Thoughts on Shaper Rawal?

[Doubleclick]

Here's a little side-note on my sudden re-appearance after my three posts a long time ago.

 

Alright, I'm just working on a little geneforge "project" and I wanted to get some opinions on some of Geneforge's iconic figures... Oh, and I found Geneforge in my old laptop right before I gave it to my little cousin. Oh you memories...

 

 

Did any of you actually side with him?

 

Did you dislike him?

 

Personally I just wan't to know. I really liked him for some reason, even though he put evil-tools-of-shiggidiggy on my chests and forced me to get rid of a random presence that I don't give a crap about. He just seemed nice somehow later in the game.

[Randomizer]

I did all his errands just to see his ending.

 

It's easy to hate him once you figure out his errands are to build up his power base at the expense of all the other Shapers. He is willing to sacrifice them in hopes that their deaths will weaken the Rebels and leave him in charge. Also his use of the control tool to force people to serve him or die.

 

 

 

[Mosquito---Slayer]

Yeah, I hated him big time, the only person I disliked more in the game was Taygen.

[BMA]

I hated Rawal because I was forced to server under him. But, to be fair, his take on life made sense and he was the only leader I could associate with among the Shapers.

 

But I didn't like him planting tools in my chest, so I killed him in the end.

[Doubleclick]

Guess the only reason why I liked him was because of a common objective: personal power. Lol .

[Ohsky]

It was easy to hate such a psychopath, don´t ask twice about it.

[Trenton.]

KILL HIM. KILL HIM WITH FIRE.

[Catoblepas]

Ugh, I hate Rawal. All the bad parts about the shaper power structure with an overdose of selfishness. I almost always play pro-shaper, so I have put up with a lot of their garbage over the games, but personally, he takes the cake. At least Taygen (as horrible as he is) has the excuses of thinking he is doing the right thing for everyone, and of being insane. Rawal would drive the whole shaper empire into the ground and everything it stands for (good and bad) to hold onto power, and if you side with him, he does. Absolutely despicable, it's a shame that we got him instead of a proper third shaper faction in Geneforge 5 (preferably a moderate shaper faction) I found that game the least satisfying to play as a pro-shaper, and only did so because I disliked the rebels more.

[Trenton.]

Not to mention you die like, fifty missions sooner if you choose Rawal's Faction.

[Goldengirl]

I find Rawal to actually be one of the more realistic characters in the Geneforge series. Moreover, he was representative of the older, classical era of Shapers that prompted the Rebellion in the first place. I'm thinking, here, specifically of the Shaper Council that would rule over the world, even if it was burnt to a husk, as they said in the ending of G3.

 

From a roleplaying perspective, it's understandable to hate him as he basically holds the PC hostage. Maybe I just have Stockholm syndrome for him, even though I usually play rebel?

[Ohsky]

He´s just a lawful evil character. So, well, he´s EVIL .

[Catoblepas]

I find Rawal to actually be one of the more realistic characters in the Geneforge series. Moreover, he was representative of the older, classical era of Shapers that prompted the Rebellion in the first place. I'm thinking, here, specifically of the Shaper Council that would rule over the world, even if it was burnt to a husk, as they said in the ending of G3.

 

From a roleplaying perspective, it's understandable to hate him as he basically holds the PC hostage. Maybe I just have Stockholm syndrome for him, even though I usually play rebel?

 

He's basically a perversion of all of the shaper order stands for, he's far from the 'older classical era of shapers'. he breaks pretty much all of the shapers laws, up to including building a *geneforge*. He does a lot of things that carry the death penalty in shaper society, even for shapers. he also personifies much of what the rebels hate as well such as complete iron-fisted control over his creations (the nedings where he gains control of the shaper organization make this clear) and he runs his little corner of the continent like the mafia. There is literally no reason to stick with him. If you like the traditional shaper way of doign things, you are better off with Alwan, who actually cares about the traditional ways. If you don't like the shapers, then he is just about the worst shaper in the series-personally I'd say he's only edged out by Taygen in the same game, and as mentioned before, at least Taygen has the excuse of not beign completely sane, and of at least *believing* that he is helping people with his actions.

 

As for the shaper council ruling over the world, even if it was burnt to a husk....lets not forget what the player character does in the rebel ending of Geneforge 3, I'd say that's a fair assessment of their plan as well.

 

He´s just a lawful evil character. So, well, he´s EVIL .

 

 

Evil? Definately. But LAWFUL? Honestly I don't think he could be farther from it, considering how much he wantonly perverts the laws of the shaper for his own personal benefit. I don't particularly care for the ol' D&D alignment system anymore, and I'm not sure it would even be appropriate to try to apply it to the geneforge series, but If I *had* to give him a alignment as in one of my campaings, it would have to be neutral evil, or perhaps even chaotic evil. He just makes too much of a habit of breaking the rules and laws of the shapers.

[Trenton.]

I would classify him as neutral evil.

[Ohsky]

neutral evil, sounds more appropiate

[Triumph]

Rawal is marvelously...pedestrian. Not a murderous fiend on the scale of Taygen, not an arrogant, almost alien force like Ghaldring, not visionary or idealist like Astoria or Litalia 3.0, not a determinator like Alwan. He's selfish, greedy, and cruel, yet (magic aside) he's those things in average ways. I don't mean to suggest the other characters are "unrealistic," but the sorts of real behavior they represent are less common, in my view, than the quiet, narrow-minded, self-centered sort of corruption that Rawal can represent.

[BMA]

He's basically a perversion of all of the shaper order stands for, he's far from the 'older classical era of shapers'.

 

There was no reason for the shapers to stick together until the rebellion posed a challenge to their rule. So in the pre-rebellion days the Shapers were a lot more self-serving (even Rawal-like, considering the un-controlled research on Sucia island) as they only had themselves and their standing within the Shaper community to think about. And insert the survival-of-the-fittest concept somewhere within this paragraph.

 

It was the rebellion slapping them in the face that brought about all the team spirit, and quite possibly it was only then that even the Shaper Council became a lot more important.

[Goldengirl]

I imagine that the Shapers are like many orders of elites. They maintain their image so absolutely to the oursiders, and therefore when they recruit from the population to train new Shapers, there are two possibilities. The illusion may be bought so wholly that it's actually faithfully reproduced without any duplicity, such as with Alwan, or the illusion remains merely an illusion for power-hungry individuals, like Rawal.

 

It would be easier if we had some idea of how people became Shapers. Taygen shows that Shapers can marry, and presumably have children, so I imagine that the children of Shapers are first pick to become Shapers as well. Whether or not outsiders can become Shapers is less clear. At some level, Shapers seem devoted to ideas of meritocracy. However, I'd imagine that outsiders would have far less motivation for the Rebellion if it were so easy to become a Shaper. Perhaps it's some mix of the two, where only the rich can afford to send their children to Shaper schools like the Greenwood Academy.

 

I don't think Rawal is evil. He doesn't have a solution to the Rebellion, but then again neither do the Shapers of the Coast.

[Ohsky]

So this Rawal has just sent me to kill a Banana. "Platano". In the Taygen area, so i still haven´t met that evil Taygen you talk about.

 

Basically an evil char is just that sociopathic. The end justify the means and to save themselves from any morality everything else is collateral damage. Anyone excusing himself on moral relativity could end up being as evil as one could imagine, but on his own image of himself, he´s doing, just the right thing for everyone else.

