Savescumming, respeccing, and cheating in RPGs

[Stack of Turtles]

I guess you need to be more clear about what you mean by "intended to be part of the game". You are the one coming up with examples that, yes, of course a DM would change on the fly. You're not actually arguing against my points, but something you've misinterpreted.

I wasn't "arguing against your points" in the first place, you just assumed I was...

You literally quoted me and told me where you thought I was wrong. Are you actually ********?

Okay. Let me try to make this clear by saying all the really basic obvious stuff I assumed everyone would understand.

I am saying that the concept of "completing all content" in a TTRPG is inapposite because a TTRPG does not have a fixed set of content. Talking about whether it's "an option" to complete all content in a TTRPG is like talking about whether it's possible to count all numbers.

The only situation in which someone can "miss content" in a TTRPG the same way you can in a cRPG is if the DM is already operating from the assumption of a fixed set of content, like "I am reading this campaign out of a book and I don't know how to make anything else up so it's all you're getting". In that case, the DM has to learn to be more adaptable, or more realistically, just isn't mentally capable of DMing and should be taken out behind the woodshed and sent to live on a farm upstate. Certainly, though, yes, there are people like this, which is why your "of course a DM would change on the fly" isn't really that cut and dried. Still, I explained that situation in my previous post in order to make you understand what I'm talking about and that I'm not talking about whatever you think I am.
You then assume that I'm arguing against something I've misinterpreted, when really, I was just never arguing against what you thought I was at all and I don't see what you think the big deal is. If you agree with what I just said about a TTRPG not having a fixed set of content so it doesn't make sense to even talk about missing content, then... great? This isn't a problem.

It just also has nothing to do with the situation in a cRPG where there's a fixed set of content and you can miss out if you mess it up.

[Faceless_Sentinel]

In that case, the DM has to learn to be more adaptable, or more realistically, just isn't mentally capable of DMing and should be taken out behind the woodshed and sent to live on a farm upstate.

But it is my first time!

[Stack of Turtles]

In that case, the DM has to learn to be more adaptable, or more realistically, just isn't mentally capable of DMing and should be taken out behind the woodshed and sent to live on a farm upstate.

But it is my first time!

I did say you get a chance to learn.

But if you don't, chop chop.

[WhiteShark]

I am saying that the concept of "completing all content" in a TTRPG is inapposite because a TTRPG does not have a fixed set of content. Talking about whether it's "an option" to complete all content in a TTRPG is like talking about whether it's possible to count all numbers.

The only situation in which someone can "miss content" in a TTRPG the same way you can in a cRPG is if the DM is already operating from the assumption of a fixed set of content, like "I am reading this campaign out of a book and I don't know how to make anything else up so it's all you're getting".

I don't see how the ability to add more content on the fly negates the concept of missing content. If I prepare a hexcrawl in advance of the campaign and my players end up only visiting a small fraction of it, would you not call the unvisited portion missed content? Of course, it's not a problem that they don't―that's the nature of tabletop―but it would still be content I created that the players did not experience. Those locations would still be part of the world I created whether the players visited them or not.

[rusty_shackleford]

Quantum ogre is considered a terrible GM practice: where no matter what choice you made, you end up in the same place.
https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions ... antum-ogre

Yes, a tabletop RPG should have 'missable' content.

[Stack of Turtles]

I don't see how the ability to add more content on the fly negates the concept of missing content. If I prepare a hexcrawl in advance of the campaign and my players end up only visiting a small fraction of it, would you not call the unvisited portion missed content?

No, I wouldn't. I mean, in the absolutely literal sense it's content which they missed, but I tried to make it clear that that's not the specific category I mean. I would call it content that you prepared but that didn't make it into the game - it's almost more like cut content from a cRPG perspective, I guess, although it's a real stretch.
If your players revisit that area later, you could reuse the map you made, and probably would, but you could also just make a new completely different one from the last explored point on, and it wouldn't, from the perspective of the players, be a change. To try to draw another stretched analogy, if a patch to a game radically changed the layout of a dungeon, and someone had only ever played the post-patch version of the game, I wouldn't say he'd missed content in the game because he didn't see the original layout. I admit this is all very abstract and semantic, though.

