Lost in Space
You might try Writer's Block instead, as that's going to give you access to more direct advice. All I can offer is that deconstruction is massively overhyped. It's little more than taking a trope or collection of tropes and breaking it down into its "realistic" causes or consequences. As with any such concept, it can be done well or poorly.
Examples of ways to approach a deconstruction: "What would be the logical reasons a person could end up being X?" "What sort of society would develop if Y were in effect?" "What might the consequences be of Z happening?"
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Oh, I was wondering where exactly am I supposed to post that. If that's not too much of a hassle, can I ask for moving the thread?
Buttmonkey
I'll throw in some examples from Skyrim and Witcher III for shits and giggles.
The player is often free to kill hordes of monsters, bandits, animals and whatnot without a second thought, and everybody in the game world finds it perfectly normal and acceptable.
—Usually the hero is a badass whose job it is to do shit like that, Dragonborn, Witcher, etc. And usually it's in people's best interest to stay out of the way of such a person due to their massive world-breaking badassery.
The player increases in strength by either killing enough beings or having enough first-hand experiences with things; not only that, but those increases usually have specific thresholds, and allow you to invest points in any skill, even ones you never used before.
—I think that was mostly done as to prevent grinding than really be a trope or critique of such games.
The player is essentially a massively overpowered cosmic being that can undo any mistake by simply loading a save. Not only that, but they usually come into the world having no backstory at all, or if they do have a backstory, they can potentially go completely against it, suggesting that they very well might be normal people possessed by a supernatural entity. *
—Dragonborn is a Dragon soul in a human. Witcher is some human/demon hybrid. Most of these games set that up within the first hour or so. MMORP Gs usually do the "start from mediocrity" thing since they're less about telling a story than in-game player interactions
Nobody ever complains if the player just barges into someone's house uninvited and starts asking them questions.
—most games with a karma system this is illegal, or people will tell you to frak off if you barge in at night (quest givers are usually exempted from this) or if they don't like you. If you break the law or don't leave, there are usually consequences, but city guards can be easily killed by a high level character, a well-trained character can escape from jail easily, and fines for crime (lke murder) are laughably low
Weapons and sometimes even shields just get glued to a character's back when not in use.
—that's just lazy
Potions and whatnot usually have an instantaneous effect.
—If you set the difficulty level high enough, in many of those games grievous injury can only be fixed by in-game healers. I don't question the immediacy of potions in a world with healing magic, the whole mechanics can be different.
NP Cs often don't advance in skill or equipment or whatever no matter how much time passes, whereas the player can potentially become the leader of every guild, master every skill and kill off entire armies within a few months at most (which also raises the question why didn't they do it sooner).
-Most new games have NPC advancement, or have areas with high level NP Cs that prevent progression. Most single player RP Gs the main character is a badass not necessarily due to overpowering them unnecessarily, but due to the sandbox nature of the world, it's completionist players who build up every stat. Game designers put in factions so every avenue cannot be explored with one playthrough, but many players will complain if that is too limiting—forcing them to grind through the game 2-3x times to try other skills. This is a consumer product, after all.
The stock plot of "there's a bad guy in a tall tower sending out minions across the country to wreck havoc and spread darkness, go stop him". The fact that there's a lot of dungeons to plunder that are still full of monsters and treasure, potentially with both respawning after a while.
—In Skyrim the big bad and the hero character coexist, they both bring each other into existence, also a lot of the problems in the world arise out of the actions or the interventions of the hero character—you're dropping a bored god into a sandbox. The world is still a craphole without the big bad or the hero character, tho. In Witcher III most of it has to do with your overpowered adopted daughter going on a rebellious streak and screwing up the multiverse.
There is usually some kind of invisible boundary that prevents the player from going outside the intended game world.
—not sure if a limitation of a system is a real trope. You could have lands outside the map with a radiant sort of self-generation, but then people would complain that gameplay is boring. Witcher III has a bunch of islands you can explore that have no quests or critical gameplay elements on them to remind you the world is boring where there is no major quests/conflict.
