Trying to Fix a Missing Stair

Blog, , ,

Recently, my corner of social media has lit up with a somewhat complicated controversy. The details of it are important but aren’t important for me here. This was a case of a missing stair and the people who wanted to fix it. I don’t have the time right now to construct the beautiful evolution of the metaphor that would have been here, so let me cut to the chase. Communities can be thought of as networks of relationships. Each relationship may not be critical to every other relationship but many relationships rely on the existence of a few relationships. “Fixing a missing stair” implies that you can simply replace that hole with a new stair, but really, when you take out a community problem you are often ripping apart that problem from their existing relationships, which changes what the community as a whole is.

What happened was, I feel, effectively a party split. For some people, the existence of the party as-it-was is the most important thing, because that idealized party is what they associate with good things. Their main concern is that their community as-they-know-it is being threatened. The other side will have members with one of two characteristics. First, they may be relatively unconnected from the “missing stair”, so they aren’t as threatened because their relationships aren’t being attacked. Second, they may be committed to the effort of reforming such a community without the problem of that missing stair.

To use the crude metaphor that I had been trying to avoid, when you fix a missing stair, you are not replacing one stair, you are ripping down the staircase and building a new one. Let’s say it’s a Model X staircase (I’m sure they don’t have “models” but go with it). Some people will only be satisfied with another Model X staircase. Some people will not even trust that a new Model X staircase can be properly built and so they’re against fixing it in the first place, even if they think the missing stair is a real problem.

Some people just want to be able to get from one level to the other. We have to ask ourselves: is having the exact same staircase more important than being able to get up and down without tripping?

The House of Knowledge

Short Stories, Stories, , , , ,

CONTENT WARNING: Extreme violence, torture, and mass murder.

Something about the list of prices made it real. Souls of the dead, not for sale but as sale. One hundred souls for a wand of war, one thousand for a ring that would make its wearer invisible. It was not as though Emla had just learned of the trade in souls. She was educated: she knew what prayer was for. The list made her think of the torments suffered by forsaken souls. She wondered if this was a sign of weakness in her. She might retire soon. She’d been thinking about it more often recently. To get out of the city once and for all. She’d have to spend a year in the clanlands and pay respects to the ancestors, but then she could live on the family estate and raise chickens. It wasn’t her first wish but she wanted to serve the clan. That came before anything else.

Emla opened her eyes when she heard footsteps approaching and looked up at a servant who sat down a stool for another woman. The other woman was aged like Emla but fatter and lighter-skinned, with wisps of grey-black hair (somewhat resembling a full head of it) rising from her scalp. She wore wide-legged trousers but her upper body was swathed in a shawl of rampant pattern, favoring red and green. If Emla hadn’t known Darya, she would have said that the woman’s face was kindly. Now she saw a new plot in every smile.

The servant, in red a creature of the Orlingvir, let themself be dismissed. Emla had sent them with purpose to Darya and the servant knew their business. The Painted Hall belonged to the two of them now, the other members of the Great Council having departed. They sat surrounded by the evidence of centuries of mediocrity, the legacy of the Orlingvir’s ancestors. The exploits of others but re-faced. The whole south wall devoted not to his family but to the drama of Bulokas and Szakish, a war of the gods. Emla — a thin old woman in a worn but stately green shawl, who even held an office granted by the Orlingvir — herself represented a far greater power.

Emla knew that she might never find out how heavy Darya’s hand was in this infernal trade. Emla’s agent had said that the workhouse of the artificers was guarded by a gang called the Hawks, well known to be creatures of Clan Nushak, and Darya was also a member of Nushak. Most saw her as the clan’s leader in Adamabad. Emla saw her that way. That didn’t mean that Darya knew that a camarilla was being run under her nose.

“Darya Chelnik, salute,” Emla said in her hoarse voice. She extended both hands and Darya clasped them in both of hers.

“Emla Chelnik, salute,” Darya said, her own voice full and dry. She let go of Emla and rearranged her shawl. “How is your cousin?”

“He is well, I expect,” Emla said. “Hoping to settle the war soon, as are we all.” Emla had many relations in the empire and beyond, but anyone from another clan asking about “her cousin” only meant one person: Emperor Khurrozi who, like her, was of Clan Meymekhat.

“Gods willing,” Darya said. “Every day might bring another riot.”

Emla didn’t close her eyes and didn’t sigh but she was keeping herself from to doing both. Darya wanted to fence. Emla said “Indeed.”

