Playing the monster and popularity

maglag · Post by **maglag** » Wed Jun 03, 2015 4:58 pm

I believe he was trying to say that inflicting massive collateral damage is perfectly fine as long as the other society is considered more evil than you.

This is, nobody cries for the families of the generic soldiers of tyrant general McEvil, do they? Or when they leave a path of destruction through the city of tyrant general McEvil, the audience doesn't mind all the local civilians caught in the destruction, do they?

silva · Post by **silva** » Wed Jun 03, 2015 5:18 pm

deaddmwalking wrote:The problem with a lot of games is that you adopt that role consistently, and it doesn't stay fun long.

Was ?

Thats bullshit, pal.

momothefiddler · Post by **momothefiddler** » Wed Jun 03, 2015 6:34 pm

I think the real question here is why silva doesn't have Oblivion or Fallout 3. You ok there buddy?

AndreiChekov · Post by **AndreiChekov** » Wed Jun 03, 2015 6:46 pm

momothefiddler wrote:I think the real question here is why silva doesn't have Oblivion or Fallout 3. You ok there buddy?

You can get both of those without steam.

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Wed Jun 03, 2015 6:48 pm

Occluded Sun wrote:How often have you been in an Evil D&D party? Or done awful things in Vampire? That's not really the mood of either game.

I've never played vampire. I've been in many Evil D&D parties though. Some of the best D&D games I've had were evil campaigns. Though, the worst game I've ever been in was also an Evil D&D campaign, which soured me on playing with that group.
As long as everyone is on the same page though, playing Evil allows for far more roleplaying freedom. You don't have to kick all the puppies as an Evil overlord.

momothefiddler · Post by **momothefiddler** » Wed Jun 03, 2015 6:53 pm

AndreiChekov wrote:
momothefiddler wrote:I think the real question here is why silva doesn't have Oblivion or Fallout 3. You ok there buddy?
You can get both of those without steam.

You can pay someone $50 to kick you in the head repeatedly. (More seriously I didn't think of that. I only ever buy games on Steam at this point... and he does have Morrowind and Skyrim and FNV on there, so...)

silva · Post by **silva** » Wed Jun 03, 2015 6:56 pm

Momo: I have both, just not on steam.

momothefiddler · Post by **momothefiddler** » Wed Jun 03, 2015 6:58 pm

Whew. All is well. Back to your regularly scheduled thread.

AndreiChekov · Post by **AndreiChekov** » Wed Jun 03, 2015 7:09 pm

I have a deep seated hatred for steam, and only use it for DOTA2. I even took the time to download a crack for my legally purchased skyrim so that i wouldn't have to touch steam.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed Jun 03, 2015 8:21 pm

Ok, this has gotten perhaps a bit metaphorical.

My question comes down to "Why are HeroClix and Magic super populer, but 'HeroClix but with vampires and ghosts and cultists' and 'Magic as a megalomaniacal overlord' not?" Or "Why is D&D popular, but 'Universal Studios the RPG' not?"

Why is playing or using classical monsters or being an evil overlord a niche thing, but playing swaggering gangs, vigilantes and wizards summoning beasts and dragons ...as mainstream as you can really expect nerd activities to get?

silva · Post by **silva** » Wed Jun 03, 2015 8:22 pm

Well, I like Steam and usually give preference to it over other alternatives.

I think I played Oblivion and Fallout 3 through black flag versions though. Don't remember really. BTW, its something that happened here in Brazil: A lot of people stopped pirating games once Steam got popular, because it helped reduce the games prices in half.

souran · Post by **souran** » Wed Jun 03, 2015 8:40 pm

Stahlseele wrote:que?

Wait, was this directed at my comments?

I was agreeing with you that Shadowrunners are, by any modern definition terrorists.

Further, its astounding to me that a game where the PCs are terrorists didn't get harrassed into oblivion post 9/11. Characters whose creedo could be expressed as "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue" are not going to be protagonists or heroes in general consumption modern media. The "shadowrunners" of the modern wold get killed by rockets from UAVs they never know are comming.

Anyway, this thread seems to keep shifting between several concepts that I think all are actually about slightly differnt things.

1) Playing monsters is nominally about exploring what it is to be human. If you were playing VTM by the book (I know this never happened) this was supposed to be your central conflict, do you succomb to the inhuman nature or do you retain some tiny shred of what makes you more than a beast. Although typically monsters typically more numerous on the antagonist side playing as a monster normally says little about being an antagonist or protagonist.

2) Although role playing games clearly have the capacity to let the PCs generally be antagonists this generally doesn't work because the medium doesn't really support it. The hardest issue is clearly that antagonist PCs are harder to have continuing adventures with. Any format that could actually make the game work will inevtably start seeming less like playing the villians and more like playing anti-heroes.

3) Basically all "Heroes" in modern culture are anti-heroes to some degree. Hell, they are all such anti-heroes that if you slot in a true hero it can be his entire persona (see Captain America). There are lots of games where you play "bad guys", theives, outlaws, and other neir-do-wells of various stripes. These are actually so common that the idea that any party based game WONT include at least a couple of "dark siders" would be more odd than it including such characters.

TLDR; PCs play bad guys and monsters all the time, in all kinds of games to the point where its a literal trope. What they don't play is antagonists because it doesn't work.

Occluded Sun · Post by **Occluded Sun** » Wed Jun 03, 2015 8:54 pm

D&D isn't the most serious approach worldbuilding I've ever seen, but it's far more consistent and mature than Universal monsters, most of which aren't all that plausible even within their own features and which often get squeezed together (Wolfman meets the Bride of the Creature from the Black Lagoon, etc.).

The Universal monsters aren't particularly scary any more - and that was their primary draw. Mindflayers and orcs don't feel quite so trite.

Shady314 · Post by **Shady314** » Wed Jun 03, 2015 11:29 pm

Because even just pretending to be bad makes many people feel bad.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Thu Jun 04, 2015 2:54 pm

Prak wrote:Why is playing or using classical monsters or being an evil overlord a niche thing

To summarise: they lose. Popular escapism is not built from the perspective of losers. It just doesn't sell.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Jun 04, 2015 3:19 pm

Prak wrote:"Why is D&D popular, but 'Universal Studios the RPG' not?"

You have flawed premises. D&D was less popular than Universal Studios the RPG for about four years in the late 90s. White Wolf had what was for the day a slick presentation and D&D was a doddering dinosaur held together with grognard tears.

-Username17