 

But narcissism and egocentrism, sociopathy, psychopathy are the common denominator in this planet, not only amongst the elites of psychopaths who rule it, but amongst a considerable amount of the population. Such behaviour is sponsored by the media wich is full of propaganda about it. Lies, subterfuge, conspiration in the shadows, black projects, use of jackals like the player, so forth and so on, nothing special in any way.

 

Neutral evil characters could be the most dangerous of all evil chars as they are not bound by any kind of collective code or traidition so they can switch sides as they see fit.

 

Basically as i am doing in this game myself. I don´t like either the shapers or the rebels, so i aid them both, hurt them both when i want to, even help the trakovites a little. Can´t get further and swear to be one with their different agendas, wich are all the same: the end justify the means. It´s so mentally dizzing that i don´t care about any faction anymore. Didn´t care in the beginning, but now even much less.

 

It still makes the game dissapointing on not pointing for just one real direct evil to banish instead of three, six, seven, whatever. And if you decide to banish any evil, you become a monster yourself in the process, because there are always innocent people involved, with their own respectable personal stories amongst all factions. I end up with my head like a balloon.

Edited February 27, 2013 by Triumph
Removing attempt to evade the auto-censor.

[Sudanna]

Y'know, most people would call that kind of narrative and moral depth a good thing.

[Ohsky]

Indeed what caught me by suprise on the Geneforge series, and before that, on Avadon, is the very well developed depth of the morals involving the consecuences of war as being somewhat realistic to an extent, from my perspective; politics, conspiracies, diplomacy, etc. Maybe i don´t have played enough Rpgs, but those that i did weren´t as well written in such area, so complex. Wich is quite admirable. What is dissapointing is the fact that i didn´t found i could join any side at all. Joining a side means your morality is flawed about your respect towards all forms of life, from my perspective, but anyone can call up to moral relativity to excuse themselves from their decisions on what side to take.

 

But then, what i am doing playing a game like this if i am so pacifistic, in real life?, is this game asking for me to care about the pawn i have killed with my queen playing chess?. The morality implied in this inert videogame makes me think about it in such a weird way. Deep morals embedded on entertainment.

[Student of Trinity]

Years ago, when this topic came around at that time, I remember arguing that the Shapers were really a bunch of baggy-suited incompetents, stumbling through the minefield of history.

 

I think my main point was that over 50% of the Shapers you met in the games were in some way corrupt or crazy, and nearly 100% of the Shaper facilities you explored were sealed vaults in which something had gone nightmarishly wrong. That implied that the Shapers as a group were clearly incompetent to deal with the problems they faced. So clearly incompetent, in fact, that the few Shapers who seemed to sincerely believe in the Shaper cause must have been Dunning-Kruger idiots as well, to have been so unreasonably confident. Any intelligent Shaper would have seen the glaring evidence and recognized that they were operating well out of their depth.

 

Instead, the Shaper idea of dealing with any problem was just to seal off the disaster, and dig a new lab somewhere else. What could possibly go wrong? The Shaper regime was a one-party totalitarian state where Chernobyls seemed to happen every year. Once I found this viewpoint, it really seemed compelling. I started hearing all the Shaper dialog as though spoken with a drunken slur and stammer. What a bunch of idiots.

 

That was certainly before G5, maybe before G4. But I don't think those games changed my impression very much.

[Goldengirl]

Years ago, when this topic came around at that time, I remember arguing that the Shapers were really a bunch of baggy-suited incompetents, stumbling through the minefield of history.

 

I think my main point was that over 50% of the Shapers you met in the games were in some way corrupt or crazy, and nearly 100% of the Shaper facilities you explored were sealed vaults in which something had gone nightmarishly wrong. That implied that the Shapers as a group were clearly incompetent to deal with the problems they faced. So clearly incompetent, in fact, that the few Shapers who seemed to sincerely believe in the Shaper cause must have been Dunning-Kruger idiots as well, to have been so unreasonably confident. Any intelligent Shaper would have seen the glaring evidence and recognized that they were operating well out of their depth.

 

Instead, the Shaper idea of dealing with any problem was just to seal off the disaster, and dig a new lab somewhere else. What could possibly go wrong? The Shaper regime was a one-party totalitarian state where Chernobyls seemed to happen every year. Once I found this viewpoint, it really seemed compelling. I started hearing all the Shaper dialog as though spoken with a drunken slur and stammer. What a bunch of idiots.

 

That was certainly before G5, maybe before G4. But I don't think those games changed my impression very much.

 

In all fairness, the regions the games took place were exceptional. Sucia Island is the only one of its kind, and its shutdown was effective for two hundred years. Drypeak was a backwater colony that would have had no problems had the Shapers not gotten involved in Sucia Island. There wasn't even anything particularly wrong with the Ashen Isles, aside from a minor squabble between Diwanyia and Lankan on Harmony Island. Looking at regions in G4 and G5 doesn't really work in this aspect, as everything is changed due to the Rebellion.

 

I think it would have been far more illustrative of Shaper society to see any of the major provinces in peacetime. Until then, all we know of regular Shaper society is what it's like at the war zones and backwaters.

 

One thing I would like to point out, however, is how much I love the civilians in Geneforge 4 and 5. They're one of the aspects of the game that I thought impressively well-written. They tend not to be ideologues or even want to take sides. However, when they do, they're almost always loyalists because they hate how much death and destruction the rebels have brought. I thought that to be a particularly realistic touch by Jeff in a series full of people spouting philosophy.

[Ohsky]

I think Shaper society in peaceful times was stability at the cost of material freedom, there was also a mental freedom cost but it was bypassable through spirituality. That is clearly mentioned in one of the games, don´t know if G3 or G4.

 

Refugees always look for themselves and to the continuality of their way of life because they have no other aspirations, they don´t see further than their own way of survival wich tends to make them very egotistic in nature. They are more mundane and simple, wich doesn´t mean inferior to the rest in any sense, just different because they, as everyone else, has the potential to make a significant difference in the general scheme of things. When such shaper stability was broken, they were the collateral damage firsthand because of their own addiction to it.

[wackypanda]

In all fairness, the regions the games took place were exceptional. Sucia Island is the only one of its kind, and its shutdown was effective for two hundred years. Drypeak was a backwater colony that would have had no problems had the Shapers not gotten involved in Sucia Island. There wasn't even anything particularly wrong with the Ashen Isles, aside from a minor squabble between Diwanyia and Lankan on Harmony Island. Looking at regions in G4 and G5 doesn't really work in this aspect, as everything is changed due to the Rebellion.

Still, the fact that the Shapers' solution to Sucia Island was to seal it off instead of confronting the issue belies their constant claims that they are the only ones responsible enough to control the power of Shaping. It reminds me of one bit in Lord of the Rings where someone on the Council of Elrond suggests throwing the Ring into the ocean to be lost, only to be rightly told: "Not for ever."

 

Drypeak wouldn't have happened if the Shapers on the belated Sucia cleanup crew weren't corrupt. And even on the Ashen Isles you find yourself cleaning up messes that the Shapers sealed away (eg. Darkstone Mine, which if memory serves was condemned before the rebels appeared, so they don't even have the excuse of strained resources). In that case sealing up the mess instead of cleaning it up wasn't even in their best interest, as they could no longer access the enchanted anvil and other resources inside.