Darya frowned. “So why did you have a servant fetch me, auntie? I should be on my way home to eat, you know.”

Still fencing. “Will you listen to a story, child?” Emla said.

Darya’s nostrils flared. Only a few years separated them. They had both worked hard, both wielded a great deal of influence. Emla wasn’t surprised that Darya was aggressive. Their clans were on opposite sides of the civil war currently ripping through the clanlands, the same war which was the root of riots in cities throughout the empire, including Adamabad. Darya knew very well she wouldn’t like whatever Emla had to say. Darya had not been educated in the capital but she wasn’t stupid. Emla had been disabused of that idea years ago.

“Let me eat, mama,” Darya said and she put her hand to the floor.

“Sister,” Emla said, reaching out to touch Darya’s arm, “should I apologize?”

Darya made her face cool. She straightened up on her stool again. “What do you want?”

“Sister, I do want to tell you a story, a true story,” said Emla. “These are recent events in Maloxia across the sea. Did you know that a demon sat the throne of that empire?”

“Great gods, no,” Darya cried out, then clapped a hand over her mouth. The sound of her voice rang a moment. “But not anymore? The demon has been slain?”

“He sat the throne just a little longer than a month.”

“Praise the Victors,” Darya said, which would have been strange to hear from her in any other situation. “So which of the Orders now rules Maloxia?”

“None of them,” Emla said. “They raised a new emperor and continue to rule themselves.”

Darya raised her eyebrows. “Well then, auntie, this is a story I would like to hear.”

Emla slowly bared her teeth.

Darya raised her hands and said “Sister, sister, abeg.”

Emla relaxed and brushed the offense away with her hand.

“You know that Maloxia is ruled by its navy?” Emla asked.

“I’ve heard that. It’s a human country?”

“It’s Aridhan, but its emperors are human.”

“That’s what I meant, sister,” Darya said.

Emla paused, then continued. “It’s up through the navy that this demon came. He was called Daoud and he took the form of a beautiful human, lean like a wolf, like a hawk of the land. He enlisted with the Armada as a matross and was employed on land, one of the lowliest there were. His comrades knew him then as a fanatic who gave everything up to the Triad, the three gods that the Maloxians worship. He volunteered for patrols until he led patrols, and he found other religious stalwarts and preached to them against banditry. He led his followers out to attack and seize bandits wherever they could be found. With twenty fighters he waged a war against the agents of the roads. The Armada made him a knight for this. They had no choice: he was becoming known. With the new degree came the power to accomplish even more. And at that time, the word in the wind told of a great cult of demoniacs which had gathered in their western country.”

“They are filthy with demons over there,” Darya said. “I could never step foot on that accursed continent.”

“Sister,” said Emla.

“Abeg, I am hearing you,” said Darya. “The man is a knight in their navy.”

“And there were demon worshippers in the west. After many many months, the western army of Maloxia could not capture this demon cult. When they had failed so many times, they then asked the navy to bring the knight Daoud to come root out these heretics. Daoud came there with his fighters and in thirteen days he had taken the heads of the cult leaders, and these were identified by people who had survived those demoniacs. People throughout the empire began to know of him. The Sea Lords who ruled the Armada had noticed him, too. Most felt that he should be given a land command but some thought he might finally be given a ship, a promotion for many but a sure end to his career against bandits. He got neither. Instead, he was made a functionary of one of the Sea Lords, an assignment which forced him to reside in High Malox, the capital of their empire.

“As imperial cities, High Malox and our capital are not comparable. Our empire is greater, without question, but the capital itself might be our third city. High Malox is the Maloxian Empire and the Maloxian Empire is High Malox. Nothing in that vast dominion is really important unless it happens in the city, as the Maloxians say. Daoud’s entry into the city put him at the heart of imperial affairs. He had been rescued from the sea by a benefactor called Lord Ramya, a cleric of the Triad Church, so he joined her party. His devoutness made him loved by the Church and his charm made him popular with the nobles. His patrols of the city streets brought prestige to Armada and Church alike. Not even half a year since Daoud arrived had passed when the city was gripped by despair: the son of one of the emperor’s favorites, Count Pradeep, had been abducted. It was Daoud himself that rescued the child, wading into the camarilla’s lair with sword in hand, emerging with the child, both painted in blood but unscathed.

