Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Vester]

Honestly, it'd be awesome if my adventurer gained fame and fortune with her own two hands, rather than having the game generate a scenario for me where that's assured.

[Neonivek]

Ah.   But Granite is right that a 'reality simulator' would be boring.   S'why DF is a fantasy world simulator.

True and in fantasy the planets align to make things happen.

You don't see Frodo spending his life at home.

[Vester]

You're not Frodo in this game, though.

You're a person with a sword, a shield, and some wandering tendencies. That's all.

It would certainly be odd if every adventurer you made was directly involved in some colossal battle between good and evil.

[Neonivek]

You're not Frodo in this game, though.

You're a person with a sword, a shield, and some wandering tendencies. That's all.

It would certainly be odd if every adventurer you made was directly involved in some colossal battle between good and evil.

Well that is why there is a story generator

Though you could be directly involved in a battle between good and evil... assuming you made all your characters that... and happened not to have destroyed all evil.

[Granite26]

Honestly, it'd be awesome if my adventurer gained fame and fortune with her own two hands, rather than having the game generate a scenario for me where that's assured.

The point is, there'll be all these things out there that you can get involved in.  That's true no matter what.  I agree 100% with you on the not creating a scenario for the player.  What I'm trying to get across is a lot more subtle. 

For example:  Earlier I said 'Mugging happens in front of you' or something similar.  I wasn't saying create a mugger to attack the player'.  Codewise it could be something as simple as saying 'a mugger who is looking for a target will be more likely to pick targets near the player.'  Not pick bad targets, or magically become a mugger, or worse yet, magically come into existence...

[Doodle]

For example:  Earlier I said 'Mugging happens in front of you' or something similar.  I wasn't saying create a mugger to attack the player'.  Codewise it could be something as simple as saying 'a mugger who is looking for a target will be more likely to pick targets near the player.'  Not pick bad targets, or magically become a mugger, or worse yet, magically come into existence...

And we're saying that is exactly what we don't want happening.  The premise of your point is that events will occur around the player character for no more reason than the player simply being the player.  The trigger for the event would be entirely dependent on the player being present, and if the player had been replaced by a NPC, the very fact that they weren't the player character would decide whether they were mugged or not.  I don't think the game was meant to be based around some entitlement given to the player characters: if someone is going to be mugged, it is going to be because they decided to walk around the bad part of town in robes and jewelry without guards. 
A huge portion of the army arc seemed to be eliminating this kind of event from the dwarf fortress mode by making it so that sieges and thieves would not just show up at the fortress because this was the fortress run by the player, but rather because those thieves and armies had actual motivation to specifically attack or rob that specific fortress. 

From my understanding, the game seemed to be originally built around a simulation of reality, in which the responsibility fell to the player to create their own experience, and their ability to do so was meant to fall upon their understanding and skill with the game.  If I wanted to be playing something where events just constantly fell into my lap, I could go and play just about any other RPG ever made, or mod the game out where I was some kind of voodoo dragon god with max skills and reputation, wandering about the countryside healing things with my right hand and making sexy time with my left. 

So I suppose that's another point to make. Just leave the original game experience as vanilla as possible, and wait for everyone else to start making voodoo dragons.

[Neonivek]

If I wanted to be playing something where events just constantly fell into my lap, I could go and play just about any other RPG ever made, or mod the game out where I was some kind of voodoo dragon god with max skills and reputation, wandering about the countryside healing things with my right hand and making sexy time with my left.

Things will fall into your lap though. If it didn't it would be a horrible game that doesn't recognise your character.

Imagine being the greatest Adventurer ever and STILL needing to go hunt people down just to know what to do next. HECK NO! Your the greatest adventurer ever, people come find you!

Heck Imagine your an ordinary person and NOTHING happened for your entire life and you die of age. Things will happen because things are bound to happen.

That is how Reality works without even getting into Fantasy.

In Fantasy however things work quite a bit differently and one of the BIGGEST Fudging Toady ever mention was the Story Generator for Adventurers.

You have a world where everyone has great potential and who are trying to manipulate the world around them to their whims.

Fudging needs to be more subtle but it needs to happen anyhow as some things that are part of an Adventurer's lifestyle is difficult to include in generation. Then you also need for the Generator to always include things that are interesting. THEN you finally need someone for the player to do after the thread has been realised (Yay Lategame Arc)

Finally certain things will happen by virtue of it being a first person perspective. That Mugging? Well sure it could have happened anywhere else and indeed it does. However you were just unlucky that day. It would be adjusted by the crime rate in the city/town/hamlet/thorp/village/hole. It isn't so much Fudging as the game could NEVER possibly control every single actor in the world all the time, so it instead uses statistics to cause events to happen as well as what the actors are coupled with.

So you kill the mugger, guess what his Wife is the head of the Fighter's Guild. Now they will try to kill you.

That is the case where the system fudges things so that events can happen. Since in reality the chances of seeing a mugging is high, but the chances of seeing a mugging naturally for gameplay is much lower due to limitations in the system. Basically it is Fudging to make the game more realistic!

Note: I cannot organise my thoughts... I build 100s of scenarios while getting this down.

Thus Fudging doesn't JUST ruin Simulation. In fact Fudging can be an excellent way to make it even more of a simulation when reality and software limitations contradict eachother.

[Footkerchief]

The task of simulating a DF-style game world basically requires that the simulation revolve around the player in a sense -- maximum depth of simulation is only achieved in a small bubble centered on the player character; everywhere else it's fudged to some extent.  It's weird to me to think of fudging as a goal in itself when the game will inevitably have tons of it anyway -- the goal worth talking about is to make that (inevitable) fudging as invisible as possible.

[Capntastic]

I'm still whirlingly confused that people assume that players want their adventurers to cater solely to the whims of townsfolk and peasants, rather than be the initiators of their own fates.

[Vester]

Yeah, I want to spend most of my time out in the wilds, hunting wolves, building myself a log cabin, maybe waylaying the occasional caravan.

If that becomes possible... SO COOL.

[Capntastic]

Ordering my mercenary hordes to storm the goblin tower, seeking the riches within.   Scaling the rocky slopes leading to the dragon's lair, then asking it questions of times long past, after bribing it with an exquisitely carved golden chalice looted from aforementioned tower.

When playing adventure mode, the fun is that the 'plot' for the player will be what the player does within the setting.   Not what the setting arbitrarily throws at them.

[Granite26]

Ordering my mercenary hordes to storm the goblin tower, seeking the riches within.   Scaling the rocky slopes leading to the dragon's lair, then asking it questions of times long past, after bribing it with an exquisitely carved golden chalice looted from aforementioned tower.

When playing adventure mode, the fun is that the 'plot' for the player will be what the player does within the setting.   Not what the setting arbitrarily throws at them.

Part of it would be the game an AI sensing some of that and being more likely to tell you about the dragon in the first place, or the local adventuresome types being more likely to spend time in the pub when you're in town.

[Vester]

Wouldn't the adventuresome types either be adventuring or hanging out in the pub in the first place, even without a special trigger?

[Capntastic]

Not to mention that the best events in the game happen because of underlying mechanics rather than special-trigger-events.

Like how whales beach themselves because of how tides work.

[Granite26]

Wouldn't the adventuresome types either be adventuring or hanging out in the pub in the first place, even without a special trigger?

Who spends all their time at the tavern?  They need day jobs, and saving money and stuff...