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LYING TO AND DECEIVING THE PLAYER
Posts
pianotm
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CloseThis topic reminds me of my first DM. If he didn't like the way we were progressing, or were doing too well (and that's our fault, how?) he'd just start lying so we would walk into traps and get ourselves killed.
Hasvers
1298
That was not a very good DM.
I just played it, and yes it does. That's mostly a gimmick, but still, funny.
author=nurvuss
Anyway, how about Frog Fractions? I haven't played that yet, but I hear that lies to the player in really interesting ways.
I just played it, and yes it does. That's mostly a gimmick, but still, funny.
Sooz
They told me I was mad when I said I was going to create a spidertable. Who’s laughing now!!!
5354
Ugh, what an incompetent DM!
Aegix_Drakan
6037
author=pianotm
This topic reminds me of my first DM. If he didn't like the way we were progressing, or were doing too well (and that's our fault, how?) he'd just start lying so we would walk into traps and get ourselves killed.
You're telling me he was upset you were doing too well, and instead of playing to your personalities to make you make risky/dumb moves, or making actually devious tricks and traps...he just lied to you?
Like:
" A spot check reveals that the floor is totally safe...PSYCHE IT WAS ACTUALLY NOT SAFE! HAHAHAH"?
If so, what a total jackass. That's no fun.
Then when we'd ask him why, he'd say something like, "I didn't like your characters anymore," "They were too powerful and I wanted to get rid of them."
Sooz
They told me I was mad when I said I was going to create a spidertable. Who’s laughing now!!!
5354
...is he sure he wants to DM? o_O
Your DM sounds terrible! I had a DM tell me to roll an evil character and then he got mad whenever I did something evil like shoot a dwarf who was screaming at me in Dwarf. Then he killed me with a hydra :/
If you designed a game from the ground-up this way, I think it'd be totally doable, and a lot of fun for the players who spent the time to explore. You'd have to make the main branch convincing enough that the player doesn't realize that there's other options or choices, but offer up enough subtle direction to make the player go... what if I go here instead?
I can think of a lot of games that point you in a particular direction ("we'll meet you in the next town!") but have other events going on off-screen (instead of going to the next town, you go to an old town, and people say/do different things, events happen, etc.) A lot of times this isn't mentioned or even hinted at, but also doesn't have much mechanical reward to it - just some extra dialogue or cutscenes for interested players. You could expand on this, though, and make the game incredibly changeable based on decisions that aren't explicitly mentioned, but are hinted at, or are an obvious common sense solution for the player who thinks about the situation a little more. This sorta sounds like it would fit in really well with a mystery game, where the player can bluntly truck through the story or try and piece together clues via context alone. I guess you risk the game coming off as really simple to players who can't be bothered to explore, though.
Also, I totally just thought of another example of this:
In Spec Ops: The Line, there's a scene where some soldiers have tied up and are preparing to execute a civilian who killed soldiers to steal water during a drought. You're presented with two choices: shoot the soldiers to save the civilian, or shoot the civilian as an example to others. What the game doesn't mention is you is if you shoot the ropes, the civilian will get up and try to escape.
...of course, the soldiers shoot the guy anyway, but I thought it was a neat little thing for players who thought outside of the presented options.
author=accha
I'm pretty sure all of you have played a game where you facepalm because the MC walks into a really obvious trap and there's nothing you can do about it. Since games are interactive, though, why shouldn't you be able to do something?
So the point of the lying and deceiving having the significance I tried to talk about is based on the assumption that the player has the ability to trump you if they're observant and dedicated enough to walk away from the solutions they're spoonfed.
The dumbest way to do that is by saying something like "You can't climb the big tree in the middle of the forest!", after which every player will immediately attempt (and hopefully succeed) in climbing the tree.
Basically, this is about branching storylines that are purposefully hidden and to be uncovered by players who seek out other solutions, and the only hints to these branches are... subtle, at least so that a player breezing through the game wouldn't notice them at all.
If you designed a game from the ground-up this way, I think it'd be totally doable, and a lot of fun for the players who spent the time to explore. You'd have to make the main branch convincing enough that the player doesn't realize that there's other options or choices, but offer up enough subtle direction to make the player go... what if I go here instead?
I can think of a lot of games that point you in a particular direction ("we'll meet you in the next town!") but have other events going on off-screen (instead of going to the next town, you go to an old town, and people say/do different things, events happen, etc.) A lot of times this isn't mentioned or even hinted at, but also doesn't have much mechanical reward to it - just some extra dialogue or cutscenes for interested players. You could expand on this, though, and make the game incredibly changeable based on decisions that aren't explicitly mentioned, but are hinted at, or are an obvious common sense solution for the player who thinks about the situation a little more. This sorta sounds like it would fit in really well with a mystery game, where the player can bluntly truck through the story or try and piece together clues via context alone. I guess you risk the game coming off as really simple to players who can't be bothered to explore, though.
Also, I totally just thought of another example of this:
In Spec Ops: The Line, there's a scene where some soldiers have tied up and are preparing to execute a civilian who killed soldiers to steal water during a drought. You're presented with two choices: shoot the soldiers to save the civilian, or shoot the civilian as an example to others. What the game doesn't mention is you is if you shoot the ropes, the civilian will get up and try to escape.
...of course, the soldiers shoot the guy anyway, but I thought it was a neat little thing for players who thought outside of the presented options.
Hasvers
1298
Actually this bad DM thing made me think of a rather peculiar p&p RPG, "Sunshine Boulevard". It's a game you can play only once. Probably not a good experience either. But a very systematic way of going about lying to the player.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
Presenting two clear options and then allowing clever players to do a third one is a neat idea.