“As a knight, Daoud could claim the title of hidalgo. As reward for this service, the emperor at this time — whose name was Iderses — elevated Daoud to the rank of count. Soon, Daoud was engaged to marry the niece of Count Lorrin, the Second Sea Lord, which would attach him to a prestigious family of the empire.

“Almost immediately after those plans were set, the emperor was killed along with 23 hours of the royal household at least. It was a spell, of course: a sudden intense heat gripping the main house and little else, causing its fires but chiefly killing by the cooking heat alone. It was first assumed to be some mishap of a palace sorcerer, none of whom survived to be questioned. The empire mourned but the worthies did not wait, they gathered swiftly to decide their next action. As Emperor Iderses’s child and heir had also died, a council of decision was formed to elect the next ruler. Lord Ramya, a member of this council, proposed that they elect Count Daoud as the next Maloxian emperor. As an outsider with a reputation for fighting criminals and demons, he would be popular with the common people. As a human, he would not shift the marriage aspirations of the nobility. Finally, as an untutored military man and a devotee of the Triad, he would be a creature of this council. This convinced the rest of the council; not all, but enough that their choice was clear. The council of decision declared that Daoud would now rule their great empire.”

“Gods forfend,” cried Darya. “And this was the demon?”

“He was the demon, yes,” said Emla.

“How could they have let this happen?”

“They did not let it happen. They had been outmaneuvered, for a moment, by a cunning demon, an immortal hell-creature. This demon emperor Daoud was crowned shortly thereafter and was married on the same day. As soon as he was enthroned, Daoud cast suspicion on everyone who survived the death of the old emperor, and all such people were speedily replaced. Not only was the captain of the guard dismissed, nearly every member of the guard was thrown out, to be replaced by new fighters. Not only servants but even traders who prided themselves as royal suppliers now had their business refused. Count Lorrin was named archcleric (which is like our grand vizier) and many of the new appointments came from her circle of associates.

“But the city talked. Not all of the emperor’s servants could be replaced with the same speed. Those who were dismissed met different fates. Some were suddenly and cruelly killed. Others fled the city or went into hiding. As they left, they scattered the pieces of what they’d seen throughout the city. Piece by piece, the story of what was happening inside the palace was assembled outside its walls. The Triad of Emperor Daoud demanded blood. Oaths of undying loyalty to Daoud were being carved into flesh. Uncanny shadows crept through the halls. The consort, already pregnant and bedbound, was cloaked in a presence of such inexplicable malevolence that no nurse could be around her and no one could tend her unless they had taken the flesh-carved oath. The emperor took a strange form at night, it was said, and each day another part of the palace was restricted for his personal use.

“Lord Karolkarem, the guard captain dismissed by Daoud, still lived in the city. He had survived two attempts on his life already when he was approached by the magistrate for the empire, Count Batulay. Naturally, the emperor couldn’t simply dismiss her, but he made himself and the palace inaccessible to her. Batulay and Karolkarem were both familiar with what was supposed to be happening around the emperor. They decided that they had to break into the palace and deal with the malefic presence which had established itself there. Lord Karolkarem summoned a half-company of fighters and they attacked the palace. Count Batulay’s powerful magic subdued the guard and broke through the demonic defenses, allowing Karolkarem and his troop to storm the building. Inside, they confirmed all the horrors that had been rumored and more. Many lives were lost against the demon called Daoud but he was slain that day. With all they knew to be true, Karolkarem and his fighters did not rest. The lord held one of Daoud’s broken horns. He no longer doubted what was happening.

“What grew within the consort was a cambion. Batulay crushed the consort’s womb with magic, then the fighters slashed her throat and hacked her body apart to make sure that the child could not live. Count Batulay sealed the palace so no one could leave while Karolkarem went from chamber to chamber, murdering everyone they found by the sword until swords got too dull, and then by whatever instruments they could find. They battered to death servants of every kind, they disemboweled retainers, they threw children down stairs. They murdered all 24 hours in the palace that day. No one there died an unsupervised death.

“After this, Count Batulay assembled a few locals to made a council of decision and elect Karolkarem as the new emperor. Word spread in the city and soon Karolkarem had over 1,000 fighters with him. The force first marched to the Palace of the Sea Lords. Those Sea Lords who had supported Daoud were either not in the city or had already fled, and the two who remained speedily accepted the decree of Batulay’s council. High Malox fell to the new emperor almost instantly. Those nobles and officers who had favored Daoud would find no support anywhere; their oldest friends and most loyal associates abandoned them when it became clear what Daoud was. It was not long before Karolkarem had full control of the Armada and the other military forces of the empire.