At least some games have situations where the player is susceptible to certain negative effects or limitations that supposedly apply to everyone, but clearly, all other NP Cs are not affected by them.
—NP Cs die easily, in a game with a karma system this can play hell with your reputation and make it frustrating as hell. Invincible companions just get debilitated and stare at you uselessly, both making for terrible gameplay.
Massively impractical weapon designs.
—In a world where magic exists?
Annoying Arrows,
—In a game where someone off screen could score an instant sniper kill and undo 2-3 hours of grinding...
Vendor Trash,
—totally needs to go away
Chainmail Bikini,
—lots of games will penalize you for leaving character bits uncovered (like no helmet), some let you "toggle" the helmet to see character faces during dialogue. Skyrim without mods will penalize the hell out of you for not covering up, Geralt will die if running around unarmored—the lack of helmet can be simply attributed to a storytelling device
Kleptomaniac Hero,
—when the totally badass armor needs super rare components, then you hoard everything. A lot of it is due to developers not wanting players to level up too fast
Money for Nothing,
—ugh, imagine having to come home from work, and then start working in-game to fund my next adventure, slit my wrists now
I had a brilliant idea once.
Yes, if one thinks hard enough, they could potentially come up with an excuse for any decision a game designer can make, just like one can look at Spongebob creating fire underwater and say "It works as long as they don't think about it".
However, the thread is about listing any conventions from a standard Western RPG video game that could potentially be pointed out and explored in-depth. Things that, when you think about them, are kinda odd, no matter what the potential explanation might be or how they might be fixed/addressed in some specific games.
edited 24th Oct '16 6:30:20 AM by ZuTheSkunk
It may be wise to differentiate story and gameplay elements as bases for deconstruction, because while the former have plenty of potential, the latter are mostly parody fodder. I also want to see which elements can be reconstructed, so as to inspire future improvements.
From my own observations, the usual unrealistic cliches are the hero being the chosen one, typically tasked with search & destroy jobs that are easily done by less special but merely better equipped teams of soldiers. In actual mythology, such were deliberate suicide missions, usually set up by the hero's enemies or rivals - so that's one way to deconstruct the whole deal.
Skill grinding is also a frequent sign of fake longevity, as RPG combat inevitably boils down to a frontal assault. Somehow, nobody ever thinks to just poison the bad guy or mine the evil fortress. Stealth and sorcery are all but useless half the time. As deconstruction, one may have the boisterous bruiser utterly fail at taking the evil overlord head-on... while some no-name alchemist drops a cyanide pill in his dinner and slinks away.
Speaking of stealth and sorcery, most MMO games feature loads of redundant character classes and spells, even though the actual job description of any PC is mercenary-gopher-errand-boy. As a deconstruction, let the dedicated fighters totally dominate the open field battles, while being easily dispatched in areas favorable to other classes. As a reconstruction, it would be nice to have class-specific missions altogether - thieves get to thieve, fighters get to fight, and mages are total wimps but their job is mostly based on peaceful crafting, and facing one with a full load of fulminating potions is a death sentence. Perfect PVP balance is tricky at best and flame-bait otherwise, so just rolling with a creative lack of balance is worth exploring.
It's interesting to note that a lot of Anime and, going back further, Chinese kung-fu movies follow the basic construction of the average video game RPG (actually, I'm sure it's the other way around). I'm thinking particularly of the leveling-up and fighting bosses bit, which seems to be the basic formula of Dragonball Z, Yu Yu Hakusho, Bleach, Hunter X Hunter, and a host of others. If you find a deconstruction of anime fighting shows, you've probably found a good portion of your RPG deconstruction.
A lot of what you describe aren't really what I'd call story tropes, but simply short cuts to make gameplay easier. I know, for instance, that in games like the Elder Scrolls and Fallout series, all the inventory management that you have to do is a serious bar to my enjoyment of the games, so I don't know that making a game more realistic in some of those areas would really do much more than give you a brief laugh and then become seriously irritating. Also, deconstructions tend only to be fun the first time they're done, and then afterwards tend to sound like nerd-wanking.
