[Free Will] Exploring the concept of free will in a computer RPG

[Dan Maruschak]

I'm trying to design a single-player computer RPG.  I've never seriously played tabletop RPGs, but I do enjoy reading RPG rules, and have read a few Forge-style games, and think there are some interesting ideas in them.  For context, my favorite CRPGs are games like Baldur's Gate II, Planescape: Torment, and Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic.

Right now I'm working on the very beginnings of a game design with the working title of "Free Will", which I'll probably try to change to something more evocative before I'm done.  I want the game to explore the philosophical concept of "free will".  I think that several of the "constraints" of computer games can potentially be turned into advantages to explore this concept (for example, the distinction between the player and the player's on-screen avatar might be useful for exploring the concept of dualism).  For setting, I am thinking of a pretty generic high fantasy world with knights in armor and elves and wizards and whatnot, since that is the standard "expectation" of most computer RPG consumers, and since I'm hoping to do some "new" things in other areas of the game design, there's no sense alienating the customer base with an unusual setting, too.  In terms of system design, the idea I have so far is that the game will begin with the player's character being possessed by a demon.  The demon will provide some game-mechanical advantage (e.g. stronger attacks, or something) if the player's character is doing what the demon wants, e.g. murdering innocent people or being cruel for its own sake.  In addition, whenever there are interactions with NPCs in the world (in the form of conversation trees), any time the player wants to choose something other than an "evil" choice, there is a conflict with the demon (which it will tend to win if the player hasn't been acting evil, and lose if he has) which can override the player's choice to the "evil" one that the demon wants.

I'm also thinking that some of the "encounters" in the game will be with characters who advocate or epitomize various "philosophical positions" on the question of free will.  For example, I'm thinking of a character who flips a coin to make every decision, believing that nothing but randomness controls his actions, and another character who's a playwright or puppeteer or something who believes in pre-destination and determinism and stuff.  The endgame will be a confrontation with some powerful omniscient force who will analyze and philosophically challenge the player based on how he's been playing the game (e.g. if he's always picked the "evil" choice, say that he has no will of his own, and is just a tool of the demon), and give some conversation tree options to let the player debate whether the analysis is true or not.

I'm hoping to give most of the major ideas of "free will" a voice in the game (e.g. determinism, free will is an illusion, dualism, randomness provides an opportunity for free will, etc.), although I imagine my own philosophical biases will probably impact things.  To my mind, the important ingredients for exploring free will are an ability to make choices (which will be what the various "encounters" are about, with a variety of "options" for how to resolve them), the existence of things which are deterministic (the demon always wants you to do the evil thing), the existence of randomness (sometimes the demon wins the conflict and makes the choice for you, and with the save/restore paradigm of computer games, the player will essentially be able to control that randomness, which I think of as analagous to dualism).

Some questions:  Does the "railroading" inherent in the linear (or, at best, branching at pre-defined points) plot (more or less dictated since there's no live GM in a single-player CRPG who can bounce ideas back and forth with the player) prevent this from being an interesting game, e.g. am I essentially trying to write a novel or something in the wrong medium?  Do the "game" aspects actually provide an interesting way to explore the theme I want to explore, or are they just an excuse for me to spout my philosophical rambling?  And, any suggestions for game mechanics, or existing games I should look at for ideas or inspiration?

[Callan S.]

Hiya Dan, welcome to the forge.

In addition, whenever there are interactions with NPCs in the world (in the form of conversation trees), any time the player wants to choose something other than an "evil" choice, there is a conflict with the demon (which it will tend to win if the player hasn't been acting evil, and lose if he has) which can override the player's choice to the "evil" one that the demon wants.

So if you've done some evil deeds, you have more free choice? So the question is, what evil will you commit to buy free will?