The kind of "missed content" I mean is if you planned to put a very old and powerful wizard NPC in the end of that hexcrawl and now the players will never talk to him and learn the middle name of God which they need to get the good ending according to your plot notes. I think we both agree that that's simply bad DMing and a person who did that needs to learn to run a game adaptively (or, as mentioned, be quietly put down). The idea of a strict progression where players have to set the right flags in the right order to get the ending cutscene is totally missing the entire point of a TTRPG. That's what I mean when I say the whole comparison is inapposite.

[Kalarion]

The fact that all of you cretinous blubberballs can't even manage to draw analogies that are consistent with the central premise of my argument is truly delightful. I'm just kidding I hate your stupidity almost as much as I hate your horrendous non-gaming behavior. Every single one of you is a spiritual ****.

Except @Nooneatall he's cool

[Kalarion]

Wow! At least two people here are ready to play emotional support for *****-qunari and crippled black elves in Failguard, because - you can not argue this! - this is definitely "A fundamental part of a game" and "within the boundaries set by its rules."

Guess, mods like No Alphabets should not be used either - definitely affects game's rules.

Enjoy your games, I suppose

P.S. With all seriousness, though, what other fresh subject should we discuss next? I suggest Alignment in DnD.

Special call-out for a post that could only be made by a post-wall foid. @rusty_shackleford this is clearly a Mebrilia deep-cover account, please kick her from the site.

For everyone else: the proper response to a game like Dragon Age: Veilguard is to refuse to play it. It speaks a great deal that there are "people" making the straight-faced argument that just because a game exists we must both (1) play it and (2) support it in order to be a TRVE GAMER(tm)(c).

Every single one of you is on notice.

[rusty_shackleford]

Guess, mods like No Alphabets should not be used either - definitely affects game's rules.

Could you expand on this argument?


To be clear, I don't consider cosmetic modifications to be 'cheating'. With regards to your original post about changing your appearance, I'd be fine as long as there's a good reason for it to exist in the gameworld. My issue with it and 'respec' features is it's just plopped in the game with little care given for it having a reason to exist, and in the case of respeccing, whether it negatively harms the game's intended difficulty.
Mods like 'No Alphabets' are actually the inverse: the gamedevs have purposely made a gameworld that is internally inconsistent, and the mod is an attempt to fix this.

---

IIRC, in Runescape you could change your appearance by going to a wizard who used magic to do it. That's a perfectly valid explanation in a high fantasy world.

[Vergil]

The fact that all of you cretinous blubberballs can't even manage to draw analogies that are consistent with the central premise of my argument is truly delightful. I'm just kidding I hate your stupidity almost as much as I hate your horrendous non-gaming behavior. Every single one of you is a spiritual ****.

Except @Nooneatall he's cool

Black son in law

[Element]

Save scumming isn't great, but the game should be designed in a way that sidesteps the issue eg. the Rhalata questline in Enderal. The quest is too long to save scum because you will make the most important decisions long before their effect is made clear, and the game will not notify you of their importance at that moment. Some of them are rooted entirely in gameplay outside of dialogue eg. running around the Rhalata temple and refusing to wear their uniform will unlock new dialogue in the end that sheds a different light on the antagonist. The player who savescums and maxes out the companion's approval rating is also punished with the bad ending, with you companion suiciding. It's great because there's no way to back up 10 minutes of gameplay and just conjure up a different story - you have to restart from the beginning and pay attention to your actions.

[rusty_shackleford]

Save scumming isn't great, but the game should be designed in a way that sidesteps the issue

Yeah, like getting rid of discrete saves.

[Xenich]

Save scumming isn't great, but the game should be designed in a way that sidesteps the issue

Yeah, like getting rid of discrete saves.

Unless you make it like the old consoles where you lost everything unless you made it to the next point regardless if you shut down the machine or not, people will get around it.

I always hated save point systems like that. It took me a month to get through this one part of a console game once because I was constantly being interrupted and had to shut it down while trying to play it.

Seriously not a fan of that crap.