[Student of Trinity]

There's also that golem lab or whatever it was in G3 (Darkstone Mine — thanks, wackypanda). It's one of the dozen or so zones in the most settled island of the Ashen Isles. And there's that teacher guy of yours, the one with the cutscenes, who goes rogue and sets up his own secret buried lab. And there was this bizarre necromancer crypt somewhere, too. That may not have been a Shaper site per se, but it's further evidence that the Shapers do not have rogue magic under control, even in an area they're supposed to control.

 

G4 has Monarch. He's not a Shaper, but the Shapers couldn't keep him down. It also has that golem guy in his — get this — secret buried lab. There are powerful rogue wizards with Shaping power in every doggone game, I think. And secret buried labs practically under every rock.

 

The point that the games over-report frontiers and war zones is a good one. Back when I first made this argument, I raised it, and said that we would have to see whether the Shaper heartland was possibly a lot better run. Now, after G5, it's still a bit hard to say about this. You never see the peaceful coastal cities. They don't seem to take up a lot of space on the map, but perhaps they are densely populated enough to represent the bulk of Shaper society. You do get to see more of the Shaper council, though, and the ratio of corrupt and insane members on it is alarmingly high. It's like the US federal cabinet from Doctor Strangelove, you know?

 

The most Shaper-friendly view that I found I could take was to see the Shaper cause as a tragic one. Maybe Shaping is just too hard to control. Maybe it warps the mind so strongly, that a high rogue rate among Shapers is inevitable. So on this view, the true Shapers aren't really just stupid. They're doing their best, though the struggle is doomed, and their pose of perfect power and self-control is really only a way of spitting in the eye of death.

 

I could buy that, if it were presented, I think. The thing is that no character in the games ever really puts it like that. Everybody acts as though Shaper society is overwhelmingly successful, when the evidence is wildly against that claim.

[Sudanna]

. . . Okay, no, you're way off base with this. First of all, and this is really the elephant trampling on your argument, it's a video game and it needs dungeons and interesting places to explore and excuses for varied enemies and almost every zone needs to have interesting things to do and fight. The player needs enemies. They need multiple different enemies. The plot for local areas needs detail and variation. You do not want dozens of boring, peaceful, perfectly functional Shaper labs or schools or workshops to wander around, and so Jeff didn't put many in there. There is always gameplay and story segregation in a game with any appreciable story. Deciding what does and doesn't count is a judgement call, but you're going too far. The Shapers are not defined by the demands of level design.

 

And even after that, there are problems with this. Whether or not Shaping is uncontrollable (which I would fervently deny - the Shapers have maintained a functional and largely benevolent empire for at least centuries, if not millennia), it's clear that researching it is inherently risky. It's also the basis of their entire society. The Shapers are technocrats, and part of that is highly valuing advances. And since the only areas that you see laid to waste are the result of the war or intentional action, they seem to do a pretty good job of managing risk. Besides, is there some land shortage that I'm not aware of and never saw anyone mention in the games? Sealing off an island or a mountain or whatever is a perfectly valid response when you've got islands and mountains to spare.

 

And besides, you're forgetting that the Shapers have been around a long time. Long enough for there to be no mention of a time before them. The labs or vaults or failures you come across probably accumulated over extended periods of time, and there sure as hell weren't 'Chernobyls every year'.

 

Another thing - Geneforge is very much a 'points of light in the darkness' setting - as many fantasy settings are. A zone or two away from a town is the wilderness, and the distances involved are never clear, but it's presumably larger than it seems. These labs or cryps or ruins or whatever are only characterized as menacing settlements as the result of intentional sabotage. Otherwise, you're going into them because there's some macguffin inside or just for fun or loot and XP. Maybe sometimes people ask you to clear them out, but it's rarely because they're menacing other places.

 

Regarding the Shaper Council - there's one corrupt one, Rawal, and one insane one, Taygen, yes? Then you have Alwan, a fervent patriot, and Astoria, who is more diplomatic. And I don't think we see any others. So, 2/7? And both of their character flaws were significantly exacerbated by the war with the Rebellion. Frankly, that's not very bad. That's the best record in G5.

 

Honestly, I think you hit on one or two interesting things to notice and liked them enough to just run with them. You're ignoring a lot about the setting and the medium itself.

[Randomizer]

Shapers usually learn from their mistakes and the first thing they learned was mistakes happen. With the hit and miss method of creating and modifying creations they learned to set up labs to seal themselves at the first sign of disaster. The second thing they learned was never go inside to look at what went wrong when you can send an underling to risk his life instead of yours.

[wackypanda]

And even after that, there are problems with this. Whether or not Shaping is uncontrollable (which I would fervently deny - the Shapers have maintained a functional and largely benevolent empire for at least centuries, if not millennia), it's clear that researching it is inherently risky. It's also the basis of their entire society. The Shapers are technocrats, and part of that is highly valuing advances. And since the only areas that you see laid to waste are the result of the war or intentional action, they seem to do a pretty good job of managing risk. Besides, is there some land shortage that I'm not aware of and never saw anyone mention in the games? Sealing off an island or a mountain or whatever is a perfectly valid response when you've got islands and mountains to spare.

No one denied that Shaping was inherently risky - the point is that their risk management stinks, and rather than claiming that it's the best they can do with what they have, they always claim that they're doing fine. No, there is no land shortage, but that's not the issue - the point below is.

 

And besides, you're forgetting that the Shapers have been around a long time. Long enough for there to be no mention of a time before them. The labs or vaults or failures you come across probably accumulated over extended periods of time, and there sure as hell weren't 'Chernobyls every year'.

That they were allowed to accumulate over extended periods of time still shows that the Shapers' default response to problems is to seal it and punt it to underlings, if any are available, or let everyone forget about what happened. It is true that the things usually don't escape immediately to harm people, but as Sucia Island shows, sealing the mess doesn't solve the problem, only punts it forward in time to people who are even less equipped to deal with the problem because they didn't know there was one. In fact, the seal on Sucia Island was not "broken" intentionally but due to circumstances completely beyond the control of the people involved. (There is also the danger of the mess festering under the seal - if Sucia Island had gone through a thorough dismantling when it was first Barred the serviles would not have had to fend for themselves on poisoned land and there would not have been a servile uprising.)

 

Darkstone Mine is another example - if someone wanted the anvil but no one could remember why the place was condemned (which is quite close to the situation in the games) they might not go in prepared and so end up as pink jelly. Not even admitting that these occurrences are possible is not responsible risk management.

 

Compare that to the PC's thoughts when you clear out the necromancer's lab on Harmony Isle in G3 (which was supposed to be Diwaniya's job as ruler of the island) - after the first time you call the shades, the subsequent times you do it, the PC knows what will happen but thinks: better you than someone who won't.

[Ohsky]

They left many sealed places behind because they didn´t got nukes to erase them at that time. It´s pretty obvious why they can´t clear all the mess they leave behind as they don´t have the power to do it. They are monkeys playing with fire and yes they get burnt by it as they don´t know how to extinguish the fire.

[Student of Trinity]

In response to Nalyd/Wander above, I want to save the 'it's a game' argument for last, because it makes the other points anticlimactic. If you don't like the shallow debating tactic of saving the clincher for the end, feel free to skip ahead. So for the other points:

 

Two wackos out of a council of seven is not a good innings. Then there's Astoria, who is sane precisely in that she has come to doubt the full rigor of the Shaper way, and Alwan, who is proudly fanatical. The remaining three councilors are evidently non-entities. I do not see this as a good counter-argument to my scenario.

