There’s this depressing lack of nuance in RPG’s -- especially American ones I’ve played recently -- that troubles my conscience. It troubles it because I have no toleration for goody-two-shoes boyscouts who always do the right thing and never make mistakes, but at the same time I don’t consider myself particularly evil.

So naturally, when I play RPGs, I am an extremely evil character!


(Youtube video credited to user: DarkGem2)

Mass Effect and Fallout 3 are my primary suspects here (because they’re the only ones I’ve played in the past six months and have fresh perspective on). I feel that these two games rely on “liberal versus conservative” paradigms that can be very frustrating when you (or your character!) would like to break out of that kind of dichotomy. To be fair, there are usually “neutral” conversation items, but it isn’t enough -- all they are is a sort of benign intermediary... It’s kind of like if you went into a store and the clothes were all: XXL, XX Small... and XX Medium. In other words, being neutral in an RPG isn’t really possible anymore than wearing an extra-medium shirt is.

I don’t think the good-evil dichotomy works because that’s not how investigation works. And if you break it down, RPGs in many ways are “investigator simulators” where -- when you have to make a game-effecting decision -- you are called on to use investigatory discretion. Therefore, I think they should design games around choices of discretion!

At a glance, this doesn’t seem really relevant: you can be a good cop or a mean cop, right? Wrong! Choices should be based on realistic factors that lead to discretionary decisions: expediency, order maintenance, and a pressure to reach conclusions and get results as quickly as possible. On the other hand, respecting due process, people’s rights, and an attitude of “the ends don’t justify the means” should be another philosophy. Neither of these things are “good” or “evil”, mind you, just philosophically different.

Here’s just one idea I had to put this kind of thing into practice:

In Mass Effect, let’s say, I always notice that being a renegade instead of a paragon really doesn’t make much of a difference in the game. You have to go through a long-winded dialog tree, the only real difference is that the renegade character is a dick: he pulls out a gun and threatens instead of saying “calm down man, live and let live!” What if more missions were time-based, and getting through dialog can’t be skipped and counts towards the clock winding down, and getting through conversations quickly (by using forceful discretion) would get answers and objectives quicker, but result in negative consequences (bad information or red herrings for example, as happens in real life!)

What do you folks think? Is there room for improvement in the design philosophy of character direction in RPG’s? I guess I’ve just been in school too long and see the “good versus evil” thing to be a bit old fashioned, so maybe I’m just biased!