“Both Emperor Karolkarem and Count Batulay knew that the empire was not yet safe. Needing channelers they could trust, Batulay invited inquisitors from the Land of Mum to aid them in wiping out the demonic threat plaguing Maloxia. Count Lorrin, the archcleric, had been killed alongside the demon, so Karolkarem ordered her manor to be ransacked. Soldiers invaded Lorrin’s home and seized everyone they found. Most were butchered where they were caught, streaking blood across the floors and onto their killers. Others were held until a magician and a channeler could be found. The magician performed a torture called reversal, twisting limbs back and forth unnaturally, careless of what might snap or break, while the channeler drew upon mystic to penetrate the patient’s mind and separate truth from falsehood. All of Lorrin’s relatives were tortured like this and they revealed how deep their devotion to this demon ran. Everyone they had found was a slave of the demon emperor and had been for years. Not only this, they knew of many, many others who knew that Daoud was a demon and worshipped him as the Lord of Death who would soon have been crowned. Everyone who had aided him was in his thrall.

“Those named by the patients of torture were placed on proscription lists, marking them as criminal arch-heretics whose sentence had already been decided. There were only two sentences: death and arrest. Rotting blood stank throughout Maloxia for weeks after the vicious hunters had finished mauling the heretics. The few who were arrested were dragged to the manor which had belonged to Count Lorrin, which was now being called the House of Knowledge by those who had, by necessity, to speak of it. It was a place where you stopped noticing screams. Floggings continued for days. Desperate to find where the least demonic influence might still reside, the torturers devised ever more devious ordeals to extract ever smaller shreds of gossip or shattered memories. When they decided that they could learn no more, they burned the house down; only the torturers and their servants were allowed to leave first.

“The first person who was ever known to have seen Daoud was the registrar who had enlisted him into the Armada. Some time after that, this man had been assigned to a ship and then to a post in the Kingdom of Aybakeli. He settled there, joining the Aybakeli navy, and marrying, and raising a family. It is said that he wasn’t even aware that he had met the Emperor Daoud before, not even during all his early exploits. And yet on a hot but cloudy day, the man’s house was broken into by a gang of mercenaries. The mercenaries dragged him out into the street along with his family where they were brutally decapitated. Their bodies were left in the street but their heads were taken. I do not know what happened to the heads.”

Darya stared at Emla, wide-eyed and empty.

“This all happened over five years,” Emla said, “from Daoud’s defeat of the demoniacs to the lifting of proscriptions. Both Daoud and Karolkarem were elected four years ago, and the House of Knowledge burned down the year before last.”

Darya still stared. Finally, she managed to say one word: “Madness.”

“Is it?” Emla replied.

“Do you think an ocean of blood will solve your problems?”

“Should they have allowed a demon to fester on their throne?”

Darya shook her head. “Madness,” she said again. She put a hand down and this time Emla didn’t stop her from getting up. Darya said “Let me tell you something, auntie,” as she drew her shawl tighter around her. “An exorcist is much cheaper.”

Darya turned away and walked out of the Painted Hall at a stately pace. She had left her stool. The servants would return it to her, of course, but she should carry her own stool out of a place like this.

Emla wondered if that mudling Darya had understood what she was trying to say. She wondered if Darya had understood more than she wanted to say. Emla knew what she had said, she could recall the words, yet she wondered about what she had really said and how much of it she meant. How could heretics and demons be tolerated?

Emla closed her eyes. She was suddenly exhausted. She wondered if it was all becoming too much for her. Maybe she should retire.

The Outer Worlds: Peril on Gorgon

Adventures, Morality, and the Outer Worlds

Critique, Non-Fiction, , ,
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Why is it that adventurers often fall into the “murder hobo” archetype? It’s a facet of the kind of game we are playing: in Dungeons and Dragons, it’s a combat-focused game, so the problems that we get presented are primarily combat problems. Computer role-playing games have a large debt to tabletop RPGs and, perhaps especially, to Dungeons and Dragons. It’s not just that games take their inspiration from role-playing, they take their inspiration from combat-focused role-playing. That’s the reason we have games like the first-person RPGs from Bethesda and now from Obsidian. But there is a big problem here.