 

My point about how many Shaper facilities are sealed vaults of horror is not about how many sealed vaults of horror exist in the Shaper frontier lands. It's that the proportion of safe, functioning labs to sealed vaults of horror is far too low. And I don't remember there being much to show that the vaults of horror were particularly old. In most of them, the flawed experiments that led to the sealing are still very much alive and kicking. Some of these creatures are clearly durable, but we don't seem to be talking about centuries of accumulation. Often you find some evidence about what went wrong, and you don't have to read through fifty years of mundane records before you find it. The evidence seems to be that most Shaping labs have disasters within only a few years of operation. That's a horrible track record.

 

You could argue that there are lots more safe, functioning labs somewhere else, and the games just don't happen to bring you through them. But where are they? I think I was actually the first to argue that the Geneforge zones represent isolated points of interest with long distances between them, though there's only one zone transition that is stated in the games to be a long walk. But a major research facility that doesn't even get mentioned at all? Lots of them? That seems pretty implausible. Why don't you ever get supplies from them when you're a Shaper ally, or attack them when you're a Rebel? The only place that those facilities could plausibly be, now, is in the unseen coastal cities of G5. That leaves most of Shaper territory with a marked preponderance of SVH's over functioning labs. On that scenario, the best that you could say is that the Shapers could competently manage peaceful city states. They'd still be out of their depth in running a continental empire.

 

There's the same sort of argument about Shaper personnel. Of course it's to be expected that there are some bad apples out on the frontiers. The problem, however, is that the proportion of sane, loyal, competent individuals is just far too low. You can argue that there are many more of these, lurking between the zones, but then it's again unlikely that you never have to deal with any of them.

 

Okay, so back to the 'it's a game' argument. I think this is something like a category confusion. Of course it's a game. But the nature of Shaper rule is part of the game. It's not as though there's a real Shaper empire out there anywhere, being unfairly caricatured by its appearance in the games of Jeff Vogel. The fact that the Geneforge games have to provide dungeons and villains is the reason why the Shaper empire has to be dangerously incompetent. It's not some kind of evidence that the appearance of dangerous incompetence has to be false.

 

If there were even a few panels of text justifying all the Shaper corruption and mismanagement, and stating that things were much better on the whole than what the player sees, then I'd agree that that was what the Shaper world was really like. In the absence of any such text, though, the Shaper empire is the way the Shaper empire seems. It seems pretty incompetent.

[Triumph]

Random thoughts:

 

Playing through G4, I've been impressed by the level of competence and genuine concern with preventing disaster exhibited by Crowley and Alwan. However, there are more bizarre and / or creepy shapers...or, really, more than anything else, arrogant shapers. It seems to me that what really sets apart shapers I find competent from those I see as mis-managers, fools, or worse, is hubris. Contrast G3 Khyryk with the distant, smug Rahul who trained him. Or contrast G4 Alwan with...a most of the other G4 shapers besides Crowley and Miranda. I don't know that I've ever thought it through before, but it seems to me that the Shapers have a culture of pride, of smugness, of blind confidence in their power and superiority. (Of course, the Drakons quickly fall prey to the same superiority complex.) The few shapers who deal with the world in more realistic terms are a minority, simply too few to compensate all the overconfident fools.

 

Shapers have all these rules, but why do the rules fail to prevent trouble? Because so many shapers are so sure they are smart to not need to follow the rules. Or they so confident in their own collective wisdom that they blindly trust the rules to prevent problems (reminds me of G3 Alwan) without accounting for human foibles. The Shapers love to proclaim the importance of their rules, but don't really seem to take enforcement seriously - remember the "extremely old" purity officer of Dhonal's Keep? Danell is presented aged and feeble, and she's supposed to be the one enforcing shaper rules for Ashen Isles - which she does by never leaving the keep and relying on random other shapers to take time out from their busy days to report stuff to her. The someone like her ended up as the Purity Officer hints to me at shaper complacency. Their culture has an overweening sense of superiority. Some few people manage to rise above this culture and grapple with problems in a somewhat more realistic way (G3 Khyryk, G4 Alwan, Crowley), but a few good apples doesn't change the fact that their prevailing culture suffers from a fundamental flaw.

 

Different thought: for all the talk about the Darkstone Mine, the fact is that a problem occurred during an experiment, shapers followed procedure, and the problem remained safely sealed up for 50 years (I checked). We may question the wisdom of the shapers in foregoing access to the magic anvil there, but remember that until shortly before the G3 PC arrives, Dhonal's Keep had its own magic anvil. Also, the mine was marked as a class 3 accident, a relatively low level problem (NOT as a class 2, which meant a loose creation capable of inflicting imminent harm - and indeed the golem remained relatively quiet all those decades). This doesn't mean there aren't plenty of shaper blunders (SVHs), but I don't know that Darkstone Mine is the best example.

 

Hmm...in G1, the entire island was barred, and much of value was left intact, despite orders to destroy it (e.g. the Geneforge and various information pertaining to it), because of the arrogance of a few who determined to ignore orders. For all that, Sucia remained relatively quiet for 200 years. G2 and anything encountered in it comes about from the arrogance of a handful of shapers led by Zachary and Barzahl who decided to ignore the rules, confident they could do great things and nothing would go wrong. Everything seen in G2 developed relatively recently, and, to be fair, the Shapers sent a dedicated, loyal agent to investigate. (That Shanti got killed may lead us to ponder her power or competence, but we see an interesting hint of how the system is supposed to work.) G3 had Krya's Refuge, the sealed tunnels with the mad undead guy, on Harmony Isle; Krya wasn't a shaper. Most of the SVH-ish locations in G3 are created by the rebels, not the shapers (this is also true of some of SVH-type situations in G2, though of course the existence of those rebels is the fault of Z and . In G4, we do see a couple Shaper failures (the Dumping Pits in the Forsaken Land, the possible case of Monarch), but I'm drawing a blank on any other SVHs that can be fairly blamed on the shapers. And G5...well, I know some about it, but without having played it all, I can't comment on the presence of SVHs.

 

My conclusion (assuming I haven't forgetten a long list of SVHs that invalidate everything I just said ) is that perhaps the perception of ubiquitous SVHs is slightly exaggerated (at least in so far as they can be blamed on the shapers).

 

This doesn't negate any of my earlier comments about the shapers' collective superiority complex problem, but it should temper criticism of the shapers' propensity for unleashing disasters.

Edited February 28, 2013 by Triumph
Wow, that was long. Hopefully it's not dumb...

[Sudanna]

No one denied that Shaping was inherently risky - the point is that their risk management stinks, and rather than claiming that it's the best they can do with what they have, they always claim that they're doing fine. No, there is no land shortage, but that's not the issue - the point below is.

 

How does it stink?

 

and

 

They're a (mostly benign) totalitarian state that uses the appearance of infallibility and supreme power to maintain control over the populace. You are never a person of status in Shaper society. They will never admit failure to you. They are answerable to their superiors, and while corruption and misuse of power on that level happens, portraying Shapers as literally blind to their failures is in no way accurate.

 

That they were allowed to accumulate over extended periods of time still shows that the Shapers' default response to problems is to seal it and punt it to underlings, if any are available, or let everyone forget about what happened. It is true that the things usually don't escape immediately to harm people, but as Sucia Island shows, sealing the mess doesn't solve the problem, only punts it forward in time to people who are even less equipped to deal with the problem because they didn't know there was one. In fact, the seal on Sucia Island was not "broken" intentionally but due to circumstances completely beyond the control of the people involved. (There is also the danger of the mess festering under the seal - if Sucia Island had gone through a thorough dismantling when it was first Barred the serviles would not have had to fend for themselves on poisoned land and there would not have been a servile uprising.)

