POLL - What types of Protagonists/Main Characters are you open to playing in a Hosted Game?

[TSSL]

I’m not by any means saying this to denigrate animal sentience—that’s not at all my goal here, and please don’t take it as such. And I’m certainly not equating chopping a strawberry with killing an animal—I did say there’s different levels of sentience. I just wish to note that some plants do have a lot more sophistication going for them than is readily apparent.

In some, it goes quite a bit beyond stimulus-response, like when they use their chemical signals to coordinate with each other. They’re just using a really different system from animals, since it’s not based on a nervous system. Moving away from both plants and animals, slime molds are also capable of self-organizing behavior, and acting in animal-like ways, despite not having any sort of nervous system, or even tissues as specialized as plants have. They don’t really seem to have self-awareness, but do have some sort of emergent intelligence (which scientists can take advantage of in weird ways).

It’s not on the same level as animal sentience, but it is fascinating, and there’s some kind of sentience at work there.

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Uh, bringing it back on topic… anyone want to play a game where the protagonist is a slime mold?

[Frogs]

I wonder how a game where the MC is a plant would be.
It would probably be boring though due to the lack of movement, but perhaps you can make a game as an insect like a bee? It could actually be really interesting to see how things like ants or bees interact with each other and to plan hunts together.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a game where you play as an insect before

[Voidmare_Shydeath]

Does the question refer to what kind of role I’m willing to play as?

I like progression, therefore rising from a nobody to a glorified hero is definitely a rewarding experience for me. I also like to shape my protagonist’s personality during the game itself, and I welcome character creation. All of these aspects make a very replayable and unique story in my opinion.

[Samuel_H_Young]

Insects are bad asses! Up close, they look like aliens or monsters (ants, for example), and they basically all have super powers of their own. Flies can fly in all directions, ants are as strong as Superman, and spiders can run on water or even use air bubbles to breathe underwater.

So yes, an insect game could be amazing. (Spiders are arachnids, of course, but still.)

[TSSL]

@Frogs

I wonder how a game where the MC is a plant would be.

I think the trickiest thing would be coming up with meaningful choices I don’t know, stuff like “Do you chemically tell other plants to back off? Encourage growth of allied plants?” or “Do you grow lots of fruits or conserve your energies?” would only go so far Difficult also since they’re operating on a really different timescale from animals in terms of reaction times, for the most part.

I would really enjoy the idea of a game where you play as something like a dryad, or maybe something similar to a plant sim, which are basically plant people from the Sims games they’re mostly like other sims, but they have planty looks and apparently photosynthesize and stuff. I mean, not that you’d copy those, but a plant-like dryad species would be a really nifty concept

[rose-court]

@Frogs

I wonder how a game where the MC is a plant would be.

Interesting question you have there, mind if I…answer it badly?

I was actually in a DnD campaign where my Wild Magic sorceress had the magical side effect of turning herself into a plant when not in a combat phase.

Long story short, there was a long argument over who got to carry around my character, the necromancer won, and she ended up partially sacrificed my sorceress to commune with her deity.
When Malorie (my sorceress) finally escaped her plant prison, she was at half health, coughing, bleeding, traumatized, and had to fight a dragon.

According to the DM, my only options as a plant were ‘wilt’ and ‘turn slowly toward a light source’.

In other words, it was not Fun™ per se, but it was goddamn hilarious 10/10 would turn into a plant again.

probably the best part is that i had had my sorceress turn into a rose bush as a baby when she sneezed for the first time, and her parents, drunks that they were, literally just planted her and kept her alive, vaguely, by watering her. she turned back into a human, six years later, into a child really, when she entered combat phase with a garden bug. none of the other players knew her backstory yet, Malorie just has the worst luck, is all.

[TSSL]

@rose-court

In other words, it was not Fun™ per se, but it was goddamn hilarious 10/10 would turn into a plant again.

