how so?

@JinLong well, in that DW campaign I mentioned...one of the headlines, if you will, was "Orcs Liberate Besieged Elven City"

LOL

Who said orcs should be evil eh

Maybe they're just misunderstood?!

@JinLong exactly!

I blame Tolkien

XD

BTW, Tolkien actually had a whole origination story for both orcs and goblins

@JinLong that is true

Orcs were basically mutated elves.

In fact that's why they hate elves so much in the Tolkien universe.

yeah, in my universe, the current orc and elf populations are related due to some cross-introgression that took place during a shared population bottleneck

I played a lot with conventions as well. My setting wasn't a traditional D&D setting by any means.

XD

I did keep the basic themes, such as races, magic, technology level at about middle-age Europe, etc.

yeah -- I generally keep the tech level down, and stick to Vancian-style magic (never had much exposure to psionics, so I generally don't lean on it much, although I'm not dead-set against it either)

but I often wind up tinkering with the psychology of various folk, and sometimes the physiology as well

I usually invented more races, rather than mess with the old ones.

@JinLong Didn't Tolkien have several? IIRC it's one of those issues where he quite diligently avoided making "Word of God" statements.

@kviiri that's true, IIRC the story of the orcs is presented as a conjecture, i.e. not absolutely certain

tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Orcs

> In The Silmarillion is mentioned that the Orcs were transformed from Elves — the purest form of life on Arda (the Earth) — by means of torture and mutilation; and this "theory" would then become the most popular.

the Elder Scrolls orcs are just a subrace of elves

Tolkien was generally quite fond of "revealing" things of his world through in-universe conjecture --- which is quite easy to forget might be false in-universe.

@Carcer yeah, I never played much TES, but from what I understand, the Elder Scrolls treatment of orcs didn't peg them as Always-Evil either

(likewise with Argonians)

@Shalvenay Correct. TES does have its share of racial stereotypes but not really that strong

Yeah, the Silmarillion contains a lot of lore, but much of it is in some form of conjecture.

@Shalvenay yeah, TES takes orcs in the "noble savage" direction afaict

I haven't played a lot of TES though, I fancied Morrowind for a while but sadly Morrowind fancied crashing

TES has a lot of different views of even the same race across the games...

How interesting is the TES setting?

I played a bit of Oblivion, the world didn't feel very well formed or rich.

TES is a very complicated setting

Not too consistent, the lore gets really confusing if you go far into it

how interesting/complicated depends on how deep into the weeds you get on Kirkbride's writing

@Carcer yeah, whereas my thinking with Orcs is "noble not-quite-so-savage" (still noble-spirited, but paired to a fair degree of tactical and technological sophistication; for instance, they have developed bowyering quite heavily in their own right, and also can make quite strong/well-tempered blades, even if their hammerwork looks crude at first XD)

I didn't really like the plot of Oblivion. It seemed like a B- generic fantasy plot #12

honestly I don't think Oblivion is a very good game

I don't think much of TES has a great plot really, though nearly every game has wonderful side-plots

Rumor is that Skyrim's plot was much better made though.

Or is the strength of the game still the scope of the world and how free you are to act upon it?

Oblivion has significant problems with verisimilitude and a pretty lacklustre main storyline

how so "verisimilitude"?

Skyrim is generally much better - the story still isn't exactly a masterpiece but it holds better

Oblivion breaks "realness" a lot, though much is from some of the absurdity you can get out of level-ups and whatnot. Like jumping 40 feet into the air

Right

Oblivion doesn't feel like a real world

it's too small

@JinLong I think Morrowind's setting was kinda nice for shying away from the most traditional Anglo-Saxon Eternal Springtime fantasy. Eg. lots of settlements have a Levantine feel to them

The DLC actually do add a great deal

Yeah, I think the reason Oblivion became huge is the graphics, basically.

there are too few people, the towns are comically tiny, it's meant to be this entire country but it just doesn't hold up to even the most casual inspection

It's not such a leap forward from Morrowind when you consider plot or setting. Arguably a step back on the latter (back to "most generic setting possible")

@kviiri yeah, what's funny is that I get stuck in a North American geographical rut much of the time

Yeah, I think Oblivion's setting being generic compared to Morrowind and Skyrim is a pretty uncontroversial statement.

Also whether or not Cyrodil is a forest is... messy

Skyrim feels too much like the real world. I'm participating in this escapist fantasy involving a populist leader who does nothing about the blatant racism of his followers because I want to escape my real life with a populist leader who does nothing about the blatant racism of his followers.