*snip*

Some questions:  Does the "railroading" inherent in the linear (or, at best, branching at pre-defined points) plot (more or less dictated since there's no live GM in a single-player CRPG who can bounce ideas back and forth with the player) prevent this from being an interesting game, e.g. am I essentially trying to write a novel or something in the wrong medium?  Do the "game" aspects actually provide an interesting way to explore the theme I want to explore, or are they just an excuse for me to spout my philosophical rambling?  And, any suggestions for game mechanics, or existing games I should look at for ideas or inspiration?

Introspective questions - heh, not so many people check how much they are controlling things (and writing a novel, essentially).

I think, from what I understand so far, resource managment by players will create situations that no one could anticipate (which can't be railroading, can it). When I say resource management, I'm choosing a horribly dry and emotionless way of describing a player choosing which sins he can stomich comiting in order to be able to make his choice latter.

You probably don't want to have something like 'sin points' so the player knows what he's earned from sins and what he needs to buy free will (were you planning to keep these values hidden?). Perhaps think about what would happen if you made them explicit, open to tactical analysis. And again when I use the word tactics, I'm choosing a horribly dry and emotionless way of describing a player determining some pretty damn tough moral choices for his PC.

[Dan Maruschak]

So if you've done some evil deeds, you have more free choice? So the question is, what evil will you commit to buy free will?

That would be one valid interpretation for the player to make.  Assume for the sake of argument that you're playing this way, and doing minor evil to appease the demon so that you can do "good" when it counts most, in a utilitarian sense, trying to do the most good.  But then (assuming the game is smart enough to figure out you've been playing this way), the end game can say that "choosing when to choose" is itself a choice, and therefore you were exhibiting free will 100% of the time, and therefore did evil of your own free will, and therefore deserve to be damned.  Or, maybe you've tried to play the game by always choosing the "good" choice -- the endgame will accuse you of abdicating your moral responsibilities by letting random chance determine whether your character would do good or evil, and therefore deserve to be damned.  Or if you decide to take responsibility for your evil deeds (after all, choosing to be evil should be a valid option under free will, right?) the endgame can accuse you of being a hapless tool of the demon, rather than evil in your own right, and you therefore deserve to be damned to hell, but not elevated to the status of demon (as would happen in this cosmology to the truly evil).  Basically, try to confront whatever concept of free will you've been trying to exhibit through play with a devil's advocate argument against it (and now that I mention it, the concept of "devil's advocate" has some interesting connotations with the game I've been imagining so far, since thoughout the game you have a devil advocate that you do evil...).  Hopefully I'll be able to make the game smart enough to be able to detect how you've been playing and make a reasonable argument against it.

You probably don't want to have something like 'sin points' so the player knows what he's earned from sins and what he needs to buy free will (were you planning to keep these values hidden?). Perhaps think about what would happen if you made them explicit, open to tactical analysis.

My current thinking on the subject is that I would have an explicit good/evil meter telling you how evil your actions have been.  But your comments which I referred to as "choosing when to choose" make me think that I may want to track "ends" and "means" separately.  Generally, I was thinking I would lay all information on the table, as hidden info can be frustrating (and, given the medium, would probably be possible to reverse-engineer for a sufficiently motivated player).  Although if I do split ends and means, maybe make "means" explicit, and "ends" hidden, since you can't always immediately tell the result of a choice.  I'll have to think about that.

[Madheretic]

I congratulate you on the intriguing concept.

What I'm getting so far is that you're looking for a way to impose something akin to a personality test over a more-or-less conventional CRPG (I like to call 'em "PCRPGs," to distinguish them from Console RPGs, which really are a whole other animal, but I'll have to wait for the internet to catch up with me on that one). The test judges your in-game actions and aligns them to an established position on the question of the existence of free will. Then, at the end of the game, you run through some dialog trees to fine tune the test's assumptions. Have I missed anything critical in there?

It might be beneficial to look into some material on writing personality tests. It's a fairly extensively studied practice and I imagine there's some good resources online.

If you haven't read it, I'd like to recommend Elric of Melnibone by Micheal Moorcock, which, besides being a tasty read by itself, puts its protagonist in a remarkably similar position to the player avatar in your game.

[Callan S.]

