Lack of character diversity with new approach?

[quote=Estelle Knoht]
Think of it this way - even in, say, action movies, the heroes inevitably ends up needing to break the law because of injustice and some such, if only for a bit. If they make the earlier, petty thefts justifiable for players more concerned about the law, then they don’t really have to touch the later contents beyond the early game.[/quote]

But not all. Some protagonists, and even some antagonists, might go to agonizing lengths to avoid breaking the law.
And personally, I find those kinds of characters rather interesting when written well.
Sure, that brilliant detective could have caught the criminals if he’d only been willing to bend the law a little, but he wasn’t. He wasn’t, and he still isn’t. He refuses to do so, for whatever reasons he might have.

The way I understand it the topic at hand isn’t about whether the early-game crimes are justifiable or not, it’s about allowing people to make a diffirent choice and write more varied stories. I don’t believe there was any argument made that the crimes were hard to justify.
edited by Munk on 8/17/2015

Breaking the law and general violence are pretty unavoidable though - all Ambitions involve murder or theft, from Heart’s Desire (stealing stuff from the Palace), Nemesis (kill stab stab), Bag a Legend (kill stab stab), to Light Fingers (why did you pick this if you want a no-crime run!?).

At the Filt, you steal, rob, burgle, with a bit of courier work at the lower levels. You can grind up Casing and sell information to the Constables.

But discounting that, you have the Affair of the Box and Wilmot’s End, which are both vague enough to not be explicitly illegal.

So!

At lower levels:
Eavesdrop / Cat-chasing / Courier work
Infinite Loitering to boost Shadowy (because 20+ Shadowy involves smuggling and burglary and little else)

Mid-game:

Courier work at the Flit (Revolutionary courier though, so probably illegal?)
Entertain the Topsy King (Consorting with criminals?)
Grind Casing, and then sell information to the Constables (Very much legal)
(War of Illusion, beyond intercepting messages, are generally not okay because fleecing people is still illegal. Also involve a mandatory step of stealing Rabbits / Tarot Cards depending on faciton.)

Mahogany Hall:

Shadowy content are no-go, can’t think of anything that isn’t fraud / scam / copyright infringement / sabotage / burglary / arson / non-criminal. Some Persuasive content involve bribing officials, too.

You can progress parts of the Affairs of the Box here legally, though, if you sticks to gifts and double-cross Jasper and Frank.

End-game:

Affairs of the Box (vague intrigue)
Wilmot’s End (vague spywork)

Aye, that’s how things are at present. The point of the thread, or at least the point I’ve been arguing, is that it would be pretty cool if that was changed.

[quote=Estelle Knoht]Breaking the law and general violence are pretty unavoidable though - all Ambitions involve murder or theft, from Heart’s Desire (stealing stuff from the Palace), Nemesis (kill stab stab), Bag a Legend (kill stab stab), to Light Fingers (why did you pick this if you want a no-crime run!?).

At the Filt, you steal, rob, burgle, with a bit of courier work at the lower levels. You can grind up Casing and sell information to the Constables.

But discounting that, you have the Affair of the Box and Wilmot’s End, which are both vague enough to not be explicitly illegal.

So!

At lower levels:
Eavesdrop / Cat-chasing / Courier work
Infinite Loitering to boost Shadowy (because 20+ Shadowy involves smuggling and burglary and little else)

Mid-game:

Courier work at the Flit (Revolutionary courier though, so probably illegal?)
Entertain the Topsy King (Consorting with criminals?)
Grind Casing, and then sell information to the Constables (Very much legal)
(War of Illusion, beyond intercepting messages, are generally not okay because fleecing people is still illegal. Also involve a mandatory step of stealing Rabbits / Tarot Cards depending on faciton.)

Mahogany Hall:

Shadowy content are no-go, can’t think of anything that isn’t fraud / scam / copyright infringement / sabotage / burglary / arson / non-criminal. Some Persuasive content involve bribing officials, too.

You can progress parts of the Affairs of the Box here legally, though, if you sticks to gifts and double-cross Jasper and Frank.

End-game:

Affairs of the Box (vague intrigue)
Wilmot’s End (vague spywork)[/quote]
You can choose to let people live in Nemesis, at least, which is probably the main reason my character, despite being the type who’d turn his own parents in if they broke a law, has Magnanimous coming out of his ears.

