Would the player care more about the relationships between NPCs if a given relationship opened new powers / possibilities? Normally, save for story, you have no real reason to care if the town merchant hates the governor or what have you. Imagine, however, that people's thoughts toward one another create an emotional web. This web, when tuned a certain way, would unlock the power to change the game world. Basic Concept: You and other special NPCs have a quantum AI growing inside of you. The (hidden story) reason you're being used by mysterious forces as a guinea pig is to gain control of a lost Cosmic Engine, which can be used to control reality (time & space) itself. The Cosmic Engine has hidden nodes scattered around the various worlds you travel to. People around the node can unlock it with their "emotional / psionic resonance". Nodes vary in number of people required to unlock them, with more people the more powerful the node. To create change, you'd want to influence leader NPCs, who in turn would control a faction or block of people. All the people would then take a certain action (war, peace, indifference, etc.), which would then unlock the node. Since it scales, you'd go from influencing a gang leader or town mayor to whispering in the ear of an emperor or president, with challenges to get access harder and harder (requiring you to level in wealth, power or prestige). Changing the Cosmic Engine would be the whole point of playing, btw, the way you get to the victory screen. Linking this with other ideas I've posted so far, you'd basically be world-building from an RPG character perspective over lifetimes, single-player or co-op, against bots who are your immortal rivals .

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Some Questions: Does the concept make sense? Can you imagine being motivated to alter particular nodes, given that they'd change the world at large? I'm assuming that your rivals would be busy working against you, based on their priorities.

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EDIT: btw, this is one part of another (related but different) idea, posted here.

You seem to be constantly fascinated by the idea of an RPG that takes place over the course of multiple lifetimes -- why? Why can't a nonlinear story with an ending or two satisfy your gaming needs?

I like the word "web" in this post. Unlike your other idea (psi idea 1 of 2), I'd like to see this implemented in front of the user; what I mean is that I'd like it if the players had some sort of menu via an abstract GUI, in-game 'console', or "personal relations counseling" (whatever) where they could check the status of relations, whether fuzzy or distinct. This would create a mini-goal for the players: to create relationships around the world.

Personally, I lean towards the abstract menu GUI, where, possibly, the player would be presented with a floating menu of spheres from the first person they meet, each sphere colored-keyed to represent a relationship. Upon further examination, these spheres might show completed dialogue trees (Q&A only, options omitted). The point being, though, that the user is completely aware that their actions can and will affect themselves, the gameworld, and the ending(s) they view -- and I'd envision this type of game having more endings than Star Ocean 2.

But that brings me to the potential problem with a system like this -- replayability is available, and should be expected (from both the players and the designers). For the uninitiated, Star Ocean 2 had a total of over 80 (short) endings; however, in Star Ocean 2, multiple endings could be obtained per-playthrough. That's a problem, in my opinion. If each of my options, each of my dialogue choices, affects the powers I get and the way I'm able to influence the world, the world damned-well better reflect every single choice I've made.

This could be the ultimate exercise in empowering players -- a big idea that I just recently thought seriously on after reading a short article about story design for games. Would you, Wav, be willing to invest a huge amount of time designing an ending for *every* situation? I don't think I would. But still, interesting idea, and interesting posts. Like all of your posts.

"Would the player care more about the relationships between NPCs if a given relationship opened new powers / possibilities?"

Depends on your protrait of relationship. You are turning a deep and emotional interaction into a shallow playground of manipulation and powers. It is just the basic model of a political conflict, where the battlefield is not military power but emotional power.

I find this implementation banal, demeaning, and immoral. Many people look down on games and animes due to their commonly shallow depiction of emotion. You are providing the exact justification for their dismissal:

"Imagine, however, that people's thoughts toward one another create an emotional web. This web, when tuned a certain way, would unlock the power to change the game world."

"You and other special NPCs have a quantum AI growing inside of you. The (hidden story) reason you're being used by mysterious forces as a guinea pig is to gain control of a lost Cosmic Engine, which can be used to control reality (time & space) itself. The Cosmic Engine has hidden nodes scattered around the various worlds you travel to. People around the node can unlock it with their "emotional / psionic resonance". Nodes vary in number of people required to unlock them, with more people the more powerful the node."

This implementation is shallow and redundant. Permeability and influence are basic properties of emotion that make this possible:

"To create change, you'd want to influence leader NPCs, who in turn would control a faction or block of people. All the people would then take a certain action (war, peace, indifference, etc.)"

