Scars of War - Is Death Necessary?

[Squeek]

I'll chime in here by agreeing with Lucky Day's point about the value of keeping these games challenging. Questing for adventure is a lot like scuba-diving, IMO. You're there to have a good time, but mainly you're concerned with staying alive.

This genre casts players in roles that are typically set in dangerous worlds where folks are running around armed to the teeth. Why shouldn't your life be at risk? Aren't adventurers supposed to cheat death? Removing that is like removing the flavor from food (they actually do that in some parts of England, btw).

I've found that in RPG the value of reward increases in direct proportion with the risk of death. Lowering the risk of one lowers the benefit of the other. Some things belong in the box.

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

This genre casts players in roles that are typically set in dangerous worlds where folks are running around armed to the teeth.

Spontaneous thought: What about a game where everybody isn't armed to the teeth ?

 

[Squeek]

Spontaneous thought: What about a game where everybody isn't armed to the teeth ?

No offense, Alrik, but this point has been made many times before, and it tends to get confusing. If someone wants to make an imaginative CRPG where the main character never dies, that's fine with me.

But there has to be conflict in order for there to be drama. And the obvious threat in a dangerous world is death. I think that's a good thing, and that's pretty much all I mean.

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

Yes, in a way you are right.

But adventure games are using a completely different storytelling technique, and they can incorporate some sort of drama, too. There it works.

I wouldn't say that conflict is absolutrely necessary in order to create drama. Of course, it goes much better with it, and almost all drama is based on conflict.

But what we have in RPGs is sort of armed conflict. But there's not only this sort of conflict out in the world. You can have any kind of conflict out there ! Ethical conflicts, for example.

To me, it is as if RPGs are tenting to rather be limited to armed conflict. That's traditional.

But other forms of conflict are rarrly be seen in it.

In action-RPGs the "armed conflict" is taken so much to an extreme that it becomes almost hilarious: There is not ONE conflict, but a conflict with EVERYTHING ! (Regarding Blizzard's games, especially. Except a few sparse friendly NPCs, to which saying "they are in a minority" would be a broad understatement.

Performing "armed conflict" in Action-RPGs is so silly as if I would let a whole oil tanker's load of red colour be sprayed in order to represend spraying blood from a murdered victim (anyone remember that particular scene in Monty Pythin's Circus ? Where all of the people were dressed in white, and blood comes out there in huge fountains ?)

This is just an abnormal extreme, "conflict" in action-RPGs. It's just too much to take it seriously, so consequently there is no real drama.

What in my eyes are traditionally heavily underrepresented in RPGs are "social conflicts", whereas "armed conflicts" are much overrepresented.

Take the sculptor of BG1, I think he was there south of the Nashkell mines.
This "quest" turned out to be nothing like fighting, combat, whereas it could've been a deep, challenging "social conflict" instead.
There coul've been deep talks - negotiations - between the bounty hunter and the sculptor. There could've been talks - negotiations - about what makes a bounty hunter if he's hunting a helpless sculptor. Nowadays, one would say to the bounty hunter he's a Ganker.
And the sculptor on the other hand wanted to be instantly be killed. Why wasn't there no talk, no negotiating to save his life ? Maybe he could travel far, far away and begin a new life ? As a renowed sculptor, even ?
But no, the intentions were never asked. The player was given no choice of talking the man into travelling away and beginning a new life, and the bounty hunter from keeping away from his ganking behaviours.
It was, because the designers were so much put into the style of letting all "conflicts" be solved through fighting, that they didn't even consider - or otherwise they would've imprelemted it - other means of solving these quests. (There were others, too. Similar ones, like the magician in one of the carnival's tents.)
The player was given no choice, because everyone seems to agree that fighting is a traditional way of solving "problems" in RPGs. No talking, please, no social skills, please.

And if that is a mirror of the society the developers live in ...