The problem is in the “role-playing” aspect. Specifically, it’s in the kind of moral choices we’re expected to make in these games. I’ve just finished my second play-through of Obsidian’s The Outer Worlds. I did enjoy the game but one of the reasons I could enjoy it was that I did not let myself view the moral choices presented as real. This wasn’t how I went into the game, though. I got very frustrated at the morality of the game immediately, and it was from there that I decided the entire structure was the issue. I’ve picked at this problem from the moment it started to needle me and I think that I can finally elaborate on the issue with this type of storytelling.

So here’s the incident that pissed me off: Parvati and Edgewater. In my first playthrough, I was running a more standard hero who picks the good boy options 9 times out of 10. However, you get presented with a choice here: you have to reroute power either to the town (with an oppressive work system) or to the deserters (who escaped from the town). The one you don’t send power to will fail as a community. From what people said, especially Parvati, it seemed like the deserters were doing a decent job. My idea was to divert power to the deserters, then the people of Edgewater would become a community with the deserters. Okay, cool. We go through the dungeon and I’m about to do The Thing that diverts power, then suddenly Parvati’s like “wait a second no actually don’t power off Edgewater”.

First of all, what the fuck? Parvati is pretty solidly pro-deserter all the way up until this point. Never mentions a problem. But okay, fine, she has her say, I send power to the deserters. I go back to Edgewater to get a quest thing and the mayor is like “look, fuck you, I have my guys down there and they’re gonna shoot you if you get the quest thing”. So I’m like well I have to get the quest thing, so fuck you, dude, and I shot him. Parvati is horrified and nearly leaves the party. But I’m just like eh fuck that, so I reloaded the save. I don’t shoot the mayor this time. Instead, I just go down and gun down all his goons. Parvati doesn’t blink an eye.

And it’s at that point that I realized the game just isn’t set up to deal with morality in the way it wants to.

Thinking more about it, though, I realized it’s not a problem with Obsidian or the Bethesda style in particular. It’s actually a problem with how we construct adventures. It’s a problem that’s shared by Dungeons & Dragons as well and, in general, with all adventuring games that try to deal with morality in the usual ham-fisted way.

The basic issue is that it’s just not the player’s fault for being in these shitty situations. When building the adventure, game makers & dungeon masters tend not to take any responsibility for the situation. In the Edgewater situation, I can’t say “okay well I don’t want to power either of you off, can you like call your people and we can get a quest thing ordered, I’ll wait”. More importantly to me, I can’t tell the mayor “why don’t you guys go join the deserters?” (it turns out that the “good deserters” are also basically fascists, which I won’t get into in this time, but suffice to say this is not at all apparent before the climax unless you ask a ton of questions). The game constructed both the situation and the viable options. I can’t interact with the quest in any way other than what I’m given. Yet when a character says “I am going to kill you” and I kill them instead, Parvati is horrified about it and I’m supposed to feel bad?

If Parvati was going to be horrified, why doesn’t she shed a tear about the people down there who are going to be killed? Why doesn’t she try to stop the mayor, or to convince me to go another way? It’s because of the entirely artificial reason that she’s just there to accompany you on the adventure. You’re not supposed to kill the mayor, therefore she reacts badly to it. You’re supposed to kill the new guards, so she gives zero fucks.

Basically, the game pretends it has an all-encompassing morality but does not allow me a full latitude in reacting to situations, then judges me based on the constrained decisions I make. It tells me that I can either be a capital-G Good capital-P Person or an evil villain, an outcome that relies entirely on who I decide to murder. (They lampshade this in the Halcyon Helen DLC but lampshading doesn’t make a problem go away.) It’s utterly ridiculous and, to me, the only honest response is to simply not engage with the game’s nods at morality.

But I am trying to get at a larger point. One way to solve this would be to expand the non-combat portions of the game, allow the player to fully engage with the world and think of different solutions. If you wanted to do this, though, you probably shouldn’t play Dungeons & Dragons; there are plenty of other RPG systems which are better equipped to handle the kind of looseness you’d need for this. Some computer games have approached this as well; I haven’t played Vampire the Bloodline: Masquerade but everything I hear about it makes me think that it’s more social than combat focused.

Again, though, I’m not suggesting all games need to broaden out. I’m suggesting that games need to choose. If you are going to ask me to pick any sort of morality I want, you have to allow me to back that up. That means, necessarily, you can’t construct dungeons as the main obstacles. If you’re going to make a combat-focused game, you as the game maker or DM should constrain the narrative so that the players aren’t being expected or even allowed to be paragons of virtue or sons of Sam. Don’t present situations that end up in this kind of schizoid where players shift between being dead-eyed spree killers and goody-two-shoeses, especially not if everyone around them is somehow fine with this.

