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I'm not a nice person in strategy games
2023-Jan-11, Wednesday 11:20
I was just thinking.
Me in normal life: "I dunno man, the Crusaders primarily had a political motivations even if they were also religious wars. The First Crusade literally began because the Romans requested aid in their wars against the Seljuk Turks! The earlier barring of Christian pilgrims hadn't been enough, but gave them additional justification for Pope Urban II's call to war. And the Fourth Crusade never even made it to the Levant. Not to mention the sheer number of pogroms as a side-effect of the Crusades, to such an extent that it sometimes seemed like the crusaders' aim was destroying the Jews in Europe rather than reconquering any part of the Holy Land. And-"
Me playing Crusader Kings II:
In RPGs, I always play the good guy. I can never take the evil route even to see what the content is like, because I feel too bad about it. Most of the time this isn't much of a loss--the evil content in Bioware games is generally down to mustache-twirling puppy-kicking, where you're just an asshole for no reason--but games like Planescape: Torment, where you can manipulate people and destroy their lives and the previous life of the main character who caused the most evil was called "The Practical Incarnation," I do feel like I'm missing out.
But strategy games? My most recent game of Stellaris I was playing an empire of dark elves, who have a species trait that they can't stand having other free species in the same empire as them, so I enslaved everyone I conquered. I even found a lost genetic database from a vanished precursor civilization and brought back multiple extinct species just to enslave them and force them to work on worlds whose climate was unsuitable for elven habitation. When playing Crusader Kings II I'll underhandedly scheme to steal neighboring lands, arrange "accidents" if I have an heir that's less than promising, marry off daughters to powerful kings much older than them, the full gamet of pre-modern power politics. In Civilization my most memorable game was the game where the Celts, the Japanese, and the Aztecs were at war on and off for a thousand years and the land bridge that connected the continents containing our civilizations was a blasted radioactive wasteland from all the nuclear weapons that had been used on each other.
I think it's because there's no actual face or obvious personality for these games. Even CKII, which does have specific characters, has no dialogue or personality to the characters beyond any RP you do when playing them--having a character who's an incompetent diplomat affects your chances in events, but since you rarely have any direct dialogue, there's no strong sense of their incompetence. Having a character who's bad in battle is easily overcome by just not having your king directly command soldiers, so you can then be a brilliant tactician--though this is actually realistic since a king in his castle isn't giving orders on the field. I'm mostly playing an immortal bodiless dictator, not the specific character I'm playing in RPGs (or in real life)! It's the same separation that lets me be so ruthless in board games but not in TTRPGs. I don't get that when I have a specific character, and especially not one that I created.
Me in normal life: "I dunno man, the Crusaders primarily had a political motivations even if they were also religious wars. The First Crusade literally began because the Romans requested aid in their wars against the Seljuk Turks! The earlier barring of Christian pilgrims hadn't been enough, but gave them additional justification for Pope Urban II's call to war. And the Fourth Crusade never even made it to the Levant. Not to mention the sheer number of pogroms as a side-effect of the Crusades, to such an extent that it sometimes seemed like the crusaders' aim was destroying the Jews in Europe rather than reconquering any part of the Holy Land. And-"
Me playing Crusader Kings II:
In RPGs, I always play the good guy. I can never take the evil route even to see what the content is like, because I feel too bad about it. Most of the time this isn't much of a loss--the evil content in Bioware games is generally down to mustache-twirling puppy-kicking, where you're just an asshole for no reason--but games like Planescape: Torment, where you can manipulate people and destroy their lives and the previous life of the main character who caused the most evil was called "The Practical Incarnation," I do feel like I'm missing out.
But strategy games? My most recent game of Stellaris I was playing an empire of dark elves, who have a species trait that they can't stand having other free species in the same empire as them, so I enslaved everyone I conquered. I even found a lost genetic database from a vanished precursor civilization and brought back multiple extinct species just to enslave them and force them to work on worlds whose climate was unsuitable for elven habitation. When playing Crusader Kings II I'll underhandedly scheme to steal neighboring lands, arrange "accidents" if I have an heir that's less than promising, marry off daughters to powerful kings much older than them, the full gamet of pre-modern power politics. In Civilization my most memorable game was the game where the Celts, the Japanese, and the Aztecs were at war on and off for a thousand years and the land bridge that connected the continents containing our civilizations was a blasted radioactive wasteland from all the nuclear weapons that had been used on each other.
I think it's because there's no actual face or obvious personality for these games. Even CKII, which does have specific characters, has no dialogue or personality to the characters beyond any RP you do when playing them--having a character who's an incompetent diplomat affects your chances in events, but since you rarely have any direct dialogue, there's no strong sense of their incompetence. Having a character who's bad in battle is easily overcome by just not having your king directly command soldiers, so you can then be a brilliant tactician--though this is actually realistic since a king in his castle isn't giving orders on the field. I'm mostly playing an immortal bodiless dictator, not the specific character I'm playing in RPGs (or in real life)! It's the same separation that lets me be so ruthless in board games but not in TTRPGs. I don't get that when I have a specific character, and especially not one that I created.
