargo tow -- and very deliberately lined up on him. He was very close and slowly moving toward me, flying his light fighter as if he was in something much bigger. I unleashed my four twin-packs of HellRazor missiles at him. Wish I had gotten a screenshot of that mess. :)
Somehow, due to a bug or an exploit of some kind, he survived the initial onslaught with 100% shields and _48% armor remaining. Negative armor? Maybe I did so much damage so quickly that a variable or two rolled over. But I wasted no time contemplating it; I pounded on him with dual Hammer cannons until he damn well blew up.
That'll learn 'im.
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it's all over now |
| 06-18-00 |
SimuCon's over and done with. My participation during the con itself was minimal this time -- I was there for the GM dinner on Wednesday night, the reception Thursday night, taking some DR folks to see X/1999 Friday night, and the costume dinner/keynote speech Saturday night. Pics are up at dave.mooville.net.
 X made more sense than we'd been warned about. In fact, I thought it was easier to follow than the manga. The movie wasn't ruined by the bad voice acting, Japanese titles and subtitles that weren't translated, and odd hugging-the-severed-head scenes. It looked pretty darned good (though not Princess Mononoke good) and there were some pretty cool characters. As brutal as some of the scenes were, they did spare us from actually seeing what could have been really nasty horrible stuff -- but that doesn't mean they left it out of the story. Don't take kids to see this one.
Anyway, between X and the few moments spent in a couple of guild meetings, I want to do more of what we at Simutronics call in technical jargon, "GM Stuff." Storyline and fluff items and spells and events and things that are all tied together. I miss it. The last time I did that was when we introduced the four new races (if you don't count a certain vision-inducing ring that was auctioned about 6 months ago).
 Speaking of races, it was incredibly cool to see people dressed up as Prydaen and S'kra Mur and swamp trolls and, uh, big creepy skeletons with glowing red eyes. People really outdid themselves at the costume dinner this year. Even some of the staff got into it, with Zoha and his wife decked out in Dragon Priest robes. I wore my old standby SCA tunic and pointy boots and carried an axe -- a little awkward at the dinner table. I want to do a little better next year. I'll probably either make myself a new tunic (kind of a pain without a sewing machine though) or violate the last remaining shred of my SCA principles and buy one, and find myself an Egyptian mace or a nice flail. Hmmm. Or maybe I'll go as a Gor'Tog...
Maybe it's because I wasn't there for seminars or maybe it's because people already know I can't talk about it, but nobody asked me awkward questions. Of course, most people were there for GS3 and/or DR, and were busy hounding those GMs. :)
I still haven't gotten drunk at a SimuCon. Maybe because I stayed well away from the bar -- crowds bug me and concentrated cigarette smoke bugs me more.
So now that the con's over I've switched gears. Parents are probably coming up next weekend and the mess is a place. I had a carton of milk in the fridge that predates the Industrial Revolution, and it sprung a slow leak and left crustaceous yellow gunk all over the bottom of the fridge. Cleaning that up was not one of the most enjoyable experiences I've had. I also did some laundry and cleaned Kalila's cage, dumping the sand in favor of paper towels so she can't bury her water dish... and that was not one of the most enjoyable experiences she has had.
I reinstalled Rogue Spear, Urban Operations, the patch, and some new mods. I didn't like NATO 3 at first, but it's all in the weapons you pick -- there's a big difference in stopping power between ammo types, so the silenced pistols and SMGs that I usually prefer are not necessarily a good choice here. The Steyr ACR flechette gun is well done in this mod, as are the shotguns. Also, Sputnik Satellite's mod has been updated since I tried it last, and it features some cool stuff such as an integrally silenced Aug. So between those I've been kinda having fun with RS again.
I have about 80 EXP to level 5 in Jumpgate. Slow going. I shouldn't have switched from an Interceptor to a Traveller until hitting that level. In that big ol' space truck I'm pretty reluctant to flip beacons. On the plus side though, I'm making a lot more money in that ship. Overall, my interest in JG has cooled a bit -- probably because I know the prerelease version is around the corner, all kinds of new features will be added, and the player database may be wiped. Not a lot of point in frantically chasing levels if we're all going back to level zero, is there? Still, I get in there and play casually once in a while. Running cargo when things are quiet is kind of relaxing.
