Inappropriate Choices

Doesn’t make it good either.
Also, if a choice is there just for shock vlue it DOES make a game bad.

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@MeltingPenguins First of all love the username haha! :slight_smile:

I have seen shock value used to great effect many times, I personally believe shock value has its place in stories, EVEN when put in JUST to be shock value. Though that would depend of what kind of story we are being told.

Then again, everyone is different. I am very curious to see where this discussion goes especially given the couple of projects im working on. :smiley:

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Thank you all for your thorough and quick replies. My decision to place this scene so early in the game and have it be so shocking WAS for shock value. But not to shock the readers, but the players. The people who are inside this character’s head and help them get into just how REAL the danger is in this setting. How simply powerful they are and the whole scenario is pointed towards a lack of truthful government. If we remember, surveillance is the true reason why the majority of big crimes have gone down over the years. Deterrents for people with a grey morality. And those with a black set of morality will do what they want regardless. Also, those with a rather WHITE set of morals won’t do things against a code of law even if it isn’t be enforced.

That turns me towards the typically Dungeons and Dragons morality chart of lawful vs chaotic and good vs evil. I’m assuming most readers to come into stories with their own morality. I set the choice there to help them make the character into their own playable hero… or villain.

After reading all of this I’m thinking I will keep the choice there and continue to omit most of the details but I will stress that it is the dragon’s blood as an influence for the rage-fueled actions. And I think I’ll add a choice to immediately repent the decision and reflect on it to lower the fueling to the dragon or to increase its sway.

With that addition, I’m going to remove the instant death scene when you reach a certain level of rage, making it more like you get to see and do more rage-filled things if you’ve set your character up that way. In fact, if you don’t start off wanting to do destructive things, you won’t even see the option for killing the child. That way anyone who has already showed their offense to such things won’t be bothered and potentially off-put later.

Any personal thoughts on this decision? I understand it is ultimately my decision, but I haven’t published anything through CoG as of yet and I’d rather not have my debut ruin my future chances. So I will heed any advice from my seniors on the forum.

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It’s only shocking if you deem it so.

IMO it ain’t the nature of the act itself that makes it bad, what’s important is how it’s done and implemented. If one of the first things we’re going to do is to commit a serious crime then I would like to know the “how” and “why” of it. Any action without an explanation, prior or subsequent, is just poor writting IMO. It doesn’t give us any ground for empathy and/or ability to relate (either with our character or the “victim”). But when it comes with a reason or a backstory then at least we’re being given something to work with, it ain’t just there to “shock” the readers anymore.

As an RPer, not all characters I play are goody-shoes, some can be sadistic and cruel, others get tired of being victims and snap, sometimes in the worst possible way. But for my character to act accordingly to their personality and values they first need to be given something to react to and the means to do so, be it good or bad.

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Sounds interesting. :slight_smile:
I would suggest starting a work in progress thread then putting up a demo to get feedback on it as you go.

I do like the idea of this dragon blood thing happening to a sorcerer so I as a player would want some choice trees leading to a discovery of not only why I have the dragon blood in me, which will be one of the major points of the story I think, but also discovering what freedom or power the dragon’s blood allows.

This is your story and you can do whatever you want with it. But as a fantasy, just about anything is possible. One option you could have is that the dragon’s breath actually transports the “victim” to a different area, and doesn’t actually kill them, though you wouldn’t know this from the dust and ash left behind. But you don’t know this until later on in the story when the weight of your sins, so to speak, has already darkened your character. So later on you come across your apparent victims face to face and they directly confront you about why you choose to flame them. But by then your MC could be quite insane from the guilt and might struggle with figuring out of they are real or just a manifestation of the voices. Voices? Did I say voices? There are no voices. Shut up, don’t tell them about us. They aren’t ready to hear.

(Do you see where I’m going with that?)

Don’t limit your creativity on this. Be as creative as you can.

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Do you happen to know if there’s any set timeline for how long a work in progress thread can be open? I have a few ideas that are years away from coming out but encompass a full universe that could allow others to write on.

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Hmm, @Eiwynn probably knows the exact details.
To my knowledge, it can remain open indefinitely so long as the thread remains active.

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In the story your murderous act is only one reaction to something in particular. And this happens many times throughout the story. The “how” is basically a spell of fire that spits “hot-as-hell” fire from your fingertips. And this spell is one of the most useful things to your character at the beginning, as he has the power but not the knowledge to properly use it.

The “why” is honestly just a moral choice. I doesn’t establish a standard set of morals for the character, just a series of events that led you to this point in life.