[rusty_shackleford]

Save scumming isn't great, but the game should be designed in a way that sidesteps the issue

Yeah, like getting rid of discrete saves.

Unless you make it like the old consoles where you lost everything unless you made it to the next point regardless if you shut down the machine or not, people will get around it.

I always hated save point systems like that. It took me a month to get through this one part of a console game once because I was constantly being interrupted and had to shut it down while trying to play it.

Seriously not a fan of that crap.

Dork souls does it, but you can still get around it.
Guess we're going to have to make every game online-only. All you guys had to do was quit cheating.

[Xenich]

Yeah, like getting rid of discrete saves.

Unless you make it like the old consoles where you lost everything unless you made it to the next point regardless if you shut down the machine or not, people will get around it.

I always hated save point systems like that. It took me a month to get through this one part of a console game once because I was constantly being interrupted and had to shut it down while trying to play it.

Seriously not a fan of that crap.

Dork souls does it, but you can still get around it.
Guess we're going to have to make every game online-only. All you guys had to do was quit cheating.

I guess when I was playing the game is wrong as well.

You might need to publish a list on the "right" way to go about life because I might be doing a lot of things the "wrong" way.

[rusty_shackleford]

Unless you make it like the old consoles where you lost everything unless you made it to the next point regardless if you shut down the machine or not, people will get around it.

I always hated save point systems like that. It took me a month to get through this one part of a console game once because I was constantly being interrupted and had to shut it down while trying to play it.

Seriously not a fan of that crap.

Dork souls does it, but you can still get around it.
Guess we're going to have to make every game online-only. All you guys had to do was quit cheating.

I guess when I was playing the game is wrong as well.

You might need to publish a list on the "right" way to go about life because I might be doing a lot of things the "wrong" way.

Just quit cheating. It's that easy.

[ArcaneLurker]

Whenever I die in a game I actually just stop playing it completely. You guys don't play that way?

[rusty_shackleford]

Whenever I die in a game I actually just stop playing it completely. You guys don't play that way?

There are games that even take this into account e.g., dork souls.
Sorry you guys are so addicted to cheating that the idea that you might actually be playing games wrong and ruining it for yourselves causes this much distress.

[Xenich]

Dork souls does it, but you can still get around it.
Guess we're going to have to make every game online-only. All you guys had to do was quit cheating.

I guess when I was playing the game is wrong as well.

You might need to publish a list on the "right" way to go about life because I might be doing a lot of things the "wrong" way.

Just quit cheating. It's that easy.

I wasn't cheating, It just took me a long time to get through one part because I kept getting interrupted. The only solution based on that is to not play a game like that when you don't have a large amount of time set aside to deal with those issues. It is one of the many reasons why I hated a lot of console games. They operated more like arcade level events, and I got tired of those games in the 80's.

[Unhelpful Contrarian]

Dork souls does it, but you can still get around it.
Guess we're going to have to make every game online-only. All you guys had to do was quit cheating.

I guess when I was playing the game is wrong as well.

You might need to publish a list on the "right" way to go about life because I might be doing a lot of things the "wrong" way.

Just quit cheating. It's that easy.

15C35B3B-C28B-4477-8BE1-396F7B834B4A.jpeg

[rusty_shackleford]

I guess when I was playing the game is wrong as well.

You might need to publish a list on the "right" way to go about life because I might be doing a lot of things the "wrong" way.

Just quit cheating. It's that easy.

But you aren't having fun.

[ArcaneLurker]

Whenever I die in a game I actually just stop playing it completely. You guys don't play that way?

There are games that even take this into account e.g., dork souls.
Sorry you guys are so addicted to cheating that the idea that you might actually be playing games wrong and ruining it for yourselves causes this much distress.

It's very sad when people display such distress over vidya

[rusty_shackleford]

Whenever I die in a game I actually just stop playing it completely. You guys don't play that way?

There are games that even take this into account e.g., dork souls.
Sorry you guys are so addicted to cheating that the idea that you might actually be playing games wrong and ruining it for yourselves causes this much distress.

It's very sad when people display such distress over vidya

If you see someone eating by shoving food up their ***, are you going to tell them that they're doing it the wrong way?

