An alternative to randomness
David Fisher
in their games is because it can heighten the tension and give players a
sense of "risk taking". If they know there is a chance of failure, then
there is more anticipation, excitement, etc. in trying to jump across a pit,
overcome an enemy, disarm a bomb, and so on.
In reality though, this doesn't seem to work very well in IF. Players can
just undo the action and try again until they succeed; if you disable undo
to prevent this, it just gets annoying to the player. There is also a
problem if the player can't tell if an event was random; why should they try
something again if it failed last time ?
But the alternative to randomness - everything the player tries either
succeeds or fails - seems a bit boring. Where is the sense of risk and
danger, and the exhilaration of narrowly avoiding some deadly situation ?
While I was reading through some past game reviews, and I came across the
following comment about another area where the author wants to communicate a
sense of danger - time limits:
Babel demonstrates that you can have the emotional effect without using
classic IF limits. The power is slowly failing throughout the game, with
periodic warnings; but it does not actually fail during play. I felt hurried
by the warnings, and afraid I would run out of time, but it did not prevent
me from winning.
- Andrew Plotkin (1997 IF comp review)
Cool idea - psychological pressure !
Applying this to risky actions: instead of having a random chance of
success, the action always succeeds, but the descriptions express the danger
the PC was in (and possibly after effects as well, eg. the PC limps for a
while after landing on a hard surface).
For example:
The lumbering creature continues to pursue you down the passageway. Suddenly
a pit opens up before you ... you are not sure if you can make it across.
The pit contains nothing but blackness; there is no telling how deep it
might be.
> jump across pit
You leap with all your might, and desperately reach for a hand hold on the
other side. You gasp as you miss the lip of the pit by several feet, and
slam into the far wall. Your left hand grasps an old tree root, which
threatens to snap at any moment; your right hand finds nothing but the sheer
surface of the stone wall.
> climb up
Steadying yourself, you carefully search for another hand hold. The tree
root seems to be holding out. An uneven stone in the wall above you suggests
itself, and you pull yourself up slowly. Soon you manage to drag yourself
out of the pit and onto the other side.
Your body aches from the impact with the pit wall, and there are scratches
on your arms and legs from the rough stone.
There is no sign of the creature that was pursuing you.
> x me
You are feeling a bit battered and bruised. There are scratches on your arms
and legs from your encounter with the pit.
(... later in the game ...)
The passageway winds east, and then south again. As you turn the corner, you
are confronted with a large pit in the floor. It is about the same size as
the other one, and no doubt just as deep. You rub the bruises on your side
at the memory.
---
Any more thoughts on conveying a sense of genuine danger when PCs do risky
things in a game ?
(I guess the above example uses another technique as well - putting them in
a situation they already know to be dangerous, either from their own
previous experiences or from observation, eg. seeing an NPC failing to make
it across the pit first).
David Fisher
Dan Shiovitz
David Fisher <da...@hsa.com.au> wrote:
[..]
>But the alternative to randomness - everything the player tries either
>succeeds or fails - seems a bit boring. Where is the sense of risk and
>danger, and the exhilaration of narrowly avoiding some deadly situation ?
This is a pretty good analysis, and I agree that the writing has to
carry the brunt of the load of making the situation engaging, but I
wanted to point out that having guaranteed success/failure of
individual actions doesn't necessarily remove the risk and danger from
the thing as a whole -- just because you know that you'll attempt to
carry out what you intend, it doesn't mean you know enough to know
you're doing the right thing, or know everything about what the
consequences of what your actions will be. (In some sense, this turns
the puzzle from a die-roll into a maze. The maze is of course a
much-maligned puzzle type in IF, but the overall idea of a space where
you're attempting to get from one point to another, exploring and
stumbling in circles until you finally make the leap and find the
right way to cross the distance, is still quite useful and popular as
a model for IF puzzles.)
One good example of this is Lock & Key -- I definitely felt some worry
and thrill as I set things up and then watched the game work through
it, even through it was entirely deterministic based on my actions.
This is a pretty good handling of undo, too -- you have to set the
whole thing up and then execute, so you can't undo to try individual
bits specifically.
There is, incidentally, a decent thread on this subject from 1994 -- I
think it may have been one of the first r*if threads I participated
in. It's mostly about a puzzle that John Baker was working on for
John's Fire Witch, which I haven't played in some time, but I seem to
recall also has some good substitutes for randomness. Anyway, the
thread is at
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.int-fiction/browse_frm/thread/c80883ad26062704/611c5b700abaa4fd?tvc=1
>David Fisher
--
Dan Shiovitz :: d...@cs.wisc.edu :: http://www.drizzle.com/~dans
"He settled down to dictate a letter to the Consolidated Nailfile and
Eyebrow Tweezer Corporation of Scranton, Pa., which would make them
realize that life is stern and earnest and Nailfile and Eyebrow Tweezer
Corporations are not put in this world for pleasure alone." -PGW
ems...@mindspring.com
David Fisher wrote:
>
> Any more thoughts on conveying a sense of genuine danger when PCs do risky
> things in a game ?
