Indiscriminate Murder is Counter-Productive

[Rya.Reisender]

This song reminds me of Spiderweb games:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Y05TDInaeU

 

Lyrics:

http://lyrics.wikia.com/Machinae_Supremacy:Indiscriminate_Murder_Is_Counter-Productive

 

Discuss!

[Alorael at Large]

Ah, the anthem of the RPG "protagonist" in more sandbox-amenable games.

 

—Alorael, who wonders what it says about gamers that the only way to make heroes into good guys is to severely curtail their choices.

[Questionably Legal]

Nonsense! In Spiderweb games, random NPCs without an individual name never do anything useful.

[Death Knight]

Im not really into punk rock music but I happen to find Spiderweb Software's later games to have some of the best music out there! Avernum Escape from the Pit while not my favorite game, is an epic song of awesomeness. Avadon is epic and while Geneforge 5 is a little slower, its still got some coolness to it. Avernum 5 is the best spiderweb music as it sounds like a metalica song (just can't remember the name. Avernum 6 is cool too,

 

I haven't heard/dont remember Avadon 2 music yet as I didn't listen to it in the preview.

[Rya.Reisender]

Spiderweb games have music?

[Kelandon]

The loading music.

[Dikiyoba]

—Alorael, who wonders what it says about gamers that the only way to make heroes into good guys is to severely curtail their choices.

Hey, role-playing a sociopath is valid role-playing. (But if you don't like people playing evil, then you have to give equal or better rewards for taking the good or non-violent options over the evil ones. That still won't stop some people from murdering everyone in sight just to see what happens, but at least it'll keep the powergamers in line.)

 

Dikiyoba also suggests making a game with an evil protagonist, and then watch in frustration and amazement as some gamers wreck the game with pacifist runs, spare enemies they were supposed to murder brutally, help every random NPC they meet, and numerous other good acts.

[Prince of Kitties]

What can I say, your average Exile adventurer is not exactly a well-adjusted person... I mean, they make a living hacking other sapients apart with a sword. That does take a certain lack of empathy.

[Randomizer]

To encourage the others is a good adventurer rule. But rule number 1 is leave no witnesses alive.

[Rya.Reisender]

I always try to solve everything without violence, but sometimes NPCs are just too stubborn and you can't make everyone happy and rather to risk one of them sending people to assassinate you because you deliver that rare artifact to someone else instead and so you better kill them to be sure.

 

Or you hear they are from the Empire and then just kill them because of course everyone from the Empire must be evil and NPCs don't lie.

[Edgwyn]

Ah, the anthem of the RPG "protagonist" in more sandbox-amenable games.

 

—Alorael, who wonders what it says about gamers that the only way to make heroes into good guys is to severely curtail their choices.

 

Most forms of fantasizing involve eliminating all or most all consequences. It doesn't matter if it is RPGs, Grand Theft Auto, First Person Shooters, Fantasy Football, adult magazines, car magazines, fad diets, most novels, 99% of movies, etc. This is common to almost all people, not just those of us who are gamers.

[Necris Omega]

If Violence isn't solving all your problems, you're just not using enough of it.

 

Ah for the days of Quickfire, when all you needed to teach an entire town a valuable lesson on not blowing raspberries at the PCs was a mage with 7th level spells, a room with a door, and the wait comand...

[Alorael at Large]

Most forms of fantasizing involve eliminating all or most all consequences. It doesn't matter if it is RPGs, Grand Theft Auto, First Person Shooters, Fantasy Football, adult magazines, car magazines, fad diets, most novels, 99% of movies, etc. This is common to almost all people, not just those of us who are gamers.

Some fantasizing, sure, but most? I'm skeptical. "Choices and consequences" has become something of a buzzword (buzz-set-of-words?) in game design. Fantasy Football has consequences, and those consequences are winning or losing, potentially with large sums of money on the line! Novels are escapism, maybe, but the stories they tell are full of consequences, be they deserved or undeserved, unforeseen or dreaded or avoided entirely.

 

—Alorael, who thinks a specific form of fantasy, and of enjoyment, comes from avoiding or flouting consequences. Games can include that, and many of Spiderweb's do. That element is neither necessary nor sufficient for a good game.

[Edgwyn]

Fantasy football has outcomes such as winning and losing, but you often do not have to deal with the real life issues of payroll and personalities. I guess that I am more translating the discussion into constraints as opposed to the term that I used "consequences". Your first post in this thread

Ah, the anthem of the RPG "protagonist" in more sandbox-amenable games.

 

—Alorael, who wonders what it says about gamers that the only way to make heroes into good guys is to severely curtail their choices.

alluded, to me anyway, that if we do not constrain the choices of gamers, they will act like psychopaths. A statement that I agree is fairly accurate for a certain segment of the population. While many characters in novels do face deserved or undeserved consequences of their actions, the characters are typically under far fewer constraints than real people.

[Rya.Reisender]

I'm not sure how many people would actually do something in real life just because all consequences are removed.

