I think an RPG would be more realistic if it included mood and emotion.
Obviously too much realism is undesireable, as the player focuses more
on nitpicked details and less on fun. Examples of bad realism are
cleaning weapons, wearing clothes (besides armor), sleeping, and a
realistic-sized world with corresponding travel times.
However, some realism is good. I think you should be required to eat
in a roguelike, and poison, bleeding, and other status conditions are
good. Some level of abstraction is required in a game, though; the
game would not be fun if every attack caused bleeding and every
sickness required a different cure.
Anyway, back to my point: I believe mood falls under the proper level
of realism. Gearhead is the only roguelike I know of that uses mood,
and it only affects the player's stats (maybe conversation as well).
In the best possible case, the player will feel whatever his character
does. For this to occur, the character's attributes must be important
and easily alterable.
In ADOM, one can have a pet, and Bards start out with one. What does
the game say when that pet gets killed? "You are horrified by the death
of your friend!" Ok, great. You've lost an extra 3 points of damage
each turn. Horrific. The player would feel much worse, and in turn
empathize with his character (remember, this is about role-playing) if
that death had a greater effect. If his character had improved stats
as a result of the pet's emotional attachment, or conversely had
decreased stats as a result of the loss, the player would feel more
frustrated at this event. If the pet represented a good deal of help
for the player character, or had some intrinsic value, the response
would be much more severe. Suppose this pet was surrounded by goblins
and killed. Since this implies serious gameplay problems for the
player in the future, he is likely to be frustrated or even angry, as
his character is. Maybe the player will find some relief in the
merciless slaughter of every goblin involved. The player character may
have difficulty interacting with peaceful goblins after the event too.
If the character cannot talk to goblins (in the interest of receiving
aid, bartering, or getting quests), the player will attribute that to
the goblin incident, and feel a similar frustration and/or regret at
the event.
The weather and/or environment should also have a substantial effect on
the player character. Imagine how you feel if you were trudging
through a blizzard and happened upon a warm inn with good food and good
company (there's no weather to speak of in roguelikes either, but
that's another matter). The inn needs to have a significant reward in
order to give the player a truly happy or relieved feeling. Maybe
wolves are easy enough to avoid in general, but the can attack
unexpectedly as a result of the reduced visibility caused by the
blizzard. The character would be safe from said wolves in the inn.
Maybe certain companions could be incapacitated by the cold, and are
revived once they are in the inn.
Quests should also change the character's mood. If rumors are
constantly circulating throughout the game of a "pure land" where only
the the most noble and honorable people can ever hope to see, much less
go to, then a late-game quest that allows access to this land will
provide a feeling of accomplishment for the player. Generally, the
more exlusive the area or reward, the greater the feelings will be from
attaining or losing it.
I realize I shifted from character emotion to player emotion. However,
I think player emotion is more important. Character emotion is just a
medium for the players to experience corresponding feelings. The
example in the last paragraph was derived from my experiences in "The
Secret of Mana" (SNES) and Runescape (PC). There really is a Pure Land
in "The Secret of Mana", and getting there means you are *very* close
to winning the game. It is always nice to have a tangible progress
indicator like that. In Runescape, there is a quest that gives you
kingship over a small, secluded island. The people there work for you
and give you resources. The island itself is accessable only to
members, and then only after you have completed several semi-difficult
quests. I remember ever since I started playing I wanted to go there,
and once I finally did, I experienced an incredible rush of
satisfaction and accomplishment. This is probably not normal; consult
your physician if you experience similar effects
.
Anyway, the point of this novel is that thought should be given to
different ways to immerse the character in the game. The problem with
several ideas is that it is complicated, and it could work too well.
You don't want the player destroying his computer or quitting because
of a seriously terrible game event. Conversely, you don't want to give
the person a "success high" too often or the effects will wear off.
This is the complicated part I mentioned. The player must be able to
recover from bad events, or the game will cease to be fun. The good
events and bad events must balance each other in possibility frequency
and amount. Finally, there needs to be very detailed and very deep
game content, or the moods and emotions the player and character
experience will become repetetive and lose their impact.
Anyway, those are just some ideas I thought I'd bring up. It's a
little too complicated to implement in my roguelike (though I think it
would be a great idea in a sequel), and also probably too complicated
to be used by a single independent developer. Nevertheless, it would
be great to see in any RPG in the future.
Gamer_2k4
--
Author, "Roguelike Mood"
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