Elhanan wrote...
Now some would hold that this is cheating, and maybe in their own game and rules, it would be for them. But in a solo game under my own control, I set the rules. I just happen to believe that it is possible for one to lose control, break those rules, and spoil the experience for themselves. Some may hold that this is extending the former boundaries; I do not, and call it cheating.
I'm coming into this discussion late and confess at the outset that I haven't had time to read the entire thread. There are, however, two things that I would emphasize. The first is that I think that fundamentally, it's not the player, but the game developer in general and the module author in particular, who set the standard for what is and is not "cheating" in an SP game. If you use the dm_set... in the console to give your character an attribute score that would be impossible under the game's character creation and levelup rules, you're cheating. If I write a module that's balanced for a first level starting character and you play it wih a 40th level munchkin, you're cheating. If I create an area with a barrier that can't be passed except if certain plot conditions are fulfilled, and you dm_jump over it, you're cheating. And so on.
"Cheating" is, simply put, playing a game in a way that violates or disregards the game's rules. A set of rules that place limitations on how players can achieve the game's goal is one of the four defining characteristics of a game to begin with, so this is not a dispensible consideration. And in a good game, those rules -- as defined by the builder --
are designed to create a particular and engaging kind of play experience. In the context of an SP role-playing game, those rules usually come in the form of a series of plot events and story-related obstacles to be experienced and overcome. The intended play experience may allow for many different role-playing
options, giving the player a host of ways to "co-create" it by choosing a path through them that is personalized for their character; but ultimately, those options are circumscribed by an "envelope" of RP variations that is defined by the game's rules. If the player disregards those rules and steps outside that "envelope," or presumes to rewrite them without the same kind of design effort the author put into creating the game, then it will start to come apart. If the player does that to any significant extent the result isn't so much a
game any longer, but just someone mucking around in someone else's virtual environment.
The second and more basic question, though, is: is there any deeper "meaning" to the choice to "cheat," and is there anything "wrong" with it? The answer, as with most other things, is that it depends on your purpose. Good play experiences don't happen by accident; they're the result of a lot of time, thought and effort on the part of the builder. The reason to "play by the rules" in an SP game is to get the benefit of that (presumed) effort and to experience it as the author designed it. So if that's your purpose in playing, then no, you
should not cheat; cheating would only defeat your purpose. If on the other hand what you're seeking is the experience of selectively "mucking around" in someone else's virtual environment, and you don't care about and/or are willing to forego possibly significant aspects of the play experience that the builder has created for you, then "cheating" will achieve your purpose.
I can't speak for others, but the reason why I devote the time to building is for players to experience my game world and story,
as I designed them to be experienced. I can't stop anyone from cheat-playing my work, and I don't consider it worth making a fuss about if they do (but then it's "caveat player," and they're on their own). If they do that in any significant way, however, then they're not giving back to me as the author anything that I actually value in exchange for the effort that I put into creating it. Speaking personally, that's one of the main reasons why I try to avoid cheating when playing other builders' modules.
EDIT: I should add that it does make a big difference when you're talking about using cheat codes to deal with an SP module that has evident bugs and/or obvious design flaws. If you hit a game-stopping bug, for example, then it would be silly not to use the console to get around it.
Modifié par AndarianTD, 07 mai 2011 - 11:02 .
