political correctness and captured prisoners in rpg

Norman Barrows · 2013-03-24T20:39:43

I'm working on a caveman fps / rpg / simulator. in the game, one can attack to subdue, or to kill. similar to attack to subdue in original D&D. subdued opponents can be captured (if you have a rope). in the game, you can interact with everything in the environment (like in The SIMs), right down to the last plant, rock, tree, and bush (of significant size). This includes captured prisoners. So when you capture a hostile caveman, and you walk up to them and select them by hitting the space bar, you get the "Captured caveman" menu: Captured caveman... Eat Enslave Free Kill Kill, then eat Make live with mother-in-law Rape Tickle to death Torture for information Torture for no reason etc and then the "Torture caveman" menu... Disembowel Fart in general direction Strip flesh Wound etc well, this was the logical progression of the design based on the way the game works. you can attack anything to subdue. you can capture anything you subdue with a rope. you can interact with anything you capture, and perform any actions (within reason) that would be possible in reality (circa 40,000 BCE). Since its 40,000 B.C. (or so) there are no laws except the laws of the jungle. So actions like enslavement, rape, murder, torture, and cannibalism are all valid (yet politically incorrect) actions. when i originally ran into this design issue, I hummed and hawed for a week or two over what to do about it. Finally i decided to avoid the whole issue by simply making subdued hostile cavemen flee. you can run them down and kill them, but you can't capture them. well, that's all fine and good, keep that PG rating and all that. But now I'm working on the quest generator, and its become apparent that kidnap and rescue quests will require captured cavemen. So, now this opens up the whole "captured caveman menu" issue again. I could just let the player free or kill prisoners, but nothing else. on the other hand, realism is a selling point for the game, so things like torture, rape, murder, slavery, and cannibalism are appropriate for the simulation. I'm not interested in gratuitous sex or violence or explicit graphics, that's not what this game is about. Is there a way to model these without being too offensive? torture for information has a place in the game related to quests. torturing a hostile to learn the location of his band. murder has a place, in easily disposing of prisoners. besides we murder people everyday in computer games. I'm not really worried about this one. slavery would open up a lot of gaming possibilities. sort of like having a hostile household member in The SIMs. you could order them around (clean that toilet!), but they'd try to leave at the first opportunity. its also historically accurate, dating back to the dawn of recorded history and beyond. cannibalism is realistic too. homo sapiens is just one of over 50 paleolithic species modeled in the game. and predators such as a Saber Toothed Tiger are equally happy munching on the carcass of a Wolley Rhino or a caveman. So the animals already eat cavemen anyway. Historical evidence shows it to have been practiced to a limited extent, usually in conjunction with ritualistic practices. But its also a survival strategy. rape doesn't have a major role at this time. it would affect mood and relations, and cause physical damage, but that's it. the game doesn't model mating and offspring yet. so, what can be done? what would be too much? I'm not necessarily worried about keeping it a T for teen, vs a M for mature game, although it would be nice. not sure how one could do these things in a T rated game.

Game Design and Theory Game Design

Started by Norman Barrows March 01, 2013 06:08 PM

20 comments, last by Norman Barrows 11 years ago

wodinoneeye

1,691

March 16, 2013 10:51 PM

Factors have to be made overt and solutions not too subtle

Wasnt it Tropico that had objects you built that coersed control of 'slaves'

With cavemen it would have to be fairly simple. many of the things discussed sound more like things that would be there in a villager level of social organization

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A historical factor is that nearby peoples from the local group (Cave #217) often had relatives in them and the blood ties would have a whole lot more impact on how people behaved

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Norman Barrows

7,180

Author

March 24, 2013 08:39 PM

A historical factor is that nearby peoples from the local group (Cave #217) often had relatives in them and the blood ties would have a whole lot more impact on how people behaved

yes, the whole inter-band rivalry modeling thing has yet to be settled. it, raiding, resource depletion, mating, blood ties, captured prisoners, etc, are all tied up together.

at the low level, modeling mating and blood ties is required. as well as taking captives. raiding based on nearby hostile bands and resource depletion based on nearby bands (hostile or friendly) are already modeled. however, modeling mating is not required to implement capturing prisoners. so a basic implementation of captives that doesn't model the blood ties thing could be done. right now things in the game are very all or nothing, badguys shoot on sight. it would be more realistic to have rival bands that could become enemies or friends. like relations for bands, in addition to relations between individual PC's and NPC's. sounds like a job for a politics engine to me. each band would be a faction.

Norm Barrows

Rockland Software Productions

"Building PC games since 1989"

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