I had a scene in one game where you were told a story with no ending, and asked which of three endings to give it. The endings all told the same story, but they were worded differently, to make the events of the story seem just, unjust or neutral. Depending on what ending you gave it, it was used as a judge of your character.
However, there was actually a fourth option below the three choices: "Done." A player's brain is trained to ignore that option, to treat it like a non-existant choice. If you even consciously realize that the choice is there at all, you assume it'll cancel the event. But in fact it was a legitimate choice. If you chose it, your character be questioned about why she didn't choose an ending, and she would explain that what people say and think about your actions after the fact doesn't matter.
Basically, I used the player's pre-existing understanding of how video game narrative choices work in order to trick them. Was the final option any better? No, not really. It was my favorite dialogue of the possible choices, but all it affected was that single cut scene.
That's probably important. If you hide stuff this way, make sure it's just an easter egg, not something that gives you a real advantage. Because the player's not supposed to find it, and it feels like complete bullshit to learn later that you missed something like that.
I had a scene in one game where you were told a story with no ending, and asked which of three endings to give it. The endings all told the same story, but they were worded differently, to make the events of the story seem just, unjust or neutral. Depending on what ending you gave it, it was used as a judge of your character.
However, there was actually a fourth option below the three choices: "Done." A player's brain is trained to ignore that option, to treat it like a non-existant choice. If you even consciously realize that the choice is there at all, you assume it'll cancel the event. But in fact it was a legitimate choice. If you chose it, your character be questioned about why she didn't choose an ending, and she would explain that what people say and think about your actions after the fact doesn't matter.
Basically, I used the player's pre-existing understanding of how video game narrative choices work in order to trick them. Was the final option any better? No, not really. It was my favorite dialogue of the possible choices, but all it affected was that single cut scene.
That's probably important. If you hide stuff this way, make sure it's just an easter egg, not something that gives you a real advantage. Because the player's not supposed to find it, and it feels like complete bullshit to learn later that you missed something like that.
Hasvers
1298
A great post for this kind of things: A Bestiary of Player Agency.
The part about negative agency is especially relevant (although other sections may help think about ways to play with the player's expectations)
The part about negative agency is especially relevant (although other sections may help think about ways to play with the player's expectations)
nurvuss
958
author=bulmabriefs144
-The big cities? The technology? Nope. Humans are slaves to magical overlords, who use massive illusion to convince humans they are living in fabulous houses when in fact they are in huts, and elves have vast groves all over the place. Those humans polluted the Earth before, so elves are doing this to not take any chances.
If all of humanity is experiencing a mass-hallucination of lavish houses and usable advanced technology, that's not such a raw deal.
Sooz
They told me I was mad when I said I was going to create a spidertable. Who’s laughing now!!!
5354
author=BurningTyger
In the Japanese version of Castlevania II everyone was a liar.
No, only some of the people, just like in the US version.
author=nurvussauthor=bulmabriefs144If all of humanity is experiencing a mass-hallucination of lavish houses and usable advanced technology, that's not such a raw deal.
-The big cities? The technology? Nope. Humans are slaves to magical overlords, who use massive illusion to convince humans they are living in fabulous houses when in fact they are in huts, and elves have vast groves all over the place. Those humans polluted the Earth before, so elves are doing this to not take any chances.
It is, when you consider what they're actually eating/sleeping in.
Filet mignon => Rations
High rise aparments => Leaky huts in the woods
Fine clothing => Rags
Remember, elves hate humans for polluting the land. We're assuming this is after some major climate emergency where the elves effectively stepped in and effectively doped up humans, warping their perceptions to keep them from actually doing any more damage.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
The experience is everything; they're not suffering. I would take that illusion and that reality over my current non-illusionary reality.
I guess this could be used as an analogy for the player! If you lie to the player and they never find out, that's actually great as long as your lie made them think the game is better than it really is.
As an example, armor upgrades in the first half of most Final Fantasy games have virtually no effect. Upgrading all of your equipment early in the game might reduce the damage you take by 5% or less, due to how stupidly the damage formula works. Almost every FF game calculates defense this way. But because damage is so random, because the FF games are so easy anyway, because your HP is still increasing as you level up, because you can usually afford to buy every single upgrade immediately, and because your weapon upgrades help you to kill the enemies before they can hurt you, the player is very unlikely to notice that the party's defense actually stayed the same after buying a full new set of armor upgrades. The party can easily survive against enemies that were difficult an hour ago, and there doesn't seem to be any particular reason to not buy the armor, so the player doesn't think too hard about it. They are tricked into thinking their gil was well spent. And as long as it's creating a good experience for the 99.9% of players who don't know the damage formula, isn't that enough?
I guess this could be used as an analogy for the player! If you lie to the player and they never find out, that's actually great as long as your lie made them think the game is better than it really is.
As an example, armor upgrades in the first half of most Final Fantasy games have virtually no effect. Upgrading all of your equipment early in the game might reduce the damage you take by 5% or less, due to how stupidly the damage formula works. Almost every FF game calculates defense this way. But because damage is so random, because the FF games are so easy anyway, because your HP is still increasing as you level up, because you can usually afford to buy every single upgrade immediately, and because your weapon upgrades help you to kill the enemies before they can hurt you, the player is very unlikely to notice that the party's defense actually stayed the same after buying a full new set of armor upgrades. The party can easily survive against enemies that were difficult an hour ago, and there doesn't seem to be any particular reason to not buy the armor, so the player doesn't think too hard about it. They are tricked into thinking their gil was well spent. And as long as it's creating a good experience for the 99.9% of players who don't know the damage formula, isn't that enough?
Sooz
They told me I was mad when I said I was going to create a spidertable. Who’s laughing now!!!
5354
For a question like that, I think it's more philosophical than practical, since it wouldn't significantly impact the gameplay experience.