 

If murder was legal, would you actually go out and kill someone in real life?

[Student of Trinity]

If murder was legal, I'd be worried about people murdering me.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

I guess that I am more translating the discussion into constraints as opposed to the term that I used "consequences". Your first post in this thread alluded, to me anyway, that if we do not constrain the choices of gamers, they will act like psychopaths. A statement that I agree is fairly accurate for a certain segment of the population. While many characters in novels do face deserved or undeserved consequences of their actions, the characters are typically under far fewer constraints than real people.

 

How much of that is really an issue of freedom from constraint, though, and how much of that is just creators of media simplifying them in order to weed out less interesting events? Characters in media use the restroom a lot less than real people, but I'm pretty sure that's not some power fantasy of freedom from excretion (though admittedly that would save a lot of time in the long run), and more that bathrooms don't generally contribute much to narrative or drama.

[Prince of Kitties]

I'm not sure how many people would actually do something in real life just because all consequences are removed.

 

If murder was legal, would you actually go out and kill someone in real life?

 

It works the opposite way too, actually. If you were raised in a society where murder was legal, you might not think it was so bad to kill someone. Societies like that have existed historically, and still exist today (although they wouldn't necessarily call it murder).

 

And even if you didn't have it in you to murder someone, keep in mind that perhaps 1-2% of people are sociopaths.

[Goldengirl]

Sociopath is a term of art. Please be more careful about how you refer to people with mental illnesses in the future. Thank you.

 

Just because murder is legal doesn't mean it's without consequences. For instance, in the societies that Tevildo mentions, there tend to be vendettas and such that make consequences for killing in a very lethal way. It's even a pretty popular trope in fiction.

[Prince of Kitties]

What term do you think would be more appropriate, Goldenking? Keeping in mind that I am referring specifically to people with good theory of mind, but no (or at least very limited) empathy. Such people are at an elevated risk for committing violent crimes, no?

 

(Not that "ordinary" people can't commit violent crimes, of course...)

[Alorael at Large]

Sociopath is a deprecated term of art. The standard now is antisocial personality disorder, and yes, it's a small but appreciable percentage of the population. Probably. Numbers are understandably hard to come by.

 

Fantasy Football is not football, nor is it football management. It's a game of its own, about good prediction and statistics. It just uses football games as the randomizing element. And Football Manager is, in fact, a game, contracts and all. Idealized? Yes, to an extent, but games as simulations usually have to pare down the perfectness of simulation.

 

 

There are novels about unconstrained characters, but there are plenty of novels about constrained ones, too. There's no shortage of literature about ordinary people leading basically ordinary lives. There are also stories about people who reject the constraints of society, social pressure, and/or morality; there are fantastic stories about people who have impossible abilities or powers. But these aren't all wish fulfillment; that may be an element, but it isn't always.

 

—Alorael, who doesn't even think that antisocial/sociopathic behavior is a factor in how often gamers slaughter the NPCs. He thinks it's more a tendency to explore the boundaries of a system and to make up new "games" in the form of self-challenges within another game. Can you kill them? What happens? Can you expunge all brunettes from this game world?

[Dikiyoba]

It works the opposite way too, actually. If you were raised in a society where murder was legal, you might not think it was so bad to kill someone. Societies like that have existed historically, and still exist today (although they wouldn't necessarily call it murder).

 

Given that murder is the unlawful killing of someone, it would be pretty hard to have a society with legal murder.

 

Dikiyoba.

[Randomizer]

Given that murder is the unlawful killing of someone, it would be pretty hard to have a society with legal murder.

 

Dikiyoba.

Executions by the government, abortions, ... depending upon your definition of murder.

[Enraged Slith]

What can I say, your average Exile adventurer is not exactly a well-adjusted person... I mean, they make a living hacking other sapients apart with a sword. That does take a certain lack of empathy.

Empathy for lesser creatures is a waste of my weekly allotment of emotions.

[Student of Trinity]

Dikiyoba has a point, but it can't quite be that simple. It's notoriously difficult to distinguish murder from killing in general, but the distinction can't really be purely formal. People do take stabs, as it were, at making it more objective. Don't criminal codes have to define murder? Surely they can't just say, 'Killing that's against this law is hereby forbidden by this law.'

[Lilith]

Dikiyoba has a point, but it can't quite be that simple. It's notoriously difficult to distinguish murder from killing in general, but the distinction can't really be purely formal. People do take stabs, as it were, at making it more objective. Don't criminal codes have to define murder? Surely they can't just say, 'Killing that's against this law is hereby forbidden by this law.'

 

For a very long time, the UK didn't actually have a formal legal definition of murder set out in any one place. It really was pretty much a "you know it when you see it" thing; there were certain boundaries established over time by judicial precedent, but for the most part it was up to the jury in a particular case to decide whether the accused committed murder, based on both the facts of the case and on what they understood murder to be. I believe they only passed a law to formally define it a few decades ago.