…and of course getting to endgame Shadowy content on a no-crime run is only a possibility right now (and that it is at all is awesome). With the overhaul, might be you’re stuck in early/mid-game on a no-crime run because advancing a tier requires some crime.
(Also, that list would’ve been a life-saver for me a few months ago. Instead, my character did nothing but take walks in the Flit, with careful item juggling to make sure he was able to.)
edited by Katistrophe on 8/17/2015

I must say I mostly agree with the point in the first post. This new approach is a role-playing nightmare.

We are being forced to do things that could be extremely out of character in order to gain access to further content. While this has been the case before as well, now it’s a straight &quotblock all persuasive stories until you engage in a romance&quot kind of thing, which is way worse.

Frankly I’ve mostly given up on serious role-playing in Fallen London long ago, when I discovered you have to be all the things at once (aka murderous lustful cleptomanic artist-scientist) if you want to advance in the game.

I’ve accepted this as a design decision and I’m mostly just enjoying things without thinking of them too personal. Now if I have to kill and steal to advance I just close my eyes and think &quotthis is not me, this is just pushing buttons&quot and go on playing (which is kind of psychotic, if you think about it!). Breaks immersion? Yes. But does not break enjoyment, at least.

Setting aside the asexual / aromantic question for a moment, since I think it could be dealt with differently – the new Persuasive tracker content has seven levels, each with a chunk of story attached. The Shadowy tracker would presumably be similar, and it’ll be about the story of a specific criminal career – one that probably involves area-diving early on, then following the Affair of the Box to the Flit, maybe pulling off a Heist, going on to Mahogany Hall to worm your way into the Kashmiri Princess’ dressing room, and maybe eventually starting your own newspaper in the aftermath of the Box affair.

There would be a couple options to handle &quotlaw-abiding&quot characters in this kind of story:

  • add law-abiding choices throughout, which would probably look something like &quotthe constables approach you to go undercover for them and area-dive / heist.&quot Notably, the beginning of Affair of the Box already has something like this – where you refuse to do a crime, and end up snarled in an intrigue anyway. This is probably an extra couple storylets per section – but it does present some further narrative problems in that the character of the Shadowy tracker, as it continues to extend, has to be assumed to be EITHER a criminal OR a mole. It’s not double the work, but it’s a harder story to write. You can replace &quotmole for the Constables&quot with something else, I guess – &quotassociate of criminals who refuses to ever get her hands dirty&quot I suppose? But that’s the same level of writing snarl with less drama.

  • just leave it as-is, and if law-abiding characters don’t want to do a crime, then they never advance in the story; they miss out on six out of those seven chunks of story. This isn’t that different than if you choose to roleplay a character in Skyrim who has zero desire to become the Dovahkiin or wants nothing at all to do with fighting dragons, getting powers from mysterious monks, etc. You can still play the rest of the game; you could make an alt who you do play as a dragonborn-dragonslayer; there’s plenty of other stuff to do, but you don’t see the rest of that storyline with that particular character because you’re just not the Dovahkiin, unlike most other player characters. Or similarly, some FL characters (mine included, for 5+ years of existence) have never gotten exiled from Court, perhaps because they don’t trust that oily Privy Counselor or don’t find any of the reasons (in http://fallenlondon.wikia.com/wiki/Why_are_you_doing_this%3F) compelling enough. And that keeps you out of Foreign Office and Carnelian Coast, unless you change your mind. Note that even with the Persuasive tracker, there are plenty of ways to raise your Persuasive… but you can’t ever get into the Shuttered Palace if you play someone who refuses to ever toady up to Society snobs. That was true even before the tracker was added, and was a tricky choice to rationalize for my own character way back when. But you can roleplay all sorts of things if you don’t mind the game not acknowledging them. An argument can be made that this is what one essence of roleplaying actually consists of – making decisions for your character that are not pre-packaged by a gamemaster or game designer, and therefore may not be acknowledged in a satisfying way, but you do it anyway.