So if you've done some evil deeds, you have more free choice? So the question is, what evil will you commit to buy free will?

That would be one valid interpretation for the player to make.  Assume for the sake of argument that you're playing this way, and doing minor evil to appease the demon so that you can do "good" when it counts most, in a utilitarian sense, trying to do the most good.  But then (assuming the game is smart enough to figure out you've been playing this way), the end game can say that "choosing when to choose" is itself a choice, and therefore you were exhibiting free will 100% of the time, and therefore did evil of your own free will, and therefore deserve to be damned.  Or, maybe you've tried to play the game by always choosing the "good" choice -- the endgame will accuse you of abdicating your moral responsibilities by letting random chance determine whether your character would do good or evil, and therefore deserve to be damned.  Or if you decide to take responsibility for your evil deeds (after all, choosing to be evil should be a valid option under free will, right?) the endgame can accuse you of being a hapless tool of the demon, rather than evil in your own right, and you therefore deserve to be damned to hell, but not elevated to the status of demon (as would happen in this cosmology to the truly evil).  Basically, try to confront whatever concept of free will you've been trying to exhibit through play with a devil's advocate argument against it (and now that I mention it, the concept of "devil's advocate" has some interesting connotations with the game I've been imagining so far, since thoughout the game you have a devil advocate that you do evil...).  Hopefully I'll be able to make the game smart enough to be able to detect how you've been playing and make a reasonable argument against it.

Against?

"What if I'm not damned...what if I'm right...and that makes you the damned one? What if all along you should be following my path instead of judging it, judgement guy. Ever think about that?", my character says (his trenchcoat billowing in the wind, no less!)

Who's this judgement guy that comes in, as played by the computer? It seems to be a method of making all choices seethe with unease and doubt. Which is thought provoking. But this judgement guy comes in and doesn't face any judgement himself? That seems to remove unease and doubt and the thinking that goes with it, cause judgement guy is pure good - do as judgement guy does! Except what if he doesn't hold the right to judge, what if he's tread a dark path that deserves to be judged? Then with no perfect morality to compare someone against to see who is or isn't damned, the unease and doubt returns several fold, which is thought provoking.

I think how your choices are judged is one part of the equation - and how you judge your judges is perhaps the other half. Free will - do you kneel before judgement, or know your judgement comes before theirs?

[Dan Maruschak]

Who's this judgement guy that comes in, as played by the computer?

I hadn't had a really good handle on that.  At first I was thinking that you'd be making your case to some sort of supernatural judge to see where your soul goes, but that's kind of lame since it requires the character to die first.  Now that you're focusing my attention on it, I'm thinking that a confrontation with your "opposite number" is the way to go -- you confront somebody who's been "posessed" by an angel.  You show up, make your case, and he makes his initial judgement.  Now there's a classic boss-fight -- you bring him down to half health or whatever, and then you get to further your case, probably incorporating the "who are you to judge me?" stuff.  Then you finish the fight, and you carry the day, earning your place in heaven or hell as appropriate.  I think that's pretty cool.  It also gives me some ideas for some intermediate goals in the game -- I can say that "the right of challenge", the ability to use a personal duel to settle disagreements, is the guaranteed right of any nobleman, so the first goal of the character is to become part of the nobility, which gives you the ability to challenge the angel-dude over your fate.  I think the concept of the duel also fits into where the setting is going in my mind, which is more of a swashbuckling renaissance kind of place (largely due to how I think the game is going to be implemented).

It seems to be a method of making all choices seethe with unease and doubt. Which is thought provoking.

That's definitely what I'm hoping to evoke with the end-game.  And I'm thinking that my new end-game works with that, too -- do you "win" because your arguments are right, or because you kicked an angel's ass?

[Sane]

In addition, whenever there are interactions with NPCs in the world (in the form of conversation trees), any time the player wants to choose something other than an "evil" choice, there is a conflict with the demon (which it will tend to win if the player hasn't been acting evil, and lose if he has) which can override the player's choice to the "evil" one that the demon wants.