It may not seem like a good enough reason for some people, but in all honesty we make billions of choices every day. I can’t include them all. I won’t include the choice of whether to step with your right foot or left foot first… but that’s also like how most movies about every day life don’t sell while the next theater over you have an action film filled with violence and excitement that sells. All actions have an explanation, but we don’t really NEED to explain them all. As a parent to a four year old who asks “why” for most things… I try to answer them all, but some things you just develop your own sense of “why” something happens.

This character is given a backstory that turns some into monsters and others into heroes. And I do that on purpose. It is so you can build your character yourself without having to go into a generation screen that breaks immersion.

I apologize for not giving more information at the start of the thread. I was figuring that if it was going to get my work rejected, I would get a fairly instant “no” to the act altogether.

Thank you, though, for your opinion. I’ll go into more detail in the story about the darkness inside and the personal choice of whether to revel in it or squash it as it arises.

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This is correct. The newly made WiP threads will have a deadline of 3 months of inactivity allowed. Meaning they will be closed after 3 months without a reply.

Now that the Choice of Rebels thread is closed (it was open for 6 years) I believe the Guenevere thread is the longest running WiP thread. (It was opened in Dec. 2013)

@CrimsonShadow - I do encourage you to open a WiP thread; the community seems to be interested in your story already :rocket:

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The are tons of games that allow you to kill men, women, children, sick puppies, etc.

There’s this one anime/manga, the title escapes me, but there’s a little girl that has a puppy and this puppy is discovered by one of her bullies, basically the bully beats the puppy to death along with a group of his “friends” and the little girl basically loses her mind and kills all of the children in very hardcore violence. Like a lot of the people here want(?) there’s a reason why the little girl massacres all of the other children, its not just “because” ya know?

Honestly, tons of other games deal with it as well like in one of the Call of Duty games there’s a gas attack and you see this little girl, a long with her family, being covered in it and die. It was a terrorist attack and if you wanna go into “was there a reason behind it?” Yes, there was, not a big personal reason, this girl and her family died because terrorist wanted to spread fear and chaos, is this a complicated enough reason to show children dying compared to (just remembered the anime’s title) Elfen Lied?

People seem to usually want to go the route of why do books/games/comics/etc. want to be connected to reality? Because reality based things is something we can actually connect to and understand. So, the more grounded into reality it is along with some scifi or fantasy makes for interesting stories. I say keep it but give the scene a reason.

In reality we have people who do atrocious acts for bigger reasons or just because they felt like doing it, so maybe a choice variation can come into play maybe? Like this child stole something from you so the MC kills the boy just out of pure evil or maybe there’s some background into the choice.

Just giving my extended two cents haha.

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I don’t see any issue with the described scenario at all. It’d be different if it were an action the player was railroaded into, but if someone deliberately clicks a choice of this kind, the only person they can be upset at is themselves.

The option to play as a villain is just as viable as any other, and there’s no reason to whitewash the kinds of things a guy who can create and direct fire at will would be capable of. For as common as wizards and sorcerers are in fantasy, it’s rare to see it really explored just how dangerous and frightening they’d be to the average person and why.

The real question I’d have in that scenario is, if powers like that are in any way common to the setting, then what keeps that kind of thing from happening all the time , and what means to the authorities have for restraining or dealing with magic users who go evil?

Take a look at games like Dragon Age, Divinity Original Sin 1 & 2, and just games that deal with magic users. I’ve seen/read many ways that usually involve violence meeting violence which ends in complete subjugation of many people. I read a book once (years ago) that gave off the feeling of peace, like legit peace, but turns out it was just years of secret genocide and controlling the willing/broken populace. I remember the author explaining, at the end of the book where the authors note go, that humans are humans there is no such thing as real peace for us, one size losses and another wins which brings hard feelings and topics that should never be discussed.

Man, wish I still had that book :neutral_face:

Even something like the Culture novels, the ultimate sci-fi utopia…it’s not disguised that it works through the deliberate cultural erasure of ‘incompatible’ societies or sometimes by outright wiping people out. People are naturally contrary beings, you can’t have complete unity in any setting in a realistic manner without some brutal subjugation of those who won’t get on board going on, whether physical or mental. It’s why utopias are so elusive and difficult as a setting and much of the time wind up dystopias in disguise.

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Oddly enough, I still like it when people use those settings and show it to be a big ugly mess covered up by pounds of makeup. I guess I only like them because people usually have different takes on what the mess is or how well they’ve covered it up so now the main character/size character has to decide what to do with this information. Its getting more played out now but I still like the concept haha.

