A story about being a smuggler, pirate, or vampire should not be dumped on for forcing you to be a smuggler, pirate or vampire, just because you’d rather be a chimney sweep. Just my opinion on that subject.
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As a precursor I totally understand feeling frustrated if the game’s pushing you to feel particular things or being locked out of plots. (For example: I made sure in Blood Money to have a lot of options to sabotage and/or leave your crime family in various ways rather than making every player have to be loyal. I wouldn’t have wanted to push all players to be happy doing crime in that way forever.) But I do think it’s fair to expect a certain level of player buy-in for a game when the plot and setting is integral to the player experience.
Like… with one of the examples the point of 7th Sea is that you’re a pirate. It’s reasonable for the author to expect players to want to be playing a game about pirates. If it was a game framed as “do you want to be a pirate or are you going to work for The Man” and you were forced to be a pirate, I’d absolutely understand being irritated. But when the first sentence of the marketing text says “Fight for what’s right—as an up and coming pirate! Battle slavers, sea monsters, and your own corrupt government to become a hero of the high seas” that makes it clear to me that this is A Pirate Game and that I’m not going to have a good time if I decide to play a character who doesn’t want to be a pirate, you know?
There’s some interesting chat about this topic on this thread (I didn’t realise it was your thread when I looked for it, but I remembered it from a while back 
):
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All forms of cooperative storytelling require the players to be willing to engage with the central tenet of the story.
When you play Dragon Age Origins you play a character who would join the Grey Wardens. When you play Night Road you play as somebody willing to live as a vampire. When you play Creme de la Creme you play as somebody willing to attend a high powered finishing school.
And when you play a game called 7th Sea: A Pirate’s Pact where the first sentence of the marketing blurb is “Fight for what’s right—as an up and coming pirate!” you are, unsurprisingly, expected to be willing to play as a pirate.
It’s how all games work. It’s the only way games can work.
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If that’s your takeaway of what I’m trying to say, then evidently I’ve poorly explained my point… again. Frequent problem with me, I find.
You’re absolutely right, stories that put you in certain roles are within their right to do so. But the games that make it clear what’s expected of me and draw a line in the sand telling me that that’s what I’m going to be doing, are not the games that I’m taking issue with. (I recognize that I used Wayhaven as one such example, and that, I’d like to rescind, since I know that joining the agency is part of the plot and non-negotiable.)
In the case of both 7th Sea and Night Road, while it is expected that you’ll conform to the role placed in front of you, both stories provide options to go against the grain, instead:
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For all it proclaims that you’re an up and coming pirate, 7th Sea allows you to reject piracy outright. The consequences, as mentioned, include losing the support of the pirate brotherhood in the endgame since you refuse to join under their banner and they’re dodgy about putting trust in non-pirates, and like I said, the game does work pretty hard to try and get you to change your mind, but ultimately, you can begin and end the game without ever stepping into the role of a pirate - at most, you sort of take up a role like Jim from Treasure Island, you end up working with the pirates but are definitely not one of them.
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While Night Road does explicitly say that you’re a vampire, there are a multitude of options that allow you to style your character as being unwilling and resistant towards the Masquerade, and one of the endings of the game allows you to sell out the Masquerade and Julien Sim to the Second Inquisition and thoroughly unmake both of them. It’s definitely a harder path, because the expectation is that you’ll engage with Masquerade politics like every other vampire, but that path exists nonetheless.
Both stories present the option to not play by the rules, while still maintaining your place in the plot, but if you choose not to do the obvious thing, both stories also treat it as strange that you wouldn’t want to, and heavily punish or hinder you for going that direction.
That’s what I’m trying to relay, here: If I have the option to go for route B even though the game thinks I’ll choose route A without question, then the narrative has no place treating it as strange that I picked an option the narrative, itself, presented to me. If it means the game is more difficult because I’m going against the flow, fine, but having it feel like the game is trying to wrangle me back into route A is the part I take issue with.
Ergo, my ultimate statement: It annoys me when a game expects me to take the most obvious path, simply because everybody else does, and treats it as inconceivable or rebellious if I choose to go the other direction that it puts in front of me.
If I’m expected to slot into a particular role without question, don’t give me the option to be something else. A VtM game that gives me the choice to rebel against the Masquerade has only itself to blame for giving me that choice, if I then choose to take it, and has no business acting like I’ve done something completely out of left field, since that “left field” was knowingly placed in my hands from the start. A game that outright declares that you’re an up and coming pirate should not then allow you to decide not to be a pirate, since the intent is clearly that you’ll be on board with it.
Basically, if a narrative gives me the option to play as a contrarian, it isn’t allowed to be surprised if I play as a contrarian, simply because the more popular option is for people to not do that.
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If I hear you, what you are objecting to is the execution of a possible path presented in these stories.
I feel that is a legitimate area of critique.
With 7 Seas, it has been too long for me to recall such details as a contrary path being offered.