Ditto for the Diablo II beta stress test... there's not a lot of content in there and I've seen it all several times over, but I still pop in hoping to find nicer gems. Couple of weeks and I'll be playing the real thing though.
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it's beginning to look a lot like SimuCon |
| 06-13-00 |
Couple of additional random thoughts on the article that came to me the next day:
- "The Rule" also implies that there are some players who go above and beyond, and are more courteous, helpful, and honest than anyone has a right to expect. Help them help you.
- Justice systems need to allow for people who want to spar or duel, so that a sore loser can't turn in the winner as a murderer.
 SimuCon is this weekend, but we're getting an early start. Bunch of DR GMs arrived today and we've already had our traditional pre-SimuCon power outage. This time neither Mother Nature nor Ameren-UE were to blame, but an electrician who thought it would be okay to push the reset switch on our master UPS. Temporary brain failure? Demonic possession? Saboteur hired by Verant? Whatever he was thinking, he was swiftly ejected from the data center while Jim, Andy, other-Dave and I did damage control and looked around for bags of burning fertilizer.
As I wrote, SimuCon was weird last year. I'd backed away from being a DragonRealms GM and wasn't really a part of the action anymore. This year I'm already a little creeped out. No token green neck cord for me this year. No sitting in on the panels of DR seminars. (Though I am listed as a DR GM on the website... hmmm.) Half of me wants to go find a hole to hide in until all the strangers go away. The other half is glad for the break in the routine and intends to have a good time as what I am. So probably I'll do what I always do -- hang around for a while, run away for a while.
Tommorow, the 14th, is the one year anniversary of this journal. I'm not sure if that means anything though -- that's just the date when I started calling it a journal, while before that it was simply some notes on site updates and things that were going on at the time.
It was hosted on Xoom back then, and moved through Crosswinds and Dencity before arriving at this domain. The site navigation stuff originally used interface elements from the HJ prototype, which was kind of neat but also a bit much. I've learned a good bit about execution since then, and I like to think I've learned some things about design.
Parents are probably visiting after the con -- leaving me with little time to clean the place, and boy does it need it. To give you some idea, I haven't washed the dishes yet this June and I'm not sure whether I did in May either.
 They'll be delivering me a "new" computer -- new to me that is, but by no means new to the world. It'll need a new CPU and more RAM to get current, and maybe a new hard drive just to get it running, but even without those things it will be faster and less rickety than the thing I have at home right now. The old machine dates from the time when...
- 12X was a screaming CD-ROM (actually, more of a whining buzzing it's-gonna-blow sound).
- Celeron was a garnish for tomato-based drinks.
- USB was a typo.
I still haven't caught up on lost sleep from this weekend's Diablofest, so I'm gonna cut this short, go home, and make Z's.
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the good, the bad, and the PKers |
| 06-11-00 |
After much labor, not enough sleep, and too many breaks to play Diablo II, I have (A) learned that I really don't want to be a professional writer, and (B) gathered my thoughts on the design issues of basic morality in roleplaying games. I'm posting it here on my site and giving HJ Stratics permission to include it in the next Hero's Journal. If anyone else is interested, please contact me.
It's About Fun
Games are supposed to be fun. Being a victim is not fun. Being powerless to prevent, punish or retaliate against attack, theft, or abusive behavior is not fun. It's up to game designers to create worlds in which their players cannot be made into virtually helpless victims.
The Rule
Anything players can do in a game, some of them will do. They'll do it whether or not it's good for themselves, other players, the game, or the game company. They'll do it whether or not the game was designed for it. They'll do it whether or it's a feature, a bug, a loophole or a hack. They'll do it whether or not it's consistent with the genre of the game. They'll do it whether it throws off the entire balance and economy of the game. They'll do it whether it's right or wrong.