I'm a little confused that you seem to start out with the intention of making a game that promotes freedom of choice to the player, then introduce an element straight away that removes a large portion of that free will by forcing the player's hand. I'm not saying that it's a bad idea or that I wouldn't play it, it just seems a little contrary to your early design goals.

Personally if I was writing a game that emphasised free will, I'd follow the Oblivion / Grand Theft Auto model to begin with then give each mission several outcomes that affected statistics involving the player character's personality. So for instance you might find yourself with a low compassion rating if you go around demanding money from everyone you help, or a high violence rating if you kill people instead of avoiding or subduing them non-lethally. Then I'd make certain missions, bonuses, equipment and so forth unlock only when you reach higher levels of each personality trait. For instance you wouldn't be able to become a cop if you've got a high level of violence, and people wouldn't approach you pleading for help if you got a really low compassion score. That's just my take on the genre though. I like free-roaming games with randomised quests as well as preset story ones myself, especially if there are several ways to complete the game. I was most upset by Oblivion when I wasn't allowed to join the apocalyptic cult half-way through the game and be a bad guy.

Ash

[Dan Maruschak]

I'm a little confused that you seem to start out with the intention of making a game that promotes freedom of choice to the player, then introduce an element straight away that removes a large portion of that free will by forcing the player's hand.

I think maybe I didn't explain my goal clearly.  What I'm really interested in is the philosophical "question of free will".  Things like "free will" vs. "determinism".  And the accompanying questions of morality -- generally speaking we consider that something needs free will in order to have moral judgements made about it.  If a piece of industrial machinery malfunctions and kills somebody, we wouldn't consider it to be an "evil" machine because it couldn't make a choice -- it's just a machine.  But we probably would make a moral judgement about a repairman who was supposed to keep the machine in good working order but didn't because he was lazy.  But we probably wouldn't if he failed to make the necessary repairs because he had a heart attack on his way to the job.  In an RPG context, let's imagine for a minute that you're playing a stereotypical goody-goody knight-in-shining-armor type.  Doesn't that mean that you always pick the "good" choice?  Well, if you always do one particular thing, are you really making a choice, or are you just a complicated machine that's running a program?  Aren't you just a goodness machine?  If you're not really making the choices, do you deserve "credit" for your moral choices?  But then if we look at that from the other side -- how can we say that one particular set of choices is off-limits if you have "free will"?  That's the kind of thing I'm trying to look at.

Personally if I was writing a game that emphasised free will, I'd follow the Oblivion / Grand Theft Auto model to begin with then give each mission several outcomes that affected statistics involving the player character's personality.

To my mind, the way that you investigate something in an RPG context is to put it under tension.  The Oblivion model (I haven't palyed Oblivion, but I'm assuming it's pretty similar in design to Morrowind, which I did play) doesn't really say anything about choices.  So you make a choice.  OK.  What does that mean?  I'm hoping that with my design I'll be able to put some focus on the question of what making choices means.  So you "chose" converation option 1, but your character ended up actually using conversation option 2.  What does that say about your "choice"?  I can think of several things that might be said about it.  I'm hoping that's interesting.

[Hans]

After reading through this thread, Dan, a few things occur to me, but first, a comment on CRPG's in general.  There are two interrelated problems with developing any kind of in depth issue related story in a CRPG.

* Character death as the only consequence of failure.  Because character death is the only consequence of failure, then failure in a CRPG has no real story meaning, because it never ACTUALLY HAPPENS.  No character ever fails, ultimately unless the failure is a totally scripted railroad.  Every CRPG ends with the total success of the character (I will mention one exception to this at the end), and it is not all the multiple times you died trying to kill the final boss that are in your memory, only the one time you succeeded. 

* Since death is the only consequence of failure, the save button is the lifeline; saves are required for the fun of the game.  How many of us have played through the same section of a game over and over, trying to beat that key boss or jump that bloody great pit or defeat some other in-game challenge.  How many of us have FORGOTTEN to save for a couple of hours, then died in a game and suddenly realized we were going to have to do the whole silly thing all over again, and cried a scream of rage.