Okay, this convinces me that a “transformed into a plant” interlude in a game would make for a really entertaining chapter

[zenith8]

Well, if the main character is a carnivorous plant (similar to Audrey II from the movie/stage-play Little Shop of Horrors), I can definitely imagine all of the chaos that would ensure. Also I think it would be somewhat hilarious if the plant could then move, similarly to the Triffids in Day of the Triffids novel.

[Frogs]

Yeah but even if you are a carnivorous plant the gameplay could be boring I think.
It would pretty much be something like: wait until someone approaches, eat them and repeat
You can’t actively hunt an animal, you have to wait for them to come into your range.
If you’d be able to move it could be a lot more interesting though

[Jacic]

@Eric_Moser

And my “vague premise for a space opera where you play as an alien” gathered about 10 times more interest than did my (pretty well-written, I think, 8,000-word demo) owl attorney story, so for now I am going with the perceived demand.

I agree with you and @Samuel_H_Young, I was quite surprised by the poll results. My story with is character and gender locked generated noticeably less interest than my other WIP’s with more character creation. I guess it’s hard to judge as well since each story is different, maybe people like mermaids better than Greek tragedies I’m almost wondering if it might be an interest factor in what you’d like to participate in helping to make, rather than something you’d consider reading once it’s finished which is what the poll was about? (I guess I’ll see when I finally get Oedipus out on the stores )

@Eric_Moser

It is a little disappointing, but we have to be realistic. What is the last major motion picture (non-animated) that featured an animal as the MC?

The hayday for those seemed to peter out by 90’s with all the Lassie, Flipper and Turner and Hooch type films (which are humans with animal co-stars type movies). If you’ve heard about what happened in Milo and Otis, I’m not surprised animals as the only protagonists are not being made as often now. They tried to create non-human related drama and did some bad things (I know it’s never been proven that any actually died, but let’s face it letting a cat smack a bird or snake around or or throwing one off a cliff and letting it get half downed in the process (all of which were in the movie and not special effects) is pretty bad.

Animal wefare in films has been stepped up since then. I haven’t see the movie, but I did see what happened behind the scenes in “A dog’s purpose” and that wasn’t great either. There’s just too much potential for stuff to go wrong with animal actors, I guess most places don’t really want to risk it these days as a death of your star will probably wipe out your movie. Besides with all the training and potentially CGI involved, it’s probably cheaper just to make it a cartoon. I suspect it’s more these things, rather than lack of demand for animal protagonists, as animated protagonists keep showing up in cartoons and animated movies. (Secret life of pets was fairly recent and I believe did well at the box office.)

@Frogs

Yeah but even if you are a carnivorous plant the gameplay could be boring I think.

It would pretty much be something like: wait until someone approaches, eat them and repeat

You can’t actively hunt an animal, you have to wait for them to come into your range.

If you’d be able to move it could be a lot more interesting though

That’s why you make it a cross between Audrey and a Triffid!

[Frogs]

Who is Audrey?
Anyway I think the main problem with animal protagonists is that animals are too different from humans.
A serious game (not a comedy/children one) with an animal protagonist wouldn’t work cause their way of thinking is very different from that of a human and nobody knows for sure how they think either.

You can have animals talking and thinking and having human traits but people see it as childish/cartoonish and that’s why it usually only happens in animated films or children books, because it’s not really realistic for an animal to talk and act like a person.
In comparison an elf/alien/vampire etc is still pretty humanoid and isn’t that much different from humans.

The only movie where it could be actually realistic for animals to talk and act like humans is Planet of the Apes due to the whole ALZ virus thing.

[Samuel_H_Young]

Yeah, I actually don’t like animals being used in movies at all because it ranges from exploitation at best to flat out abuse at worst. CGI does just fine.

[Jacic]

@Frogs

Anyway I think the main problem with animal protagonists is that animals are too different from humans.

A serious game (not a comedy/children one) with an animal protagonist wouldn’t work cause their way of thinking is very different from that of a human and nobody knows for sure how they think either.

I actually disagree to an extent with this. Using an animal protagonist can actually demonstrate specifically how a particular type of animal thinks differently to humans. If you don’t want to go there, you can always humanize them like in the lion king.

Who is Audrey?

The plant from little shop of horrors.

