So last post was a long-winded definition of a concept that i think anyone who's played a game before is naturally familiar with. Find and Choose, random and determined, order and chaos, however you want to describe it, there it is. I also mentioned that Choose is the 800lb gorilla menacing my thoughts whenever playing, designing, or philosophizing about games. This post, i'm going to turn the gorilla outwards and let him menace you. I've made peace with him, hopefully you can, too.
I'd like to kick this off with a discussion of games i think have done Choose really well. Also, i'm going to try to avoid obvious things like leveling mechanics and crafting. I'll try to avoid these guys, but, to be honest, they're a big part of the Choose mechanic. I'll start at EVE Online. It's the biggest Choose game built to date. EVE's current marketing campaign is "EVE Is Real". To a certain extent, they aren't lying. EVE allows you unrestricted activity within the game world. You can choose to be a miner who just chills and rakes in the cash. You can choose to attack miners and grab their stuff. You can troll people and provoke them to attack you when the odds are HEAVILY stacked against them, perhaps even provoking them to get the police to slay them. You can lure someone into a dark alley and beat the crap out of them and take their shoes!
EVE uses Choose in many ways, but the biggest, i feel, is in its lack of invisible walls. If you con someone into giving you a billion ISK... you just made a billion ISK. However, if someone gets a contract to reduce you to a slowly expanding gaseous cloud, congratulations on your lack of density. I say invisible walls but what i mean is artificial consequences. What you're choosing between aren't a list of actions, they are a list of potential consequences. EVE is real because the consequences for your decisions are as real as the other players in the game. There is no GM to come in, slap a con artist's hand, give you your money back and say, "Bad man, leave Good Player alone." Here, Choose is the defining property of the world, and the game mechanics are merely Choose's playing field.
Now, let's step back to something wildly far away from EVE's social experiment (unrestricted capacity with 13km space wrecking balls). How far away? 1997. 1997? More like Final Fantasy VII! Oh snap! Because many Japanese RPGs pull you through the story like you were water skiing, you might be thinking "JRPG and Choose? Certainly not!" And you're right! To a certain extent. The mechanic in FF7 that i find truly resonates best with Choose is obvious, as it's about the only meaningful thing you CAN choose in that game. Materia! If you don't know what i mean, i'll be quick about it. Materia are basically spells and abilities that you socket into gear in order to use and level them up.
I know, FF7 is not the first game to use such a concept (it's not even the first FF game to do so). However, i pick it because i know the game so damn well. Also, the number of materia you were able to socket (as much as 16, depending upon your gear), provided for better customization than the Job system, sphere grid or any of their other systems. For example! I took Cloud (called him Jack, didn't realize how funny that was until my second playthrough) and had him built like a Melee Bruiser from the beginning. A Cure materia added, and now i have a Bruiser who can heal (d20 Cleric?). Feel like changing it up? Swap his materia with some in inventory; now he's a full mage.
Weirder? I made a version that included every Counter and Counterattack materia i had. Sure, he was mediocre on his turn, but he returned each attack tenfold. Why have Choose limited by something as arbitrary as a class when you can equip and level up as many as 16 unique abilities?
And there lies what i've been getting at this whole time. Classes in a game such as this serve as the same imaginary walls on your character progression. "Imaginary" might be a bit strong. Ask a power lifter to start training his fast-twitch muscles for sprinting, and see how much he has to change in order to get good at that. I'm not saying it's impossible, just that some training makes other training more difficult. Training limits and walls are very real. However, in a game, i'm less inclined to care. If i want to pretend my character can run a marathon while defending his thesis on potential applications of String Theory, so be it! I want to socket Advanced Theoretical Physics and Level IV Endurance at the same time!
My theory is that it is better to Choose. In fact, properly designed choices can even have a similar effect of Find. In working on my own table-top RPG, i learned a lot by the strange combinations of abilities that some of my players chose. However they picked those options, not their dice. I understand that picking a class and having that instant visualization and expectation of how that avatar will play is far easier than looking at a list of capacities and choosing. Imagine a list of every d20 feat and class ability and trying to choose from that. I tried to make people do that once.
So, you know now what i mean when i say Choose, but what about my games? How does Choose factor into them? Anything more than leveling mechanics?
