Re: [Adonthell-devel] Characters

[David White]

On Wed, 2003-01-08 at 19:37, Alexandre Courbot wrote:
> > I'm a little dubious about this concept. Do we *really* want the
> > player to be able to go around attacking anyone they choose to? E.g.
> > in Wastes Edge, would we want the player to be able to just start
> > attacking Silverhair, his mistress, immediately upon meeting her? Then
> > some guards come in and kill him?
> > 
> > I think it's reasonable to not let the player do anything that is far
> > out of character like that. There's little point in giving the player
> > the appearance of freedom by letting them attack everyone, but then
> > making it that if they do they will have to face an unbeatable foe. It
> > seems far too contrived in my humble opinion: I think it would be
> > better to simply prevent fighting peaceful/friendly characters; at
> > least important ones.
> 
> Yeah, I guess you're right on that one. I'd like as far as possible to
> avoid the kind of stuff you can see in many games: your sword just go
> through the character who doesn't get hurt. This makes nonsense and
> would not fit very well with the engine design. On the other hand, my
> proposal was a bit extreme, I agree. And we want the player to be able
> to play the bad guys if he want so - so killing non-important characters
> should be allowed IMO (say you kill the inn keeper - then the inn gets
> closed and you have to find another place to sleep in next time as a
> penalty, something like that). What to do for important characters
> remains an open question. As they are not *that* numerous, maybe we
> could make a different reaction for each of them.

I agree about swords just going through people seeming a little
unrealistic, not to mention frustrating, however I tend to think the
alternatives are just as bad. To start with, I think it opens a whole
can of worms of situations that are going to be real difficult to appear
realistic.

For instance, in the Waste's Edge game, imagine if the player decided to
go and kill someone. That'd suddenly blow the game out of all proportion
- forget some stolen gems; someone's been murdered!

Also, in Waste's Edge, note that almost all the characters are 'main'
characters. Almost all the characters require interaction with to finish
the game. I don't see how killing the few that don't would be possible
either. It is not feasible that one could kill either of Silverhair's
assistants, since Silverhair, being present, would obviously take
none-too-kindly to this. So obviously, one would not only have to deal
with the attacking of 'major' characters, one would have to deal with
fighting people in their presence.

If one were to really walk into a town and kill the local innkeeper, it
would do far more than shut down the inn: it would prompt a murder
investigation. Simulating this realistically would be very hard.
Further, trading with people using bad scales would damage one's
'reputation'. Going around killing people would make one a feared
outlaw, who would be killed on site by the guardsmen of any town who had
heard of him.

I do like the idea of giving people freedom of choice, but I think in
any game it has to be inside clear boundaries. For that reason, in my
humble opinion, I don't see any way an Adonthell-style game can support
attacking of peaceful characters in towns without creating more
contrived situations than it tries to solve.

Cheers,

-David.