  • I suppose there’s a third in-between way to add a &quotmoment of truth&quot choice in the first real criminal activity (&quotok, you’ve earned their trust, but now you actually have to cosh the night watchman and break in, and they’re looking expectantly at you – can you do it?&quot) where law-abiding players can make that huge decision NOT to be a criminal, and maybe betray criminals to the constables instead, ending the story early and sealing the rest of the Shadowy tracker. (Unless you redo the story and change your ways for the worse.) This acknowledges roleplaying, and points out &quotnot being criminal&quot as an option, but doesn’t try to accommodate both criminals and law-abiders in the Shadowy tracker story.

Now, the aro/asexual stuff, on the other hand, I think could be addressed with some language tweaks. There’s nothing mandatory in the current Fascinating… content that implies you’ve ever done anything sexually with any of the people involved, for instance. You can break off your relationship with the Barbed Wit or the Acclaimed Beauty after they fall in love with you by chastely revealing that no, you’re not actually interested in them that way. And that bumps the Persuasive tracker to the next level. I think this might satisfy the roleplaying requirements of an aro/asexual character, as long as you’re willing to play the Persuasive game by being fascinating and charming enough to fall in love with?

If that’s not your character – you don’t either pursue romantic passion OR ever risk toying with others’ affections, intentionally or not – then well, you are not the Dovahkiin of this story, which is about social-climbing, charm, and manipulating personal relationships for gain. There are a few places where I think the Persuasive tracker COULD use some language tweaks, though; the bridge of the Seduction: Honey-Sipper arc where you cash in your Fascinating… to continue implies that you are actually dating your Honey-Sipper for a few weeks, then breaking up. It’s a rather odd story-beat anyway, and I don’t think it even made sense to me until a close re-reading just now, but I think it could be massaged similarly: you’re fascinating this person (maybe not seducing them, since that implies more) and then you’re either keeping them on a string, declaring your undying love and proposing marriage (a current choice for the jewel-thief) or ditching them (which does happen in several of the subsequent storylets, and bumps the tracker to the next level).
edited by metasynthie on 8/17/2015

[quote=Danko]I must say I mostly agree with the point in the first post. This new approach is a role-playing nightmare.

We are being forced to do things that could be extremely out of character in order to gain access to further content. While this has been the case before as well, now it’s a straight &quotblock all persuasive stories until you engage in a romance&quot kind of thing, which is way worse.

Frankly I’ve mostly given up on serious role-playing in Fallen London long ago, when I discovered you have to be all the things at once (aka murderous lustful cleptomanic artist-scientist) if you want to advance in the game.

I’ve accepted this as a design decision and I’m mostly just enjoying things without thinking of them too personal. Now if I have to kill and steal to advance I just close my eyes and think &quotthis is not me, this is just pushing buttons&quot and go on playing (which is kind of psychotic, if you think about it!). Breaks immersion? Yes. But does not break enjoyment, at least.[/quote]

Eh, it’s not strictly impossible to advance without killing or stealing right now. Just very, very grindy.
Although with the overhaul, I’d be reaching the point you’re at, probably, since various OOC-but-necessary actions are tracked and have consequences, and eventually half of what happened would be OOC or a consequence of such an action…

[quote=metasynthie]Setting aside the asexual / aromantic question for a moment, since I think it could be dealt with differently – the new Persuasive tracker content has seven levels, each with a chunk of story attached. The Shadowy tracker would presumably be similar, and it’ll be about the story of a specific criminal career – one that probably involves area-diving early on, then following the Affair of the Box to the Flit, maybe pulling off a Heist, going on to Mahogany Hall to worm your way into the Kashmiri Princess’ dressing room, and maybe eventually starting your own newspaper in the aftermath of the Box affair.

There would be a couple options to handle &quotlaw-abiding&quot characters in this kind of story:

  • add law-abiding choices throughout, which would probably look something like &quotthe constables approach you to go undercover for them and area-dive / heist.&quot Notably, the beginning of Affair of the Box already has something like this – where you refuse to do a crime, and end up snarled in an intrigue anyway. This is probably an extra couple storylets per section – but it does present some further narrative problems in that the character of the Shadowy tracker, as it continues to extend, has to be assumed to be EITHER a criminal OR a mole. It’s not double the work, but it’s a harder story to write. You can replace &quotmole for the Constables&quot with something else, I guess – &quotassociate of criminals who refuses to ever get her hands dirty&quot I suppose? But that’s the same level of writing snarl with less drama.

