Submitted by Chainsaw Aardvark on Sun, 2007-11-25 16:42.
I'm not one to raise a fuss about the presence of demons or violence in games. After all, YOU are not spreading the mayhem - a playing piece (that may be a character, but a piece none the less) is the actor in this case. Harry Potter is learning about magic, not the young reader.
My favorite example of this is of course chess. Taken at face value, its a pox on all that is good. A figurehead king with no real power, manipulating bishops, serfs to be sacrificed for the protection of higher ranking individuals. Accept that its a game, and then it becomes a good thought exercise for risk analysis, long term planing, and so forth.
Now of course, the question is - does this stance undermine morality systems in games? After all - its not you or a real person, its just a game piece. [Insert commentary about "munchkin" behavior here] For that matter - how well do morality systems work in games? The alignment in D&D is fairly maligned, and while there are the humanity hierarchies in Vampire - those rules are fairly conventional morals, with a more sever than usual penalty for transgressions.
Now that I'm done playing devils advocate, here are some of the stances taken in some of my games:
Anarchy Zones is a bit heavy handed in its morality play. In short, every city-state is some type of extremist. Ruby Ridge is survivalist militias/anarchy, New Birmingham is theocracy, and NEST is 1984 in tone. The aliens are Green Peace with power armor. (A nice change from the usual invasion scenario - Mars needs trees! Attack of the 50 foot paleo-botanist...)
An on and off project since about 2000 called XenoExodous, deals a bit with the lifeboat question. There is a limited time to evacuate the entire planet due to a xenofomer - but the capacity to evacuate more than a few tens of millions doesn't exist. Each major faction espouses a different way of restarting the human race anew. (Social Darwinists, Anarcho-Capitalists, China style communists, Techno-utopians... 10-14 major entities so far)
Gangland I've tried to keep fairly neutral. Some of my others might be less so, but not intentionally.
There is a fine line between hobby and obsession. I seem to have lost sight of it some time ago.
Pieces on the board
I'm not one to raise a fuss about the presence of demons or violence in games. After all, YOU are not spreading the mayhem - a playing piece (that may be a character, but a piece none the less) is the actor in this case. Harry Potter is learning about magic, not the young reader.
My favorite example of this is of course chess. Taken at face value, its a pox on all that is good. A figurehead king with no real power, manipulating bishops, serfs to be sacrificed for the protection of higher ranking individuals. Accept that its a game, and then it becomes a good thought exercise for risk analysis, long term planing, and so forth.
Now of course, the question is - does this stance undermine morality systems in games? After all - its not you or a real person, its just a game piece. [Insert commentary about "munchkin" behavior here] For that matter - how well do morality systems work in games? The alignment in D&D is fairly maligned, and while there are the humanity hierarchies in Vampire - those rules are fairly conventional morals, with a more sever than usual penalty for transgressions.
Now that I'm done playing devils advocate, here are some of the stances taken in some of my games:
Anarchy Zones is a bit heavy handed in its morality play. In short, every city-state is some type of extremist. Ruby Ridge is survivalist militias/anarchy, New Birmingham is theocracy, and NEST is 1984 in tone. The aliens are Green Peace with power armor. (A nice change from the usual invasion scenario - Mars needs trees! Attack of the 50 foot paleo-botanist...)
An on and off project since about 2000 called XenoExodous, deals a bit with the lifeboat question. There is a limited time to evacuate the entire planet due to a xenofomer - but the capacity to evacuate more than a few tens of millions doesn't exist. Each major faction espouses a different way of restarting the human race anew. (Social Darwinists, Anarcho-Capitalists, China style communists, Techno-utopians... 10-14 major entities so far)
Gangland I've tried to keep fairly neutral. Some of my others might be less so, but not intentionally.
There is a fine line between hobby and obsession. I seem to have lost sight of it some time ago.