Only i prefer local conflicts over "saving the world"?
SorcererV1ct0r
Member Posts: 2,176
in Off-Topic
IMO is far more relatable and interesting.
For example, on Icewind Dale, the story is not about you trying to save the world. Is just a small frozen region of Faerus which always had very decentralized small cities/tribal societies and a evil tyrant wanna "unify" the region. Instead of "good vs evil", you have "chaos vs law". Other example is Baldur's Gate 1, you start the game investigating material shortages and local conspiracies.
Most earlier 90s games also had a focus on local conflicts. Dark Sun Shattered Lands has you dealing with one of the city states of a dying planet and the surrounding villagers. Ravenloft with a part of Barovia that got "infused" with the shadowfell. Eye of The Beholder, with a mysterious evil temple(Darkmoon).
Don't get me wrong, defeat Alduin is fun, but not as the civil war on skyrim. People debate till this day which faction is the right one. Fallout New Vegas is another amazing example, you have the options of siding with raiders slavers, with a corrupt democracy or with a businessman and his "private city", or none, all choices only changes the local desert. Not the world.
Anyone else has the same preference? Prefer more local focused story than world saving stories?
For example, on Icewind Dale, the story is not about you trying to save the world. Is just a small frozen region of Faerus which always had very decentralized small cities/tribal societies and a evil tyrant wanna "unify" the region. Instead of "good vs evil", you have "chaos vs law". Other example is Baldur's Gate 1, you start the game investigating material shortages and local conspiracies.
Most earlier 90s games also had a focus on local conflicts. Dark Sun Shattered Lands has you dealing with one of the city states of a dying planet and the surrounding villagers. Ravenloft with a part of Barovia that got "infused" with the shadowfell. Eye of The Beholder, with a mysterious evil temple(Darkmoon).
Don't get me wrong, defeat Alduin is fun, but not as the civil war on skyrim. People debate till this day which faction is the right one. Fallout New Vegas is another amazing example, you have the options of siding with raiders slavers, with a corrupt democracy or with a businessman and his "private city", or none, all choices only changes the local desert. Not the world.
Anyone else has the same preference? Prefer more local focused story than world saving stories?
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Siding with NCR, Legion, Mr House or non actually affects only the local desert. At least in short therm. Mr House for eg doesn't even wanna expand his "private city". He has long therm plans to colonize the space but that is it. The world continues a post nuclear apocalypse and you can only change if a small part of a desert will gonna be owned by a businessman, a corrupt democracy, raiders or independent until someone takes it.
Inquisitoin is trash in every aspect. Even DA:2 is better. At least the story of DA:2 is Mages VS Templars and a lot of local conflicts. I honestly think that Dragon Age(even Origins) is overrated.
That meme explains the BioWare (de)volution.
I'd think it'd have a longer stretching impact that any faction that wins is going to keep expanding while the others look to other directions or turn inwards. Too bad they went to the East Coast for the next games so we can't know what happens there.
My current D&D game campaigns have features a kingdom in a civil war and a murder mystery in a city. The character's are currently at level 10.
One game that seems extremely promising is Cyberpunk. The gang conflict and the politics and everything seems to be restricted to the night city...
Outerworlds was a mess, it was like somebody trying to make a bad knock off of an obsidian game. Stiff models, really only 2 enemies in the entire game, whole planets that were nothing more than 2 streets, every planet's the same, the planet's that were larger were just full of empty buildings, no environmental story telling (even fallout 4 did great in that regard), companions were boring. I got about halfway through before disappointment just made me walk away. I was disappointed by Fallout 4, but nowhere to the degree Outer Worlds left me. I have to wonder how much Avellone was responsible for Obsidian's great writing while he was there. I'd like to blame Microsoft, but they were bought so far into the game's development they wouldn't have had much impact. And this is coming from someone who has a "Seattle Sucks Now" sticker with the Amazon logo on their laptop. I thought I'd dig the anticorporate vibe, but it was just in your face evil. If they'd had more subtly insidious corporations, like facebook or amazon, it would have been much more interesting.
Maybe one of the things that's so great and epic about BG is that it is so personal. What kind of person is your Charname? "He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you."
Was thinking the exact same thing. I suppose you can definitely put ToB as having a bit of an epic save-the-world plot, but the rest of the series isn't. The first game especially so.
Personally, I am fond of how Stygian does things: the battle to "save the world" is already lost from the very start. Instead the player has to survive hostile dimensions, travels through dreams and even space-time itself just trying to save his own skin.
The story does a good job of leaving much of this in the background (until ToB at least):
You basically save the world in all three scenarios, but it never really feels like it since the story is laser-focused on the personal journey of CHARNAME:
While the story is focused on you and what type of Bhaalspawn you want to be, by stopping the antagonist of each game, you at least inadvertently "save the world". The only time where this isn't really applicable is in ToB where you finally have the option to ascend and possibly become a deity of evil and destruction yourself. There's nothing wrong with that, it's just the natural progression of CHARNAME's journey, but it's also why ToB is my least favourite. It's the only time in the series where it undoubtedly feels like you're a "Chosen One" (deservedly to be sure, but still not something I generally enjoy).
I think one of the main things that many game stories skimp out on is a good villain or antagonist. Defeating a nameless Big Bad who threatens the world is usually a lot less compelling than defeating the guy who murdered your foster father or the guy who tortured you and stole your soul. Often, the more human the conflict, the better.