[Frogs]

Yeah but how would you know how the animals think? For example cats, nobody knows for sure what they think about their owners and scientists are still debating it. Some say Cats view humans as other cats.
It can be difficult to understand how animals think (especially things like insects) from a human perspective

[Samuel_H_Young]

That was the worst movie ever made.

Feeeeeed mii.

[Jacic]

Yes and no. Although you couldn’t say you know “exactly” what they’re thinking all the time, you can often give it a good guess if you read up on enough animal behaviouralist type information. Things can become murky when you’re talking pet-human relationships as yes, some animals like dogs often see humans as part of their pack. However if you’re interested, look into the amount of behavioural problems dogs are prone to, because the human half of that equasion doesn’t act like a canine or understand why the dog is acting the way they are. There’s a communication gap there that can be improved by understanding what has gone wrong. Horses are another very good example, they’re large herd, prey animals whose primary means of communication tends towards body language, quite different to that of people, yet to a degree you can learn to understand it. Cats… well cats just think humans are there to serve them (j/k… kinda).

[wolfmarelalala]

I actually prefer protagonists whose gender not my own

[Sovereign2Lilith]

I guess animal documentaries are non-animated animal shows that are somewhat popular since there is a whole channel (Animal Planet) devoted to them. Animated shows aren’t very popular with Western adults in general. Except for the Simpson’s and Family Guy, I can’t think of any popular originally Western “animes” in theaters and human documentaries aren’t that popular either. So, the animal protagonist movies with their threeish genres (documentary, animated, non-animated entertainments like Air Bud) are at a disadvantage compared to all the different human movie genres.

I guess some choice games might have to anthromorphize a non-human protagonist to still preserve the choice aspect of the game.

[Dark_Stalker]

@Sovereign2Lilith

Except for the Simpson’s and Family Guy

Family guy’s siblings (well I guess Cleveland Show got canceled), Futurama, Boondocks, South Park…

[Pizza_is_good]

Kinda late to join the discussion, but why not?

I’d be leery of gender-locked games because… why are they gender-locked? Gender-specific plots are not my cup of tea. Someone said a game about a pregnant woman trying to hide her pregnancy had to be gender-locked, but why in the world would i want to play a game with that plot?

So, i tend to think as gender-locked games as less no matter the locked gender. (Male or female, my own gender or not changes nothing) I will assume that the game will either have a boring plot or that the author isn’t good enough to write a non-locked story (which an average writer can).

A great plot can change that. Personally, i loved Magium and that was gender-locked, but that’s basically the only gender-locked game i’ve liked up to now.

As for gender and romance, i do not mind if there’s romance or not because the plot is my main interest, but i truly detest when a certain gender changes much of the story. Yes, i know different genders have physical differences and i am okay with that because that’s the reality. Change the physical description based on gender. That’s completely normal.

What i dislike is when non-physical things change. Many, many games make you the dominant one if male and submissive if female. That, i hate with great passion. Base my dominance/submissiveness on some stats/personality traits or give me the option to choose it instead of basing it entirely on gender.

Or when your roles completely change depending on gender. Some people even attempt to write two games in one, depending on the gender. Like, for example, this one game i played where if you were a male you were a prince and if you were female you were a commoner.

Games that change too much based on gender are a strong no on my part. A bad-rating, not-buying, not-playing-ever-again no.

Supernatural creatures are too human-ish while animals not so much. I’d buy a supernatural creature game like i’d buy any other game…maybe a lot more in case of vampires (i am a sucker for vampires in any setting, though i prefer the horror one). As for aliens, it really depends…

As for the animal one, i could still buy it if i liked it, but i do not usually like animal movies/books so i do not know if i’d be able to like it. (I do not like The Lion King. Blasphemy, i know )

I would buy a game whith a set protagonist as i would buy any other game. I do not self-insert, therefore i am never the protagonist so it wouldn’t make much of a difference to me. Plus i’d love to see what the author had in mind for that particular story. (cough Fallen hero cough i wouldn’t have it any other way)

This are my own opinions and preferences.