@Carcer is Skyrim better in that regard? I thought the towns of Skyrim are even smaller than the Imperial City

@JinLong it felt better, to me

@JinLong From what little I remember of Oblivion, Skyrim's major cities are smaller than the Imperial City but there are more of them.

The thing I feel Oblivion did well were the Ayleid Ruins

@Yuuki I present to you: Mods

I am somewhat intimidated by large cities in sandboxy adventure games like TES

they're obviously still a lot smaller than a real place would be for the population that's conceivably meant to be there but it's less jarring

Yeah, the Ayleid Ruins were some of the best parts of Oblivion

Solitude, Whiterun, and Windhelm are all probably smaller than the Imperial City but there's three of them whereas Oblivion has the Imperial City and a collection of hamlets.

Skyrim's towns do a much better job of having the characters matter. A much larger percentage of the town have quests than in Oblivion

yeah, what Yuuki says.

In Oblivion, characters in cities don't matter at all

In fact, there's a sense that nothing matters unless it's explicitly and specifically tied to a particular quest with specific plot points and goals.

@Medix2 Skyrim: welp guess we're in blackreach again

Blackreach can go away. The chandelier dragon is honestly a really weird decision, and the red nirnroot quest is horrendous

The problem with Blackreach is that it's a big dungeon that's after a big dungeon.

And/or two other big dungeons, rather.

@kviiri: I know what you mean, though the cities in Oblivion seemed larger than they actually are.

Compare all of this to Arena and Daggerfall though... Morrowind had a lot of good changes from those, though I miss Arena's spell-craft system

My personal sandbox game phobia is losing some crucial item somewhere in the huge map and never being able to find it.

It used to happen a lot in older sandbox games.

Daggerfall is an excellent example to show to players who think "more is more" :>

@JinLong Pshh, with Bethesda games, that's a feature bug feature.

@kviiri Skyrim has much smaller cities, far easier to traverse and remember, with a well defined height-axis (most of the time)

What's interesting about Bethesda is that it started with almost 100% proceduraly generated games

Then moved from that to have more actual (human-designed) content.

But you can still feel the eerie "proceduraly generated" vibe even in Oblivion.

I wonder how strong it is in Skyrim.

I never played it.

And now we're back to more procedurally-generated content.

Really? I thought Skyrim was actually more manual?

I never got a procedural feel from Oblivion (and I play a lot of procedural games)

@JinLong In Skyrim and Fallout 4, they started championing what they call "radiant" quests.

Which is really just another name for procedurally-generated content.

That just happen to branch off of more human-designed content.

Radiant quests are quests (90% are miscellaneous, unneccessary quests) which have you go to a randomly chosen location to find something

@Medix2 I stopped playing Oblivion after reaching a point where it just felt really generic

it's a bit hard to explain, but basically the world started feeling very empty

@JinLong So... you never made it past the character creation screen :p

@JinLong That's about when I would decide to join the next guild/group_thing

like all the NPCs are generic and don't matter at all

Studios have figured --- rightly so, to a part --- that some types of quests lend themselves very well to procedural generation.

@kviiri it makes you grow cynical about the whole point of these games :)

"Go to some place and get this random item for some imaginary good-boy points"

@JinLong Hmm, I think that's a bit too generous generalization.

"So you can level up and do the same thing again"

@JinLong Ah, I know that feeling. It's usually when I take a break to do something that requires a lot of thinking, like non-euclidean puzzle games

I do wish TES games would give me a quest where I don't become the leader of the guild after the culmination of the guild storyline.

@JinLong But I like getting good boy points...

@Yuuki There's, hmmm, there's at least one...

@Medix2 from what I've seen Oblivion doesn't have that much guild play?

Maybe you mean Skyrim?

@Yuuki Hush, Grand Champion Thiefmaster Archmage Head Assassin Vampire Blademaster Yuuki

@Medix2 Does it instead mean I'm the sole survivor of the guild?

another settlement needs your help

@Someone_Evil what's what game devs are counting on

@JinLong Dark Brotherhood, the Arena, The Thieve's Guild, and the Mage's Guild all have a fair share of stuff

@Medix2 the arena is just a series of battles though?

the mage guild was just a series of quests

Arena battles, bounty hunts, stuff like that is easy to procedurally generate in a way that's appealing.

@JinLong Against a rather large variety of fighters though, certain builds would bring about real challenges.