Whether designers choose to allow free reign ("self-policing"), attempt to regulate behavior (justice systems), or arbitrarily make certain acts impossible (PK switches), they must take this rule into account.
Utopia Online?
I'll admit it, I'm a sucker for the rantings of Lum the Mad. I don't care for the prospect of facing down the barrel of Lum's smoking gun o' criticism -- which we will when we get our first graphical RPG on the market -- but the man talks sense. Mostly.
For instance, Lum labels Ultima Online as "a grand social experiment gone horribly, horribly wrong." Not a kind statement, but a true one which Raph Koster (ex-UO designer now batting for Verant) recently confirmed in a post on rec.games.computer.ultima.online:
"We wanted to challenge players to act ethically, in the spirit of the Ultimas previous, without making it a set of quests that would be 'gamed' and up on a cheat website within a couple of weeks -- and we didn't want that to happen not because it meant extra work making new quests all the time, but because it meant that ethics themselves were being 'gamed' and were therefore meaningless."
In the real world, people don't murder and loot their neighbors. Life, dignity and property have great value to us, therefore there are serious consequences for taking them away. Most people are ethical enough to not even consider it; of the rest, most are cowed by the high probability of being caught and severely punished.
In a game world, some people just don't give a damn. "Death" in a MMORPG is a mere inconvenience, so "life" is cheap. The consequences for murder or theft are laughable -- at absolute worst, a repeat offender might have to quit playing the game and go do something else. More likely the perp just becomes a target for others, so in effect, all he's risking is his own cheap game "life" -- something that everyone who goes out and engages in proper heroic behavior risks anyway.
Wide-open PvP does not provide players with an ethical challenge -- it simply sets up a survival situation. It doesn't offer a choice between right and wrong, it offers a choice between mean and meek. Mean people get the best loot and the widest reputation.
Perhaps the flaw in Raph's thinking was in trying to apply single-player behavior (as in the previous Ultimas) to a massively multiplayer society. In a single player game, only NPCs suffer as a result of the player's actions, so it's kind of neat to let the player explore the possibilities and consequences of good and evil. Unlike UO, Fallout didn't lose any customers because some of its players chose to be dirty lowlife scumbags.
The Brute Force Method
EverQuest, wishing to encourage cooperation and avoid the brutality seen in Ultima Online, went for the opposite extreme. They make it impossible by default for players to attack each other. You can't participate in player-vs-player combat unless you opt in.
This is supposed to mean there are no innocent victims of violence. What it really means is that people are free to be complete jerks toward everyone else with little risk. And you can always "train" monsters onto other players, a method of killing without much precision but perfectly suited for those who simply want to cause some grief.
On the other hand, the PvP servers are so empty they echo. Some people want to be predators, but nobody wants to be prey. When there are distinct PvP and non-PvP servers, one naturally assumes that there is so much inter-player combat going on in the PvP server that advancement and economy suffer as a result.
The sheer arbitrary heavy-handedness of EQ's approach turns off serious roleplayers. When you can't do anything about the whiny little first-level punk following you around and making lewd comments about your mother, it's rather hard to play a rugged mercenary who takes no $#!% from anyone. Conversely, when you know there's not a damned thing they can do about it, it's no fun for a bard to satirize her fellow players to see how far she can get away with pushing them.
Let Your Conscience Be Your Guide
One thing game designers cannot afford to do is make all actions possible, but rely on manual punishment of players who go too far.
Assuming the transgressor is caught and punished, at least three people have been upset by the process -- the victim, the abuser and the staff member who had to make the judgement call. Usually the abuser fails to take responsibility for his actions and winds up thinking the staff member is being mean and unfair.
People tend to think that if the game mechanics allow an action, the rules should allow it as well. For the most part, they're right. (Bugs and exploits are an exception -- the responsibility is shared by the designers/developers who have to close the hole, and the players who have to be honest enough to report them and not to exploit them.) The game mechanics should be designed to prevent abuses in the first place.
