Baldur's Gate : The Sword Coast Chronicles : NWN2 Persistent World

Steve wrote:I think Hoihe is writing his end exams essay for Bachelor of Gaming Studies!

more like Masters thesis

PhD dissertation.

requirement for epic nerd feat.

Stop tempting me to make a take down.

I've read the entire article, including everyone's response so far, and there are various points in those that hold true as well.

However, I think Hoihe's article is spot on, I think its highly relevant and gives food for thought, especially in relation to having empathy and understanding for others rp, their investment and effort that goes into their characters. I've seen a lot of people not having empathy and understanding for others rp, who only seem to be interested in their own rp, their own characters progression, who're only interested in their own point of view as a player where others opinion doesn't matter at all. This is also seen here on the community.

Seperating what your character knows and what you know as person is a delicate matter and not so easy as one should think - Consider we're supposed to play our sheets, guess how many who don't have the appropriate knowledge skills but rp as if they do or the very least they're rp'ing as if its common knowledge. Like for instance, "Oh it just another druid", whether they're rp'ing having more knowledge than their character actually possess or its just common knowledge really depends on what it actually is. Because if its not, then knowing such requires having ranks in a skill such as Knowledge: Arcana

Check:
Answering a question within your field of study has a DC of 10 (for really easy questions), 15 (for basic questions), or 20 to 30 (for really tough questions).

Action
Usually none. In most cases, making a Knowledge check doesn’t take an action—you simply know the answer or you don’t.

Try Again
No. The check represents what you know, and thinking about a topic a second time doesn’t let you know something that you never learned in the first place.

To not metagame is an act of self-discipline in it self.

Personally, I'd hate to retire a character I had invested a ton of time and effort into, one that had a vast amount story and roleplay associated with it, not even if it was for the benefit of the story.
With perma-death, I feel the same if with the above. I see no reason to create a character which sole purpose was to further the plot, make history and then retire.

this is all true steve except one point. who said it is your story to write? you are a character in a story that is in very little way controlled by yourself. you may decide to go left or right, but that does not decide what is left or right. the server is the writer of the story and to pretend that you are the writer, i think, can only lead to disappointment.

2 cents.

Hoihe wrote:Hello!

Hoihe, there are a lot of assumptions here.

Hoihe wrote: An individual falling purely on this side with no interest in the "life" aspect will hold no more attachment to a character than George R.R. Martin

False. You become attached. However, the ultimate idea is to have interesting story - for you. The story doesn't have "grand", it can be comedy, tragedy, anything, as long as it is interesting. Likewise it is important to maintain character's integrity through the events, otherwise it'll all be a worthless waste of time. Filler content can be very interesting too.

The only difference is that you are not your characters. However it does not mean that you make characters just splatter their brains all over the sword coast. Senseless deaths are not fun.

Hoihe wrote: Those who seek to tell a story have a pretty simple process for designing a character, centered especially around the idea of reducing net loss and investment to ensure they can freely sacrifice anything for the purpose of the story.

Plot relevance is not a factor. There are a lot of plots going on and most of the time you don't know they even exist. Coming up with an interesting character idea takes a lot of time and is not a simple process. Aslo, you do not "tell" the story, you witness it. The idea is to throw character into the world with personality you created and see what happens.

Hoihe wrote: Those who seek to experience a setting have to deal with a more involved character design process to avoid being accused of Mary Sueism and self-insertion.

I've witnessed the opposite. When people actually wear their character's skin, some portion of them want to experience things they don't get enough of in real life, which results in a mary sue character. Prettier than they really are, more awesome than they really are, etc. Those are often called snowflakes. Meanwhile, a "3rd person" player would have no qualms with playing a sentient cockroach.

Hoihe wrote: Thank you for reading.

I'm not sure what you were trying to get at to be honest.

