RPGs: the scary parts
Mar. 21st, 2020 10:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethThe Adventure Path I'm reading, Rise of the Runelords, is very themed on the 7 deadly sins.
There's game mechanics in the back of the book for figuring out what a character's sins are across the course of the game. As far as I can tell, without telling them. So at a certain point they get to where it starts making game mechanical differences and get A Surprise.
But the more I think about it the less the pluses and minuses are what would bother me.
It's the fact that characters are going to get to this level, walk into somewhere dedicated to sin, and get told 'well now you feel at home'.
The rest of the team will not, in that wing, unless they're uniformly sinful.
So one of the team walks into, say, Gluttony, and gets told, this feels nice, you feel nice, you feel at home here.
And then they find out that in this instance Gluttony is the home of necromancy, and then it gets nasty.
... actually there is entirely too much of that particular sin in this adventure. I realise that monsters will, quite often, be trying to eat you, and if they're lion shaped or a really big plant that seems fair.
If they look like someone who was on your team a minute ago before someone animated them, it is Not Fair.
By the time they're up to the bit with the spirit of cold and hunger that drives people to cannibalism?
Worlds Of Nope.
I mean I've already states my opposition to anything that takes choice away from characters, but that is a particularly disturbing thing to be told your character will now do.
And Gluttony, I say as I go to get my daily cake, is a really easy one to just slide into.
The given examples aren't connected to every other characters expression of it though. ... primarily because PCs aren't going to be cannibals on purpose. ... probably. ... ugh.
You know the first time a goblin tried to eat a person, I got upset about it and spent time thinking how I would modify the level so the upsetting bit wasn't there any more. But then it became clear that Tryign To Eat You is an abiding theme. And goblin cannibals are like level one cannibals, trying to eat another species, albeit a thinking one. Undead are hungry for the dead, low level into problem. Mid level cannibals eat people and then use the remains for gruesome things. High level cannibals eat their friends. Then there's a being eaten alive problem. And by the last book the PCs are getting aimed at each other. You want to pull all those encounters, you remove most of the book.
But by the end I'm just kind of sigh staring and reading another tab for a bit.
Too much biting, still creepy, not so upsetting.
Is a problem of overusing it.
Gluttony in the sins rule though says if a pc gets drunk multiple times per session, that's gluttony. So the fight fight pub kind of PC is going to get a nasty surprise.
Walk into the gluttony section. Over here bread and wine, over there meat, and in the other corner, pointy teeth grinning argh argh make it stop.
I just feel that bundling all that as one sin is a bit odd. Seems like there's a hard nope somewhere between the wine and the... meat.
Though now I'm recalling my greek tragedy reading and, well, it is a classic.
So the sins theme gets uncomfortable, doing a compare and contrast that's heavy on the comparisons. And while I personally would like an Adventure with way less creep in it, it does provide an excellent feedback mechanism for making characters re evaluate their life choices. They could get heavy philosophical on this.
And if they've got any obnoxious habits, say a bard doing Roll To Seduce in that way that has no line between that and sexually harrassing the GM, then here is plentiful opportunity for feedback. Walk into the Lust section, be welcomed as one of them, get to see what that even means. Heavy use of enchantment magic and some really nasty ways of leeching on people.
It is weird where the game draws the line thiugh. Like, Greed, which is a big theme on this adventure. It is officially Not Greed to loot the bodies. A little light corpse looting is just how things work. As long as it is shared out properly it isn't even a sin. It's only sinful to loot the innocent victims. Sometimes. If there's anyone else to give their stuff to. Like if investigating a death turns up a secret stash of life savings, taking that is Greed. But not if the owner just tried to kill you. Then it's just loot.
... that is such an awkward line. It's like it took a look at the game mechanics and moved the ethics to match.
But then it does explicitly say that in this game there is no necessary correlation between Sin, as the game rules and ancient Thassilon understood it, and Evil.
Evil as an alignment somehow has nothing to do with Sin.
... this seems to be so even Paladins canuse the Sin magic to win the game, but it makes absolutely no sense.
I mean sure it means if you detect evil you wont see the sinful items or people unless they also happen to be evil
but
slight problem
guess what all the sinful people the pcs have met have in common?
So if a PC can get to the point sin magic becomes a possibility
and decide it is not evil?
They're basically being like
RIP to every other character we've ever met
but I'm Different.
... whilst using items that will push them further towards their dominant sin.
... they kind of have to be made to pay for that, or else what's the point of doing it?
So the scary part in these games is setting out thinking it's about stopping armies
and ending up finding out it's about personal corruption
and descent into depravity.