Watcha Gonna Do When They Come For You?
I'm an optimist, but I don't believe there will ever be a perfect solution for this problem. But justice systems are perhaps the optimal way to handle it.
Justice systems cannot entirely prevent some jerk from going completely psycho and killing you without any provocation, particularly if that jerk is quitting the game anyway and doesn't care about the consequences. They can do much to make it a rare occurance however.
If the chance of getting caught is high enough, and the punishment severe enough, few players will murder other players without a damned good reason. They are discouraged from engaging in that behavior in the first place, and if they go ahead and do it, they can be punished and the victim compensated. Repeat offenders can be slapped with crippling fines, magically cursed, banned from certain towns, suffer the wrath of the gods, and even stripped of all weapons and shipped off to a penal colony. The possibilities have barely begun to be explored.
Justice systems can be tailored to match the genre, and can vary from one location to another. Maybe there are a few entirely lawless towns, while the capital city has fines for spitting and a guard on every street corner.
The key to making this work is to ensure that players don't have to enter lawless areas. Yep, that means the long arm of the law extends into the wilderness and the gloomiest dungeons -- using the appropriate magic or technlogy to confirm or refute the plaintiff's statements. (Of course, areas where that doesn't apply will rarely be visited unless there is something special there that makes it worth the risk.)
NPC guards don't have to instantly teleport to the criminal's side and immediately haul him off to prison. They can keep lookouts at the town gates, or give other players rewards for locating and/or apprehending them. In fact, players can partially fill the roles of detective and enforcer, giving the term "self-policing" a whole new meaning.
In short, there are all kinds of gameplay possibilities in justice systems which have not yet been adequately explored by RPGs to date.
Never Underestimate the Power of the Dark Side
Some players want to roleplay evil characters, and will do so whether or not the game makes allowances for them.
Villains are not necessarily mass murderers. Even in the most simplistic movie plot, the Bad Guy is usually on his own quest for power, wealth, domination, or revenge. An effective villain rarely commits murder, and only does so in the interests of achieving his ultimate goals.
Of all the memorable evil characters I've encountered in roleplaying games -- those that truly enhanced the game experience for other players -- none of them were serial killers or simplistic bullies. None of them were power gamers who simply hold their superior force over the heads of lower leveled players -- and yet every one of them was capable of delivering effective threats. Many of them were perfectly capable of being polite when it suited them, and some were actively helpful to newbies without compromising their "evilness."
But there are a lot of players who want to roleplay evil and don't have the kind of talent and dedication it takes to make a great villain. Designers can give them an outlet in the form of dark gods to follow, conspiracies to take part in, thievery, quests of a dubious ethical nature, and something that most MMORPGs already provide under the guise of fighting against evil -- the ability to go out and beat up lots of creatures and steal their lunch money. This can, and should, be arranged so that all of the victims are NPCs.
Some players expect to be able to roleplay "evil" jerks but can't handle the social backlash against them. "Bob killed me," such a player complains, "and I didn't do anything to him. Yesterday I killed his girlfriend and looted her corpse, but I was just roleplaying an evil character and I should be allowed to do that!" All I can say to this is... duh. There's a lesson in personal responsibility and accepting the consequences of one's actions, but some people won't learn it. Is that a game design problem? I'm not sure.
Some players will tell you that they play evil characters because the game needs them. The implication is that they're taking it upon themselves to fill the role of villain so everyone else can be that much more heroic. But I don't buy it, because not once have I heard this sentiment come from the mouth of a serious roleplayer. It's the killers and bullies who claim their own necessity, as if hundreds of masochists would be left unfilled without their services.
What games need is not bullies, but conflict. Sure, there's the simple players-vs-creatures conflict, but that's simplistic, static, and without intrigue. Conflicts between rival cities, kingdoms, clans, races, political and religious movements, and so on can be built into the game or introduced via subplots and special events -- and if not, they will arise on their own and in a more chaotic manner. Designers cannot reasonably expect everyone in the game to get along and pull for the same side.