I'm not seeing any conflict, and the only difference is that that some people prefer to think that they're their character, while some other people prefer to watch what their character does from distance. I've found that being in character's shoes results in more OOC drama, while observing from distance grants access to larger array of character archetypes and possibilities.

At the end of hte post you for some reason started critizing permadeath. No, it wouldn't hurt the setting. Just provide more challenge for thsoe who seek it.

NegInfinity wrote:

Hoihe wrote:Hello!

Hoihe, there are a lot of assumptions here.

Hoihe wrote: An individual falling purely on this side with no interest in the "life" aspect will hold no more attachment to a character than George R.R. Martin

False. You become attached. However, the ultimate idea is to have interesting story - for you. The story doesn't have "grand", it can be comedy, tragedy, anything, as long as it is interesting. Likewise it is important to maintain character's integrity through the events, otherwise it'll all be a worthless waste of time. Filler content can be very interesting too.

The only difference is that you are not your characters. However it does not mean that you make characters just splatter their brains all over the sword coast. Senseless deaths are not fun.

Hoihe wrote: Those who seek to tell a story have a pretty simple process for designing a character, centered especially around the idea of reducing net loss and investment to ensure they can freely sacrifice anything for the purpose of the story.

Plot relevance is not a factor. There are a lot of plots going on and most of the time you don't know they even exist. Coming up with an interesting character idea takes a lot of time and is not a simple process. Aslo, you do not "tell" the story, you witness it. The idea is to throw character into the world with personality you created and see what happens.

Hoihe wrote: Those who seek to experience a setting have to deal with a more involved character design process to avoid being accused of Mary Sueism and self-insertion.

I've witnessed the opposite. When people actually wear their character's skin, some portion of them want to experience things they don't get enough of in real life, which results in a mary sue character. Prettier than they really are, more awesome than they really are, etc. Those are often called snowflakes. Meanwhile, a "3rd person" player would have no qualms with playing a sentient cockroach.

Hoihe wrote: Thank you for reading.

I'm not sure what you were trying to get at to be honest.

I'm not seeing any conflict, and the only difference is that that some people prefer to think that they're their character, while some other people prefer to watch what their character does from distance. I've found that being in character's shoes results in more OOC drama, while observing from distance grants access to larger array of character archetypes and possibilities.

At the end of hte post you for some reason started critizing permadeath. No, it wouldn't hurt the setting. Just provide more challenge for thsoe who seek it.

Permanent Death, over a period of time with no set end-date, as found in books or one of campaigns and not found in persistent world games, will result in the creation of pre-fabricated characters in the natural human quest for maximising pleasure in a lifetime. To maximise pleasure one must balance intrinsic and extrinsic actions.

Intrinsic Pleasure = Story derived pleasure * X + Character derived pleasure * Y

Where X + Y = 1, and X, Y describe the player's inclination towards story (X) or Character (Y). By being a GRRM, you derive no pleasure from who you play as. By being a Setting Paragon, you derive no pleasure from story progression.

When X approaches 0, you derive less and less pleasure from the story. On the other hand, the higher quality your character is the more pleasure you derive compared to someone with the opposite inclination and same quality character.

To achieve a quality character, you must organically develop one. Pre-fabricated characters cannot exist long term or in a real world. They can only exist in a vacuum. Organically developed characters can be either active or passive. Active is not sustainable long term. Passive can be sustained long term.

For a character to be considered High Quality, they must possess at least one character trait the player considers enjoyable. The more traits they possess the better. By pre-fabricating a character, you run risk of making a mary sue. By making a character that actively is on a path that will net them these traits, you will end up without a goal. By making a character that is passively susceptible to acquire these traits, you can play the indefinitely and derive ever increasing pleasure from their play.

Thus, the best character creation method is the passive organic. Passive Organic is a highly extrinsic process. Extrinsic processes have the habit of having high volatility and high up-front cost. Due to the high volatility and to maximize the potential that in a set time, you get one character that you consider enjoyable, you must start multiple characters parallel to each other. As you start culling each of the non-enjoyable ones, their up-front cost is not returned, but is instead added to the value of the survivor.