  • just leave it as-is, and if law-abiding characters don’t want to do a crime, then they never advance in the story; they miss out on six out of those seven chunks of story. This isn’t that different than if you choose to roleplay a character in Skyrim who has zero desire to become the Dovahkiin or wants nothing at all to do with fighting dragons, getting powers from mysterious monks, etc. You can still play the rest of the game; you could make an alt who you do play as a dragonborn-dragonslayer; there’s plenty of other stuff to do, but you don’t see the rest of that storyline with that particular character because you’re just not the Dovahkiin, unlike most other player characters. Or similarly, some FL characters (mine included, for 5+ years of existence) have never gotten exiled from Court, perhaps because they don’t trust that oily Privy Counselor or don’t find any of the reasons (in http://fallenlondon.wikia.com/wiki/Why_are_you_doing_this%3F) compelling enough. And that keeps you out of Foreign Office and Carnelian Coast, unless you change your mind. Note that even with the Persuasive tracker, there are plenty of ways to raise your Persuasive… but you can’t ever get into the Shuttered Palace if you play someone who refuses to ever toady up to Society snobs. That was true even before the tracker was added, and was a tricky choice to rationalize for my own character way back when. But you can roleplay all sorts of things if you don’t mind the game not acknowledging them.

  • I suppose there’s a third in-between way to add a &quotmoment of truth&quot choice in the first real criminal activity (&quotok, you’ve earned their trust, but now you actually have to cosh the night watchman and break in, and they’re looking expectantly at you – can you do it?&quot) where law-abiding players can make that huge decision NOT to be a criminal, and maybe betray criminals to the constables instead, ending the story early and sealing the rest of the Shadowy tracker. (Unless you redo the story and change your ways for the worse.) This acknowledges roleplaying, and points out &quotnot being criminal&quot as an option, but doesn’t try to accommodate both criminals and law-abiders in the Shadowy tracker story.

Now, the aro/asexual stuff, on the other hand, I think could be addressed with some language tweaks. There’s nothing mandatory in the current Fascinating… content that implies you’ve ever done anything sexually with any of the people involved, for instance. You can break off your relationship with the Barbed Wit or the Acclaimed Beauty after they fall in love with you by chastely revealing that no, you’re not actually interested in them that way. And that bumps the Persuasive tracker to the next level. I think this might satisfy the roleplaying requirements of an aro/asexual character, as long as you’re willing to play the Persuasive game by being fascinating and charming enough to fall in love with?

If that’s not your character – you don’t either pursue romantic passion OR ever risk toying with others’ affections, intentionally or not – then well, you are not the Dovahkiin of this story, which is about social-climbing, charm, and manipulating personal relationships for gain. There are a few places where I think the Persuasive tracker COULD use some language tweaks, though; the bridge of the Seduction: Honey-Sipper arc where you cash in your Fascinating… to continue implies that you are actually dating your Honey-Sipper for a few weeks, then breaking up. It’s a rather odd story-beat anyway, and I don’t think it even made sense to me until a close re-reading just now, but I think it could be massaged similarly: you’re fascinating this person (maybe not seducing them, since that implies more) and then you’re either keeping them on a string, declaring your undying love and proposing marriage (a current choice for the jewel-thief) or ditching them (which does happen in several of the subsequent storylets, and bumps the tracker to the next level).
edited by metasynthie on 8/17/2015[/quote]
Thing is it locks you out of a ton of content and lore (Affair of the Box, Wars of Illusion,…), and it’ll make reaching PoSI without a crime awfully grindy (if you’re a cheap cheapskate who doesn’t want to pay Fate like me). (I’d probably do it if I still had to, though, because CHARACTER… but it would annoy me to be locked out of the later non-criminal espionage etc. options.)

Rewording stuff would be a good step too, yeah. Right now the honey-sipper stuff sounds like &quotyou will have an affair and you will like it&quot… tweaking it so it’s either possible to have a different relationship with them or to break it off without dating would help.
edited by Katistrophe on 8/17/2015
edited by Katistrophe on 8/17/2015

Is it currently possible to get to Wars of Illusion 15 without stealing something for either the bats or the cats? If you won’t steal, that in turn locks you out of most of Affair of the Box – unless I’m missing some option for raising Embroiled in the Wars of Illusion.