In fact I'd probably be miffed if a game ran out of arena encounters or bounties to throw at me :>

@Yuuki Maaaaaybe.....

Yeah, but IDK, since we're in an #RPG channel, I don't really like content that has no plot elements

@Someone_Evil Why did you remove the restrained tag from this question? It's part of the basis of the question

But I guess TES is generally weak on plot, so :)

I'd like a TES game where I join the Guild of Chefs and it's literally just a screen overlay of Overcooked 3.

Please and thank you.

@Himitsu_no_Yami Because I don't think that tag needs to exist at all. It's too narrow a topic and is generally covered by conditions

@Someone_Evil I agree on that

@Yuuki at this rate, chefs will be one of the guilds in TES 6 :)

Actually, now I want a parody meta-RPG where every part of the game is just a pop-up window containing a separate game.

but if the tag already exists I don't really see the need to remove it from the question. just trying to understand

@Himitsu_no_Yami there are no other questions with the tag

"I'm gonna go steal this ruby" -> boom, Payday 2.

@Himitsu_no_Yami well, unused tags are auto-deleted after a period of time

@JinLong Thankfully those kinds of quests are also often of the kind that are easy to make obviously optional and in a non-punishing way

I REALLY wish cooking mattered in Skyrim

"I want to shoot this enemy with an arrow" -> Sniper Elite.

Travel to location X quests are worse in the sense that given time, you're going to travel to X anyway almost certainly, so you're effectively punished for not taking the quest.

@Yuuki aren't you just describing warioware?

@kviiri yeah, but my biggest interest in CRPGs is whether they can be evolved such that they have a real plot that is interactive.

Like the original Deus Ex

Where there's a real plot, but also it is meaningfully affected by your actions.

mmm

I'm not sure it is that meaningfully affected

There's a couple of those out there but a CRPG is never going to be able to match a TRPG in spontaneous decision-making.

Being able to do this intelligently and flexibly is the exact reason RPGs with a human GM are superior.

@Yuuki yeah, exactly.

Deus Ex did a great job of making you feel like you were making meaningful choices in a plot which was very much on rails

Namely because no matter how much time a human DM invests into their campaign settings, there's countless more hours a CRPG would have to spend on art assets, models, gameplay, etc. to match up.

@Carcer I agree, but it emphasizes my point that it was one of the best such games, while still far inferior to TRPG in that aregard.

CRPGs will match humans eventually, this is obviously the primary application for strong AI

yeah, my thing is that multiplayer CRPGs are an underexplored space in that regard, although still somewhat limited compared to a TTRPG

@Yuuki it's more about the fact that a computer can't create a fleshed-out imaginary world on the fly.

I think there are things CRPGs do that TTRPGs can't

@Shalvenay I assume you've played a bunch of online NWN

@Carcer well, when you have strong AI then sure, but that will be a while :)

Like utilizing mechanics from physics in ways words really won't cover

Once AI hits a point that it can generate an imaginary world while meaningfully responding to arbitrary actions, humans will be obsolete :)

@JinLong it's difficult to judge how far we are away from that since various experts of the field disagree considerably on what the timeline looks like

but yeah, our metal children will replace us eventually

And historically predictions on technological advancement have been both incredibly accurate and horribly inaccurate

@Carcer hard to say time-wise, but in terms of technology, we are very far.

AI hasn't even passed the Turing test, and what you're asking for is far beyond that.

@JinLong there are major technological challenges to be overcome but the pace of technological development at this point in history is such that it's very hard to predict what the shape of things will be in 10-20 years time

@JinLong We cannot know the time between an AI passing the Turing Test and what was described here. Technological jumps are, well... jumpy

Sure, that's why I said "time-wise is unclear"

not that I think strong AI is a 10-20 years away problem, but yeah

there is considerable distance but we're going faster than we've ever been

Right now we don't even have a clear path to start working on strong AI

@JinLong I'm not sure there's such a thing to pass. As in, does anyone know the actual definition of the Turing test, and whether or not its goalposts have been moved over the decades?

Now I want a game that adapts in real-time to become the perfect game for whoever is playing it...

@vicky_molokh I was going to point out the exact same thing :>

@vicky_molokh it's just an arbitrary example of a test AI isn't close to passing.

In fact there's no real R&D or any sort of promising direction on passing it any time soon.

@JinLong I mean some while ago there's been hype about a chatbot that passed the Turing test. One that talked like a teen from Odesa.

