Yep, very true...Peregrine.

It''s like that w/ all media. It''s just the balance of universal appeal vs. more centralized audience. I perfer the latter, but you are right.


"All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be --Pink Floyd
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
Need help? Well, go FAQ yourself.

Dwarf: Yeah I totally agree with that. People dont have big coloured circles round their feet telling you what they are like, you have to talk to them and find out for yourself.

I like the alignment system, but I think that games can be done without alignments and done better. They really do serve a purpose, to define good or evil for the player, but if there is only grey (even the most pure person has a blemish) then the player is forced to make judgements. Don''t tell me that nobody makes judgements because I know damn well that they do. The thing that this goes with is teaching players to be socially responsible. You can use thier prejudices (yeah naz) to teach them to be more accepting. This comes into the realms of bettering society through subconcious education in games.

"Prejudice is Education too!"

-Chris Bennett of Dwarfsoft - Site:"The Philosophers'' Stone of Programming Alchemy" - IOL
The future of RPGs - Thanks to all the goblins over in our little Game Design Corner niche
          

Yeah, I would love to see lack of alignment in games. I appreciate it so much when movies & books dare to have throughly developed characters and let the audience judge for themselves.

Generalization is really a bad thing...except that those Austrailians really all do hang around the kangaroos & drink a bunch of beer and throw boomarangs all day long (j/k)


"All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be --Pink Floyd
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
Need help? Well, go FAQ yourself.

One reason I liked fight club and human traffic so much is because they are movies that dare to paint the picture of the unnacceptable in a heroic way. Destruction is not accepted, but you really feel like you are watching a hero in Fight Club, and drugs are not acceptable, but you experience the life of Ravers and you feel like they are the good guys.... That is one place that has yet to be traveled well in games. Portayal of bad as good

-Chris Bennett of Dwarfsoft - Site:"The Philosophers'' Stone of Programming Alchemy" - IOL
The future of RPGs - Thanks to all the goblins over in our little Game Design Corner niche
          

Yeah, exactly, dwarf. Same thing w/ American Beauty. The protagonist has many weaknesses and faults, but you still feel empathy for the main character. That really has not been explorered enough in games.


"All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be --Pink Floyd
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
Need help? Well, go FAQ yourself.

Dungeon Keeper is pretty much the only game that I can think of where you are the bad guy, but even then it is just an us vs. them .

The Usual Suspects comes to mind about seeing the story from the bad guys perspective. I hated that cop... And really liked Verbal... aka the Devil . The Jackal was another film that was from that perspective.. But it sucked.

-Chris Bennett of Dwarfsoft - Site:"The Philosophers'' Stone of Programming Alchemy" - IOL
The future of RPGs - Thanks to all the goblins over in our little Game Design Corner niche
          

oh yeah, I haven''t played Dungeon Keeper yet. Usual Suspects is another good example. Kevin Spacey just rules. Pulp Fiction is another. Never heard of Jackal though


"All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be --Pink Floyd
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
Need help? Well, go FAQ yourself.

RE: Alignments

It depends how you use them. Going back to P&P RPGs, apart from your own characters alignment, you do not see anyone elses. (or at least, you shouldnt) The DM doesnt go around saying "You see two chaotic neutral men standing in the middle of the road" - you have to find out what they are like by talking to them. The DM knows their alignment and he uses it as a guide to help him decide how they react to you. It helps the DM to design the NPC's in the game and it helps the players design their characters. Other than that, it has no bearing on the game whatsoever*.

There is no need to expose the player to an alignment system in the game, but from a design point of view it may prove helpful to use some such system in order to work out your characters and how they effect the plot.

*Exception: There are some spells that effect specific alignments, or reveal alignments. There are ways of dealing with these that doesnt necessarily require a clearly defined alignment.

Edited by - Sandman on November 12, 2000 6:22:07 PM

yeah, very vaild point, sandman.