The reason for me listing primarily gameplay conventions is entirely intentional. I'm interested in all conventions, be they story-based or gameplay-based. I want to be able to decide what could be deconstructed, and what should be silently ignored due to being more trouble than it's worth to deconstruct or lampshade.
One interesting thing that just came to my head is the fact that some RPGs don't apply any limitations to your inventory, effectively allowing you to carry an infinite amount of items. What if it were to be explained as everyone being able to summon their own personal pocket dimension on command? What if they were able to actually go inside that dimension themselves? What effect would it have on the law enforcement and the society if everyone was able to just snatch something and then immediately disappear into their own dimension that only they can enter, and possibly stay there for an indefinite amount of time?
edited 24th Oct '16 9:23:37 AM by ZuTheSkunk
I see your point. It kinda reminds me of how Assassin's Creed justified gameplay mechanics as being part of the in-universe simulation, or how early strategy games felt the need to address the player personally as an unseen general fiddling with a military management interface. Similarly, the pocket dimension purse is an element in Beyond Good & Evil, while the Star Trek: Elite Force games use mini-transporter buffers and replicators to explain the vast arsenal players can carry. Still, most of it is just magical technobabble at work. Titan Quest even explained player resurrection via magical wells... creating quite a bit of fridge logic as to why only the player can benefit from it. All in all, you might simply be looking at in-universe justifications for an RPG Mechanics 'Verse, which tend to get increasingly tacky after a while.
Show an affirming flame
The opposition to the player rarely if ever throws concentrated, overwhelming force at him, instead penny-packeting them in groups small enough for the player to deal with, recover, and press on. Instead of being swamped in a single overwhelming clash with a large enemy force, the player fights through a series of small, increasingly favorable clashes.
The gameplay reasons are clear enough (ten-man veteran squad against level 1 PC? GG, no re) but storywise there's little justification. It's like the opposition wants their force to be destroyed in detail
by failing to concentrate it and hunting the player down. That's one reason a straightforward hack-and-slash RPG might not translate well to prose.
Shin Megami Tensei IV
>All in all, you might simply be looking at in-universe justifications for an RPG-Mechanics Verse, which tend to get increasingly tacky after a while.
I always use Virtual Reality, even our real world is data. And we can play with it.
Watch me destroying my country
Now that I think about it, the average sandbox RPG is very reminiscent of a hunter-gatherer or feudal society in terms of economy and structure (never mind the framework of feudalism itself being put into question by modern historians). There are no laws outside large settlements, no checks and balances on leaders and mercenaries, there's a deeply pronounced stratification, to the point even the players operate under a rigid class system. And the economy is no more complex than just picking flowers and gathering animal parts to use as crafting ingredients or even sell directly. There is a great sense of freedom and independence in such a world... provided one is a dedicated warrior, as opposed to a member of the non-privileged-caste, also known as an NPC.
So I wonder, what if such a society had to deal with all the niceties of dawning democracy and modern market economy? What if suddenly the cunning rangers had to purchase a license to hunt down the few kobold breeds that aren't on some endangered species list, while the mighty swordmasters were finding themselves out of work when newly-minted machine guns gave every paltry town watchman the ability to shoot down a dragon at half a mile away? What if noble kings could never even give a basic fetch quest without passing it first through three different committees, while revolutionaries demand abolishing the throne altogether? What if wizards spent all their time trying to figure out and prevent the next stock market crash, while druids complained incessantly about climate change?