 

Who said that no records are kept of facilities and accidents? Just because you, a low man on the totem pole, don't get to see them (And as per the totalitarian state argument above, records of failures are not freely distributed) doesn't mean they don't exist. It's true that sealing things doesn't solve the problem, but when trying to fix the problem might let it out or make it worse, or when you're not entirely sure what went wrong, that's not an unreasonable response.

 

In response to Nalyd/Wander

 

Nalyd, please. I know it's bothersome.

 

Two wackos out of a council of seven is not a good innings. Then there's Astoria, who is sane precisely in that she has come to doubt the full rigor of the Shaper way, and Alwan, who is proudly fanatical. The remaining three councilors are evidently non-entities. I do not see this as a good counter-argument to my scenario.

 

You forget, this Council (or most of it) was sitting on the end of unknown centuries of relative peace or small-scale conflict when the world exploded into an all-out war for survival. Choosing councilors based on their reliability during military conflict was not a priority when they came into power. What would peacetime Rawal look like? A corrupt, political schemer, certainly, but planning to backstab and usurp? And I have a hard time seeing Taygen pursuing his drastic plans without the Rebellion there.

 

My point about how many Shaper facilities are sealed vaults of horror is not about how many sealed vaults of horror exist in the Shaper frontier lands. It's that the proportion of safe, functioning labs to sealed vaults of horror is far too low. And I don't remember there being much to show that the vaults of horror were particularly old. In most of them, the flawed experiments that led to the sealing are still very much alive and kicking. Some of these creatures are clearly durable, but we don't seem to be talking about centuries of accumulation. Often you find some evidence about what went wrong, and you don't have to read through fifty years of mundane records before you find it. The evidence seems to be that most Shaping labs have disasters within only a few years of operation. That's a horrible track record.

 

You could argue that there are lots more safe, functioning labs somewhere else, and the games just don't happen to bring you through them. But where are they? I think I was actually the first to argue that the Geneforge zones represent isolated points of interest with long distances between them, though there's only one zone transition that is stated in the games to be a long walk. But a major research facility that doesn't even get mentioned at all? Lots of them? That seems pretty implausible. Why don't you ever get supplies from them when you're a Shaper ally, or attack them when you're a Rebel? The only place that those facilities could plausibly be, now, is in the unseen coastal cities of G5. That leaves most of Shaper territory with a marked preponderance of SVH's over functioning labs. On that scenario, the best that you could say is that the Shapers could competently manage peaceful city states. They'd still be out of their depth in running a continental empire.

 

You often come across books that just say "This is a book of boring records about how this facility was run". Like, in almost every place that would have records to take. There are often structural failures, rubble blocking hallways, decayed machinery, damaged or worn golems, significant dust, etc. There's every indication that these places are very old, and that rogues within them are either just that durable or create viable ecosystems and breed.

 

You don't see the boring, functional labs because the games are full-up on towns and faction-variable places to invade. You could say they're secret, or irrelevant, or whatever. This comes back to the 'it's a game' argument, which I'll do in a bit. Also, there's a whole other continent that we never heard about and is presumably doing okay.

 

There's the same sort of argument about Shaper personnel. Of course it's to be expected that there are some bad apples out on the frontiers. The problem, however, is that the proportion of sane, loyal, competent individuals is just far too low. You can argue that there are many more of these, lurking between the zones, but then it's again unlikely that you never have to deal with any of them.

 

What exactly are your standards for sanity, loyalty, and competence? There are very few Shapers we see that are actually insane, fewer still that are incompetent, and even fewer than that are disloyal. You know those nameless Shapers that wander around towns and keeps, with no dialogue and no involvement with the player? There are more of them than named Shapers. And most of the named ones do not meet your criteria. And there are probably more of them than are shown, since there's probably more of everyone than is shown, due to engine and design constraints.

 

Most Shapers have big egos. They're part of a totalitarian faction capable of creating life. They literally ruled the entire known world until very recently, when the Sholai showed up, and later the Rebellion picked up steam. This is a common character flaw, but it's one that's really to be expected, and the cases where it's debilitating rather than a nuisance are the exception. The cases where it approaches genuine insanity are rare.

 

I don't know where you're getting the idea that an appreciable number of Shapers are disloyal. There are cases of corruption or cowardice or suboptimal performace, like there would be in any organization, but the number Shapers that betray the larger empire is few. Not many defect to the Rebels and not many set up their own little rebellions.

 

The same goes for competence. What Shapers are incompetent? Diwaliya? EVen he was more weak than actually incompetent. I admit my memory of the series is fuzzy at this point, but cases of Shapers really failing at their job are not portrayed. Is it because you get lots of quests to do? It's a game. It needs quests. Speaking of which.

 

Okay, so back to the 'it's a game' argument. I think this is something like a category confusion. Of course it's a game. But the nature of Shaper rule is part of the game. It's not as though there's a real Shaper empire out there anywhere, being unfairly caricatured by its appearance in the games of Jeff Vogel. The fact that the Geneforge games have to provide dungeons and villains is the reason why the Shaper empire has to be dangerously incompetent. It's not some kind of evidence that the appearance of dangerous incompetence has to be false.

 

If there were even a few panels of text justifying all the Shaper corruption and mismanagement, and stating that things were much better on the whole than what the player sees, then I'd agree that that was what the Shaper world was really like. In the absence of any such text, though, the Shaper empire is the way the Shaper empire seems. It seems pretty incompetent.

 

The world as portrayed in a video game is rarely sensible. The world portrayed in Geneforge is not sensible. It requires the player to fill in the gaps. I think it's way more reasonable to say that there's stuff that you don't see because it's not relevant than to assume blinding and pervasive incompetence of a faction that is never portrayed that way. Even the Rebels don't really say that - their objections are moral or for the purposes of self-aggrandizement. The main thing the Shapers have going for them is their stability - if that weren't the case, you can bet the Rebels would exploit that for PR.

 

This isn't explicitly stated (and neither is incompetence) because these explanations would distract from the main story, they aren't really relevant, and they minimize the role of the player, and while that would be reasonable, and while I would like it, it's not how RPGs generally work, and Jeff makes RPGs that generally work. Or maybe he just didn't think of it. Or maybe it wasn't worth the time. Or maybe a dozen other reasons. I'm not Jeff.

 

The point is, almost any video game - almost any media - requires a suspension of disbelief, unless it's just that immersive or believable, or just that simple. You have to be able to look past the limitations of convention and structure. The objections you have to the Shapers lie well within those limitations.

[Student of Trinity]

I'm not really letting the Shapers off the hook for SVHs just because they stayed S. It's a big investment of energy to build one of these complexes, and even if it doesn't end up laying waste to an entire province, letting the whole thing go so badly pear-shaped that it has to be abandoned and sealed is not a mark of competently conducted basic research.

 

So in G1 there's the Geneforge itself, which of course should never have been built, but there's also the dangerous and bizarre crypts, and Tek's SVH. Arguably also the power core full of uncontrolled shades. Competent and responsible Shaper installations, zero.