I don't see why letting the PC fail sometimes need be a bad thing. Yes,
the player can undo; but from the story perspective the knowledge of
that death can still heighten the sense of risk.
I've come around to the idea that losing endings are still part of the
game, and can be written in a way that gives the player interesting
information or heightens the emotional engagement. Anchorhead has
several extremely effective losing endings, and even though I undid and
went on with the game, the knowledge of those events stuck with me --
giving me just the sense you describe, of a disaster narrowly avoided.
solar penguin
>
> In reality though, this doesn't seem to work very well in IF. Players
> can just undo the action and try again until they succeed; if you
> disable undo to prevent this, it just gets annoying to the player.
The obvious solution is to allow Undo but with penalities. Say, deduct
a point from the score the first time Undo is used. (If you're feeling
very evil, you could deduct points *every* time Undo is used, but that
might be going a bit too far.)
--
___ _ ___ _
/ __| ___ | | __ _ _ _ | _ \ ___ _ _ __ _ _ _ (_) _ _
\__ \/ _ \| |/ _` || '_| | _// -_)| ' \ / _` || || || || ' \
|___/\___/|_|\__,_||_| |_| \___||_||_|\__, | \_,_||_||_||_|
|___/
http://www.freewebs.com/solar_penguin/
** Tall bipeds don't have enough cash left for a tabloid newspaper.
** Please don't trouble me with a chemical.
solar penguin
>
> In reality though, this doesn't seem to work very well in IF. Players
> can just undo the action and try again until they succeed; if you
> disable undo to prevent this, it just gets annoying to the player.
The obvious solution is to allow Undo but with penalities. Say, deduct
Jessica Knoch
> David Fisher <da...@hsa.com.au> wrote:
>>
>> In reality though, this doesn't seem to work very well in IF. Players
>> can just undo the action and try again until they succeed; if you
>> disable undo to prevent this, it just gets annoying to the player.
>
> The obvious solution is to allow Undo but with penalities. Say,
> deduct a point from the score the first time Undo is used. (If
> you're feeling very evil, you could deduct points *every* time Undo
> is used, but that might be going a bit too far.)
I am a firm believer that if you must take up this tactic, of penalizing for
undo (or accessing hints), it is far better to *award* points for *not*
using it than to *deduct* points for using it. Paper Moon showed me the
light :).
I don't generally agree with penalizing for undo or hints, but if I don't
know it's happening, then it's hard to be outraged about it.
--
Jess K., pondering random events.
Daryl McCullough
>
>solar penguin wrote:
>> David Fisher <da...@hsa.com.au> wrote:
>>>
>>> In reality though, this doesn't seem to work very well in IF. Players
>>> can just undo the action and try again until they succeed; if you
>>> disable undo to prevent this, it just gets annoying to the player.
>>
>> The obvious solution is to allow Undo but with penalities. Say,
>> deduct a point from the score the first time Undo is used. (If
>> you're feeling very evil, you could deduct points *every* time Undo
>> is used, but that might be going a bit too far.)
(Jessica, sorry for replying through you to solar penguin, but
for some reason his post didn't show up on my newsreader.)
Now that you've brought up scoring...Whenever
I play IF, my goal is to get to a satisfactory ending
(and have fun along the way). I couldn't care less what
my score is. How do other feel about scoring?
--
Daryl McCullough
Ithaca, NY
David Fisher
news:1139471717.2...@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
>
> I don't see why letting the PC fail sometimes need be a bad thing. Yes,
> the player can undo; but from the story perspective the knowledge of
> that death can still heighten the sense of risk.
I guess if the PC dies, it's pretty convincing proof that the danger was
genuine :-)
> I've come around to the idea that losing endings are still part of the
> game, and can be written in a way that gives the player interesting
> information or heightens the emotional engagement.
I get everybody's posts mixed up with everybody else's, so I may be
completely wrong about this, but I would have thought your ideal was to be
able to go through a game with only the knowledge that the PC would have had
(without information from "past lives") ?
David Fisher
David Fisher
news:dsg2d...@drn.newsguy.com...
>
> Now that you've brought up scoring...Whenever
> I play IF, my goal is to get to a satisfactory ending
> (and have fun along the way). I couldn't care less what
> my score is. How do other feel about scoring?
A less than full score lets me know that there were things that I missed
which might be interesting to go back and take a look at (which wouldn't
work if points are subtracted for using undo or asking for hints) - the
author clearly had a particular path in mind which would lead to the full
score.
Gaining points along the way can be a useful hint that you are on the right
track, but getting a high score isn't important to me (except for the
reasons stated above).
David Fisher
ems...@mindspring.com
David Fisher wrote:
> <ems...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
> news:1139471717.2...@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
> >
> > I don't see why letting the PC fail sometimes need be a bad thing. Yes,
> > the player can undo; but from the story perspective the knowledge of
> > that death can still heighten the sense of risk.
>
> I guess if the PC dies, it's pretty convincing proof that the danger was
> genuine :-)
Right -- my point was just that being able to UNDO the death doesn't
change the fact that *within* the fiction there was a real risk of
failure.
