Well, I don't really think of the late 1800s/early 1900s as "modern".
Historians use the term "modern" to mean anything after 1648, and in that broad sense of the term... there's still pretty much nothing. RPGs are either set in the middle ages or in the cyberpunk/postapoc future with a massive gap in between.
I think the major reason is that RPGs rely heavily on dialogue and NPC interaction.
Which is cancer. Yes, a modern "adventure" setting that was primarily about speech checks would suck.
Stuff like Tomb Raider and Indiana Jones, they really go in hidden places far away from civilization to hunt for treasures. But outside of these secluded “dungeons” you have a disconnected, normal world. Probably not many interesting quests to be had.
It is not necessary to have the non-dungeon areas be boring suburbs or whatever. I can imagine a game set in the 1950's where the player is exploring a cave system near Kilaminjaro and returns to Nairobi for supplies, where there are side quests to fight Mau Mau rebels, go big game hunting, smuggle ivory and diamonds, solve a murder mystery involving cannibals, help an ape researcher rescue a super-intelligent gorilla. That's just one idea. There's a lot of interesting and exotic places untouched by RPGs to use.
Well, I don't really think of the late 1800s/early 1900s as "modern".
Historians use the term "modern" to mean anything after 1648, and in that broad sense of the term... there's still pretty much nothing. RPGs are either set in the middle ages or in the cyberpunk/postapoc future with a massive gap in between.
I can imagine a game set in the 1950's where the player is exploring a cave system near Kilaminjaro and returns to Nairobi for supplies, where there are side quests to fight Mau Mau rebels, go big game hunting, smuggle ivory and diamonds, solve a murder mystery involving cannibals, help an ape researcher rescue a super-intelligent gorilla. That's just one idea. There's a lot of interesting and exotic places untouched by RPGs to use.
If you are going to go through the bother of creating a videogame where you have to concept and model all of the environments and assets from scratch, then why replicate the boring mundane world that you already inhabit? Why not create something that does not exist? A fantastical that piques the imagination?
Another issue is that Western gamers seem to have an obsession with nitpicking details, that seems to drag down their enjoyment and cause negative reviews/word of mouth which in turn diminishes sales. "This isn't historically accurate!" or "Why don't they just whip out their smartphones and call for help or take a picture of the monster or this guy with superpowers and send it to the police or upload it to the internet?". Etc.
Another issue is that Western gamers seem to have an obsession with nitpicking details, that seems to drag down their enjoyment and cause negative reviews/word of mouth which in turn diminishes sales. "This isn't historically accurate!" or "Why don't they just whip out their smartphones and call for help or take a picture of the monster or this guy with superpowers and send it to the police or upload it to the internet?". Etc.
Those are very valid issues that any writer/ narrative designer worth their salt makes sure to avoid such common pitfalls. I can’t the number of times when I’m enjoying a game and story completely shits the bed in basic story logic cough***Resident Evil 8 ***cough.
Last edited by Unhelpful Contrarian on April 17th, 2025, 18:41, edited 1 time in total.
Another issue is that Western gamers seem to have an obsession with nitpicking details, that seems to drag down their enjoyment and cause negative reviews/word of mouth which in turn diminishes sales. "This isn't historically accurate!" or "Why don't they just whip out their smartphones and call for help or take a picture of the monster or this guy with superpowers and send it to the police or upload it to the internet?". Etc.
Those are very valid issues that any writer/ narrative designer worth their salt makes sure to avoid such common pitfalls. I can’t the number of times when I’m enjoying a game and story completely shits the bed in basic story logic cough***Resident Evil 8 ***cough.
Exactly. While one can get pedantically nitpicky about flaws, just being critical of a paid product is not nitpick. Yes, if something is supposed to be historically accurate then we should point it out as a flaw when that is the case.
The famous example of the BMW in the battlefield because there's dragons. In a world that is supposed to be equivalent to medieval Europe except (except magic/except monsters/except elves) then certain things need to make sense and be internally consistent. A BMW should not be there even if magic. That's the problem with WotC's golems that are treated as "magic robots" instead of horrific monsters whose creation usually require soul binding, which is irredeemable evil or desecration of tombs for flesh golems.
While I agree that we should give a game a fair shake and approach it with the idea of enjoying it, I disagree with the notion of let go the so called "little things" in the altar of consuming product. This is how we get slop. You deserve what you tolerate.
If you are going to go through the bother of creating a videogame where you have to concept and model all of the environments and assets from scratch, then why replicate the boring mundane world that you already inhabit? Why not create something that does not exist? A fantastical that piques the imagination?
Another issue is that Western gamers seem to have an obsession with nitpicking details, that seems to drag down their enjoyment and cause negative reviews/word of mouth which in turn diminishes sales. "This isn't historically accurate!" or "Why don't they just whip out their smartphones and call for help or take a picture of the monster or this guy with superpowers and send it to the police or upload it to the internet?". Etc.
Completely disagree, one of my main issues with many Japanese games is how little they pay attention to the details.
