Tattered Page

Ryan’s had a nice “Roast of Itemcentricity” going on over at nerfbat. He’s quick to say that he’s not opposed to itemcentricity, but he loves picking current design paradigms apart. That’s what made me a regular there.

If anything, I didn’t think Ryan was aggressive enough with his attacks on item-centric play, but I’m a bit of a radical here.

I’d love to see loot devalued- made almost disposable- to the point where your sword may break in battle only to be replaced by your downed foe’s blade- and it isn’t a bad tradeoff.

An adventurer’s life might be driven by a hunger for money and power, but they’re liable to win and lose a dozen fortunes before they’re done. Itemcentricity has put us firmly on the path of characters with eternally-increasing wealth. There can be no loss without protest. The perpetual gathering of stuff is an entitlement. Adventure is about perpetual gain, not overcoming a hardship, not reaching inward to meet a challenge. I hate that.

Many of the elements that have evolved in MMO’s that are completely ALIEN to newcomers- and often act as a barrier to accepting the game- are artifacts of an itemcentric philosophy- from soulbinding/attuning to leveling through content, to the fact that somehow I’m suddenly smarter because I’m wearing these pants.

Why the title?

So, what the heck is “Scourge of the Slave Lords?” Well, lootcentric playing existed long before online games. In my pen-n-paper GM’ing days, I rotated between alot of gaming groups (the army kinda makes that happen). I swear, at different points, I’ve gamed with the models for the Knights of the Dinner Table, Dork Tower and PvP.

In each group, you could tell the “loot whore” right away. Ask any player about his character. If he listed class, level, and his +6 Vorpal Sword of Terror before any background, he was a loot whore. Odds were good he could list from memory every magic item the character ever had, but not necessarily how he came to possess them.

Some argue that every playstyle and preference should be accepted as equally valid. I disagree. A loot-centric player locks you in to a never-ending arms race of “wanting something better.” There’s no escape. A story-centric player can always find entertainment in the next chapter of the tale.

Nor are the preferences locked in stone. I’ve known many loot-centric players learn to enjoy- even enthusiastically- the story, but I’ve never seen a story-centric player grow satisfied with lootcentricity.

All this makes me biased. I’d much rather be GM’ing to a story-centric group of players, and as GM, I believe we have the power to shape some of our players’ preferences.

I first found the module “Scourge of the Slave Lords” in a garage sale. I preferred to make my own adventures, but I wasn’t above borrowing ideas… and this, while flawed, had some very good elements in it.

The premise was simple: heroes sent on quest, bad guys are bent on stopping them. The twist comes when the villains capture the heroes, rob them of anything of value, and chain them to the rowing oars of a slave galley.

No biggie there- the players handle it well- until they escape and wonder just when they’ll be getting their old stuff back. Every locker raises the hope, “is that the one with my +6 Holy Avenger?” “When will I get my Divine Mace of Thwappage back?”

Many won’t even erase the gear from their character sheet…. they just kinda mark it as temporarily unavailable. It’s a long campaign, and they’ll hold onto that hope for a very, very long time.

The loot is gone.

Instead, most of the campaign has them relying on mundane gear- coveting the most minor magical item as if it were something sacred. They have to learn to rely on their wits, tactics, and sheer determination to take on foes that the well-twinked hero could have breezed through.

Over the course of the campaign, they learn the lesson again and again, sometimes even having to voluntarily give up what loot they’ve since earned just to get an opportunity to strike. To take out a slaver stronghold, they have to pose as a slaver party- with some playing the role of slaves- and arm themselves with whatever they can find inside the stockage.

Played right, some of the loot-centric players start to brag about defeating a foe with “just a rusty, poorly balanced longsword.” They’re starting to focus on the story over the loot.

You’ll lose some players, inevitably. Some just can’t accept the loss. If you’re not sensitive to their needs, they’ll go out in a screaming fit, disrupting the entire group as they storm off. This is particularly bad if they came from a previous GM that used loot to compensate for inadequate storytelling.

Allright, I’ll admit, it was a constant battle not to use this campaign theme as a way to give “payback” grief to the loot whores, but when you have to put up with the constant nagging for some magic item- nagging that beginning even before the characters are rolled- you really, really, enjoy seeing em squirm.

Can you imagine doing such a thing to a Fully Raided-Out PvP-Optimized Max-level WoW or EQ2 character? Can you imagine the outcry? We’re talking riflemen-in-every-belltower, stockbrokers-leaping-from-skyscrapers, mass-murder-suicide-level carnage across the countryside… nay… the world.

I truly fear the impact such an experience would have on the itemcentrically-conditioned player of today’s MMOs. These guys have just been too tightly wound to expect something else. It could never be done.

And that, my friends, is disappointing.

*Note: I’m aware of the many challenges facing story-centric MMO design. I just believe they’re worth working through.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 14th, 2006 at 4:06 am and is filed under Gaming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.