Re: Amoral behvaiour in IF
16 Jun 1995 04:03:08 GMT
In article <badger.803074735@phylo>, badger@phylo.life.uiuc.edu (Jonathan Badger) writes:
>mol@marvin.df.lth.se (Magnus Olsson) writes:
>
>>While working on my new adventure game (tentatively called
>>"Deadlock"), it struck me how often the player character of adventure
>>games (and other games as well) behaves in a totally amoral way,
>>gladly doing things he/she would never do in real life, and even
>>getting rewarded for it. [...]
>
>>But still it seems that in most IF, you are at encouraged to behave in
>>a way that's not at all acceptable in real life. It would be
>>interesting if you out there could come up with some more examples than
>>the widespread kleptomania. :-) [...]
>
>Well, something that's true in most adventure and RPGs is murder. Assuming
>that orcs and trolls existed, you couldn't just randomly kill them to take
>their treasure without the authorities getting upset!
I wouldn't consider killing the troll in Zork I as murder. He attacks you
without provocation. It's totally self-defense. I'd hardly consider going
into the white house trespassing either, since it's obviously been abandoned
for many years, and is in fact in the middle of an empire that collapsed
centuries ago. Do you consider archaeologists to be trespassing in Egyptian
tombs...? Heck, you don't even TAKE the treasure, you just move it around a
bit...
Greg