Kind of deep, kind of a lot of rp, kind of... not necessarily fun.
Though the characters aren't being pushed into it before a pretty high level, and if they can walk into that level virtuous, they actually can end up with virtuous weapons that push them towards virtue too.
But virtue is in the suggested rules all about what it costs? So like, Lust is a sin but Love is a virtue. Great! The difference is in how many gp you spend on your partners? What? I mean, okay, Calistria approves, but what? It gives a suggested price for romance as 1000gp per level. Which is... really odd.
And Zeal. Zeal is trying to get into more encounters per day without rest than the guidelines reckon you will. Sloth is trying to do less and take more rest to recover. You know which of those is more survivable? Not Zeal!
How is it a virtue to push to get the party killed?
... I may just be revealing my likely sins here. Sloth and Gluttony, given how much I like Goodberry and spells that make a foods.
I am not keen on the Sloth dungeon. It's a sewer because the dude hasn't moved in like millennia and it got gross. Also he is like gigantically fat, so fat he gets armour from it. ... Sloth is fat and Gluttony is skinny and hungry. Hrm.
Neither is appealing to be compared to.
I mean Pride died from looking in the mirror too much and getting lost in his own illusions, but ... that seems tidier?
... ooooor I have issues....
But the other thing is a character can have many virtues, but the sins section will only care if they have a dominant sin. One sin and that's what that section of the story is about for them. Big glaring light on their shortcomings.
So the adventure path provides a lot (a lot) of seeds for Story.
Which is great.
But it isn't a Story that would be unalloyed fun for me.
So now I'm pondering what would.
... bearing in mind it would still need built in conflict and temptation and points where they can make bad choices and so forth...
Tricky.
I am increasingly impressed with how much work an Adventure Path is
even while I'm also creeped out by more parts of this one.
Also, when it compares to the audio adventures, reading it is a whole other experience and playing it would be different again, because in audio you're listening to characters face a difficult challenge, but you know there's a next episode. Reading it you wonder how the PCs would get through it and how much roleplay it would take to deal with it all. And then playing it it would be you.
Well, your character.
But that's a whole lot more personal.
... it seems less fun.
And that's assuming that the GM doesn't want to kill you, and some of these encounters I just genuinely wonder if they would. Like, maximum yikes, you know?
So.
Really interesting comparing the different experiences. Like adaptation but it's not just a play or a book, it's way more flexible than that, and immersive.
Is cool.
There's game mechanics in the back of the book for figuring out what a character's sins are across the course of the game. As far as I can tell, without telling them. So at a certain point they get to where it starts making game mechanical differences and get A Surprise.
But the more I think about it the less the pluses and minuses are what would bother me.
It's the fact that characters are going to get to this level, walk into somewhere dedicated to sin, and get told 'well now you feel at home'.
The rest of the team will not, in that wing, unless they're uniformly sinful.
So one of the team walks into, say, Gluttony, and gets told, this feels nice, you feel nice, you feel at home here.
And then they find out that in this instance Gluttony is the home of necromancy, and then it gets nasty.
... actually there is entirely too much of that particular sin in this adventure. I realise that monsters will, quite often, be trying to eat you, and if they're lion shaped or a really big plant that seems fair.
If they look like someone who was on your team a minute ago before someone animated them, it is Not Fair.
By the time they're up to the bit with the spirit of cold and hunger that drives people to cannibalism?
Worlds Of Nope.
I mean I've already states my opposition to anything that takes choice away from characters, but that is a particularly disturbing thing to be told your character will now do.
And Gluttony, I say as I go to get my daily cake, is a really easy one to just slide into.
The given examples aren't connected to every other characters expression of it though. ... primarily because PCs aren't going to be cannibals on purpose. ... probably. ... ugh.
You know the first time a goblin tried to eat a person, I got upset about it and spent time thinking how I would modify the level so the upsetting bit wasn't there any more. But then it became clear that Tryign To Eat You is an abiding theme. And goblin cannibals are like level one cannibals, trying to eat another species, albeit a thinking one. Undead are hungry for the dead, low level into problem. Mid level cannibals eat people and then use the remains for gruesome things. High level cannibals eat their friends. Then there's a being eaten alive problem. And by the last book the PCs are getting aimed at each other. You want to pull all those encounters, you remove most of the book.
But by the end I'm just kind of sigh staring and reading another tab for a bit.
Too much biting, still creepy, not so upsetting.
Is a problem of overusing it.
Gluttony in the sins rule though says if a pc gets drunk multiple times per session, that's gluttony. So the fight fight pub kind of PC is going to get a nasty surprise.