Nothing wrong with adding nodes as data structure to maintain the emotions and perspectives of the factions. But implementing them literally in the game world with the explanation of quantum AI is as shallow and redundant as giving Mother Teresa the "staff of hope" to objectify and explain her influence.

This is a very interesting idea. To have the players character, instead of being the leader of the group, influence or control the leader indirectly. You could implement this into a gang warfare type of situation, where there are many different factions fighting for control of territory. The players character would be a seperate party from the factions themselves, but still play a key role in the dynamics of the gangwars.

You could set the player as a shadowy loner, or a spirit, moving from body to body as the game progressed. The players character could depend on level of control in the city or whatever setting you want.

Gaining control in the game would be dependent on who the player had influenced before, how much power he had obtained, things such as that. There could be diferent levels of control. for example, if the player were to approach a "gang" that he had never influenced or controlled before; the player would have to start off with influencing guards, to gain entrance into the Headquarters of the gang; then moving up to bigger targets. and at the second level of control, the guards recognize the player as one of their own, even though he isn't. This could be part of that web of control idea, where you have a seperate control level for each npc. You could also have on that gui of the web, shown in a different style than the normal flow of power web, the influence web.

As the player progresses through the levels of control on a faction, he would begin to obtain powers over the faction, such as commanding raids, or troop placement. Things that a normal leader would be able to do, but at the same time, the player would have to make sure that his relational ties with people were kept strong. This could create certain gameplay changes as the game progresses, where the influence that the player uses on a certain group begins to be easier to exert, and he can then choose to move another faction under his control.


This is just my thoughts on that idea. I like the concept, and it seems very do-able, and very fun for the gamers..

Im not getting how emotional faction is different from regular faction.

I suppose you are setting it up so that emotional faction is linked to the change in the overall game?

I think I would need to hear more about the purpose of the game change. Is it a change in genre? (eg. after the emotional build up the game changes from fantasy to sci-fi) Is it a change is combat methods? (e.g. the emotional change brings about a rage that means all of civilization has become a warrior race that has new skills and tactics) Is it a change in location?(e.g.they have finally moved to a higher plane of existence or perhaps merely changed planets)

That would help me understand the need for another type of faction.

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Original post by Boku San You seem to be constantly fascinated by the idea of an RPG that takes place over the course of multiple lifetimes -- why? Why can't a nonlinear story with an ending or two satisfy your gaming needs?

Maybe this idea is wearing out it's welcome? [grin]

I need this for a few reasons: If you die, you must be able to continue on with the game without having to save & restore, and I want an in-game mechanism for this; with traditional save & restore removed, the world gains more gravity and concreteness; it becomes possible to create true attachment and true loss, at the risk of true frustration (which should be less possible in an open-ended game because you can go elsewhere if you fail); and finally, you must be able to witness the rise and fall of civilizations over centuries, interacting at critical points (thuse hopefully merging the empire game with the RPG, which has been my goal all along).

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I like the word "web" in this post. Unlike your other idea (psi idea 1 of 2), I'd like to see this implemented in front of the user; what I mean is that I'd like it if the players had some sort of menu via an abstract GUI, in-game 'console', or "personal relations counseling" (whatever) where they could check the status of relations, whether fuzzy or distinct. This would create a mini-goal for the players: to create relationships around the world. Personally, I lean towards the abstract menu GUI, where, possibly, the player would be presented with a floating menu of spheres from the first person they meet, each sphere colored-keyed to represent a relationship. Upon further examination, these spheres might show completed dialogue trees (Q&A only, options omitted). The point being, though, that the user is completely aware that their actions can and will affect themselves, the gameworld, and the ending(s) they view -- and I'd envision this type of game having more endings than Star Ocean 2.

This sounds interesting, but I'm not sure I completely understand. You meet someone and the spheres eventually reveal the different people they have a relationship with?

If so, that could work. You could also make it more tangible, more in-game, with a special vision mode showing lines of force radiating from certain people and connecting other people. (Might be a bit hard to control and very ju-ju magick like, though)

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If each of my options, each of my dialogue choices, affects the powers I get and the way I'm able to influence the world, the world damned-well better reflect every single choice I've made. This could be the ultimate exercise in empowering players -- a big idea that I just recently thought seriously on after reading a short article about story design for games. Would you, Wav, be willing to invest a huge amount of time designing an ending for *every* situation? I don't think I would.