I suppose when the Shadowy tracker goes in, alternate paths to some of the repeatable, not-heavily-story-based content could be added – for instance, if you’ve made it into Wilmot’s End, you could also unlock the Boxfuls of Intrigue grind in Spite, which doesn’t really have much to do with the Shadowy storyline despite being thematically connected to the intrigues of the Masters. Being locked out of some content and lore is inevitable for any character, though – you never get to face the Vake or learn about a particular order of nuns unless your characters really wants to Bag a Legend, for instance. The same might well be true of characters who never want to dabble on the wrong side of the law.

Keep in mind that even if Failbetter did not add story-expensive &quotyou’re a mole&quot options, you still could always roleplay an undercover cop. Your character can be like Chan in Infernal Affairs (Infernal Affairs - Wikipedia) – never technically breaking the law due to acting on police orders, even though there’s only one cop who’s aware of his status. Of course, the game may never acknowledge that you’re roleplaying this way – but such is the nature of some roleplaying, and it’d provide further character motivation for say, trying to prevent killings and refusing to commit murder, much as happens in many stories of undercover work.

Being dedicated to roleplaying often requires extra work, clearly, done only for your own satisfaction; and there are often ways to bend the nature of a narrative towards your own ends. If you can’t come up with a reason why your character is stealing something, you can a) close your eyes and pretend it’s not happening; b) invest more effort and creativity into nuanced offstage-story roleplaying to understand why your character might be in such a position and choose to steal; c) refuse and avoid branches and unlocks. I’d recommend B for maximum enjoyment. Since FL’s style generally hasn’t -required- players to commit murder, or have sex, in order to proceed in a story, there’s a fair amount of latitude.
edited by metasynthie on 8/17/2015

As much as I’m uncomfortable with certain affairs my character has to deal with, the reason why he actually endures all of it is the Ambition.
The reason why every character has descended to Fallen London (unless, of course, you do not start your Ambition at all), the ultimate purpose for which he is willing do to pretty much anything it takes, his core desire.

Another reason and justification for all those unavoidable moral disasters is that though the Fifth City is truly a magnificent place, it is by no means a nice place. It is decadent, sinful (literally so with devils walking around) and extremely dangerous, be that because of carnivorous fungi or masters’ intrigues. It’s not a place that will let you get whatever is it you want without occasional deal with conscience or a bout with public law.

[quote=Katistrophe]
Eh, it’s not strictly impossible to advance without killing or stealing right now.
edited by Katistrophe on 8/17/2015
edited by Katistrophe on 8/17/2015[/quote]

Alas, the law is not that shallow. Barring that first thing you do is jailbreak, you will have to break the law to become a PoSI, since you will need either to kill a person for good, steal from brass embassy or bazaar, commit what could be treated as a public offence to crown, leaving you banished from the court, or dig up thieves’ caches, which is technically a possesion of stolen property. And there’s always spirifadge, which is described as unlicensed trade in souls, not just unlicensed extraction, even if it is treated this way all the time, which leaves every person that ever traded a soul open for prosecution.

[quote=metasynthie]Is it currently possible to get to Wars of Illusion 15 without stealing something for either the bats or the cats? If you won’t steal, that in turn locks you out of most of Affair of the Box – unless I’m missing some option for raising Embroiled in the Wars of Illusion.

I suppose when the Shadowy tracker goes in, alternate paths to some of the repeatable, not-heavily-story-based content could be added – for instance, if you’ve made it into Wilmot’s End, you could also unlock the Boxfuls of Intrigue grind in Spite, which doesn’t really have much to do with the Shadowy storyline despite being thematically connected to the intrigues of the Masters. Being locked out of some content and lore is inevitable for any character, though – you never get to face the Vake or learn about a particular order of nuns unless your characters really wants to Bag a Legend, for instance. The same might well be true of characters who never want to dabble on the wrong side of the law.

