So in CRPGs, how do you prefer (to play) the cast?

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Hey,

Hope you folks don't mind this here topic. I posted this question on another message board, and someone from the community pointed(Septic Yogurt, in case you know him) me to these forums if I wanted a possibly bigger response.

Frankly, I'm not much for introductions, so here goes...


Roit, so I've been playing CRPGs for quite a bit of time now. One thing that I've always find interesting is how various RPGs tend to handle the party. Some let the player create one hero who has other NPCs join him, others let the player create the entire cast. Some won't even let the player define the party at all, and go with pre-generated characters for all.

Overall, I'm just curious to see what everyone's thought is on these different ways of gaming.
My thoughts are...


Player Generated Hero - Pre-generated player-controlled party

Examples: Knights of the Old Republic, Baldur's Gate saga

Most well-known type for most computer RPGs, I think. The player creates one character, chooses the sex/race/stats for him/her, decides on a particular name that fits, and is then thrown into the game. Along the way, he picks up a few other characters who join him on the quest for freedom and such.

In this particular case, the player can not only move his own character, but the rest of the group as well, deciding how to use their abilities as well. The non-player created characters tend to have personalities of their own over which the player has no control at all.

I'd say that this is one of my favorite type of gameplay. You have complete control on how to completely work out one character, while having a neat group of personalities along for the ride as well. Plus, having the ability to control them allows the player to come up with all sorts of strategy(especially since I recently started Baldur's Gate have I seen this in action) during combat.

Player Generated Hero - Pre-generated computer-controlled party

Examples: Fallout, Neverwinter Nights

So now the player is still allowed to create his very own character and all, all right. And the party that joins him have been created before by the developers.

However, in this particular example, the player only has control over his own character and the others are controlled by the AI. This tends to have interesting results when the AI doesn't completely work well enough. On the other hand, it also avoids the odd moments when a character behaves a bit out-of-character during a fight when the player controls him. An example would be when Carth says that they shouldn't be rude nor threaten the poor old beggar and is happily blasting him away a few seconds later.

If the AI works well enough, I like this sort of gameplay. Allows me to completely focus on one character, instead of an entire group. However, as mentioned, the AI should work well enough, and the characters had better have a bit of a personality. The original NWN campaign was rather shoddy because of this(granted, apparantly the henchmen were added at the last moment on player's request), the later Neverwinter Nights XPs tended to have characters with quite a bit of personality(Like little Deekin).

Player Generated Hero - Player-generated party

Examples: Icewind Dale series(?), The Avernum Trilogy

Frankly, I have very little experience with these type of games, so I can't write another epic paragraph about it. Simply put, the entire party is put together by the players at the start of the game.

Me, I have yet to complete a game that uses this type of gameplay. The entire party tends to have no personality whatsoever, and frankly, I miss that.

Player Generated Hero - No party

Examples: The entire Elder Scrolls saga(?), Diablo(if you'd call it a CRPG... I'm a bit hesitant), Rogue-like games
So, that's it. It's just the player's character that is the sole purpose that evil hasn't taken over yet. Armies after armies are slaughtered when the PC comes along, and drives them back into the abyss.

I suppose that sometimes another character might join up with the character, either to be escorted or to help out a bit t times, but throughout most of the game, the player is all alone.

Meh, this is the sort of RPGs that I usually really can't play for long. It's one of the reasons why I never got into Morrowind. I usually dislike games where it's you against the world as it is(FPSes, anyone?), and enjoy to at least have group. Unless the game itself is bloody good(The free addictive Ancient Domains of Mystery comes to mind), I tend to avoid these.

Pre-generated Hero - Pre-generated player-controlled party

Examples: Final Fantasy games(aside from the first one, I suppose), Betrayal At Krondor, Planescape: Torment

(and to be honest, I'm somewhat hesitant of putting Planescape Torment here. Despite the fact that you can still customise the Nameless One quite a bit with statistics, character and class later on, I'd still put it in this category. The Nameless One has quite too much of a history and background to feel that the player really created him in my opinion)

Quite, so now the player has no hand at all in the characters that he's going to play. Their personalities, classes, gender have already been set from the start, including that of the hero. In these cases, the player tends to have very little say in how the characters develop(not always, see PS:T), how relations develop or how the story works out.

This one depends for me. If the story works really well and the characters are properly worked into the storyline, I can excuse the fact that I didn't get to generate any of the characters. Betrayal At Krondor comes to mind. Seeing as how it's set in Feist's Midkemia world, it would've been odd if the player got to set the statistics for any of the existing characters. Granted, there are three new characters in BaK, but their backgrounds tended to reflect their respective skills.