The clearest example that I have for this idea is actually not social interactions, though. It’s stealth. This particular problem is more apparent in single-player computer RPGs, mostly because party interaction is a minimal part of the active gameplay; in other words, you’re not there with your friends who are reacting to you, at best you’ll have NPCs/bots.

Stealth is an issue for these kinds of games because what they involve is, in essence, not playing the game. In the Outer Worlds, every dungeon is set up as a shooting battle, in other words a combat problem. Whenever you take the stealth “option”, though, you essentially decide to not play that, which leaves you with very little. When you’re in a fight, you are employing spatial awareness, pattern recognition, hand-eye coordination, reflexes, and so on. The problem is engaging and exciting and tense. When you’re using stealth, you’re waiting, watching, shuffling around until you finally reach the end and then if you have put enough points in the proper stealth skill, you can just end the entire encounter at once.

Solving the problem with stealth is never as satisfying as powering through with guns in these games. This isn’t because stealth is inherently uninteresting but because the game is not built around stealth. To a large extent, stealth is more about skill checks than strategy, which means there’s little creative thinking you need to do. All you have to do is be able to press the button at the end.

When I shifted from Normal to Hard on the Outer Worlds, there was a point where I was utterly baffled by how tough the combat got. Eventually I learned that the stand-up shoot-from-the-hip style just wasn’t going to cut it. I started to run away more and take pot shots, have less pride and more efficacy, and it presented an interesting challenge. Stealth, on the other hand, mainly tries your patience. There’s little active challenge in it. The goal is usually to find a fairly obvious secret passage and follow that. If you have your Lockpick and Hack skills high, plenty of the challenges just won’t exist.

Great example from the run I just finished. This is a minor spoiler, I suppose, but once you get there you’ll be able to figure this out immediately. When you get up to the final boss, there’s a locked room next to you with a high difficulty. Now, if you just go through and fight, it’s a fairly tough fight because the boss can wipe your party out pretty easy, there’s a bunch of assholes flying around and running interference, and so on. I think it took me five or so tries to beat. However, if you have a high enough Lockpick, you can get through that door I mentioned without going in to face the boss; then, if you have a high enough Hack, you can just sit back and watch the boss be destroyed.

A big, dangerous, somewhat interesting fight or two skill checks under zero pressure. That’s what I mean by “not playing the game”.

Social stuff is almost worse in these games. With stealth you do have the slight tension of watching the notice icons on people you’re trying to sneak past. Social stuff requires absolutely no though, just skill checks. You never have to do things like dress appropriately, say the right things, present gifts, or so on; just have a high level in an appropriate skill and you can say whatever you want, you’ll get through. If you decide that you don’t want to slaughter a group of people and instead talk them down, congratulations: you’re playing even less of the game than if you tried to sneak past.

Every time I got the opportunity to talk somebody down from fighting I did it, but I immediately felt like I was just choosing not to go on a ride at a theme park. I could just fail the check and have the shooty time that the game is clearly built around, or I could pass and not play this part of the game. It’s a fairly ridiculous choice to ask the player who bought the game to make, but the game acts as though this choice is one that’s meaningful in the moment. It’s like buying NBA 2k21 and it gives up a warning: “If you play this game, you’re asserting that you love Mark Cuban and you want to kiss him, but you can pick audience mode too and then it means you don’t love him”. That’s idiotic, I bought NBA 2k21 to play the game, now you’re telling me the only good boy choice is to not play? That’s a choice made outside the game.

Now, I do want to give a few hold-ups here. I’m not saying that stealth games or social games are not good or not fun. I’m saying that D&D and computer RPGs are mostly not made as stealth or social games, they are made as combat games. I’m also not saying that games can’t critique the kind of experiences we’re engaging in when we play a shooty or a fighty. Critique is an important part of artistic expression and you can do that without act as though the player is at the root

My point is two-fold. First, if you’re going to treat me as though I have total moral agency and could be a shining holy man or a dirty dirty dawg depending on my decisions alone, you have to allow me to interact with situations more fully. If you allow me to do that, you need to make those parts of the game actually interesting. This means a game with either a huge scope or uniformly pretty simplified mechanics, and I understand that. It actually leads into my second point.