[ArcaneLurker]

There are games that even take this into account e.g., dork souls.
Sorry you guys are so addicted to cheating that the idea that you might actually be playing games wrong and ruining it for yourselves causes this much distress.

It's very sad when people display such distress over vidya

If you see someone eating by shoving food up their ***, are you going to tell them that they're doing it the wrong way?

Woah, what did I walk in on here?

[Xenich]

Whenever I die in a game I actually just stop playing it completely. You guys don't play that way?

There are games that even take this into account e.g., dork souls.
Sorry you guys are so addicted to cheating that the idea that you might actually be playing games wrong and ruining it for yourselves causes this much distress.

Actually, dark souls is a cheat on the original concept. If it were a true game without cheats, it would have zero saving and require the player to win all encounters in a single play through.

[rusty_shackleford]

Whenever I die in a game I actually just stop playing it completely. You guys don't play that way?

There are games that even take this into account e.g., dork souls.
Sorry you guys are so addicted to cheating that the idea that you might actually be playing games wrong and ruining it for yourselves causes this much distress.

Actually, dark souls is a cheat on the original concept. If it were a true game without cheats, it would have zero saving and require the player to win all encounters in a single play through.

Sorry, I'm not dumb enough to conflate using a meta mechanic as intended vs abusing it to cheat.

[Nooneatall]

Whenever I die in a game I actually just stop playing it completely. You guys don't play that way?

There are games that even take this into account e.g., dork souls.
Sorry you guys are so addicted to cheating that the idea that you might actually be playing games wrong and ruining it for yourselves causes this much distress.

You can trivialize dark souls without "cheating" though. You can make yourself op pretty easily with enough knowledge or time. That's why it's all the more impressive when someone beats it at SL1 or with a DDR pad. You have to go through every game and show us which parts we aren't allowed to interact with so we know the official rusty difficulty to play on so we aren't cheating.

[rusty_shackleford]

Whenever I die in a game I actually just stop playing it completely. You guys don't play that way?

There are games that even take this into account e.g., dork souls.
Sorry you guys are so addicted to cheating that the idea that you might actually be playing games wrong and ruining it for yourselves causes this much distress.

You can trivialize dark souls without "cheating" though. You can make yourself op pretty easily with enough knowledge or time. That's why it's all the more impressive when someone beats it at SL1 or with a DDR pad. You have to go through every game and show us which parts we aren't allowed to interact with so we know the official rusty difficulty to play on so we aren't cheating.

If you can't understand how save scumming is cheating, I can't help

[Xenich]

Whenever I die in a game I actually just stop playing it completely. You guys don't play that way?

There are games that even take this into account e.g., dork souls.
Sorry you guys are so addicted to cheating that the idea that you might actually be playing games wrong and ruining it for yourselves causes this much distress.

You can trivialize dark souls without "cheating" though. You can make yourself op pretty easily with enough knowledge or time. That's why it's all the more impressive when someone beats it at SL1 or with a DDR pad. You have to go through every game and show us which parts we aren't allowed to interact with so we know the official rusty difficulty to play on so we aren't cheating.

So what you are saying... is that anyone who doesn't beat DS in a single sitting (or starts over from the beginning each play) is because they are cheating?

Wow... looks like @rusty_shackleford is playing Dark Souls... Wrong.

[rusty_shackleford]

There are games that even take this into account e.g., dork souls.
Sorry you guys are so addicted to cheating that the idea that you might actually be playing games wrong and ruining it for yourselves causes this much distress.

You can trivialize dark souls without "cheating" though. You can make yourself op pretty easily with enough knowledge or time. That's why it's all the more impressive when someone beats it at SL1 or with a DDR pad. You have to go through every game and show us which parts we aren't allowed to interact with so we know the official rusty difficulty to play on so we aren't cheating.

So what you are saying... is that anyone who doesn't beat DS in a single sitting (or starts over from the beginning each play) is because they are cheating?

Wow... looks like @rusty_shackleford is playing Dark Souls... Wrong.

Anyone who backs up their savefile outside of the game for purposes of savescumming is playing it wrong, yes.