Walk into the gluttony section. Over here bread and wine, over there meat, and in the other corner, pointy teeth grinning argh argh make it stop.
I just feel that bundling all that as one sin is a bit odd. Seems like there's a hard nope somewhere between the wine and the... meat.
Though now I'm recalling my greek tragedy reading and, well, it is a classic.
So the sins theme gets uncomfortable, doing a compare and contrast that's heavy on the comparisons. And while I personally would like an Adventure with way less creep in it, it does provide an excellent feedback mechanism for making characters re evaluate their life choices. They could get heavy philosophical on this.
And if they've got any obnoxious habits, say a bard doing Roll To Seduce in that way that has no line between that and sexually harrassing the GM, then here is plentiful opportunity for feedback. Walk into the Lust section, be welcomed as one of them, get to see what that even means. Heavy use of enchantment magic and some really nasty ways of leeching on people.
It is weird where the game draws the line thiugh. Like, Greed, which is a big theme on this adventure. It is officially Not Greed to loot the bodies. A little light corpse looting is just how things work. As long as it is shared out properly it isn't even a sin. It's only sinful to loot the innocent victims. Sometimes. If there's anyone else to give their stuff to. Like if investigating a death turns up a secret stash of life savings, taking that is Greed. But not if the owner just tried to kill you. Then it's just loot.
... that is such an awkward line. It's like it took a look at the game mechanics and moved the ethics to match.
But then it does explicitly say that in this game there is no necessary correlation between Sin, as the game rules and ancient Thassilon understood it, and Evil.
Evil as an alignment somehow has nothing to do with Sin.
... this seems to be so even Paladins canuse the Sin magic to win the game, but it makes absolutely no sense.
I mean sure it means if you detect evil you wont see the sinful items or people unless they also happen to be evil
but
slight problem
guess what all the sinful people the pcs have met have in common?
So if a PC can get to the point sin magic becomes a possibility
and decide it is not evil?
They're basically being like
RIP to every other character we've ever met
but I'm Different.
... whilst using items that will push them further towards their dominant sin.
... they kind of have to be made to pay for that, or else what's the point of doing it?
So the scary part in these games is setting out thinking it's about stopping armies
and ending up finding out it's about personal corruption
and descent into depravity.
Kind of deep, kind of a lot of rp, kind of... not necessarily fun.
Though the characters aren't being pushed into it before a pretty high level, and if they can walk into that level virtuous, they actually can end up with virtuous weapons that push them towards virtue too.
But virtue is in the suggested rules all about what it costs? So like, Lust is a sin but Love is a virtue. Great! The difference is in how many gp you spend on your partners? What? I mean, okay, Calistria approves, but what? It gives a suggested price for romance as 1000gp per level. Which is... really odd.
And Zeal. Zeal is trying to get into more encounters per day without rest than the guidelines reckon you will. Sloth is trying to do less and take more rest to recover. You know which of those is more survivable? Not Zeal!
How is it a virtue to push to get the party killed?
... I may just be revealing my likely sins here. Sloth and Gluttony, given how much I like Goodberry and spells that make a foods.
I am not keen on the Sloth dungeon. It's a sewer because the dude hasn't moved in like millennia and it got gross. Also he is like gigantically fat, so fat he gets armour from it. ... Sloth is fat and Gluttony is skinny and hungry. Hrm.
Neither is appealing to be compared to.
I mean Pride died from looking in the mirror too much and getting lost in his own illusions, but ... that seems tidier?
... ooooor I have issues....
But the other thing is a character can have many virtues, but the sins section will only care if they have a dominant sin. One sin and that's what that section of the story is about for them. Big glaring light on their shortcomings.
So the adventure path provides a lot (a lot) of seeds for Story.
Which is great.
But it isn't a Story that would be unalloyed fun for me.
So now I'm pondering what would.
... bearing in mind it would still need built in conflict and temptation and points where they can make bad choices and so forth...
Tricky.
I am increasingly impressed with how much work an Adventure Path is
even while I'm also creeped out by more parts of this one.
Also, when it compares to the audio adventures, reading it is a whole other experience and playing it would be different again, because in audio you're listening to characters face a difficult challenge, but you know there's a next episode. Reading it you wonder how the PCs would get through it and how much roleplay it would take to deal with it all. And then playing it it would be you.
Well, your character.
But that's a whole lot more personal.
... it seems less fun.
And that's assuming that the GM doesn't want to kill you, and some of these encounters I just genuinely wonder if they would. Like, maximum yikes, you know?
So.
Really interesting comparing the different experiences. Like adaptation but it's not just a play or a book, it's way more flexible than that, and immersive.
Is cool.