This second point is that if you are going to present a combat-focused game, you should structure the storyline around that specifically, rather than pretending as though the whole spectrum of moral agency is open to the player. In TOW, for instance, you could have been locked in as a criminal or a military person, someone who would be expected to “get their hands dirty”. As you work for Phineas, you should either have to keep that quiet or have people judging you for working with a terrorist. People shouldn’t receive you like a savior (the way they do in game), they should treat you like a dispensable butcher (the way combat forces often are by their employers). The idea that you could be seen by Edgewater as a savior & good person after turning off their power and killing a bunch of people is ludicrous. Should you be forced to make that choice? Sure. Should people react to you as if you could have been pure? Absolutely not.

If Parvati would be horrified about Reed, she should be horrified on at least 70% of the missions. The game isn’t equipped to handle this kind of moral agency. The game realizes this, that’s why Parvati doesn’t follow through on our morality. Instead of trying to hammer these big questions into a very narrow frame, lean into what the frame gives you and ask the questions that arise out of that.

Not every game has to present us with the possibility of being the best or the worst. Sometimes, we can just ask tough questions and give tough answers in a tough world as tough-minded people.

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Still from Those Who Wish Me Dead (2021): Hannah holds a distressed Connor

Those Who Wish Me Dead: What Is a Neo-Western?

Critique, Non-Fiction,
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I’ve always felt the need to defend my love of westerns as a genre, and I think that if the makers of Those Who Wish Me Dead are also primarily western-lovers, they also feel this need. I bring it up because I did see this movie described as a “neo-western” which is an obviously meaningless term. If a story is “neo-western” isn’t also “neo-Civil War” or “neo-Americana” and so on? The point of using neo-western is to indicate that you want people to have a kind of western genre idea in their mind, even though you might not be doing important details associated with westerns. Said another way, describing something as “neo-western” does not necessarily mean that you’re actually constructing something that could be considered a western, it only means that you want people to think of it as a western.

Don’t worry, I do have a point.

The westerns I am most familiar with are spaghetti westerns and Eastwood westerns, though I have watched pretty widely in the genre. When I feel I have to defend my interest in westerns, it’s for the same reason that Those Who Wish Me Dead defends it: because people see westerns as just loving cowboy aesthetics, and we feel compelled to show that westerns are about more than that. However, what I felt separates this film from something that I would truly call a western is not the setting, it is the thrust of the movie. Despite advancing the setting, I think that Those Who Wish Me Dead is only concerned with the aesthetics of the western genre, and for that reason I think that it misses what truly drives westerns as a genre.

Those Who Wish Me Dead centers around a kid who is being hunted by hitmen and a forest firefighter who happens to become his protector. It involves a lot of violence that is very well-done. I think everyone’s performance is good. As far as the plot’s structure goes, the only thing that I felt off about is how lightning was used, oddly enough. Twice, lightning strikes drive the plot forward in ways that are too convenient; for instance, given that touchscreen phones exist in this world, it seems odd that an firefighter would be in a place where lightning would fry all the instruments and have no back-up. However, in their defense, these beats weren’t unnecessary, even if I think there might have been a less-ridiculous way to achieve it. I’m bringing all of these elements to say that none of them are the reason I wouldn’t call this movie a western.

When I defend westerns to people, what I emphasize is that the idea of The West in a western is an area in which people are more on-their-own than they are in so-called civilization. In a city story, someone who wants to stand up for themselves can go find a group, or call on their family, or appeal to authorities, and so on. In The West, these things are less possible. The main players in westerns are always lone figures who embody their entire capacity. Take The Godfather, for instance. Vito Corleone’s power as a mafia boss was not that he himself was the best shot and the toughest guy, it’s that he had control of the mafia and its resources. In A Fistful of Dollars, there is no higher appeal that can be made. There’s no sure help. This sense is not of loneliness, because it is hard to imagine The Man With No Name or Harmonica as truly, sorrowfully lonely. It’s more of solitariness or singularity, of all things in a character being intrinsic to their own person.