Now, taking these two problems, here are some thoughts:

* In the game you are describing, it seems like game saving should be limited, or penalized in some way.  You want to make it so that people, for the most part, must always continue to move forward in the game and rarely have an opportunity to go back.  Perhaps the game has a built in save feature that is not directly accessible; if you actually die, you go back only as far as the game allows, not to anywhere you wish.  Any time the player makes a crucial in game decision that affects the good/evil meter and the story line, that decision is committed, and cannot be rewound.  This is absolutely critical if, as Callan S mentioned, part of the game is "how evil will you be to be able to choose what you want."  You don't want people to be able to "test the waters" of a particular evil act, and then rewind if the consequences are something they really didn't want to deal with, and thus pick and choose their evil with foreknowledge all the way through. 

* Because you are tieing a mechanical benefit to certain choices (evil ones), there also needs to be a way to make playing "badly" have a story outcome other than death and a reload from save.  By playing "badly" I mean not defeating opponents through the mechanics of the game (using the mouse, hitting keyboard keys, using the powers you have purchased/developed for your character).  Take World of Warcraft as an example.  If you can solo a particular mob with your 40th level Hunter (assuming no significant gear differences exist), and I can't, chances are you are a more skilled player than I am.  But in Free Will WoW, it could be that the mob defeats me, not due to lack of skill, but due to a thematic decision I have made in the game (to play the good side).  Therefore, there should routinely be story consequences, other than death, for playing the game "badly".  Maybe some opponents defeat me, but commend me on my valour and offer me a mission I wouldn't have gotten if I won.  Maybe I get captured and dragged off to the lair of the beast, and get story content I never would have gotten had I just beaten the beast.  My experience of playing the game is therefore different while playing good, not just the same as playing the evil side but with fewer kewl powerz.  From a game play experience perspective, this could be the primary difference between the two sides: play evil and you get more powers and do cooler stuff with them, play good and get your butt handed to you but see more of the game content (the failure content).

Two example games come to mind that might have relevance:

MYST - Myst was the first computer game I played where saving was essentially unecessary, unless you needed to turn off your computer.  There were a few puzzles that were tedious enough (the whole underground train thing) that saving before you tried them was better than resetting them, but there was nothing in the game that would bring it to an end before it reached an end point that made sense.  What Myst was missing was any moral relevance to the choices made in the game; only a complete idiot wouldn't be able to notice that letting either of the brothers out of the books was a bad idea.  Fun as the game was, it was just wandering around sightseeing and flipping switches to see what would happen.

CONQUESTS OF THE LONGBOW - This was perhaps not the most memorable game I have ever played, although it was a lot of fun back in the day on my 386 DOS machine.  The end game was the most relevant aspect.  At the end, after the Sherrif of Nottingham and Prince John are defeated, you meet with King Richard, and are put on trial as an outlaw (which is, after all, what Robin Hood was).  The outcome of the trial was contingent on all the stuff that happened throughout the game.  I think you would have had to be a total jerk to end up actually convicted, but the level of reward you end up with varied, if I remember correctly, based on what happened.  Most importantly, Richard would decide whether you could marry Marian or not.  I remember playing through the thing, and then at the last moment asking the King for Marian's hand and him saying something like "Certainly NOT!  I will not have my ward marrying a common ruffian" or something along those lines.  In that moment, I remembered all the times I had taken shortcuts instead of the "heroic" way through the story, and was crushed.  Two cool aspects of this: 1) it took into account your activities throughout the entire game and 2) there was NO WARNING in the rules or on the box that this was happening.  Another interesting aspect of this game was that it broke the action of the game up into days, and if I remember correctly you could not go back to an earlier day once you had moved forward.

[Dan Maruschak]

In the game you are describing, it seems like game saving should be limited, or penalized in some way.