Anyways, sorry for going off topic OP.

Elfen Lied!

You’re right, a lot of fiction deals with mature and complex issues - it’s often a way of exposing them for analysis and discussion rather than an opportunity purely to exploit for entertainment. Plus as long as you have a choice to not murder the hypothetical child, there’s no problem, right?

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Agreed, I think someone up there said the same thing and if a person picks that option they have to deal with it.

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Playing as a villain is a reasonable option - something worth considering is, where does it go from there? If that branch of the story is about descending into inhumanity, what’s the shape of the journey when the inciting evil act is so extreme? Will the draconic blood hunger for increasingly extreme actions, and how will that play out?

(Something I enjoy a lot about A Study in Steampunk is a possible villainous branch which feels both organic and inexorable, and is very effective. It may be worth having a look at that and other games which include villainous/evil paths that work well for you.)

Regardless, please do make the game - it’s easy to talk hypotheticals but that’s nowhere near as useful as seeing how it works in practice.

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I think how you portray it is going to make a big difference. I mean there’s a difference between someone who loses control of their power because of a dragon bloodline and when they realise what they’ve done, it’s a shock because that’s not something they’d normally do in a rational mind set; compared to writing a scene where the player can deliberately delight in killing a kid in graphic detail. I also agree with HannahPS, if it’s a gradual loss of humanity, starting that high on the nastiness scale, will give you less room to move later.

Anyway, personal deaths like that one (particularly if they’re involving minors) need to be treated very carefully if you don’t want to turn people off your game or get it sensored by apple. There’s a difference between reading something in a book (passive) and actually controlling the character such as in COGs (active) that make these things hit a bit closer to home and if you make people too uncomfortable, it may cause them to dislike the game. There’s also a difference between “deaths” where you’ve got nameless minions dying or “evil” characters, compared to what you’re describing with a one on one death at your hands. It could potentially be done, but would need a lot of care. Your best bet might be to post the scene and get some general audience reactions to see whether people found it engaging, or a turn off for playing your game.

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And that is the exact problem. We are living in a society that has lost/is losing its ability to tell these things apart, which affects the real world.

Gonna put this in blur now, cause trigger-warning for rape:

Look, e.g. how often in fiction a woman raping a man, brutally is taking either as a joke or even portrayed as being empowering to the woman. It’s RAPE. there’s nothing funny, nothing empowering about it. Yet very often it is used in fiction for shock. To get people talking. And then look what happens IRL when it happens.
Likewise, a guy raping someone, regardless of gender. It happens in fiction, and either it’s shrugged of, portrayed as ‘the person deserved it’ or ‘oh look this character’s evil’. And then real life roles around and the first thing we usually get is ‘what did the victim do to make him rape them?’ or ‘no it can’t be, he’s such a nice person’…

Fiction doesn’t have to be sunshine and pancakes, of course not. But when it comes to ‘shock value’ it does require some skill to pull it off. As others have said, it’s important how something is portrayed in-universe AND why it was put there to begin with.
And again, saying something is only shocking if you deem it so… is very sobering if not devastating. There are some thresholds that should be much much clearer, but they aren’t.

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Fiction can’t shock me because it’s just that - fiction - it ain’t real even if the the topics it touches are. I’m not quite that delusional yet that I can’t tell fantasy from reality… and I like to believe most people are in the same boat as me, more so than those who can’t make the distiction anymore (or never did). It’s possible we’re entering an era of bad people getting worse but is it really that bad is or is some of it being exercerbated by the (social) media to look worse than it actually is?

Life has it’s ups and downs. When you focus too much on the negative then sooner or later that is how life is going to be for you. People are more likely to remember bad things than good ones too, it’s part of the reason why bad news are more common than good ones - they tend to leave a bigger impression and they sell better. That being said, artists can influence society in a small way but it ain’t their responsability to fix people nor should they censor themselves just because it might give ideas to individuals that are already problematic, delusional or have no idea on how to behave in society. Fix or help those people to fit in instead of conforming the entire world to their problems.

These topics may be sensitive to some but I think they encounter a bigger resistance in certain places, this forum for example, because it is known as a sanctuary for those that have met all sorts of prejudice, harassement and persectuion for their choices, preferenceres and experiences. That sort of thing leaves a mark and tends to make people bitter, cautious and negative towards everything and everyone. They prefer shelter, not salt in their wounds, but “ordinary” people like me don’t have a problem discussing these topics because we never went through the same problems nor can we relate.

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