 

G2 happened because, out of the team sent to clean up Sucia Island, which ought to have been the most competent and responsible Shapers in the entire empire, given what was at stake, both leaders and their immediate followers went rogue. Either that, or the Shaper council was so incompetent that it didn't send its very best people to clean up Sucia Island. Then there's Phariton, as a mad rogue Shaper; whatsername the reclusive exile, with the awful Battle Gamma in her garden shed; and the lady who is loyal to Zachary, who has that lab full of out-of-control plants and stuff. Competent and responsible Shaper installations, zero. Responsible Shapers, arguably several: Shanti, the team of loyal Shapers you find trapped somewhere, and that one captive Shaper in the Taker lands. The captive Shaper arguably counts as insanely overconfident, however, given his intention of regaining command of Taker creations. That team of trapped Shapers are also clearly out of their depth, bringing Glaahks to a Drakon-fight. And Shanti just dies. So competent, not so much.

 

G3 has whatsisname, your teacher who goes rogue. Later you find his SVH, unless you kill him after an earlier cutscene, in which case you find a different rogue Shaper there. There's the Darkstone Mine, that awful dude on the second island, and Khyryk and Litalia have both abandoned the rigorous Shaper cause in different ways. The Gull Island governor was also involved in some kind of illegal Shaping, making mutant serviles or something, if I remember that rightly. There's also a necromancer's SVH, and that other rogue Shaping guy with the runed serviles, which the Shapers did not originate, but have failed to suppress. There's an entire Shaper army held in limbo by some kind of shade thing, until the PC shows up to help. Rahul and his wife are kind of arrogant, but maybe they can count as competent. Overall, though, the rate of incompetence and corruption among the Shapers you meet has got to be at least 50% or so.

 

In G4 there's some kind of exiled Shaper to the south, in trouble for past faults. There's the bizarre plan with Moseh and his buddies, which reeks of hubris, and needs the help of a dubious rebel turncoat in the shape of the PC. There's the Dumping Pits. Letting Monarch get out of control was presumably not a fault of intention, but it was hardly proof of competence. Again, the PC has to step in; the entire Shaper empire can't find an Agent up to the job, or if it has one, can't get its act together to send her where she's needed.

 

For G5, we went over the list of council members. Again the Shapers fail to impress. There's also the challenge zone boss, as a rogue Shaper-type that has not been suppressed. There's that control brain area that's gone all crazy. And wasn't there something kind of dodgy about one of Alwan's three forts? I'm fuzzy on that one. Am I missing any SVH-type places? Again, though, the point is just that the ratio of good Shaper places to bad, and good Shapers to bad, is not nearly high enough for a competent empire.

 

Of course this is all because it's a game. There needs to be a lot of stuff that the PC needs to handle. But if the Shaper empire needs a lone PC to save it, then clearly the Shaper empire was operating on way too thin a shoestring. So the premise for the game is that the Shaper empire was never really up to the job. Naturally the Shapers don't admit this. Perhaps they're just putting on a brave face, because they have to do their best and die trying. Or perhaps it's Dunning-Kruger syndrome, and they're just too incompetent to realize their incompetence.

[Student of Trinity]

Ach, kind of sniped.

 

About competence: I dunno. Count up the people. I think the rate of corruption is alarmingly high, among Shapers who held high enough rank that they ought to have been reliable. Even if it's ten percent, that's appalling. I think it's well above ten percent. A competent empire needs to do better than that. And promoting unreliable individuals is incompetence in the system. By incompetent, I don't mean that the Shapers can't tie their shoes. What they can't do is cope with Shaping. Which is kind of the bar you set for yourselves, when you call yourselves The Shapers.

 

I find the world of Geneforge perfectly sensible. It's just the Shapers aren't a very competent power. Many real world governments have been quite incompetent. Of course they don't admit it. Neither do the Shapers. But look at the actual evidence. It doesn't look like evidence of competence to do the job the Shapers hold.

 

I will concede that you have to play along with most RPGs, and that if you're willing to postulate enough stuff, without in-game evidence but without any blatant in-game contradiction, then you can probably decide to assume that the Shapers are competent enough. What I'm saying is that this is just not at all the most plausible conclusion, given the evidence that's actually there in the games. The Shaper pose of mastery is a Big Lie. Once you question it at all, it falls apart.

[Dikiyoba]

There's the Dumping Pits.

The Dumping Pits is mostly working as intended, and was put out of operation by rebels. So it's not a SVH. There's also the Purity Workshop, which is rundown and infested by rogues, but not hit by catastrophe. (At least, not yet, as the PC notes. The fact that all Shaper facilities eventually create a disaster and are then sealed off is canon.)

 

There are also the five Shaper infiltrators in Burwood. One is corrupt (uses canisters). Another is arrogant (wants to take on the entire drakon fortress by himself). One is very competent (clears rebels out of a town and keeps them out). The other two are fairly neutral, not doing anything noteworthy either way.

 

There's also the challenge zone boss, as a rogue Shaper-type that has not been suppressed.

The challenge area in G5 is the work of a rebel lifecrafter, and exists on the boundary of the warzone. That's not the Shaper's fault.

 

Dikiyoba.

[Ohsky]

Any kind of goverment has to sell a pose to it´s citizens, even if it´s a lie, it serves two purposes:

 

-Disencouragement of civil unrest.

-Disencouragement on the side of the enemies for them to attack.

 

Surface appearance is everything for governments.

[Sudanna]

So in G1 there's the Geneforge itself, which of course should never have been built, but there's also the dangerous and bizarre crypts, and Tek's SVH. Arguably also the power core full of uncontrolled shades. Competent and responsible Shaper installations, zero.

 

It's actually not known what the state of Shaping, legally or scientifically, really was 200 years ago, when the Geneforge was created. It was a practical experiment, and a successful one - but the Shapers decided that it was too dangerous and shut it down. It was left intact either because of corruption among the overly-invested researchers or because the Shapers intended to return to it someday. Maybe it was an entirely reasonable thing to build at the time.

 

The Shaper crypts are dangerous, but entirely under control - their defenses are functional, contained, and their intended purpose is clear. They're guarding the dead and their treasures. They're dangerous if you're a graverobber.

 

The tombs of Zavor and Tek are in defiance of Shaper law, with the shades, but they're holed up in their crypt and not menacing other things. There's not anything around them to menace, even, and they seem to postdate Shaper inhabitation of the island. Even if they don't, the Shapers leaving them on a deserted island far from anything valuable is no big deal.

 

Everything on Sucia is two-hundred or more years old. That any machinery is functioning at all is more a testament to Shaper competence than a lack of it. And again - the Shapers didn't care what happened to this stuff. They left. Nothing on the island is hurting anything off of it. There's no reason they should have taken the time to carefully dismantle anything but the Geneforge itself. There's not even any reason for them to clear up the shades or the northwest corner.

 

The entire northeastern 2/3 of the island was a collection of 'responsible Shaping installations' for as long as the Shapers cared to make it so. Once they decided to leave, they didn't care about it. Why would they. Rogues and dangerous areas would deter people from investigating the place, if anything, andif they really wanted to come back, there's little doubt that the might of the entire Shaping empire would be able to do so.

 

G2 happened because, out of the team sent to clean up Sucia Island, which ought to have been the most competent and responsible Shapers in the entire empire, given what was at stake, both leaders and their immediate followers went rogue. Either that, or the Shaper council was so incompetent that it didn't send its very best people to clean up Sucia Island. Then there's Phariton, as a mad rogue Shaper; whatsername the reclusive exile, with the awful Battle Gamma in her garden shed; and the lady who is loyal to Zachary, who has that lab full of out-of-control plants and stuff. Competent and responsible Shaper installations, zero. Responsible Shapers, arguably several: Shanti, the team of loyal Shapers you find trapped somewhere, and that one captive Shaper in the Taker lands. The captive Shaper arguably counts as insanely overconfident, however, given his intention of regaining command of Taker creations. That team of trapped Shapers are also clearly out of their depth, bringing Glaahks to a Drakon-fight. And Shanti just dies. So competent, not so much.