Keep in mind that even if Failbetter did not add story-expensive &quotyou’re a mole&quot options, you still could always roleplay an undercover cop. Your character can be like Chan in Infernal Affairs (Infernal Affairs - Wikipedia) – never technically breaking the law due to acting on police orders, even though there’s only one cop who’s aware of his status. Of course, the game may never acknowledge that you’re roleplaying this way – but such is the nature of some roleplaying, and it’d provide further character motivation for say, trying to prevent killings and refusing to commit murder, much as happens in many stories of undercover work.

Being dedicated to roleplaying often requires extra work, clearly, done only for your own satisfaction; and there are often ways to bend the nature of a narrative towards your own ends. If you can’t come up with a reason why your character is stealing something, you can a) close your eyes and pretend it’s not happening; b) invest more effort and creativity into nuanced offstage-story roleplaying to understand why your character might be in such a position and choose to steal; c) refuse and avoid branches and unlocks. I’d recommend B for maximum enjoyment. Since FL’s style generally hasn’t -required- players to commit murder, or have sex, in order to proceed in a story, there’s a fair amount of latitude.
edited by metasynthie on 8/17/2015[/quote]

Good points, yeah, and I am already dancing around a lot with justifications (see below). But there’s bound to be points where, creativity and effort be damned, something would be screamingly OOC under the setup that’s about to be put in place, and it could be avoided under the old one. It’s just no longer enjoyable if all my writing is bending over backwards to justify why my character goes against his core principles to fit into the &quotmurderous seductive thieving scholar&quot corset.
&quotGenerally hasn’t&quot doesn’t mean &quotwon’t&quot, though. I can’t recall an instance where such an amount of content was locked off behind a romance before.

[quote=Talkes]As much as I’m uncomfortable with certain affairs my character has to deal with, the reason why he actually endures all of it is the Ambition.
The reason why every character has descended to Fallen London (unless, of course, you do not start your Ambition at all), the ultimate purpose for which he is willing do to pretty much anything it takes, his core desire.

Another reason and justification for all those unavoidable moral disasters is that though the Fifth City is truly a magnificent place, it is by no means a nice place. It is decadent, sinful (literally so with devils walking around) and extremely dangerous, be that because of carnivorous fungi or masters’ intrigues. It’s not a place that will let you get whatever is it you want without occasional deal with conscience or a bout with public law.

[quote=Katistrophe]
Eh, it’s not strictly impossible to advance without killing or stealing right now.
edited by Katistrophe on 8/17/2015
edited by Katistrophe on 8/17/2015[/quote]

Alas, the law is not that shallow. Barring that first thing you do is jailbreak, you will have to break the law to become a PoSI, since you will need either to kill a person for good, steal from brass embassy or bazaar, commit what could be treated as a public offence to crown, leaving you banished from the court, or dig up thieves’ caches, which is technically a possesion of stolen property. And there’s always spirifadge, which is described as unlicensed trade in souls, not just unlicensed extraction, even if it is treated this way all the time, which leaves every person that ever traded a soul open for prosecution.[/quote]
That does leave your character fairly stranded after the Ambition ends or you reach a boundary…
Spirifage is trading souls without going the way via the Bazaar, IIRC (and aren’t some of the sidebar snippets no longer up to date with current lore anyway?). And the thieves’ caches… all right, watch me stretch for a justification, but it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch that a law-abiding character might turn them in to the Constables and get paid, would it?

Then some plausible justifications for romances: you could treat affair with Jewel -Thief as a brief but amusing frinedship with inventive nightly passtimes being races on giant slugs in the marshes (or anything else legal, ridiculous and requiring significant amount of wine to come up with). Concerning the Barbed Wit, you can treat all the wooing as usual high society smalltalk and then break her heart, being utterly queless and unromantic.