I think that's simply a non-starter in the genre.  Every design that I've ever heard of that did this was roundly criticized in reviews, and most cave in and implement save-anywhere via a patch.  I think save-anywhere is a requirment of the PC RPG genre at this point (although save point systems in console RPGs tend to be more accepted).  In my mind it's much better to consider save-anywhere a fact of the design, rather than try to fight against the tide.

You don't want people to be able to "test the waters" of a particular evil act, and then rewind if the consequences are something they really didn't want to deal with, and thus pick and choose their evil with foreknowledge all the way through.

I don't think this will be a big problem for me.  I'm not planning to have huge, hidden consequences ("Ah, you see, that crippled orphan you rescued from the dragon grew up to be Hitler, so it was really evil of you to do that!!!!"), since I don't want the game to degenerate to a "guess the designer's intent" any more than a PnP RPG designer wants the game to be "guess what the GM's thinking".  My thinking is that with my current design, it will become harder and harder to use save/restore to beat the randomizer the more you do it -- if the demon's "strength" in a conflict is based on how often he's been losing them, it will be harder and harder and harder to save/restore your way past him with each decision.  Personally, I'm thinking that using save/restore to "beat" the randomizer is a perfectly valid way to play the game -- after all, some dualists believe that their "soul" controls their physical body by subtly affecting the apparently random electro-chemical reactions in their bodies.  Isn't a player subtly affecting the randomizer that controls their character an example of dualist free will in a computer game?  At least that's the way I've been looking at it.

My experience of playing the game is therefore different while playing good, not just the same as playing the evil side but with fewer kewl powerz.  From a game play experience perspective, this could be the primary difference between the two sides: play evil and you get more powers and do cooler stuff with them, play good and get your butt handed to you but see more of the game content (the failure content).

I'm hoping that the ability to "make your own choices" is the "reward" for giving up the mechanical advantages of the demon.  And the "other options" are the game content that you get.  I'm trying not to look at things with a success/failure lens.  As you mentioned, the player always "wins" eventually, so any branch that has a preferable outcome isn't a real branch.  In my mind, both "good" and "evil" (and any shade of gray or whatever in between) are going to be valid choices.  For example, one of the situations I'm envisioning is that there's a wedding where the prospective bride is under some sort of spell, and the groom is after the money she's soon to inherit from her sickly, wealthy father.  The "evil" choice is to fight through the guy's guards in the church and disrupt the wedding, so you can marry her and get her money.  The "good" choice is to fight through the guy's guards in the church and disrupt the wedding to break the spell and reunite the girl with her true love.  There's no way to "fail" the task (assuming you're saving and reloading, or maybe respawning, which you will be), and both are perfectly valid ways to resolve the situation.  But if you want the kewl powerz, you have to do it one particular way.  Does the fact that the player wants kewl powerz control his choice?  Does he still have free will?

I remember playing through the thing, and then at the last moment asking the King for Marian's hand and him saying something like "Certainly NOT!  I will not have my ward marrying a common ruffian" or something along those lines.  In that moment, I remembered all the times I had taken shortcuts instead of the "heroic" way through the story, and was crushed.

I haven't played this game, but this is the kind of thing I'm hoping to achieve with the endgame I described.  I think I had a similar experience when I was playing Planescape: Torment -- when I went to the Fortress of Regret and found out how my character's "immortality" power actually worked it really made me look back at all the times I used the power to do things, and think about what it meant in retrospect.  I want somebody who's thinking "my guy is good, he tried to make the good choice at every opportunity!" to run into the end guy, who says "no, actually you're evil, by not appeasing the demon with little things you couldn't do good when it really mattered".  And I want somebody who's been trying to appease the demon with little things so he can do good when it really matters to run into the end guy, who says "no, actually you're evil, because the ends don't justify the means".  And I want somebody who's been using all of his kewl powerz to be a big badass evil guy to run into the end guy, who says "you're just a puppet, anybody else under the influence of the demon would have been just as evil, you're a nothing."  And then you kick the guy's butt, since I don't want a downer ending, but I do want people to look back at how they played the game and think "maybe that guy was right".