For a scenario that leads to permanent death, the following formula must be positive.

Pleasure = Story * X + (Character * Y) * (-1)

-1 signifies that the source of pleasure is lost.

If your Y > X, this means the Story itself must have incredible value to offset the negative pleasure losing the character provides. This is somewhat manageable in a setting where there is a definite end point to the campaign and you won't be making new characters.

Pleasure = story * x + (character * y) * -1 - new character * y

- new character * y signifies the up-front cost of making a new character.

For Pleasure to be positive, the Story must be of high enough value to offset the negative pleasure from losing the character AND the upfront cost of making a new character.

Or... You can reduce the cost of making a new character.

Pre-fabricated characters provide intrinsic pleasure as in making them you do something pleasurable. They also provide very low quality characters who will feel like clones over long enough time

Active Organic characters have lower volatility, but equal up-front cost to passive organic characters. Since they have lower volatility, you can afford to run fewer characters parralel as you are almost guaranteed pleasure. However, due to active pursuit they will become 2 dimensional.

Passive Organic has high volatility, high up front cost and provides a high quality character.


As long as Y > 0, over time losing a character will end up pushing people to default to pre-fabricated characters to maximise the pleasure they derive from roleplaying if there exists permanent death.

Thus, permanent death will immutably lead to lower quality characters given enough time. This is not true for settings where Y approaches or is equal to 0 or where there is no new character cost due to the existence of a limit to the campaign's duration (Pen and Paper or one-shot worlds). There is also the possibility that the story keeps being of such incredible value as to offset the 2 negatives, but that's impossible over an infinite span of time.

Incarnate wrote:I've read the entire article, including everyone's response so far, and there are various points in those that hold true as well.

Seperating what your character knows and what you know as person is a delicate matter and not so easy as one should think - Consider we're supposed to play our sheets, guess how many who don't have the appropriate knowledge skills but rp as if they do or the very least they're rp'ing as if its common knowledge. Like for instance, "Oh it just another druid", whether they're rp'ing having more knowledge than their character actually possess or its just common knowledge really depends on what it actually is. Because if its not, then knowing such requires having ranks in a skill such as Knowledge: Arcana

I agree completely. There are some things that are not reflected through character sheet, though in this particular instance I would argue it would be a matter of a knowledge check or something similar. It almost needs to be handled on a case by base basis, and it will rarely always be perfect. I think 'honest effort' to role play is needed. I've definitely role played where I've stumbled across shifted druids who communicated without words, asking if ooc my character knew animal, even then the communication was kept very simple and non-verbal until the druid character returned to normal human shape. If my character doesn't know animal, or has no lore: nature, lore: arcana, etc, they're reaction would be played much differently.

But would a level 20 fighter who has been around plenty of druids, even though not having any lore skills, be able to ascertain whether or not their character would know a shifted druid if they saw one? This is not reflected on the sheet. Also, there have been times when my character would know something that I as a player would not (this creates challenging RP for me as a player, as I feel some of my characters would and should have deeper understanding of certain things that I as a player am a total noob at, especially if I'm trying something new).

So all I can do as a player is limit myself into playing roles I know I as a player can be successful at, or to push those limits and maybe fumble as I role play my way through something new (which broadens the role play repertoire and expands my knowledge of the setting through learning more as a player).

I've had my character call out characters he knew declared themselves to be evil, but they had re-thought what they had said after my character questioned them, and they switched to denying it, so I rolled a sense-motive and they rolled a bluff: did I know their toons were evil? Maybe, did my character? No, the bluff beat my sense motive by 2, so I ended up partying with them for a short duration. It was actually more fun than the one sided pvp fight that would have happened as a result.

