I suppose, as with any trope it depends on the context. If the MC had opportunities to prove their worth during the story and did some cool things, but now they need help of their dear friends and they have arrived just in time - it’s fun and gratifying. If the MC is only a damsel in distress then it’s just boring.
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I did this several times in my previous stories. Arc-specific characters whom the MCs helped in some way come back for the finale in some form to bolster the MCs’ spirits in their darkest hour.
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I like when it is the result of the MC actions across the story, specially selflessness and good will. Rewarding genuinely moral actions with moments like that is plain beautiful.
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Yeah, like in Dragon Age where you can call up all of the armies you recruited.
Is the MC a damsel in distress, if they end up in trouble due to their own actions (player-choice)? Say, deciding to storm a heavily fortified location on their own, or pulling a high-profile heist without any preparation, or something else that’s obviously not a good idea (and can be warned against in-story).
Again, it depends on what happened before and what will be after. If the MC was doing something before and will be doing something later and proving themself capabale - then a moment of weakness just serves to let their friends shine too and to build their relationships and everything. An MC is only a damsel in distress when they do nothing at all during the majority of the story - couple of episodes here and there do not diminish them. We all need help from time to time.
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My opinion towards this trope is based on pen&paper experiences.
If the rescue is based purely on the players actions it is OK.
If it is just there to let some other characters look good, instead of the MC it is bad. If the player feels like everything they did was meaningless because they get rescued anyway, or If being rescued is unavoidable. If this is at the beginning or in the middle of the story it may bei OK, but this should never be the final fight, unless Help is based on players decisions during the game. Characters coming to the rescue, because the player helped them before is something completely different.
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I severly dislike “Romance” in games period, and IF is no exception.
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I am a firm believer of “if the player is so insistent on damseling their MC, let them have it (and give them unique content and an achievement to boot while they’re at it)” personally, but I do acknowledge it may not be for everyone.
(That is, of course, that the whole thing must be on player’s hands, but if they mess up in every turn even though it’d be fully avoidable, it does seem like it’s on purpose, so who am I to argue?)
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I find it hard to write character scenarios for experiences outside of my experience. So like I want diversity in my story. But I’ve never been a women, I’ve never been in love with a man, I have no idea what it’s like to feel non binary. I have troubling seeing things from the perspective of a player who would want to “damsel their MC” just was much as shoving a Giant Cursed Blade in that players hands and giving them the choice of #you escape or #you chop everyone’s heads off and escape, would ruin the experience for them. How do you guys expand your perspective as writers?
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There is no tool for expanding perspective as a writer as powerful as reading a lot. Devour everything by all sorts of authors, in all sorts of genres, with all sorts of different types of characters.
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Seconded, especially if it’s something outside of what you might usually pick up. If you like it, you’ll have expanded your pool of things you like to read or play; if you don’t, you can figure out why others like it and how you might want to do differently. Either way you’ll have increased and varied the art you’re experiencing, which will always have a good effect on what you’re creating.
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Thirded. Also I’d recommend playing what-if with stories you consume (“what if X happened insted of Y?”) to practice your alternate-scenarios-muscles.
Just in case it wasn’t obvious - “damseling”, in this case, has nothing to do with gender, but putting the character in question in a “damsel in distress” role. Also something I may or may not find fun myself at times, but.
I maaaaay have a scenario where a bunch of NPCs team up to babysit the MC because they deem it irresponsible to leave them to their own devices.
In my case, it has less to do with wishing to damsel the MC as of itself and more to do with picturing “okay, you need to do X, Y and Z to succeed in this task… so what happens if the player decided to not do any of them and still proceed?” or, more generally, “how much can the player screw up doing things?” combined with no early game-overs. Still less of “what might the player want” and more of “what happens if X instead of Y”.
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Here is something that always makes any sense of immersion fly straight out the window for me:
You’re playing a horror game, you went into the haunted house or whatever with an npc that gets separated away from you / goes ahead of you. Or you’re finding hints that you are actually following the trails of some npc that was here before you. And later in the game you find / catch up to this npc.
But in order to even access the area of the house they’re in, you need to get through several puzzles. Like you need a bookmark to solve the puzzle that opens one door, you need the key to unlock another, you need other items that are currently in your possession to get in there. None of the doors were unlocked. HOW did the npc even get there without any of those items!?
Even better if you had to solve some obscure puzzle that permanently breaks a very noticable piece of furniture, or interior decorating to find one of the keys inside of it. How did the npc get here!? Did whatever villain in the game escort them? Are they in cahoots? Of course not, you’re just meant to not think about it too closely.
But there is no way that it should be possible for them to be there.
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If it’s a haunted location, it’s entirely possible that the haunting just resets stuff while cackling evilly.
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The ghost locked all the doors and armed the traps after they lured the npc inside, because that’s what you do when you’re haunting a house.
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That would actually be a pretty cool puzzle mechanic. Parts of it, or even items being duplicated every time the ghost haunts the area.
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I probably shouldn’t have used the word haunted, because the most egregious example of this I’ve encountered didn’t have ghosts.
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Or maybe the puzzle grew there after the NPC broke in (because the haunted location doesn’t like being disturbed and wanted to up security)?
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“Goddamn it, ANOTHER adventurer? This is supposed to be my day off! That’s it, I’m hiring private security!”
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