Holding Out for a Hero
What is it that makes "good" characters good? Those so-called heroes are out there slaughtering animals and other non-humans by the thousands on a campaign of genocide. What kind of moral lesson does that teach us?
Most RPGS are weak where it comes to offering a fulfilling hero experience: giving characters the opportunity to usefully demonstrate their chivalry, generosity, kindness, self-sacrifice and other virtues.
"Hunting areas" are not necessarily a bad thing in themselves -- they support all those characters who see no wrong in wiping orc scum from the face of the earth and those who just want some opponents and some loot. But territorial animals that leave you alone if you leave them alone are not suitable fodder for the sword of a hero. Heroes need abominations and monsters that threaten decent innocent people.
Demons and undead are particular favorites which heroes can lay waste to with a clear conscience; heroes may even be under an obligation to destroy such beings. However, there is usually little concern for disturbing the peaceful rest of those dead that haven't risen up unnaturally -- for instance, the crypts of Diablo II feature "undefiled grave" objects which just beg to be defiled, as well as the ability to lift the lids of sarcophagi and rifle the bodies of slain heroes for a few gold coins.
For whatever reason, undead are always evil in RPGs. I'd like to see spirits of the dead who are not necessarily malevolent, but simply lost or have returned for some purpose. The true hero can help bring them peace by some means other than the pointy end of a holy sword.
Aside from destroying evil, heroes should have the opportunity to protect the innocent, help the poor and the ill, and display courteous and honorable behavior toward others. Game mechanics can reward such activities in intangible, subtle, long-term, real ways.
Character Ethics or Player Ethics?
Essentially, we want players to be decent and civil towards one another. Since this doesn't always happen naturally -- because some people are just not nice, and some hide behind the anonymity of their character, and some are just not mature enough to fully appreciate that the other characters they see in the game are people too -- the game mechanics must do what they can to help prevent abuse.
Characters, on the other hand, should be free to pursue anything on the spectrum from sainthood to public enemy number one. That does not mean they should be free from the consequences. Sure, you can roleplay a pirate, a demon worshipper or a serial killer if you want to, and not be banned from the game. But but don't be surprised when the in-game society treats your character like the scum he is!
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quickie post of the geek, -20% light radius |
| 06-10-00 |
 Steph and Jeff both got in to the Diablo II Beta Stress Test the natural way. I figured I'd be consoling myself with Jumpgate for the rest of the month and sneaking in on Jeff's account once in a while. Was looking forward to a convoy night, and maybe chasing level 5 (I've had right around 200exp to go for the past couple days and had been going for money instead). But thanks to the generous contribution of viewers like you (I always knew that phrase would come in handy) I'm now in there beating Blood Raven to a pulp and making little Fallen thingies go squish. Well, not now now, but for the past toomany hours.
I still am trying to get it through my head that somebody out there actually didn't want to try it out... but instead of questioning it I'm just gonna thank that person, the intermediary, and fate. Whee!
I was going to alternate between JG and housecleaning this weekend... but now, don't be surprised if Dweedow the Barbarian shows up on USEast waving a pair of axes around in a generally hazardous manner.
I learned some stuff that caused me to do my first revision of the pages on Seshat since last August. While I was changing content I figured I might as well change inner workings too and do some clever stuff with the web knowledge I've picked up (mostly from Steph) since then. Includes are much friendlier than cut-and-paste (except when you're trying to preview in HomeSite). Still needs a little more work. I might apply some of the niftiness to this side of the site too.
I have some thoughts about morality in games which I hope to get together and post soon.
AT&T still hasn't called me (it was supposed to be last Saturday) and I still haven't called them (because it's an unpleasant experience and I couldn't bring myself to do it yet). A tin-cans-and-string modem sounds good right about now.
4:30 AM, my eyes are really wigging out, my brain probably is too, and I have a combination of Nyah's awesome theme from MI:2 and the incredible Diablo II music stuck in my head, in other words a lot of jangling Spanish guitars... so I'm off to bed.