 

Went rogue is too much, at least for Zakary. They were ambitious and took an opportunity, and Zakary later repented and tries to correct his mistake, while Barzahl was corrupted by his power. Phariton's bottled up in his hall, and a few of the people you talk to know about him and plan on dealing with him eventually. Sharon's harmless and her creations are contained.

 

There's only one installation that's even supposed to belong to the Shapers, and it works absolutely fine. That's the area where Zakary is. And Zakary himself is a responsible Shaper, he just fears for his own life - he made errors and is working to correct them. He's outmatched but he hasn't given up.

 

Is the PC competent? Did you get through G2 without dying a few times? Shanti simply didn't have the benefit of a save system. But seriously, it's just cutscene/gameplay dissonance - she dies for the purposes of the story, not because of incompetence on your part. You're taken by surprise by rebels when you go through that gate yourself, you just get help from some Awakened.

 

G3 has whatsisname, your teacher who goes rogue. Later you find his SVH, unless you kill him after an earlier cutscene, in which case you find a different rogue Shaper there. There's the Darkstone Mine, that awful dude on the second island, and Khyryk and Litalia have both abandoned the rigorous Shaper cause in different ways. The Gull Island governor was also involved in some kind of illegal Shaping, making mutant serviles or something, if I remember that rightly. There's also a necromancer's SVH, and that other rogue Shaping guy with the runed serviles, which the Shapers did not originate, but have failed to suppress. There's an entire Shaper army held in limbo by some kind of shade thing, until the PC shows up to help. Rahul and his wife are kind of arrogant, but maybe they can count as competent. Overall, though, the rate of incompetence and corruption among the Shapers you meet has got to be at least 50% or so.

 

The Ashen Isles are in a state of open war. An ideological war directly centered around Shaping - some of the Shapers are going to come down on the other side! This is not a case against their competence, responsibility, or sanity, but to their ideology. The Rebels are directly or indirectly responsible for many of these problems, anyways - and they seem to be ascendant on the Isles, with the Shapers unprepared or with a slower than optimal response. This isn't a question of the Shaper's confidence, but their preparedness for a revolt on an unprecedented scale. Was the whole of the British Empire incompetent for their failure to put down the American Revolution? No - many circumstances conspired against them and their defeat was a reasonable and understandable one, as were the reasons they did not return.

 

In G4 there's some kind of exiled Shaper to the south, in trouble for past faults. There's the bizarre plan with Moseh and his buddies, which reeks of hubris, and needs the help of a dubious rebel turncoat in the shape of the PC. There's the Dumping Pits. Letting Monarch get out of control was presumably not a fault of intention, but it was hardly proof of competence. Again, the PC has to step in; the entire Shaper empire can't find an Agent up to the job, or if it has one, can't get its act together to send her where she's needed.

 

The exiled Shaper was left there legally, and had yet to harm anyone. The Moseh plan was perfectly valid in a world where individuals channeling magical power is your main method of waging war. Why not amplify a few individuals' power with machinery and installations so they can be capable of managing much more?

 

And again, you're missing the forest for the trees in terms of game design/story interaction.

 

For G5, we went over the list of council members. Again the Shapers fail to impress. There's also the challenge zone boss, as a rogue Shaper-type that has not been suppressed. There's that control brain area that's gone all crazy. And wasn't there something kind of dodgy about one of Alwan's three forts? I'm fuzzy on that one. Am I missing any SVH-type places? Again, though, the point is just that the ratio of good Shaper places to bad, and good Shapers to bad, is not nearly high enough for a competent empire.

 

I went over the Council. They work out fine as far as I'm concerned.

 

Your criteria of comparing the number of Shaper zones to rogue Shaper zones is flawed. It is irrelevant to the story or the characterization of the Shaper faction. It is the result of game design and not story or setting. You are looking at the wrong things.

 

And, again, there is a devastating war going on, if you hadn't noticed. The normal efforts that go towards maintaining law and order have been diverted to deal with that larger threat.

 

About competence: I dunno. Count up the people. I think the rate of corruption is alarmingly high, among Shapers who held high enough rank that they ought to have been reliable. Even if it's ten percent, that's appalling. I think it's well above ten percent. A competent empire needs to do better than that. And promoting unreliable individuals is incompetence in the system. By incompetent, I don't mean that the Shapers can't tie their shoes. What they can't do is cope with Shaping. Which is kind of the bar you set for yourselves, when you call yourselves The Shapers.

 

What contitutes corruption? Taking bribes? Illegal experiments? Defecting? Because most Shapers you meet aren't doing that. And again, there are a lot of people that you simply don't meet, unless major cities consist of a few dozen people. You meet people that give you interesting things for to do or respond to. You're probably going to meet every major offender and not meet a lot of faceless drones, guards, soldiers, or officials.

 

I find the world of Geneforge perfectly sensible. It's just the Shapers aren't a very competent power. Many real world governments have been quite incompetent. Of course they don't admit it. Neither do the Shapers. But look at the actual evidence. It doesn't look like evidence of competence to do the job the Shapers hold.

 

I will concede that you have to play along with most RPGs, and that if you're willing to postulate enough stuff, without in-game evidence but without any blatant in-game contradiction, then you can probably decide to assume that the Shapers are competent enough. What I'm saying is that this is just not at all the most plausible conclusion, given the evidence that's actually there in the games. The Shaper pose of mastery is a Big Lie. Once you question it at all, it falls apart.

 

The Geneforge world is sensible to a point. But maybe two dozen serviles being perfectly viable breeding stock for four or five generations on Sucia? The actions of any of the protagonists? The relevance of every area you go to? The ubiquity of things to fight? The mechanics of the game? The number of hits that it takes to kill something? Population? Turn-based combat? The speed of power progression? Travel time? These are all things that are as valid a part of the game as level design. And these are all things that have to be handwaved or explained out-of-game to have any semblance of a rational world. They are the result of the narrative/gameplay structure of RPGs, the structure of this game in particular, and the conventions that the entire medium is subjet to.

 

Or do you intend to argue that the humans of Geneforge function vastly differently than the humans in our world? That people and wild animals stand around, count action points, and trade blows in an arcane system of ritual combat? That the protagonist need never sleep, eat, heals almost instantly, and is capable of superhuman feats of development? That their acceptance by whichever faction or person they choose to join is entirely believable? That the sentences people are capable of speaking are chosen at leisure from a predetermined list? That binary opinions are disseminated instantly to all interested parties by telepathy? This is a tired old argument, but what you're using as evidence belongs in this exact same category. It's luddonarrative dissonance. It's not a good thing. It's a flaw in this game as it is in many. Pretending that everything you're presented with is an accurate reflection of the world is not the correct response to it.

 

The Shapers have existed for a long time, literally ruling their world, without major incident. When comparing even just that fact aginst their characterization, it moves me heavily towards disregarding what you call evidence as the kind of silliness endemic to video games and not as valid reflections on the faction. It's possible that there has been a gradual breakdown, but this is never even alluded to. Their incompetence is never alluded to in as many words. It is never explicitly stated, while their competence is. Your interpretation of gameplay elements does not, to me, constitute any kind of reasonable argument against the competence of the Shaper empire.