@vicky_molokh the turing test is conceptually very simple

@vicky_molokh it was just hype.

@JinLong That's not exactly true, AI is indeed quite close to passing it under perfectly reasonable interpretations of the formulation.

The problem is, the test is indeed quite arbitrary and poorly defined at that.

@JinLong How many people need to be unsure/fooled before the test is passed?

^

@kviiri not in a setting like running an RPG game, for instance.

People say that it's conceptually simple, but it's not. Where you put the goalposts and thresholds is super-important.

Another thing to consider: There are plenty of actual people that would be called Robots by the Turing Test (or at least some number of participants)

Because it's funny how similar things have been said about 'no animal demonstrating sapience', because things like the mirror test and the ability to use (nonhuman) language have been retroactively moved from 'would prove sapience' to 'not indicative of anything'.

@vicky_molokh I'd think of it in more general terms: producing an AI that can consistently fool human parties it converses with into considering it human.

@JinLong That's basically a non-criterion. You can't objectively apply it.

So in our context, imagine an AI that can GM a game and you wouldn't know it's an AI.

@JinLong You haven't defined "consistently"

I'm not sure the point is being very objective. I'm talking about functional application.

We're talking about a test.

AI being able to GM a game.

A test is either passed or failed.

And that requires criteria.

@vicky_molokh Conceptually, it doesn't have specific goalposts or thresholds. That's why it's simple. It's not supposed to be a test you actually perform.

@Carcer I indeed have, and still do

@vicky_molokh Sapience has moved a lot honestly. And the requirements vary quite a lot, even by what country/region/state your in (at least on a legal definition they do)

I'm not sure defining very specific criteria for passing the test is interesting.

@MarkWells That's exactly the sort of stuff that results in moved goalposts.

The point is that once we can have AI invent stories or GM an RPG, we'd have made substantial progress.

as far as I understand the field at the moment there are chatbots which might be able to fool some number of people as long as the conversation stays strictly within the domain that chatbot is designed for. I'm not aware of anything which could consistently fool a competent interlocutor who is free to converse about whatever they want

I don't think the minutia of exactly what constitutes "a story" or "a successful RPG game" are that interesting to get into.

> as long as the conversation stays strictly within the domain that chatbot is designed for.

Yeah, that's not very interesting.

I'm not sure if the Turing test is relevant to those because Turing test is... well, it's about whether a computer can pass for a human. And I know plenty of people who couldn't come up with a good story if their life depended on it.

Or GM a TTRPG, for that matter.

Chatbot domain: cyberpunk plots.

LOL

Coherent text generators are getting increasingly interesting.

@kviiri I agree. the point is to match a human who is capable, not the least capable human imaginable.

@kviiri the kind of point of the Turing Test, I think, is that if a computer can reliably convince another human that it is a human in free conversation with that human, that implies the computer has some comprehension of the human experience

@JinLong That's not really in the domain of Turing Test.

Sure, I'm not married to the Turing Test or anything.

BTW, in Iain Banks' Culture series, AI reaches a point it can do any sort of thinking better than 99.999% of humanity

@Carcer Well, if the Human Experience is actually a shared experience

Jin was just using the Turing Test as an example of a challenge we've yet to adequately overcome and is obviously still somewhat sort of what we're aiming for

@Carcer Yeah, exactly. It's not about having any, err... particular abilities, eg. being able to rhyme on command.

There's just that remaining top 0.001% that is still better than AI

I'm not sure if anyone's seriously aiming for the Turing Test outside the chatbot community tho

Chatbot also helps a LOT with language understanding though

@JinLong it's a much smaller percentage than that, as I recall!

@Carcer: yeah, I just got tired of typing 9s

I'll just say, as a linguist, there's a lot of stuff coming out of chatbot design and programming and whatnot besides just trying to pass the Turing Test

are you a cunning linguist tho

Culture Minds are several orders of magnitude up on humans - as I believe one of them says of the comparison, "we are near to gods, and on the far side"

@JinLong No I am not

yup, it's still an interesting choice that Banks decided that a tiny fraction of humans will be able to come up with ideas the vastly powerful Minds cannot

Could be some trite wish-fulfillment (see? even after singularity we'd still be important)

I don't think that comes up again outside that one book, though?

I'm not sure. I only read that one book (Consider Phlebas)

oh

well, I'm pretty sure that concept doesn't really come up again

He has some interesting ideas but I got sort of... depressed? disgusted with the world?