Actually, i guess i've blathered enough here... Stay tuned! Rather, check back. Or follow, i'll post more updates soon!
-lostinthesauce
I'd like to kick this off with a discussion of games i think have done Choose really well. Also, i'm going to try to avoid obvious things like leveling mechanics and crafting. I'll try to avoid these guys, but, to be honest, they're a big part of the Choose mechanic. I'll start at EVE Online. It's the biggest Choose game built to date. EVE's current marketing campaign is "EVE Is Real". To a certain extent, they aren't lying. EVE allows you unrestricted activity within the game world. You can choose to be a miner who just chills and rakes in the cash. You can choose to attack miners and grab their stuff. You can troll people and provoke them to attack you when the odds are HEAVILY stacked against them, perhaps even provoking them to get the police to slay them. You can lure someone into a dark alley and beat the crap out of them and take their shoes!
EVE uses Choose in many ways, but the biggest, i feel, is in its lack of invisible walls. If you con someone into giving you a billion ISK... you just made a billion ISK. However, if someone gets a contract to reduce you to a slowly expanding gaseous cloud, congratulations on your lack of density. I say invisible walls but what i mean is artificial consequences. What you're choosing between aren't a list of actions, they are a list of potential consequences. EVE is real because the consequences for your decisions are as real as the other players in the game. There is no GM to come in, slap a con artist's hand, give you your money back and say, "Bad man, leave Good Player alone." Here, Choose is the defining property of the world, and the game mechanics are merely Choose's playing field.
Now, let's step back to something wildly far away from EVE's social experiment (unrestricted capacity with 13km space wrecking balls). How far away? 1997. 1997? More like Final Fantasy VII! Oh snap! Because many Japanese RPGs pull you through the story like you were water skiing, you might be thinking "JRPG and Choose? Certainly not!" And you're right! To a certain extent. The mechanic in FF7 that i find truly resonates best with Choose is obvious, as it's about the only meaningful thing you CAN choose in that game. Materia! If you don't know what i mean, i'll be quick about it. Materia are basically spells and abilities that you socket into gear in order to use and level them up.
I know, FF7 is not the first game to use such a concept (it's not even the first FF game to do so). However, i pick it because i know the game so damn well. Also, the number of materia you were able to socket (as much as 16, depending upon your gear), provided for better customization than the Job system, sphere grid or any of their other systems. For example! I took Cloud (called him Jack, didn't realize how funny that was until my second playthrough) and had him built like a Melee Bruiser from the beginning. A Cure materia added, and now i have a Bruiser who can heal (d20 Cleric?). Feel like changing it up? Swap his materia with some in inventory; now he's a full mage.
Weirder? I made a version that included every Counter and Counterattack materia i had. Sure, he was mediocre on his turn, but he returned each attack tenfold. Why have Choose limited by something as arbitrary as a class when you can equip and level up as many as 16 unique abilities?
And there lies what i've been getting at this whole time. Classes in a game such as this serve as the same imaginary walls on your character progression. "Imaginary" might be a bit strong. Ask a power lifter to start training his fast-twitch muscles for sprinting, and see how much he has to change in order to get good at that. I'm not saying it's impossible, just that some training makes other training more difficult. Training limits and walls are very real. However, in a game, i'm less inclined to care. If i want to pretend my character can run a marathon while defending his thesis on potential applications of String Theory, so be it! I want to socket Advanced Theoretical Physics and Level IV Endurance at the same time!
My theory is that it is better to Choose. In fact, properly designed choices can even have a similar effect of Find. In working on my own table-top RPG, i learned a lot by the strange combinations of abilities that some of my players chose. However they picked those options, not their dice. I understand that picking a class and having that instant visualization and expectation of how that avatar will play is far easier than looking at a list of capacities and choosing. Imagine a list of every d20 feat and class ability and trying to choose from that. I tried to make people do that once.
So, you know now what i mean when i say Choose, but what about my games? How does Choose factor into them? Anything more than leveling mechanics?
Actually, i guess i've blathered enough here... Stay tuned! Rather, check back. Or follow, i'll post more updates soon!
-lostinthesauce
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