This sounds a bit too Pratchett-y, I know, but I'm also trying to find ways to work around it, to reconstruct the RPG elements that can work in these circumstances. In short, I'm trying to figure out how you can have a truly modern adventure-friendly world. Because for some reason, fantasy heroes are readily romanticized, while modern groups consisting of private military contractors, robbers and chemical weapons experts, all roving around the countryside and killing things left and right, sound iffy at best. Is it really a fundamental change in society at work, or is it simply easier to sugarcoat violence when it's about a thousand years out of sight, and hence out of mind? Considering the similar mechanics of a modern warfare game like Far Cry 2 (that is, the mechanics that didn't suck), I'm guessing it's the latter. Maybe someone can do a Call-of-Modern-Battle-Honor-Black-Ops sandbox game (seriously, if Metroidvania is a thing, there should be a common name for generic foreigner shooters), so that the rather grim parallels between modern mercenary life and fluffy fantasy fighting are better explored.
For general purposes, though, I'd say a good place to start for a reasonable deconstruction, rather than just random nitpicking, would be to imagine typical non-player-characters going about their daily business, and see what their own struggles and aspirations could be. Think Recettear, only for everyone in the world.
edited 27th Oct '16 7:50:13 AM by indiana404
Show an affirming flame
Sign me the hell up for that. There's never enough people who want to explore the social/economic/political aspect of things. I'd add one more point, which is this: the typical RPG is set up so that only one person is in position to do everything. Over the course of the game the PC is called upon to act as tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, butcher, baker, candle-stick maker, and everything in between. But once you factor in other people able to do things, including being able to weigh on major plot factors, the world changes.
The one kind of setting that I can actually see it working is a transitional frontier-type society. While this usually conjures up the Wild West in American imagination, it'd work just as well for the Welsh Marches, the Scottish Border, or the Ukrainian steppe. Not much infrastructure, high "enemy" threat contesting the land, stunted economic development due to fighting (meaning that it may well be up to an armed party to get things done). A militarily successful PC might end up being the one establishing themselves as a ruler.
edited 27th Oct '16 9:14:57 AM by SabresEdge
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.
Now that you mention it, the Wild West itself was a sugarcoated impression built around the same structure - lawless towns ruled by robber barons, bountiful plains offering freedom and rugged independence, tribes of savage yet honorable people living closer to nature. Even criminal underworlds are mythologized as having a feudal pyramid system, with focus on nigh-Shakespearean intrigues of family honor... as opposed to the petty and vulgar realities of running rackets and scams; or, regarding Shakespeare himself, the incredibly complex yet mind-numbingly boring squabbles of upper crust politicians. It seems to be an almost instinctive way to visualize societies one knows next to nothing about - hence my mention of the hunter-gatherer ways, probably the longest enduring and thus most influential to instinctive behavior social structure in human history.
Previously I mentioned different character classes actually having different occupations and duties, rather than merely tactical roles in the traditional trifecta. This would also avert the ridiculously versatile and perpetually preoccupied main character cliche. Sending an ostensible wizard to clear a nest of griffins is rather counter-intuitive, but it would be a regular assignment for a ranger. In short, I'm trying to figure out what occupations other than special ops mercenary would check more than a couple of boxes on the traditional adventurer list. So far, I'm up to intrepid merchants and eccentric scientists, the latter in particular being the only profession I'd reasonably task with exploring supposed supernatural phenomena. There's nothing more pretentious than blue collar warlocks mangling whatever mythical reinterpretations they happen to encounter into standard superhero soaps mixed with hackneyed hard-boiled detective pastiches.
For that matter, both superheroes and hard-boiled detectives are built around the same fantasy of the hard man living in a dangerous world, the basis of both Westerns and MMORPG games to begin with. Deconstruct that, and everything else will fall apart just as easily.
It might be interesting to deconstruct Hide Your Children. You could have some sort of god or other supernatural force that protects children from all harm, but would result in a lot of problems like more orphans than usual (since the kids would all survive stuff that killed their parents), parents being neglectful, and kids not learning to be careful before they grow up.
And now for my Inevitable Rant, which I've even gotten distilled to two sentences.