Back to perma-death, I would argue again, that it would only have meaning in a world where raise dead/resurrection was much more rare if at all accessible to everyone. The only motivation for a player to avoid death is to avoid the xp penalty when a friend can't raise you. My argument took it a step further to the idea that even our in game characters would have some semblance of knowledge of people being risen from the dead on a regular basis, unlike real life, where mortality is finality (for the most part, but that's way off topic). In game universe wise, characters would be much more motivated to avoid death than we as players may be reflecting through in game behaviors, but it doesn't carry the same type of finality as it does in real life, of course.

But then of course, how would we ever know such things? It is possible the experience of 'deja vu' in real life is just us restarting back at our last check point because something terrible happened. Who can say for certain?

I think when a player plays their character as a form of themselves, whether you call it a mask, or an alter ego etc or whatever, I think it detracts from the role play. While you cant help but put a certain amount of yourself into your character (you are afterall its controller), the idea that it is a part of you, or some alternate form of you is too abstract to really substantiate into a logical debate. If that is the case, you are really 'experimenting' with various degrees of your own psych in the form of an avatar through the servers medium of the video game. While to a certain extent that is what role-playing requires, it should not be so emotionally invested into that the feelings are mistaken for something genuine. It is a poor substitute for it's real world counterpart. The death of a character is not the death of a part of you, perma-death or otherwise.

this is math based upon total fiction. and while it may be applicable in some case. I for one know that this video game is not the application where this is based upon fact.

x=apples
y=oranges
z=taste where >0z is better and <0z is worse

x(1) = 1z
x(2) = .8z
x(3) = .25z
x(4) = -1z

y(1) = 2z
y(2) = 2.25z
y(3) = 1z
y(4) = -.10z

so through this calculation 1 apple is the same as 3 oranges.

so everybody should either eat 2 oranges and/or a single apple. and if you want the same pleasure of 3 oranges a single apple should suffice.

aaron22 wrote:this is math based upon total fiction. and while it may be applicable in some case. I for one know that this video game is not the application where this is based upon fact.

x=apples
y=oranges
z=taste where >0z is better and <0z is worse

x(1) = 1z
x(2) = .8z
x(3) = .25z
x(4) = -1z

y(1) = 2z
y(2) = 2.25z
y(3) = 1z
y(4) = -.10z

so through this calculation 1 apple is the same as 3 oranges.

so everybody should either eat 2 oranges and/or a single apple. and if you want the same pleasure of 3 oranges a single apple should suffice.

Thank you for this. +1.

i use a first person perspective and try to feel through the character, but not in this mask, alter ego or anything of the sort. it is far more like an actor playing a role. I do not think i am an orc, but the more i can feel like an orc or try to feel like an orc, the better i think my RP will be from it. perhaps i am incorrect.

I'm not going to lie, I might've cringed at the mathematical absolute.

Hoihe wrote: ....

I fully disagree.

The main issue is that you're attempting to quantify fun derived from making a character. Using your chosen methodology you arrive at conclusion that playing in specific way is how it is meant to be.

And here lies the big problem.

When approaching life aspects using mathematical logic, you risk reaching incorrect conclusion due to faulty selection of initial logical propositions/premises, upon which you built your entire logical system. A classic example of that is a cheshire cat dialogue from alice in wonderland.

---------
`To begin with,' said the Cat, `a dog's not mad. You grant that?'

`I suppose so,' said Alice.

`Well, then,' the Cat went on, `you see, a dog growls when it's angry, and wags its tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad.'
---------

This is basically what you've done with your formulas. Mathematical and logical approaches, rather than dealing with reality itself, operates on models, which pick important factors and discard the rest. Due to infinite complexity of life and infinite number of variables by approaching a problem in methodical logical way, you risk building an incorrect model, by dismissing a value you deemed unimportant, which, in reality result in model behaving in way inconsistent with the real world. That's why it is important not to get hung up on trying to approach everything like syllogism or a system equation and know when to step back from overly formulaic approach.

Anyway.

In your previous statements following statements are provided without proof or anythign to support them.