My problem is that I've only got enough resources to create a certain amount of specialized story dialog. Everything else is going to have to be generated dialog, relating to reporting of events, issuing of instructions, opinions on events, etc. Unless it arises from how the NPC interaction system works (that is, various forms of attacking or defending a person/concept/faction verbally or other, more subtle "actions") I can't see covering every single possibility.

What I can see is creating a network of NPCs programmatically, seeding them with a number of values which can be changed via conversation choices you make, and then letting a system of relationship mitigation between you and the NPCs create a certain result. Conversation then becomes a little like combat, where you don't need to script every outcome, and some choices cancel each other out.

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But still, interesting idea, and interesting posts. Like all of your posts.

Haha! Thanks!

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Original post by Estok Depends on your protrait of relationship. You are turning a deep and emotional interaction into a shallow playground of manipulation and powers. It is just the basic model of a political conflict, where the battlefield is not military power but emotional power.

It sounds like you're objecting on the grounds of versimilitude, that people do not relate in this fashion. However, consider the notion of "moral accounting," proposed by Professor George Lakoff, who, in his book Moral Politics, proposes that we all keep a register of deeds done to and for us, and that we do for others. If I help you, you are said to "owe me one." If you break the law, you are said to owe a debt to society. Lakoff proposes that we quantify our interactions with people all the time.

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I find this implementation banal, demeaning, and immoral.

Well, now. I didn't think I'd acheive that until I put in the S&M Dwarves. O_o

Seriously, don't you think you're being a tad melodramatic? Theoretically speaking, if any game were to simulate emotion in characters in a way that closely approximated human emotion, it would need to quantify relationships numerically. The emotional interactions between NPCs and the player would, in order to adher to heuristics, by necessity need to be mechanistic-- distilled down to numbers and a system that the player could learn.

The alternative would be a deterministic story, where the NPCs react based on fixed scripts. Still mechanistic.

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Many people look down on games and animes due to their commonly shallow depiction of emotion. You are providing the exact justification for their dismissal:

Side conversation, but people who dismiss games do so because they're ignorant of or unmoved by the medium, not because of anything to do with emotion. Like science fiction, some forms of media will never be acknowledged as having value by certain snobs.

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Nothing wrong with adding nodes as data structure to maintain the emotions and perspectives of the factions. But implementing them literally in the game world with the explanation of quantum AI is as shallow and redundant as giving Mother Teresa the "staff of hope" to objectify and explain her influence.

So your main concern is objectification? That, by exposing interactions between people as a concrete system, players will game the system?

If so, let me first frame the perspective here: If you're thinking this idea aspires to literary pretensions, I unfortunately can't help you here. You're dealing with a universe where characters are immortals woven into the fabric of space-time and big giant alien monsters eat minds. Sure, there's a certain level of serious treatment, but Keats I ain't.

There is a school of thought that says that as soon as you provide quantifiable values to relationships you destroy some sort of magic inherent in them. I don't think this is true. Just as we can still feel adrenaline or fear from a red bar denoting hit points, I think there may be a chance to make players contemplate and react to emotions even if they can see them conceptualized into a system.

Of course, I could be wrong.

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Original post by Vanquish Im not getting how emotional faction is different from regular faction.

The factions aren't supposed to be broken up between emotional and regular. Rather, the "science" of the game universe posits that psionics are a byproduct of thought and embue environments with energy. Certain types of life relate to this: psibionts (which are symbionts I posted about some time ago) and Siegers, the main life draining heavies in the game, are two examples.

This outpouring of energy increases the more people there are in an environment, and changes in tone given the thoughts of the people. So two groups engaged in a bloody civil war emit different psionic memes than two groups living in splendor near each other.

The key difference here is who lives near these nodes, which I'm imagining are structures constructed from space-time and powered by ambient psionic energy. If a faction moved or died out, the node would be locked until another faction moved in; and it would also be locked until the faction reached the correct psionic output.

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(e.g. the emotional change brings about a rage that means all of civilization has become a warrior race that has new skills and tactics)

This is closer to the goal I have in mind. You're worldbuilding from a character's perspective. You'll be entering a lot of different cultures and societies.

On one level, you won't give a care about what the society is made of or what they do. If they own slaves, sacrifice their weakest children, or slaughter each other in civil war, that only has the most abstract meaning to you. You'll care about it from a story perspective if you're into the story, or a roleplaying perspective if you're playing some evil or do-gooder character.

