Not a bar, but plays one on TV

12:07 AM

I do also have to mention that I haven't like, played Inquisition, or seen what all the consequences for choosing sides are, I'm pretty much coming at this from one narrow angle

that being said,... from this angle it looks pretty screwed up that both choices seem to be given equal weight at the start of the "mages vs templars" plot-line of this particular game

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

7:42 AM

@trogdor I only played DA2. I tried DA1 before and DAI after, and dropped both.

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

8:02 AM

I think the game presents an exaggerated example ('inborn WMDs!') of the usual real-life dilemma: how much is individual freedom (from coercion, from conformity, from other things) is at odds with group concerns (such as safety, or optimising general well-being, or avoiding damage). But this is an epic fantasy, so both the risks (demonic invasions prompted by some kid losing a temper and getting possessed) and the methods of averting risks (the mage-circle programme) are over-the-top in their badness.

Carcer

9:16 AM

the problem with DA's templar/mage dichotomy is that the Circles exist in a world alongside several other societies with mages that don't do that and appear to have remained perfectly functional

the Dalish and the Avvar have keepers and shamans with seemingly no problems

hell, Tevinter is a magocracy and though it is obviously a Bad Place what with the slavery and blood sacrifices its problems are not "and the wizards keep exploding into abominations and killing everyone"

I think the series also has a problem in that it tells you that mages in most circles are actually looked after quite well and not mistreated, but all the circles it shows you are... very bad

kviiri

10:07 AM

@trogdor That's my jazz

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

10:30 AM

@Carcer IIRC the one elven mage you have in the party is shown getting into some demonic stuff that you need to deal with. Don't know who the Avvar are. The Qunari seem to have made conclusions vaguely similar to those of the Templar. The mage-run Circle in DA2 seemed actually good, but exploded demonically by the end no matter what you do.

But yeah, statements about what the world is like vs. what ADVENTURES are like . . . tend to mismatch in many cases, including this one.

I suppose the usual concern is that the canon is not guaranteed to be consistent when worldbuilt.

But I think generally 'the mages deserve to be free, even if all the warnings are true' is a stronger statement to argue for, while 'oh but all the warnings are propaganda' is a cop-out.

kviiri

11:26 AM

For some reason I struggle to think of games I've played that'd've had an actually interesting alignment slider

Though a part of the reason is certainly that I've opted out of most CRPG-style games. Elder Scrolls was somewhat interesting for having clearly political (not universalist) bias between factions but still one that could be overcome, 'twas nice.

Morrowind, in particular, but can't really remember much of it.

Splinter Cell: Double Agent was somewhat unusual for featuring an alignment system in a genre where they are fairly rare, and I think it was even before everyone had to have them. Generally alignment systems are more "open worldy" while Splinter Cell is a linear game.

SPArcheon

11:43 AM

@kviiri Still thinking it would be quite funny to see what this room would think about the old Ultima games, mostly chapters 6 to 8 (and partially 9)

Carcer

12:01 PM

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica I wasn't trying to exposit a moral stance either way on that one - just arguing that the games themselves do a bad job of presenting it as something approaching a balanced dilemma, because of the distance between what the setting says the risks are and how they're handled and what the setting shows you

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@kviiri Well, what would be the criteria of an interesting one? What functions do you expect it to perform, what parts do you expect it to zoom in on in great detail, and what parts do you think are reasonable to sacrifice on the altars of abstraction and playability and simplicity?

kviiri

@SPArcheon I've been meaning to get to them but probably never will

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@Carcer Ah. Well, perhaps. I recall some of the risks shown to be real in DA2, but sided with the mages anyway.

kviiri

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica I don't know of exact criteria

Mainly because those systems generally feel like they're there just because every other game put similar stuff in

Carcer

on the evidence of what you actually see in the games, it seems clear that mages are wildly mistreated and that the extreme measures the circles take are not necessary to contain the risk

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

12:04 PM

@kviiri As a personal curiosity, I think I'd like to see a game use the Five Foundations.

Carcer

I think that for someone to think the templars are right they have to be accepting a lot of what is told but not shown as fact

(I'd also argue that on the evidence we see in the games, kettling mages in circles contributes significantly to their risk of going rogue in the first place - it's actively making the problem they're supposed to prevent worse)

kviiri

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica And yeah, I should probably stress that I generally haven't played many games where this would be expected to be a core feature (in anything but a marketing sense) which might contribute in part to my general antipathy towards alignment mechanics

Carcer

time for walk

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@Carcer On that account, I don't remember: is most of the evidence are told IC evidence (tales of NPCs) or OOC evidence (stuff that we learn through meta texts like loading screen tips and player-not-character-read codices)?