Permanent Death, over a period of time with no set end-date, as found in books or one of campaigns and not found in persistent world games, will result in the creation of pre-fabricated characters in the

natural human quest for maximising pleasure in a lifetime.

By being a GRRM, you derive no pleasure from who you play as. By being a Setting Paragon, you derive no pleasure from story progression.

On the other hand, the higher quality your character is the more pleasure you derive compared to someone with the opposite inclination and same quality character.

To achieve a quality character, you must organically develop one. Pre-fabricated characters cannot exist long term or in a real world.

Basically, it is possible to latch on every single statement you made and nag you to provide proof from them till the end of time, because in the end you're stating your opinions and there are significant leaps in logic.

For example, one thing that you possibly overlooked, by the way, is existence of other people and connections in the world.

You cannot play indefinitely and "derive pleasure". Over time character start losing relevance and becoming forgotten, turning into what I call a "ghost". Basically, character makes connection in the world and story events happen through interactions with them. However, past certain point, all connections somebody made will disappear - people will stop playing, roll new characters, or quit. And as a result you'll have a "ghost" on your hand - a character that once held a significance, but is no longer relevant to anything.

...

...

...

Anyway. I suggest to put that energy into in-game characters instead.

NegInfinity wrote:

Hoihe wrote: ....

I fully disagree.

The main issue is that you're attempting to quantify fun derived from making a character. Using your chosen methodology you arrive at conclusion that playing in specific way is how it is meant to be.

And here lies the big problem.

When approaching life aspects using mathematical logic, you risk reaching incorrect conclusion due to faulty selection of initial logical propositions/premises, upon which you built your entire logical system. A classic example of that is a cheshire cat dialogue from alice in wonderland.

---------
`To begin with,' said the Cat, `a dog's not mad. You grant that?'

`I suppose so,' said Alice.

`Well, then,' the Cat went on, `you see, a dog growls when it's angry, and wags its tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad.'
---------

This is basically what you've done with your formulas. Mathematical and logical approaches, rather than dealing with reality itself, operates on models, which pick important factors and discard the rest. Due to infinite complexity of life and infinite number of variables by approaching a problem in methodical logical way, you risk building an incorrect model, by dismissing a value you deemed unimportant, which, in reality result in model behaving in way inconsistent with the real world. That's why it is important not to get hung up on trying to approach everything like syllogism or a system equation and know when to step back from overly formulaic approach.

Anyway.

In your previous statements following statements are provided without proof or anythign to support them.

Permanent Death, over a period of time with no set end-date, as found in books or one of campaigns and not found in persistent world games, will result in the creation of pre-fabricated characters in the

natural human quest for maximising pleasure in a lifetime.

By being a GRRM, you derive no pleasure from who you play as. By being a Setting Paragon, you derive no pleasure from story progression.

On the other hand, the higher quality your character is the more pleasure you derive compared to someone with the opposite inclination and same quality character.

To achieve a quality character, you must organically develop one. Pre-fabricated characters cannot exist long term or in a real world.

Basically, it is possible to latch on every single statement you made and nag you to provide proof from them till the end of time, because in the end you're stating your opinions and there are significant leaps in logic.

For example, one thing that you possibly overlooked, by the way, is existence of other people and connections in the world.

You cannot play indefinitely and "derive pleasure". Over time character start losing relevance and becoming forgotten, turning into what I call a "ghost". Basically, character makes connection in the world and story events happen through interactions with them. However, past certain point, all connections somebody made will disappear - people will stop playing, roll new characters, or quit. And as a result you'll have a "ghost" on your hand - a character that once held a significance, but is no longer relevant to anything.

...

...

...

Anyway. I suggest to put that energy into in-game characters instead.

Relevance is borne from story.

For "relevance" to hold value, one must value story over character.


The whole idea is that permanent death forces those who do not value the story and value the character to start creating lower quality characters to reduce their loss from death.