> > I've come around to the idea that losing endings are still part of the
> > game, and can be written in a way that gives the player interesting
> > information or heightens the emotional engagement.
>
> I get everybody's posts mixed up with everybody else's, so I may be
> completely wrong about this, but I would have thought your ideal was to be
> able to go through a game with only the knowledge that the PC would have had
> (without information from "past lives") ?
I think Graham Nelson articulated that ideal in the Player's Bill of
Rights long before I wrote anything at all about IF design -- but
generally I agree. There are a few games specifically designed for
learning-by-death which actually work pretty well, which I would exempt
from this dictum.
Still: I didn't say that a player should *have* to learn about things
by death. What I said was that if he *does* die, the death can be
interesting, even useful. Like submitting your math homework, which the
textbook did give you enough information to solve, and getting back the
wrong answers corrected with extra comments: it's remedial training to
fill in what you didn't understand the first time.
And from a story-telling perspective, the deaths (or losing endings,
whatever happens there) are a great opportunity to let the player know
what the stakes are.
Mike Roberts
> Now that you've brought up scoring...Whenever
> I play IF, my goal is to get to a satisfactory ending
> (and have fun along the way). I couldn't care less what
> my score is. How do other feel about scoring?
That's pretty much the way I feel about it as well, but I'll add that I like
having a score counter anyway, as a measure of progress through the game;
sort of the analog of knowing what page you're on in a book.
On the other hand, I could imagine enjoying a game where the goal is to
maximize your score rather than merely finish. This would only work for me
in a game with a relatively short traversal where almost every choice tied
into score trade-offs; I mean, I'm never much interested in going back
through a game like Zork to find the five optional points I missed, but I
could see tinkering with a twenty-move game for a while trying to find the
optimal twenty moves.
--Mike
mjr underscore at hotmail dot com
Mike Roberts
> Still: I didn't say that a player should *have* to learn about things
> by death. What I said was that if he *does* die, the death can be
> interesting, even useful. Like submitting your math homework, which
> the textbook did give you enough information to solve, and getting
> back the wrong answers corrected with extra comments: it's remedial
> training to fill in what you didn't understand the first time.
>
> And from a story-telling perspective, the deaths (or losing endings,
> whatever happens there) are a great opportunity to let the player
> know what the stakes are.
That's an interesting way of looking at it. I've been kind of anti-death
for a long time, on the basis that deaths and other losing cul de sacs draw
too much attention to the game mechanics (in that they pretty much force a
RESTORE or UNDO), and to the PC-vs-player rift (in that you have to sort of
jump bodies and inhabit a new incarnation of the PC that exists on an
alternate timeline where the PC didn't die/lose).
But I suppose if you look at it as a sort of hypothetical, a glimpse of what
could have been... I wonder if a modified convention for PC death based on
that perspective could be made to work - something that doesn't offer up the
usual RESTORE/UNDO/QUIT prompt after the death scene, but points out that
this is what would have happened, and takes you back to a point before the
fatal move. Having said it now I'm not sure I'd actually like it; maybe
it's actually important at some level that the player gets to choose to
UNDO, even if it's all but certain that that's what they'll type anyway.
Jackdaw
"Mike Roberts" <mj...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:gBSGf.23397$Jd.2...@newssvr25.news.prodigy.net...
I have designed ( and am beginning to code) a game where events are entered
in a diary carried by that person. At the end of the game, these "events"
are taken by the police and judge and used as evidence for or against the
person. Which, as the game is set in the late 17thand early 18th century,
means the person may win or get hanged. It's a sort of points thing, but not
so's it shows.
Dicon
Valjean
the Savepoints thread, has anyone ever done anything where
not only you, but the NPC's "learn" as you retry (including
possibly after you die and restart) - so if there is an NPC
blocking you path and you get past him by throwing an axe
at him. You die in the next section and come back but the
NPC has learned to dodge axes ?
It would obviously require saving data on death and using
that when you restore - and there would have to be multiple
paths through the clever NPC's but would add another
dimension?
Val
ems...@mindspring.com
Mike Roberts wrote:
> I've been kind of anti-death
> for a long time, on the basis that deaths and other losing cul de sacs draw
> too much attention to the game mechanics (in that they pretty much force a
> RESTORE or UNDO), and to the PC-vs-player rift (in that you have to sort of
> jump bodies and inhabit a new incarnation of the PC that exists on an
> alternate timeline where the PC didn't die/lose).
I speak only for myself here, but I find this doesn't bother me at all,
especially if we're talking about a one-move UNDO as opposed to replays
of the entire game. At that point the death-turn fits itself into my
mental narrative as a might-have-been, even though it isn't
specifically presented that way.
I also sometimes feel -- though this varies from game to game -- that
it's more fun to let the player do something absurdly dangerous than it
is to tell him he's too smart/scared/repressed. There's an interesting
discussion on that phenomenon on Jason Dyer's blog, here:
http://bluerenga.blogspot.com/2005/02/fatalism.html
-- lots of comment spam at the end, but the first few are interesting,
as is the post itself.