 

You said

It's not as though there's a real Shaper empire out there anywhere, being unfairly caricatured by its appearance in the games of Jeff Vogel.

 

And it's true, there are no real Shapers. But there are two different game worlds you're presented with. There are conflicting facts and experiences. In this case, because of the quirks and idiosyncracies of the game world, I give precedence to the presentation of the narrative, and not that of the gameplay.

[Catoblepas]

I'm not really getting the argument for the Shapers beign generally incompetent and corrupt. Most of the exampels I'm seeing from Student of Trinity are in areas in which the shapers have explicitly lost control to the rebellion. Litalia and the teacher from the academy are rebels in a civil war, judging them by the standards laws and rules of a faction they no longer belong to seems a bit misplaced, to be honest. Likewise, Agatha experimented with illegal shaping....but it's clear that at least at first, she was not aware of the nature of the cannisters, and that the rebels were deliberately giving them to her to make her incapacitated. There really isn't much wrong she can be attributed to, given the situation. ANd, it's important to note, the Shapers [spoilers] have her executed anyways[spoilers/] in the shaper ending, so you can't really say that they weren't policing their own. In fact, I'd like to point out that two of the three sub orders of the shapers are dedicated to policing, with guardians executing shapers who break the rules, and agents hunting down rogue creations. Again, with the exiled shaper (there is another in G5, a guardian) I don't see evidence of incompetence, but rather of competence. The Shapers police their own, and the outsiders, quite well when left to their own customs and rules. It is the rebellion which generally stirs things up-with spawners and distributing cannsiters despite being quite aware of how it can turn well-adjusted folks in it for ideological reasons into raving deformed lunatics liable to strike out at their own allies. I am of the opinion that the likes of Monarch wouldn't be able to cause nearly as much trouble if the rebellion was not around and the shapers were not overstretched. Unstable folks like Taygen would be removed by the council or the guardians, and Rawals experiments with self-shaping (even going so far as to build a geneforge!) would get him the death sentence, and Serville terrorist villages that Astoria sponsored would not be tollerated. I feel that Student of Trinity may be missing the picture here with these accusations here, there is a lot of indication that situation the world is in in G3-G5, with rogues, bandits, cannister-crazed shapers etc everywhere is a product of the conflict with the Rebels, and that the radicals, corrupt, and crazies liek Astoria, rawal, and Taygen are taking advantage of the chaos to pursue their own agendas, and that such behavior is not typical of the shaper controlled lands. We know that the shapers are controlling, harsh, and at times cruel (particularly to the serviles), and not entirely in control of their periphrial territories in the early games, but I don't think that applyign the biggest problems with the shapers and applying it to the organisation as a whole as the status quo is entirely accurate. IMO the rebels have far worse skeletons in their closets-and isn't the series all about choosing the lesser of evils anyways?

[Lilith]

Who said that no records are kept of facilities and accidents? Just because you, a low man on the totem pole, don't get to see them (And as per the totalitarian state argument above, records of failures are not freely distributed) doesn't mean they don't exist. It's true that sealing things doesn't solve the problem, but when trying to fix the problem might let it out or make it worse, or when you're not entirely sure what went wrong, that's not an unreasonable response.

 

For the record, the narration itself mentions several times that it's common practice for records of a barred site to be destroyed, although the series seems to vacillate a bit on whether this means records of their very existence or just of everything that went on there. To hold that what's really meant is that the records are hidden away somewhere, you have to make the argument that the narration is outright lying, in a way that it doesn't do on such a scale about anything else.

[Dikiyoba]

But maybe two dozen serviles being perfectly viable breeding stock for four or five generations on Sucia?

Probably. Looking only at genetics, it only takes 50 or so individuals for there to be enough genetic variability for the population to continue indefinitely, and serviles move between villages often enough for all three sects to count as one population. But we can't come up with a meaningful estimate for how many serviles were on the island and survived the initial Barring to begin with; all we know is that it was enough.

 

Dikiyoba.

[Ohsky]

For the record, the narration itself mentions several times that it's common practice for records of a barred site to be destroyed, although the series seems to vacillate a bit on whether this means records of their very existence or just of everything that went on there. To hold that what's really meant is that the records are hidden away somewhere, you have to make the argument that the narration is outright lying, in a way that it doesn't do on such a scale about anything else.

 

Many abandoned facilities are abandonded on a rush so everything recorded is kept inside there as it´s sealed. Thus the player later discovers what went there to some extent on entering after x years.

[Sudanna]

Probably. Looking only at genetics, it only takes 50 or so individuals for there to be enough genetic variability for the population to continue indefinitely, and serviles move between villages often enough for all three sects to count as one population. But we can't come up with a meaningful estimate for how many serviles were on the island and survived the initial Barring to begin with; all we know is that it was enough.

 

Dikiyoba.

 

The number I've heard is 200, in optimal conditions of variability, and around 500 in more typical situations. That's for humans though, I guess we don't know about serviles. Though humans were made from serviles. . . *shrug*

[Triumph]

....humans were made from serviles. . . *shrug*

 

What what??? Shouldn't that be the other way around?

[Sudanna]

Not according to my memories of Heustess and the northwest ruins of G1.

[Triumph]

In the Quiet Marshes, Learned Clois says

 

 

"I learned that you are humans. And, though your kind claims that you created us serviles from nothing, I believe that we are humans, too. We were modified once, many years ago, to serve you, but that, inside, we are the same."

 

 

In The Sentinels, Heustess "looks like a tiny, warped human, but it is wrapped in a thick field of dark, shimmering energy." His conversations say nothing about humans or serviles, just that the ruins once were home to a people who "had foul magic, the ability to warp life, to change it, to twist it. They used this power to change those who opposed them." Heustess says:

 

 

 

My people were fought by them, and their war mages changed our soldiers. Their organs jellied and their minds burned and they fell. Each changed, each in a different way. Sometimes harmless but usually quick death.

 

I was changed. But my changes were good. I was strong. So strong. And I led the fight back. Their changes did other things. Diseases were made, where there were no diseases. My warriors and the sickness destroyed their land.

 

 

That's all he says on the subject. Could you be thinking of something else?

[Dikiyoba]

The number I've heard is 200, in optimal conditions of variability, and around 500 in more typical situations. That's for humans though, I guess we don't know about serviles. Though humans were made from serviles. . . *shrug*

50 is an old number. It might be higher in newer studies now. Or the number may depend entirely on the population in question. *Dikiyoba shrugs*

[Sudanna]

Yeah, my interpretation of that is that Heustess was one of the original Shapers, a servile, and was changed to be more humanlike. It doesn't say, though, and that's probably presuming too much, even if I like the story better that way.

 

It's a nice Shyamalan twist. You were the creations all along.

[Lilith]

Yeah, my interpretation of that is that Heustess was one of the original Shapers, a servile, and was changed to be more humanlike.

 

That doesn't make very much sense, considering that the Sholai are also human in appearance and have never had any contact with shaping prior to Geneforge 1.

[Sudanna]

It doesn't make much sense, no, but I like it better. XD

 

Sholai could have fled without Shaping or wiped out Shaping in their distant past or what have you, though. It's just my headcanon.

[Triumph]

Nalyd's headcannon unleashes a deadly barrage at game canon! Critical hit! It's super effective!

 

At least for Nalyd.