The real question is: (going on a bit of a leap here) if your character is a stern, steadfast and lawful to the bone Vake-hunter (other ambitions don’t really fit from their starting descriptions), isn’t it OOC for him to strive to be Imperial Artist-in-Residence? And if he does, shouldn’t it be compicated to become one, because, well, he doesn’t fit the stereotype of a celebrated artist? And if FB now enforces these complications, isn’t it actually good for your RP?
edited by Talkes on 8/17/2015

Actually his Ambition is Nemesis, with the justification of chasing known criminal Scathewick from the Surface. The dead &quotdaughter&quot is a protégée, killed when she went after Scathewick on her own, though he’d never admit he thought of her as the closest to a daughter he had.
Granted, it might have made character sense just to grit my teeth and grind up to 100 on first-tier storylets, but that’s an individual solution for a single character, and all this is getting overly specific. I may be to blame there, using my own character as illustration and allowing myself to get bogged down in details.
The point I was trying to make is not him specifically, the point is characters who may not be into romance at all but very much so into art (and &quotaffair&quot does in no way sound like they’ll just be discussing art), or a character who is loyal to a Surface lover or whatever you can think of. Who would love to be Artist-in-Residence but get stuck on the first step because as it is now it’s a romance.
edited by Katistrophe on 8/17/2015
edited by Katistrophe on 8/17/2015

Metasynthie’s post is an excellent breakdown of the whole issue. A few factors in Fallen London add up to make it a keener problem than in other RPGs, though:

[ul][li]The typical player only has one character. In most RPGs I can keep a save file for the righteous paladin and a save file for the cutthroat swashbuckler. I get to explore all my options (including mutually exclusive decisions) without breaking roleplay.[/li][li]The story never comes to an end. In most RPGs, the roleplayer crafts their story arc to a satisfying conclusion, ignoring quests that don’t fit that arc. In FL, nothing tells her to stop playing, so she logs on daily to see a big blinking doorway saying &quotmore content, but not for you.&quot[/li][li]If the RP conflict happens to lock a large amount of gameplay behind it, it could represent weeks of real-life time (in short snippets of course), versus two or three evenings for most RPGs. The content quantity may be comparable, but the medium makes the loss seem larger.
[/li][/ul]Personally, due to these reasons, I think it’s within Failbetter’s interests to provide alternate paths through the early-to-mid stat questlines. I don’t think it needs to be easy; in fact, a tough challenge can make the roleplay feel more relevant. It’s also reasonable to put a limit at the mid-to-late game, in order to focus the story on its core aspects: e.g. Shadowy is about crime, and there’s a limit to how far you can let a bobby get without weakening the narrative for everyone else.

I’m curious to see how many alternate pathways exist/will exist with the revamp. Maybe I’ll make a new character and see how it goes.
edited by TheThirdPolice on 8/17/2015

There’s always the easy cop-out: advance through content as necessary, when necessary, and say that anything you don’t think fits your character didn’t actually happen.

I’d also like to point out that it has always been nearly impossible to play the game without being forced into a romance–that’s not anything new. I’ve expressed my frustration with this in the past, and would like to see it change as well, but it’s probably not going to.

Count me in as one of the people who (a) likes that FL’s romance options are gender-neutral (no bisexual invisibility in FL!) and (b) would like it if asexual and aromantic folks could have the options to see their identities reflected in their character.

Well, in fairness the Persuasive Track is pretty much all about Romance, even when it doesn’t look like it. I don’t think there’s ever going to be a satisfactory way to go through Persuasive without dipping into romance. You could contrive it as ‘going through the motions for the sake of appearances’ (which your character actually does a fair bit of, thinking about it) but in a setting where romance is chief among the currencies of the bazaar, there’s no real getting around it.

Asexuality, though, is fairly straightforward. The low level heiress/jewel thief seductions are sufficiently vague on what the ‘weeks of bliss’ are, and while the affairs in the palace conclude more unambiguously, you do have the option of breaking it off more chastely for the same result. The only persuasive endeavour I know of that obliges you to give up on asexuality is the Melancholy Curate storyline, which is completely optional and doesn’t gate anything.

I’ve confidence that the Shadowy and Dangerous retools will allow the same sort of vague squint-and-tilt-your-head vagueness. Or possibly bring in new storylines to flesh it out from ‘now that you’re a skilled thief, you should turn your eyes towards stealing bigger things’.