Plus, these type of RPGs tend to have one thing that you rarely see in other RPGs, and that's that the storyline tends to split up at time. To point to Betrayal at Krondor again, halfway through the game, the story splits up into two different storylines. One party travels away to halt an upcoming invasion, while the other group goes on the usual epic fantasy adventure, travelling to different worlds and the like. In the final chapter, the group joins up again. The average Final Fantasy games that I've seen tend to use this as well.

Granted, Knights of the Old Republic also tried this at times, but it generally was more of a little subquests.

(I still would've liked to see the final battle in KotOR to have been a split-group effort with one party defending the Rakata from Sith Troopers, another party on the Star Forge fighting off hordes of Sith Knights, and the main hero facing off one-on-one with Malak)

If it works, I'm all for this.

Player-generated Heroes - Multiplayer

Examples: Neverwinter Nights(optional), Baldur's Gate(optional), Guildwar, various MMORPGs

No epic paragraph here either... frankly, the entire party consists of nothing more than characters who are all individually controlled by different players.

Depends, really. If you have a group of players who are a blast to game with, the experience is a complete blast and easily beats all the others. If there is but one player who is not quite able to work completely well with the party, it tends to bring everything down. (just ask JediGandalf about a particular Paladin...)

Biggest problem that I see here, aside from a problem player, is finding the right group to game with, and the usual scheduling.

Other

I'm sure you folks can think up something that I missed here. A game with a pre-generated party, but computer-controlled party members, a game where the entire game is controlled by the computer, that sorta thing.


So, your thoughts?

Edit: In hindsight, I do tend to explain things a bit too much. Fact is, on the original message board, I'm not quite sure how much knowledge everyone has about the average CRPG, so I wrote up a little paragraph per style. Ne'er mind that.

 

howdo Burrie!

if anyone can remember me from this place, i'd like to say mr. burrie is a fine addition to the SP crew.

and as far as the thread goes, my favourite is probablys the first option for a fun game, i like the storys of pre-generated party members and i find it equally fun to craft the story of the PC.

I also like the second option of creating a party of powerhouses if ever i wanna murder my way through a game.

And of course, the final fantasy option, but thats just because i like FF games because they let me waste hundreds of hours of my time training up.

 

I like the Icewind Dale II approach. Mostly because I have loads of cool character ideas and I hate only being able to try out one character every six months. In IWDII I can try many characters at once (especially as I can dump certain characters and bring in new ones whenever I want).

 

I don't normally like pregenerated heroes. Depending on the type of game, I like either pre-generated or player-generated party but not a mix of the two (can't recall any title but I've seen that in practice). I liked the party system in the BG saga because while the events were generally centred around Bhaalspawn, the way teamplay was handled made it look like as if the whole team had really been one organism. Everyone was important. However, the computer player became partly disconnected from charname as the generic player character, in favour of a more party head point of view (you directed a party, not charname & followers).

I also like the Fallout model for independent characters who make their own decisions. Ideally, I would enjoy a system where you don't know stats and biographic details but gradually put together a puzzle over the course of your adventures, gathering what you can from what you hear and see. This would require some very good AI for the characters to be efficient.

As for IWD vs BG party gathering, I suppose the IWD one is better for a combat-intense heroic fantasy without meeting potentially joinable heroes on the way. For something more people-intense, like BG (especially 2), you're better off being able to acquire team members on the course of your travels.

It might be a good idea to develop a system of interaction for player-created parties, basing on personality details filled in by the player, up to the point of computer-generated romance between player-generated characters. But decades are probably going to pass before we have this sort of AI.

I haven't played Morrowind yet, but the idea of complete and utter soloing sounds intriguing. NWN multiplayer also looks great for the same reason. The only reservation I have about party formation and interaction in people-manned persistent words is that romances are acted out by live people. I don't like the idea of people being married or in a relationship and roleplaying a romance with other people. It's not the same as Jaheira or Anomen. This time you aren't just playing a computer game, this time you practically become your character, using first person for thoughts and actions. When distinction between player and character is so blurred, problems are waiting to chime in.

 

I grew up playing old school CRPGs, so I'm used to the player-generated everybody type of party, where the NPC's that join have virtually no personality. It's very easy to powergame when every party member is under your control.