Obviously, this idea of solitariness is played with by almost every western. Even the most textbook western story will deviate in some way, because what we put in the textbook is going to be a general sense of the idea, it will not all be drawn from one specific work. However, I think it’s the baseline assumption of the western genre. What makes someone potent as a person is their level of singularity, the amount to which they have all capabilities residing in themselves. To need a family is somewhat weakening, but it’s seen as a worthwhile trade. To need a hive of bandits makes you despicable. The civilization of crowded cities and railroads is always an evil for The West, bringing the kind of society which will always reduce these singular capable beings to something lesser. The threat which white settlers perceived from Native peoples became a test of this potency, one where destroying the Natives while outnumbering them would equal a personal failure.

In reality, a person cannot become a hero by personally murdering a dozen other people. In westerns, especially when considering certain kinds of people as the target, this is possible. I raise this not to try and lessen these acts but only to note it and to argue that, despite the alienating nature of these murders, their function in western-as-genre is at least in part to reinforce the core western idea of solitary/singular. In this way, they are of a piece with encroaching civilization and the hardship of self-sufficiency.

Those Who Wish Me Dead attempts to do this in many ways. Its principal characters — the kid Connor, the firefighter Hannah, the two assassins Jack and Patrick, and the couple Ethan and Allison — all have no important connections. Ethan is a police officer but he could very easily have simply been a known & respected local outdoorsman for all the role it plays in the plot. Hannah is stationed alone in a tower in the middle of the forest for the summer. Without spoiling more, you get what I’m saying: despite this being a modern setting, these characters are as isolated as they can be. I think it’s successful in constructing these isolations, but I think it misses the real beating heart of the solitary/singular concept.

What makes the best westerns memorable, what makes them pulse, is that all the characters are not only familiar with the situation, they are intimately involved in it. Especially for the characters that are actually active in the conflict, their own personal stakes in the actual matter of the situation is what highlights their singular qualities. This is the part where Those Who Wish Me Dead falls down. Almost no one is actually concerned with the main matter of the plot: the secrets which Connor’s dad held. Connor has no idea what the matter could be about really, neither does Hannah. Jack and Patrick do not care about what it’s about: their job is just to kill people. Ethan and Allison both want to protect Connor if they can find him and also to simply stay alive. Everyone’s motivation is on their own track, so they never converge.

The tests in a western story are engaging because they pit the entirety of the wills of various people on achieving the same thing. All of their drives naturally head to the same point. In Those Who Wish Me Dead, Allison would have been perfectly right to simply ride off and try and find other police. Hannah could have just said “uh, okay kid, keep running I guess” when she saw him; she didn’t know that he was alone or that anything had happened. Ethan could have just been like “ahhhh I guess I’ll just keep driving and call in this shot woman, don’t think it’s a good idea to just get out of the car”. No one had to meet. The fact that they do isn’t bad, it demonstrates that they are brave and conscientious people, but it just isn’t the same thing. The desperation that each character feels is not involved with the other characters’ desperation. Every person’s story is their own in a way that doesn’t provide an interesting intersection.

I think that Those Who Wish Me Dead fails to be a western because it doesn’t provide that visceral interest that comes from each character driving ahead this single focal point. What makes everyone meet is the plot, or to be generous, coincidence. Coincidence is a fine driver of plot, too; as long as you don’t break your audience’s engagement, it can be effective. However, since there’s nothing to this plot but coincidence, it just doesn’t grasp what I feel westerns are about. Given what I said above, it may be a neo-western. That is, it might get you in the right mood if you think of it as being an updated western. It’s just let down by isolating all the characters without giving them a converging point.

That paragraph was going to be the final one, but I do think I need to answer a question: why isn’t Connor’s safety the converging point of interest? I don’t think his safety works in that way because the interest that people have in Connor’s safety is not personal. Though Connor is Ethan’s nephew, Ethan never gives the impression that they are very close, he’s not out of his mind with worry, and conceivably Connor could have been anyone’s kid that Ethan just decided to help. The fact that Connor has these secrets is only important because it’s the reason that Jack and Patrick are hunting him. They could have been hunting him for literally any other reason and the story would move the same. The reason Connor’s safety is important is because he’s a person in danger and, more importantly, a child. It doesn’t even rise to the level of “I’m after your bounty”/”I don’t want to die”, because at least in a cheap bounty story the stakes are explicit and known by everyone. In this, it’s very difficult to know if we’re supposed to ultimately be concerned with Connor or the secrets; without going too much longer, both have reasons to discount them, and that just makes the Connor/secrets idea too confused to be effective.

A fine movie, it is not a bad way to spend your time. I simply wanted to highlight why “neo-western” is not especially useful if what you’re after is the major non-aesthetic themes of the genre.

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