The Bazaar is big on love, yeah, but earlier on in the thread the point was made love does not necessarily mean romantic love.
As for the honey-sipper seductions - the point was also made earlier that one could reword them just a little to allow for a non-romantic read on the situation. And, well, it may just me not being a native speaker, but doesn’t “affair” in this context imply a sexual or at least romantic relationship? (It may just be that the directly equivalent German word has different nuances, of course. Native speakers, help me out here?) Hard to pretend it’s just two friends talking about racing slugs or whatever under that wording.
Plus, the Bazaar doesn’t just like happy love stories. Maybe the honey-sipper is completely smitten, I’ll allow that, but if we’re arguing on the basis of “love stories for the Bazaar” I don’t remember reading anywhere the love has to be a reciprocal business.

You can play a large majority of the game’s content as an asexual, aromantic character, including clicking buttons to make explicit &quotI’m not interested&quot decisions. I currently play one, and am impressed at the thorough and thoughtful approach of the writers. You are never forced into a different mold. You just can’t access every piece of content, which is a truism when you’ve imposed a self-restriction on your options.

Some of that blocked content is enjoyable and doesn’t involve sex or romance, and we can make polite suggestions on how it might be made more reachable. But if it remains blocked, it will not be a mangling of anyone’s identity.

The point is just that the &quotsome&quot, if you are/your character is aromantic, includes six of seven Persuasive tiers. Because the wording right now puts it as you explicitly &quotseducing&quot the honey-sipper, and I feel you have to reach pretty far to read &quotaffair&quot in a nonromantic/-sexual way. Even tweaking the wording so that’s no longer the case might help.
If you’ve found my wording to be overly aggressive, I apologize.
edited by Katistrophe on 8/18/2015

[quote=Katistrophe]The Bazaar is big on love, yeah, but earlier on in the thread the point was made love does not necessarily mean romantic love.
As for the honey-sipper seductions - the point was also made earlier that one could reword them just a little to allow for a non-romantic read on the situation. And, well, it may just me not being a native speaker, but doesn’t &quotaffair&quot in this context imply a sexual or at least romantic relationship? (It may just be that the directly equivalent German word has different nuances, of course. Native speakers, help me out here?) Hard to pretend it’s just two friends talking about racing slugs or whatever under that wording.
Plus, the Bazaar doesn’t just like happy love stories. Maybe the honey-sipper is completely smitten, I’ll allow that, but if we’re arguing on the basis of &quotlove stories for the Bazaar&quot I don’t remember reading anywhere the love has to be a reciprocal business.[/quote]
Technically, an affair simply means an event or sequence of events of a specific kind. Affair is commonly referred to in a romantic fashion, though this isn’t always nor has to be the case. I prefer thinking of the Fascinating… quality as just that: fascinating. Romance can be implied or heavily coded into the text, but for a fair portion of such content the writing leaves interpretation open to however the player wishes to view it.

As for the ace/aro side of the discussion, perhaps there’s a better way of viewing the situation. Persuasive storylets are known for scenes involving sex and romance, and while much of the text either leaves details to the work of the player’s imagination or doesn’t outright force them into a scenario without the ability to construe the event to the character’s roleplaying style, there are points in which it is heavily implied or is almost required if the player doesn’t wish to trudge through a grind. If memory serves correct, however, it isn’t definite as to how the character views the event in question.

Picture this: Honey-dens filled with vice and sin, pretensious socialites highly immersed in their own culture, spies and thieves turning the wheels of a game of power and control stretching far beyond the boundaries of the Neath. While one may enjoy the pleasures this life has to offer, others such as yourself may not. However, that is not to say that they are not to be useful. For every hapless fool enamored with your person, you merely do not reciprocate there love or rather manipulate their interest for the sake of your own gain. For every &quotlover&quot met in hopes of gaining favor or reward, if impossible to interpret as anything but sex or a committed relationship, could be seen as work done not out of enjoyment but for sheer pragmatism. Though unpleasant, these events could be considered nothing but work for your character rather than a &quotlabor of love&quot, if you will.

I know it may not be ideal or enjoyable, and in fact it most certainly isn’t. With that I can sympathize for someone such as yourself. However, when dealing in a quality notorious for lust and love of all kinds, the only option to avoid these actions 100% without the usage of interpretation is to weave through the content as best as possible to your liking, no doubt leaving many stones unturned and creating a more difficult situation for the player. These are the drawbacks to roleplaying, though hopefully when met with scenarios such as this you may either avoid the subject with complex roleplay or can see the act as just business and nothing more.