Carcer

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica mix, by my recollection

kviiri

12:09 PM

There are also some intriguing border cases like Kaiserreich and TNO that seem like they have alignment mechanics (they have a political pie chart per country) but most of the time, this "sliding scale" doesn't matter much or at all --- instead, there is a limited set of big choices you make that sets you on a particular path in a more CYOA fashion.

Carcer

DA:I specifically has a mage NPC party member who is pro-circle and thinks the circles are great and necessary, and she explicitly says "most circles aren't like Ferelden or Kirkwall"

kviiri

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica I guess overall one of my biggest bothers is that the systems, at the heydey of including "bad boy meters", often treat morality as a transactional karma meter where n-many good deeds cancel m-many bad deeds or vice versa. Often in a forced way

So it often ends up feeling very mathematical. "you can kill someone and still be a good guy, just do this many non-lethal takedowns" (eg. what was that game with the electromancer guy?)

inFamous

Or Red Dead Redemption which also has a honor meter like that. And rewards that accumulate closer to both extremes (no perks for being a "normie")

And okay. I can see why morality is often made transactional: players can flip-flop if they want to experiment a bit and that is a worthwhile concern in a sense --- but the way I see it, making good or bad reputation that transactional kinda undermines the concept being portrayed.

I know, I'm mainly describing what is pretty explicitly karma meters, not more abstract faction affiliations. These just feel like the most prominent video game implementation of an alignment system

SPArcheon

12:28 PM

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica coff coff coff....

Enough for you?

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@SPArcheon Certainly fitting the stories this is made for, even if less so for universal application across genres and life.

Is this a canonical arrangement, or is this something more obscure?

Also, huh, asymmetry emerging out of an initially symmetrical pattern.

SPArcheon

That is the virtue system from the Ultima series.

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

Oh.

SPArcheon

12:45 PM

Note: it is not like those game actually were meant as a "your own path, your own ways"- the game is strongly built so that you play as an Avatar of virtues.

but the lore it is more elaborate than white VS black

BESW

Sometimes I think about building some kind of ethics system into one of my games, that's based on my own faith's approach to such things, but I always decide that mechanizing virtue is itself anathema to the ideas I'd be trying to capture, and that it's better to use mechanics to create spaces where those ideas can emerge out of the interaction of parts.

SPArcheon

@BESW if that's help, it is a quite old videogame - dos era.

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@kviiri Well, a lot of people seem to have a 'transactional' attitude to these things IRL (basically anyone who operates on concepts such as greater good, utilitarianism, consequentialism, indulgences &c.). At a minimum, such systems seem to be a close-enough in-game approximation of those frameworks.

SPArcheon

So not like there is much hope for emergence, both because of the limits of the media and the limits of the tech at the time

Those were the times of the "but thou must"

Story branches.... not a thing back then

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

1:03 PM

Of course, a big question is what do those meters do - what are they used for.

And that answer can depend on the cosmology of the setting of course.

SPArcheon

Would be a quite long lesson and you probably would get all bored before I finish.

Those games are kinda complicated

trogdor

7:35 PM

@Carcer this was actually part of the problem in my eyes too actually, in the first game if you play as a mage you see some abusive behavior and practice and so forth, and a blood mage runs away and goes rogue because of the way the circle treated him and indoctrinated him about blood magic

It seems to me just at least from that example like the circles and the templars exacerbated the problem they are supposed to be containing as much as they "helped" it

And if there's whole excuse for existing and being authoritative and abusive is "our system prevents or reduces the problem" it's clearly broken even if you buy that excuse

Carcer

plus, when you coop up all the mages in one place, when something does go wrong, there's a lot of magically active people for it to go wrong to

trogdor

Yeah

I mean, a demon showed up at one point too as I recall

And that didn't even seem connected to any if my choices

But anyway, that wasn't even really my main argument,mostly to me it looks more like the templars just like power and will make any excuse to oppress and control mages in order to keep that power

But it does help illustrate it when thier excuse for doing what they are doing is even shown to not always hold up so well

Carcer

the structure is dictated by the chantry

the chantry oppresses mages as a threat to their political power

trogdor

7:56 PM

I don't know the overall structure I just know what little I saw just in the first game before I quit out of disgust was enough XD

Enough specifically to decide the Templars are kinda bad news but also just enough in the sense I didn't want to deal with it in a game

To the point that I didn't even roll another class

It didn't help with the grim background options I saw if you want to play as an elf

Which I had tried to do before rolling a mage

Honestly it felt kinda like the game just liked making things as rough on your character as possible

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

8:23 PM

It was certainly one of the grimmer games, but out of the many grim games out there, this one didn't look all that interesting to me, so I gave up on DA1 and DAI.

trogdor

9:28 PM

To be fair, the whole mages and templars thing was really what got me

The general grimness didn't bother me as much as the specific practice and purpose of the templars

Or the similarities I personally drew between what was done to mages and certain mental institutions

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Not a bar, but plays one on TV