(which is not to say other stories can't be compelling, of course)
Yep; but it affects sword coast, not the whole world, nor the material plane.
People tend to reduce Faerun to Sword Coast...
AS for ToB, IMO you are not "the chosen one" even in ToB, you are ONE OF THE "chosen ones"
If Sarevok or Irenicus were to succeed, they surely would affect more than just the material plane. Their plans were extremely grand in scope. And you are *the* Chosen One according to Solar:
Now, this might differ depending on how you play, I don't know. But she made it clear on my last playthrough that I definitely was foretold.
EDIT: Though I suppose this could all just be flair and that the moral of the story still is that the player get to choose their own destiny in spite of any prophecy. And according to this reading, being the "Chosen One" doesn't really matter, which is a nice sentiment.
A small scale campaign in a larger world allows players to get a feel for the places and people there, while allowing for encounters with travelers from foreign lands. As the game region becomes safer (we're still the heroes in my world), new travel and trade brings new opportunities for adventure.
I love more mid to high level gameplay.
Low level is mostly autoattack and most enemies and PC's doesn't have cool and unique abilities. But for a high level play, you should't be dealing with bandits on sword coast. You should have for eg, invading the 8th layer of the hell to rescue someone, trying to stop a war between Marids and Efreets, with a spelljammer ship dealing with aberrations from Far Realm and so on.
One campaign that i would love to play would be a campaign on Netheril : Empire of Magic for 2e D&D. Is basically a campaign BEFORE the Gods putted restriction on magic usage, with floating cities and castles controlled by archwizards capable of casting tier 10 and 11 magic and craft complex magical items to hold the cty.
Basically, Netheril is a elitist magocracy divided between low Netheril in the ground and high Netheril in the floating cities controlled by a Archwizard who has all autonomy in the world to rule over his city. PC's would start at lv 5 soldiers to fight one of many wars, if they survive and become powerful, they would get access to the high Netheril and MAYBE some PC's can even become a Archmage. Despite the crazy high magical setting, most of the game would be restricted to regional conflicts.
Well, not really. See, it would be hard for everybody to agree on who's Lawful and who's Chaotic between an innovative, disruptive tyrant who wants to impose centralized rule but has no claim to legitimate authority, no claim to rule the lands and the people other than that he wants to.
Descriptions in D&D materials tend to lend themselves to the impression that being Lawful is all about structure and centralization and civilization, but that's not really so simple from a philosophical POV.
Plus, once you start a war and people start dying and have their property destroyed or taken away, it's hardly not evil. One can certainly imagine a ruler starting an unjust war without an alignment shift to Evil, but aggression — landgrabs, beating people, maiming them, taking their stuff, generally hurting them — is pretty much evil, though perhaps for not so clearly cut evil reason. But acceptance of certain means to even noble ends also tells a thing or two about a person's alignment.
By convention things such as theft tend to be regarded as Chaotic rather than Evil among roleplayers, but, for example, in moral philosophy theft may very well be regarded as an evil act — the focus would be not on the offence against the legal rule establishing the property system and protection thereof but on the harm done to another by taking his or her stuff away. Or even taking forcibly something that you don't deserve.
Conquest, however, is something else. Which is not necessarily to say it's completely immune to subjective perspectives — for example whoever is seen as a tyrant by some may be seen as the legitimate heir to some sort of ancient high kings now wanting to restore prosperity by unity under the rule of law. But the violent means hardly escape moral review on the Good-Evil axis.
But yes, I like local stuff too. Localized conflicts. Smaller scale. Less being the world's top hero and saviour despite dozens of NPCs with higher levels running around.
Let's say I like games in which the player's character is not some sort of child of destiny, not saving the world but solving local problems. Or even just thinly veiled levellling up and farming gold by the usual guarding of caravans and slaying of orcs plus an assortment of fetch quests and moving up in a guild. This is also the reason why I don't think hack'n'slash is necessarily opposed to roleplaying — at least if you aren't too blatantly levelling up your talking & singing skills by killing monsters with steel. Or vice versa. What roleplaying is there in gaining 3 fighter levels and with them +3 AB and Knockdown or Cleave by just simply carrying letters around, not even through a battlefield, or talking and selecting lines that coincide with your alignment?
Bottom-line: I like a good low-level gold-and-glory style romp without too much pretence or some smaller-scale knightly stuff, why not. But I also like epic stuff like BG2. It's a great thing we have both and can alternate depending on what we want to play at a time.
Edit: One of the projects on my to-do list is to make a relatively conventional paladin character and go from level 1 to epic by playing modules such as PnP adventure conversions. Two-three levels at a time, rarely combined into anything of epic proportions.
BG however I don't see as a chosen one story at all. The chosen one trope in my view does not simply consist of being born with special powers, a special heritage etc. - hardly anyone wants to play a random Joe in an RPG, if only because he most likely wouldn't last a day adventuring. In a certain way, any PC is a chosen one simply because of the Power Word: Reload the player commands. What makes the trope trite is rather when it shoves plot linearity into your face by laying out the rails of some ancient prophecy, and thereby destroys suspension of disbelief. In BG, however, you are given the stakes and are then left to run with it, in terms of roleplaying. Of course the Solar claims you are "The Chosen One" - because she wants you to be (probably told Balthazar quite the same, the old harpy...). But in what manner you are chosen is left up to you, and you don't have to care one bit about some impersonal old prophecy or responsibility for saving the world for the plot to function.