Deconstructing tropes is easy. Turning all those deconstructions into a story that anyone will actually give a whit about instead of shaking their heads and muttering "I don't care what happens to these people" is hard.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
thats the difference between storytelling vs having a bunch of savvy sounding ideas you do nothing with but discuss on websites. to take those ideas and weave them into your own story elements for a live audience is totally different. i agree. i wonder how many people are actually applying knowledge they gained from these discussions about deconstruction to their fiction. how do you make it entertaining and intertwine it with dialogue, characterization, story structure, etc
edited 29th Nov '16 8:14:58 AM by WolyniaBookSeries
Okay, sure, but that doesn't mean that we can't discuss and throw ideas around, in case one or two prove interesting enough to develop and explore in-depth and to make an interesting story out of it.
Show an affirming flame
In this case, I see it more as "breaking down the stories for ideas". RPGs in general often construct an interesting world but only exploit parts of it to tell one kind of story (i.e., the nomadic adventurer's quest). That means that parts of that world are incomplete or hidden. Using that world to tell a different kind of story means exploring those parts of the world that wouldn't otherwise feature, and figuring out how that backstage world works is vital if you intend to use it.
Not so different from studying our world using social science.
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.
Besides, a great benefit of deconstructing something is the ability to reconstruct it afterwards, with improvements addressing initial criticisms. I went about this way for a modern fantasy setting that I could use as an RPG template whenever I felt like it.
The basics were more or less Lovecraftian - strange monsters of alien origin, bizarre materials and substances causing unique effects, a mythology based around them all, and a limited amount of characters frequently interacting therewith. Simple enough. Then came the problems - if the monsters are demonstrably alien, how come that hasn't spurned space exploration efforts? If the green rocks are researched, how come that doesn't lead to revolutions in technology? And in general, what sort of people are sent to deal with such matters on a regular basis anyway?
Clearly, going by Mythbusters logic, reproducing the conditions didn't work as planned. It may have worked in the 1930's but not so much anymore. So I set about reproducing the results - weird creatures, weird phenomena, weird people dealing with them. But then I realized, that stuff happens all the time in real life anyway. It's just not about aliens, but mutants. A mutant would leave no genetic traces substantially different from its origin species, mutagenic compounds are formed from otherwise inert or mundane substances. There are all sorts of myths and legends about bizarre creatures already, so another one would make no cultural difference, nor would an official discovery cause more than a shrug. A mutated living fossil is a major scientific find, but nothing revolutionary in social terms. And scientists are routinely tasked with handling strange spills or unusual phenomena, so it costs nothing to have an Indiana Jones expy with more of a biochemical pedigree just roaming about some jungle or other and chancing upon ancient gods, or at least creatures that would have been considered such. Magic is just a special effect; what matters is the myth.
In short, I went from ancient aliens to mythic mutants without skipping a beat, all because I thought the original idea was too problematic to work with. I deconstructed it with a sledgehammer, and the reconstructed result was, well, you be the judge.
3
I think you guys are just over analyzing random tropes here lol which is fine but I dont find it helpful for someone who is looking to better their the context of their story. and thats a problem i find across these deconstruct posts. cool you can discuss blah blah's deeper implications. how is that gonna help someone in need of avoiding flat characters or writing a pinch point? the former leads to idea farming the latter leads to a finished enjoyable story. as a result im pessimistic about deconstruction.
"RP Gs in general often construct an interesting world but only exploit parts of it to tell one kind of story (i.e., the nomadic adventurer's quest)." I think an rpg can be whatever the heck you want it to be. there's no limitations when it comes to fiction. Want originality? There's plenty of ways to obtain it though there are genres and if you choose to abide by the norms of that genre then so be it.
For example the "nomadic adenveutre quest" sounds like the Heroic Fantasy genre - "Heroic Fantasy has been bypassed recently by other fantasy genres, but the affinity of young males for comic book-style heroes pretty much guarantees the longevity of this form, which was once the backbone of the entire fantasy genre.