With Night Road, I remember that offered path, but when I played it, I did not feel Kyle was punishing me for going that route. I did feel that the Inquisition was punishing me for being a vampire, but I felt that to be very aligned with Paradox’s new lore and emphisis (which I think was a mistake on their part, but that is for another thread).
Again, this was my take on Night Road, and ymmv.
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I haven’t played 7th Sea - does the NARRATION keep pointing out that what you’re doing is badwrong fun, or does it just give you a noticeably harder road?
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Yeah, that’s what I was getting at: If I’m presented with two paths, one should not be less valid than the other. I suppose I could’ve just said that, but I apparently like to draw out my opinions. XD
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I think I understand your point better now - thank you for expanding on it!
I do think there’s room - and indeed it’s a good thing for a game IMO - for there to be ingame consequences (good or bad) for going against the grain. If you’re doing something that shocks NPCs it feels more natural if they treat you differently afterwards. But: I definitely understand frustration if it feels like the game/author is punishing the player or that route feels like an afterthought.
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This also annoys me. When there is a branch in things but there is a “right answer”. I’d like to point to an infamous example of this taken to the extreme in the Versus stories where the author straight up says with all but one ending that the ending is non canon and to go replay the game for the real ending.
That made me so irritated. Especially since iirc, their intentions at the time were to continue in non choicescript media which the majority of readers of the work would never no existed. Would have probably been better to just say in the beginning of their next work that it continues from xyz ending. I was vaguely interested in their works outside of choicescript and bought all of their choicescript games to support them (even if I was iffy on some of them), but this kinda pissed me off so much that I swore off of buying anything by them ever again.
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Sorry, just now saw this - yes, the narration at multiple points paints it as you being the bad guy for refusing to play nice with pirates. One of the big examples that sticks out to me is if you refuse to join under the banner of the brotherhood near the game’s climax, the sitting members of the brotherhood behave as though they’ve been terribly let down by your decision, even though they had no reason to trust that you would be willing to join them in the first place, particularly if your stats reflect a constant, unwavering resistance to the idea.
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When you play Maverick Hunter you already are part of the organization known as the Maverick Hunters. You can be human, reploid, etc.
The big question is, can you go Maverick, and thus go against the ideals of the team you are in, and everything you stand for?
The answer is… it’s complicated, for spoiler reasons. Yes, you can, if you take certain actions, but then…
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I recall becoming a vampire-hunting vampire in my playthrough. It was cool.
Good to know that the issue wasn’t about engaging in the initial setting though (as in being, say, a detective in a detective game). I was worried for a second there.
…I read that sentence as “finishing school for superpowered people” and was really confused for a second (because I’ve played the game and that’s not what it is)
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I’m shocked anyone even bothered to mention him because the ROs in the Masquerade games are so fucking irrelevant and forgettable, they must be the first COG games where I ended up without an RO by pure accident and lack of interest since the Hero Rise sequel trilogy.
That’s…actually very in-line with the setting. Most VTM campaigns are about being a rando vampire caught up in an Elder scheme and desperately trying to get away from it.
Hell, there’s an entier clan who’s shtick is basically that.
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Well yeah, but usually they try and out-politics the situation as best they can, my character was just all, “The less time I have to spend around the Camarilla, the better, thanks.”
She still got forced into SOME politicking, but her stern insistence on not being involved meant that she spent a larger portion of her time keeping herself hydrated on blood bags and saving up money between deliveries to get a less shit truck and a gun that could shoot straight.
He’s kinda in your face the whole game as your ex-buddy and an up and coming leader of a Not!Anarch faction against the Camarilla, the game doesn’t let you forget about him.
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I know we’ve kinda moved on from this point, but something that just came to my mind:
What if there was a secret stat check for when an asshole mouths off at the MC, where if the MC passes a certain threshold of Clap-Backitude, they just automatically fire off with their own sharp retort and completely flip the script on the asshole character, and then it’s the asshole who’s left in speechless, impotent rage?
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Tying the MC’s response to a sarcasm or friendly/rude stat could work. If they’re friendly they take the high road and if they’re not they can retort. I still wouldn’t like either option including the “you’re so lame and embarrassed” thing, unless that’s also tied to a stat like “timid” or something, that determines how sensitive the MC is to things like that.
But naturally that’d be a real headache to code. I think it’d work good for political games where talking is the main method of combat, but I can see why an adventure game wouldn’t feel the need to include it.
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I’m blanking on which ones, but there are definitely games that track your behavior patterns or personality traits, and will absolutely have you act in a scene based on those, moving the scene forward in ways that are either positive, negative, or some mix. And generally when these systems are used, it’s written in a way so that the player understands why it happened and what element of their character development drove that moment.
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I hate when a character gets a new transformation/power-up and the design becomes overly complicated to the point where I don’t know what I’m supposed to look at.
Anyway that’s why Super Saiyan and Ultra Instinct are peak fiction 
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I dislike the entire Power Up = Physical Transformation.
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…shouldn’t it be considered a power-up, if you suddenly learn to shapeshift to a dragon?
Okay, that probably wasn’t what you were talking about.
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