Now I’m wondering if I’m doing something wrong when I’m just describing the characters are eating and/or drinking without specifying what.
3 Likes
Generally, no. Unless eating/food is a focus of the story, I’d honestly say they might not even need to be added at all.
2 Likes
I’d say leaving it unspecified is better than specifiying something that people might have a problem with (and people can have a problem with ANYTHING).
Like, if a player is canoning their character as… I dunno, an observant muslim or something, I’d think that being told they’re drinking any sort alcoholic beverage is a bigger problem than being told they’re drinking an unspecified beverage.
5 Likes
Also saves the bother of not taking into account that one might not want to have the same drink every time. What if I want tea in the morning, but coffee in the afternoon, except when it’s hot and I’d want an orange juice instead?
(It’s just an excuse for a group of people to sit at a table and talk, anyway.)
3 Likes
I don’t love or hate the feature, but I think something like vegetarianism is important for immersion for some folks, especially if there are scenes of the character eating (feasts, parties, dinner dates).
I imagine it would be jarring if a lifelong vegetarian was told their self-insertion character was chowing down on a huge steak or cracking into a lobster. And those kind of details are often important to making a setting feel vibrant. “You and your friends throw a party. There is lots of food there. There are beverages, also.” Is not very vivid.
17 Likes
In Magium you have to choose to have Arraka check with her magic sense for underground tunnels that are not found on the map the king gives you. You don’t need to max premonition or some other stat to get out alive
1 Like
That’s just bad writing. It’s entirely possible to write a scene that doesn’t necessarily specify food or beverage choice, or without going into excruciatingly detailed descriptions. Give the general vibe of the room. What are people doing? What are people saying? What are people eating/drinking?
Give descriptions that paint a picture, but they don’t have to necessarily specify what the player character is eating/drinking/etc., but they should show what’s going on in the scene, not just tell the player.
7 Likes
I’d think it’s also possible to describe some of the food on table to set the scene, without specifying what the MC is eating (as long as you make sure you have options).
10 Likes
I have two pet peeves really, one possibly more controversial than the other:
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Being told I’m attracted to a character or constantly pushed into saying how interesting or compelling they are. I always end up hating them out of pure contrariness
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I kind of don’t like see-saw stats! The ones where you have “honest” and “deceitful” on the same bar and increasing one decreases the other. It feels like making the “wrong” choice is so punishing when those kind of stats are involved, because your stat can go down as well as up.
29 Likes
I see your see-saw stats and raise you see-saw RO relationships.
Treasure Seekers of Lady Luck did that, where your relationships with certain ROs depended on you treating their apparent opposites like shit.
I didn’t like any of them, so I tried to keep the bars as neutral as I could because I didn’t have the option of just bottoming the relationship bars out.
20 Likes
Fuck, you’re giving my war flashbacks with that, I had completely forgotten the few WiP and actual games I tried with that nonsense.
Though some games have ‘de-facto see-saw RO relationships’ since the RO choices were constantly ‘side with A or B and if you side with neither, both willl like you less’ even if they don’t appear as such in the stat screen.
14 Likes
Oh God, it’s just the worse. Like, player and MC cannot have their own opinion, instead if you want to romance someone you just become a RO’s “Yes-men”
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This actually hearkens back to an old comment I made about how I don’t like suffering ridiculous relationship hits over the most minor stuff.
Choose to hang out with RO 1 instead of RO 2? Lose ten points of friendship with RO 2. Vice-versa with RO 1.
Choose to hang out with RO 1 instead of RO 2, but platonically? Lose five points of friendship with RO 2. Vice-versa with RO 1.
Choose to just hang out on your own to avoid the drama of these two idiots using you as a tug-of-war rope? Lose ten points of friendship with both of them.
Tell the two of them to stop acting like starving dogs fighting over meat? Not an option, pal! But if it was, you’d undoubtedly lose twenty points of friendship with both of them, even if you’re completely justified in calling them out like that.
19 Likes
Assuming you didn’t have previous plans with the other RO you skipped without explanation in favor of hanging out with the other, I presume? (I mean, I would definitely lose relationship points with someone who intentionally stood me up.)
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That basically never happens in these stories, from what I’ve seen. You literally just choose to hang out with one versus the other, no prior planning, and whoever you don’t hang out with right at that moment gets miffed about it. If there were a story where you had prior plans, then yeah, the hit would be perfectly understandable.
8 Likes
Kinda reminds me of one of the villain games on here.
A RO was trying to turn me to the good side and I was going along with it, everything seemed alright. Then, pretty late into the game, there was an option to ask them to turn bad which I chose because I thought it’d be funny, but the RO just broke up and there was no option to backtrack saying it was a joke or anything which kinda seems messed up to me considering I was alright going along with being good.
3 Likes
Out of curiosity what game was that?
1 Like
I hate it in game where your character’s personality is essentially used against the player. For example in Choice of Vampire, if you have a discrete vampire you will find many of the game’s choices greyed out.
Not only will the non-discrete choices be greyed out, but the choices that do remain will often increase your characters discretion stat even more. Making it even more unlikely that you will be able to choose a non-discrete choice the next time.
8 Likes
I mean, that’s better than it used to be because a lot of those choices would just lead to death with no warning that a stat was being checked when it first came out IIRC.
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I can’t remember, I just know it was about being a villain or trying to be a villain