These are action/adventure stories on as grand a scale as the author feels like cooking up—this world, whether long ago or in the distant future, another planet, another dimension. The hero is typically humble, unassuming, and/or reluctant to take on his role as savior of said world/planet/dimension. He also has noble lineage which makes him uniquely qualified for that role, although he's initially unaware of the glorious fact. His birthright includes magical powers, of course, which he may sometimes prefer to use over weaponry. The hero is generally pretty kick ass and ranges from a man or woman who’s smarter, stronger (physically or magically), or in some way more gifted than the average person to heroes with almost god-like powers (usually achieved only through great struggle, and if an epic fantasy, after many books and a long quest). In these stories, “...all men are strong, all women beautiful, all life adventurous, and all problems simple...”, explains L. Sprague de Camp, an author credited with igniting a renaissance of the form in the late 1960's. It's pure escapism, and one of the most fun sub-genres in fantasy. You can be assured of comedy, drama, despair, and triumph in measures that satisfy formulaically, but completely.
Perhaps the best example of High Fantasy we could give would be Rothfuss' The Name of the Wind which is through and through high fantasy (the focus is on the change in the protagonist as he moves through the world) while the quintessential epic fantasy work would be Tolkien or Jordan's Wheel of Time."
I understand you guys want to have some blueprints structured in an analytical manner. On the other-hand, I think it's going overboard because where's the story coming into play? I view these as more world building exercises to create something atypical
It sounds like your looking to explore various themes from the ramfiactions of the stuff you listed. You are aiming for a high level of grand ideas and social implications outside a story's entirety. I guess deconstruction is good if you want potential for meaning and reflect on our reality. But never forget when you finally put it into the context of a story you still need a well told and structured story otherwise nobody will care. That's what none fiction is for
edited 30th Nov '16 5:00:56 AM by WolyniaBookSeries
Think of it as more of a precautionary exercise, examining the things that inquisitive audiences will most likely point out about a cliche-ridden work. Deconstruction is all about traditional tropes going wrong in some unexpected yet logical fashion, and it's better to play around and discuss them before you've committed yourself to a door-stopper and have just figured out there's no rational means for your story to go the way you wanted to, without breaking half the established rules.
To that effect, the setting described above was my idea for a modern fantasy world with no necessary weasels whatsoever. No masquerades, no arbitrary breaking of the laws of physics, no magical superpowers, no hypercompetent civilians somehow always ending up messing with eldritch entities, no messianic martyrs saving the world, and most important of all, no arbitrary separation from and implied disdain for ordinary humans on part of the sooper speshul main character, because that misanthropic self-aggrandizing crap is the mark of writers who never grew past the mental age of twelve. In short, nothing that's commonly considered standard for the genre, yet everything that's commonly considered fun - strange monsters, ancient ruins, bizarre phenomena, and the actual sense of myth that turns a pale porphyriac into a vicious vampire. It's not just about examining one's world-building, but rather, looking more closely at the very reasons one might have for wanting to build such a world in the first place.
edited 30th Nov '16 4:55:31 AM by indiana404
Be careful there with the idea that playing tropes straight is only for children or following standard narrative conventions is evidence that a storyteller has a childish mindset. That's what a literary snob would say.
If you deconstruct you have three goals in mind:
1 - to break down the board scope of things into a set of highly detailed variables based on their realistic implications.
2 - the context of your fiction requires you to do so. There is an end and start goal narratively speaking.
3 - personal reasons.
edited 30th Nov '16 5:18:11 AM by WolyniaBookSeries
The statement was specifically for the last item. Really, try writing a Harry Potter story from a muggle or squib's point of view, see what impressions you get about the mages. Or try explaining how they haven't become the subject for scientific experiment and extensive research into reproducing their abilities independently. There's even a neighboring thread to that effect with regard to superheroes. You mentioned flat characters, so consider this - when the laws of physics themselves have to bend over and confer inherent supernatural abilities to your characters so as to make them stand out from the crowd, you're probably not writing very interesting characters to begin with.
edited 30th Nov '16 5:22:33 AM by indiana404
I'm trying to think of the most commonly used tropes and conventions found in your average fantasy RPG video game that could potentially be deconstructed. Can I ask for assistance in that regard?
Here's what I thought of so far:
edited 23rd Oct '16 12:07:50 PM by ZuTheSkunk