Personality/Alignment vs. Dynamic Quests

[alexwoolery]

Well, maybe not "vs." I just wanted to talk about those things, and the effect they had on dynamic quests.

It should be interesting to see how this works in the game. Here's a quote from the faq:

"Those who follow virtues attempt to bring Order to the world, while those who follow vices attempt to bring chaos, all via the ambitions that are created around these concepts. Gameplay gets interesting when virtues come into conflict with each other. For example, if someone is aligned with the Air element, honor is a high priority for them. But what action should they take when doing the right thing means sacrificing their honor?"

On top of how your elemental alignment affects your motivations, there is your individual personality. What if a player is of a chaotic alignment, but has kind of a nice personality? Which factor will have more of an effect, when the game determines what the player wants to do in a dynamic quest? I'm interested in how these will balance out in the game.

[azgalor]

The balance of being chaotic and nice at the same time is I grant you a last request before I smite you and all of your family! Hah!

All things aside, in a world like this I believe that your personality will hold much more weight than your inherent side. An example (contrary to all propaganda, and hoping I offend no one) is that there, statistically, had to be nice Nazis on the German side of WW2. They may not have added to the war effort, or they may have followed orders... they may have secretly helped any Jew they found. You never heard of them because they were not accepted, but they were there. I think that dynamic will play a massive part in this game. There will be chaotic people who save under the banner of darkness, just as there will be murderers most heinous under the banner of the light.

The dynamic world is this game's pull, so nothing is set in stone!

[alexwoolery]

No, that's an excellent example, and I hope nobody is offended by it either, because it illustrates a good point.

[Irish]

The simpler the rules, the more complex the game world. The loose framework derived from a player-driven model makes for exciting and unpredictable circumstances, such as az cited, that are almost unheard of in many more traditional game models.

[David Thue]

alexwoolery said:

On top of how your elemental alignment affects your motivations, there is your individual personality. What if a player is of a chaotic alignment, but has kind of a nice personality? Which factor will have more of an effect, when the game determines what the player wants to do in a dynamic quest? I'm interested in how these will balance out in the game.

Is there any sort of modelling done of the player's personality (not her avatar's)? The reason I ask is that I'm currently in grad school for Computing Science, working on trying to figure out a way to tell RPG-based stories that are tailored to the player's personality and play-style (I sometimes call it Interactive Storytelling via Player Modelling).

[therayven]

Is there any sort of modelling done of the player's personality (not her avatar's)? The reason I ask is that I'm currently in grad school for Computing Science, working on trying to figure out a way to tell RPG-based stories that are tailored to the player's personality and play-style (I sometimes call it Interactive Storytelling via Player Modelling).

If you're looking for "game changes based on your playstyle from good to evil, not because of a pre-defined choice at character creation," I would recommend:

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic I & II
Fable
Black & White

There are others, but these come to mind immediately, particularly Fable.

I suppose that in Genesis your actions influence your alignment, though the difficulty is in defining 'good' acts. If you give someone a deal on a sword you're selling, is that a 'good' act? 'Bad' is easier to define, such as theft and murder. In a game where the quests are dynamically generated, good and evil are very relative indeed.

[Gavan Woolery]

Azgalor actually set up a pretty good example. There will be times when people of the Order alignment do evil things, and vice versa. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

[David Thue]

therayven said:

If you're looking for "game changes based on your playstyle from good to evil, not because of a pre-defined choice at character creation," I would recommend:

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic I & II
Fable
Black & White

There are others, but these come to mind immediately, particularly Fable.

Yep, I'm well aware of those. The angle I'm coming from, however, is that there needs to me more than a simple distinction between "Good" and "Evil" styles of play. Maybe one player prefers solving a mystery to fighting a horde of orcs, while another player prefers to have his morals tested instead of being made to sneak past a group of guards. To go with the example given in the FAQ, if the player's avatar's father gets killed, he (the player) might not necessarily want to go and pursue revenge - maybe he's a pacifist. If you could somehow pick up on that fact in-game, I think that it would lead to better adjustments of the avatar's ambitions.

[lapse]

I hope the game will not simply divide actions into good and evil ones. Since the majority of the alignments role models (?) were polytheistic religions, which usually lacks the good-evil dualism, I believe. I've seen Gavan use "Order vs Chaos" instead, which existed in the Norse Mythology/beliefs (polytheistic) for example.. I think there's a difference between these two dualisms.
At least it's not referred to as "good vs evil"