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[/root]# |
| 06-05-00 |
So there's this thread on the message board about the root of all evil. A lot of ideas have been thrown at that wall but few of them seem to stick.
The only consensus we seem to have reached is that it's not money. Money may be a frequent object of greed, but societies that didn't have money still had greed, and there are plenty of evils done for other motives.
What I was trying to find in all this was a way to answer the question that actually provided some enlightment. Ideally it should give some kind of clue as to how one avoids and/or defeats evil. Just saying something like "evil is the root of all evil" doesn't really do that.
Well, after a crummy day of not enjoying JumpGate (thanks to jerks who claim that the game needs "evil" to be any fun) and dropping Wendy's (which is pretty evil anyway) all over the parking lot, and learning of the sad fate of Java Jazz & Blues (which may well have been Mooville's only coffeehouse), we settled for the ubiquitous Applebee's and got into a discussion of good, evil, and the speed of light.
I had been thinking for some time that "evil", for lack of a better English word, is a lack of compassion. If you care enough about fellow humanity, or animals, or property, or aesthetics, or whatever, you're not going to do evil against it. But that seemed a little bit hokey and not entirely accurate. A compassionate person can still do you a lot of harm "for your own good."
I think Steph hit a little closer to the mark though. Evil is a lack of respect.
This implies a few things right off the bat. To cut someone off in traffic implies a lack of respect for that person -- and since that person is a complete stranger it implies a lack of respect for people in general and basic human dignity. And yes, it's evil of a sort. Though it's a very small, minor evil, one thing can so easily lead to another.
The dilemna is what to do about people who, through their lack of respect, hurt others. Is it still required of the rest of us that we respect them? I want to say yes but I'm not sure about it. Take someone like the dictator of the Third Reich for instance -- didn't he cross the line so far that he gave up the right to be treated like a human? Thank God that people like that are so rare, most of us will probably never have to consider it except as a hypothetical exercise.
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Woo hoo! |
| 06-03-00 |
Just came back from seeing M:I2. It exceeded pretty much all of my expectations. The plot, which I'd heard was pretty crummy, isn't rocket science but it beats the average Bond flick. The action is so far over the top that you'll need a telescope... unless you sit in the second row like we did. :) Suspension of disbelief is kind of irrelevant at that point.
Don't go 'cause it's Mission Impossible. Go 'cause it's a kickass John Woo action flick.
So, um, yeah. It's been a weird week. Here's hoping my friends have lost enough for a while.
Cable modem still not connected. AT&T is still on my excrement enumeration. The guy I talked to on the phone today kept trying to explain how this is all my fault and how much of a favor he was trying to do me. I just about told him to bite me, that I can soon be reached care of an email address on another ISP, and if they want their modem back they can drive out and pick it up off my patio before it rains. But dangit, I like that high speed connection. The technology is great, it's the people and policies behind it that suck. At this point they have to send a tech out to reencode the modem or something like that... so for another several days I will remain unwired. Which means missing a particular religious celebration I was hoping to join in online, and driving in to the office to play Jumpgate.
 Ah yes, Jumpgate. For some reason HJVault thinks that my offhand comment about playing in the beta qualifies as news. Sometimes they scare me.
Anyway, I am still hooked, though a few more moments of frustration and a few of "is there nothing else I can do in this game right now?" have been sneaking around behind my back.
Look at this. Right now 5 experience points are all that stand between me and the coveted (at least by low level players) rank of Provisioner. Five. And if one of two things had not happened, I'd be there already. First, this morning somebody two levels higher than me was "stealing" my beacons, depriving me of a few experience points they'd have generated. I could go off on a long and drawn-out tangent about this but I won't. Second, I delivered a crate to the wrong station shortly before we left for the movie, and in that wasted time I could have had another 8 or 16 points. I could say that the mistake was because I was flustered about the beacons, but it was actually Steph's J-pop that distracted me at the crucial moment.
And now I'm off to correct this sad state of affairs... the level that is, not the music.
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