What I'd like is for you to care about some societies from a gameplay perspective as a character, not as a god/emperor as you would in an empire building game.

Well my first thought when reading this topic was that it reminded me of an old PS1 game called thousand arms, which had the player gain magic powers not by killing monsters or gaining levels but by going on succesful dates with various women you met. The game itself wasn't very good and very poorly implemented but it was an defenitly a novel way to gain abilities.

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if any game were to simulate emotion in characters in a way that closely approximated human emotion,

Would you end up with game where everyone was like marvin the robot from hitch hikers guide then?


I think the real question though is one of cause and effect. How do alter an node what effect does that have in game terms? If I encounter a violent exteremist faction with little in the way of resources but has devoted to the destroying the Omni Corporation which is another faction and I give them a few creates of high explosive and firearms what effect does that have on the game? Do they start bombing Omni Corp facilities and attacking their assets? If so can I use the trouble the violoent faction is causing Omni Corp to my own benefit? Could I infact orchestrate the entire incident in order to gain power over the Omni Corp president who is now in need of my help?

Re: Verisimilitude

My argument was not based on verisimilitude. There had been several threads about the protrait of emotion. Your protrait of emotion is a regression. It has nothing to do with modeling emotional interactions as transactions. But the foundation of such transaction in your design is shallow. By implementing the cosmic engine, you are imposing a fictitious goal to an interaction with deeper meaning. You squashed the 3D topic into 1D. Think about this design:

In the feudual world, the player plays a diplomat from a small land, negotiating with the other feudal lords. In this game you will encounter various political, military, and emotional reasons behind the actions of the feudal lords, and use the information you gather to influence the future of the land.

The goals are clear. The depth is defined and realistic. An addition of cosmic engine is redundant and makes the overall design shallower.

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Theoretically speaking, if any game were to simulate emotion in characters in a way that closely approximated human emotion, it would need to quantify relationships numerically. The emotional interactions between NPCs and the player would, in order to adher to heuristics, by necessity need to be mechanistic-- distilled down to numbers and a system that the player could learn.

This is not what I am arguing about. I was not attacking the internal representation of emotion. I was not attacking the data structures. I am attacking the fact that 'Nodes' and 'Cosmic Engine' are literally in the story. My arguement was not about the mechanical implementation, but the literal presentation.

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Quote: Many people look down on games and animes due to their commonly shallow depiction of emotion. You are providing the exact justification for their dismissal: Side conversation, but people who dismiss games do so because they're ignorant of or unmoved by the medium, not because of anything to do with emotion. Like science fiction, some forms of media will never be acknowledged as having value by certain snobs.

This is unjust. The work you are aiming at is objectively childish. 1) You added unnecessary motivations for the situations; and, 2) you presented an understanding of emotion that is worse than the norm in other media. Your overall presentation of emotion, as a topic, is as disappoint as encountering the 'aliens did it' endings to otherwise good detective stories.

Why would you flush the depth of the topic away, by imposing such shallow explanation?

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So your main concern is objectification? That, by exposing interactions between people as a concrete system, players will game the system? If so, let me first frame the perspective here: If you're thinking this idea aspires to literary pretensions, I unfortunately can't help you here. You're dealing with a universe where characters are immortals woven into the fabric of space-time and big giant alien monsters eat minds. Sure, there's a certain level of serious treatment, but Keats I ain't.

First sentence, No. The rest, Yes. This is the exact reason I was referring to. I am attacking your objectification of the meaning and understanding of emotion, not the numerical representation.

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There is a school of thought that says that as soon as you provide quantifiable values to relationships you destroy some sort of magic inherent in them.

Again, I am not talking about this. I am not talking about the representation. But the shallow understanding of emotion and its power, as you introduce the concept of the cosmic engine and the villain behind. You turned the topic into a parody. Nothing wrong with making a parody. But it goes very wrong if the designer doesn't know that.


Compare these designs:

1) You play a college student living with 3 roommates. As graduation is approaching, you reflect on your years in college and on the tarnished friendship.

2) You play a college student living with 3 roommates. As graduation is approaching, you reflect on your years in college and on the tarnished friendship. Where you will discover that a villain has been working through the cosmic engine to destroy your relationship. You must affect the emotions of your roommates to shift the balance.

My argument has nothing to do with the representation of emotion. You distracted and trashed the meaning of the story.