Player-hero and NPC-party is best when the NPC's are well designed. BG2 did a superb job with bringing their NPC's to life, but that game is truly a special example. The only other memorable party of this type would be Dupre, Shamino and Iolo from Ultima 7. I think this type of party has the most potential for role-playing because you just need to put your feet in one character's shoes and you have plenty of interaction with your companions to shape your personality.

Playing with pre-generated player controlled parties like final fantasy is almost like watching a movie. The storyline is engaging albeit linear (save for side quests), and the characters are revealed gradually. FFX totally felt like a movie to me, since there were so many full motion videos and animated cut scenes. But you can only replay it has often as you can rewatch a movie. The first time is the best, the second time to make sure you understand the theme, and maybe one more to powergame. Then it goes to the shelf. So its a good party system early, but loses interest over time because characters don't change.

The worst cast I've played has got to be pre-generated player controlled hero with no party. It happened in Dungeon Hack, which was more of a dungeon crawl than a RPG. If you decide to use a computer-made hero, you'll complain about the stats. Like why didn't that mage put 18 in intelligence?!

BTW that link doesn't work for me. Which might be a good thing since you say it is addictive.

 

First option for the most part (it seems the safest and most reliable), the second would be good if the AI worked, and pregenerated character + party is fine with me if there's a good justification for it (as in: the story is well and truly garenteed to rock my socks).

 

Mmmm, interesting. I've been playing multiplayer Neverwinter Nights for a good long time now, and I never encountered much about this. Mind you, I've found myself often using the DM Client, but even then I've had the players get into relationships with the NPCs somehow.

However, when I play in a game with multiple players like Neverwinter Nights or Pen et Paper games, I don't really tend to see the characters in those games as me, but rather as fictional characters on their own. Mind you, they do tend to reflect quite a few things from me from time to time, but I certainly don't see the fighter who's raising his sword to plunge it into straight into the brains of a dragon, or the mage who's waving his hand to cast a spell that'll make the people fall down as me.

When I DM a game in NWN, I always try to keep a very clear line between characters and players. A game always starts out in an Out of Character area where we basically just chat as players. But once the game starts, I give a signal that we'll be going in-character and all now. Granted, I am not tyrant who doesn't allow any player-communication in the game(I tend to go with the 'type OOC: in front of your message if you want to say something out of character), but it tends to be a distinct line.

Frankly, this can lead to some neat gaming. A favorite moment of mine would have to be when I was playing a character who found a resurrection scroll and wanted to bring a dead character back, thinking it to be a great power. Insert the fighter in the party who didn't agree on resurrecting someone. What followed was a bloody long conversation between our characters(not the players, mind you, we were having a ball with private OOC messages) on wether the dead character should be resurrected or not. It almost came to blows as the fighter pulled out his sword to ntimidate my character, who in turned pulled out his crossbow. In the end, all the players had a great time when things were worked out on all sides in a way of roleplaying that just can't be done in a normal scripted game. There were no hard feeling at all between me and the player, we were simply talking about what a neat unplanned encounter that was.

Mmm, I think I heard of Dungeon Hack. That's a rogue-like game, isn't it?

And well, the link should point www.adom.de, and seems to work over here. Mind you, the learning curve is rather steep, the game's rather tough and unforgiving(you die, you lose your only savegame), but can be bloody addictive with the many different possibilities and secrets that the game has. Random dungeons help as well.


Also, a little note on "Player Generated Hero - Player-generated party" as well as "Pre-generated Hero - Pre-generated player-controlled party" games, I suppose I forgot a little something here. Especially with the former, but also seen with the latter, some of these games tend to have no real centralised hero, but rather has the entire party has the hero. I don't believe that Icewind Dale has a real hero, but rather the entire party consists of the main cast, while it's also rather difficult to point towards a main character in Betrayal At Krondor.

All in all, thanks for the responses so far. Nice to see what other folks think aboot it.

[Fixed the url; watch out for commas after the url. They have to be outside the link.] -Tal

[ July 05, 2005, 14:25: Message edited by: Taluntain ]

 

In my "Best games Of All Time" list, one can find Chrono Trigger(Pre-generated Hero, Player-controlled Pre-generated party), Arcanum(Player-generated hero, pre-generated computer-controlled party), and SS2&DX(Player-generated hero, no party). So, in short, there is no pattern whatseover. Adding to this that I liked Fallout(Player-generated hero, pre-generated computer-controlled party) and BG(Player-generated hero, pre-generated/player-generated[MP] player-controlled party) very much as well, I dare to say I cover all aspects. Whatever this means.