[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 "you’re a mole" 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 "murderous seductive thieving scholar" corset.
"Generally hasn’t" doesn’t mean "won’t", 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?