And THAT is why you don't see many "modern era" games:
1. Devs know very little about the setting they're writing, because they're dorky shut-ins who never get outside.
2. Their audience certainly does, because they live in it. And while many of those are also dorky shut-ins who never get outside, at least some of them have had sufficient encounters with it to notice at least one major error.
In contrast, fantasy settings are made-up ******** and everyone knows it. Although a few grognards are will point out the obvious errors, by and large, the audience does not expect to take the setting seriously.
Other points to consider: RPGs tend to be heavily biased around attritional melee combat. You whack an enemy until one of you runs out of hitpoints. This translates very poorly to a more modern era, where weapons are deadly and combat is normally fought at range. Having to shoot an enemy 50 bazillion times to kill it just FEELS BAD, especially given the abbreviated ranges games are typically played at. You don't take 800 meter shots in vidya normally, especially not an RPG. And if ranged weapons were so pissweak that every battle ultimately turns into a melee engagement anyway, they'd never have been become dominant. Which breaks the feel of the setting.
Other points to consider: RPGs tend to be heavily biased around attritional melee combat. You whack an enemy until one of you runs out of hitpoints. This translates very poorly to a more modern era, where weapons are deadly and combat is normally fought at range. Having to shoot an enemy 50 bazillion times to kill it just FEELS BAD, especially given the abbreviated ranges games are typically played at. You don't take 800 meter shots in vidya normally, especially not an RPG. And if ranged weapons were so pissweak that every battle ultimately turns into a melee engagement anyway, they'd never have been become dominant. Which breaks the feel of the setting.
The way to solve this issue is not to bloat the HP of enemies, but to increase the total number of enemies. Same total HP pool to shoot through, just presented as you shooting lots of guys. This probably means a SRPG scenario.
I think this is why recent Final Fantasy titles have taken the "modern age but with magic" approach where the fictional world has stuff like cars and cellphones but there are still monsters and divine creatures around that need to be fought with enchanted swords.
I think this is why recent Final Fantasy titles have taken the "modern age but with magic" approach where the fictional world has stuff like cars and cellphones but there are still monsters and divine creatures around that need to be fought with enchanted swords.
The only "mainline" Final Fantasy game with cellphones is FF15, which was not supposed to be a mainline game. It was originally a spinoff called Versus XIII, and it had a much more fantastical aesthetic, with Noctis being a villain protagonist from a family of mafia kings who worshipped a death god and ruled over a city was always night. That was Nomura's vision, but then the project was taken away from him and reassigned to Tabata and the project was rebranded as FF15 because Square realized that the public was losing interest in the franchise and they needed to rush out a new mainline game fast. Tavata threw out a lot of Nomura's art assets. It was Tabata who greenlighted the much more mundane world of FF15.
The way to solve this issue is not to bloat the HP of enemies, but to increase the total number of enemies. Same total HP pool to shoot through, just presented as you shooting lots of guys. This probably means a SRPG scenario.
There are limits to how far you can take that approach, though. Otherwise the player quickly winds up with a body count rivalling Genghis Khan. Which nobody seems to ever notice.
If you are going to go through the bother of creating a videogame where you have to concept and model all of the environments and assets from scratch, then why replicate the boring mundane world that you already inhabit? Why not create something that does not exist? A fantastical that piques the imagination?
Another issue is that Western gamers seem to have an obsession with nitpicking details, that seems to drag down their enjoyment and cause negative reviews/word of mouth which in turn diminishes sales. "This isn't historically accurate!" or "Why don't they just whip out their smartphones and call for help or take a picture of the monster or this guy with superpowers and send it to the police or upload it to the internet?". Etc.
Its the opposite. The world is better at fiction than we are, so we resort to fantasy worlds that don't require us to go to Mt Doom.
"Why don't they just whip out their smartphones and call for help or take a picture of the monster or this guy with superpowers and send it to the police or upload it to the internet?". Etc.
Has this ever actually helped anyone? Whip out your stupid phone and call WHO for help, exactly? I remember some ***** who CHOOSE POORLY (she picked bear) who tried this, and the only thing this accomplished was that her mother got to listen to her getting eaten by a bear live in real-time.
"Why don't they just whip out their smartphones and call for help or take a picture of the monster or this guy with superpowers and send it to the police or upload it to the internet?". Etc.
Has this ever actually helped anyone? Whip out your stupid phone and call WHO for help, exactly? I remember some ***** who CHOOSE POORLY (she picked bear) who tried this, and the only thing this accomplished was that her mother got to listen to her getting eaten by a bear live in real-time.
"Why don't they just whip out their smartphones and call for help or take a picture of the monster or this guy with superpowers and send it to the police or upload it to the internet?". Etc.
Has this ever actually helped anyone? Whip out your stupid phone and call WHO for help, exactly? I remember some ***** who CHOOSE POORLY (she picked bear) who tried this, and the only thing this accomplished was that her mother got to listen to her getting eaten by a bear live in real-time.
That is sad.
I think this complaint is usually in regards to there being some horror/mystery monster whose existence can actually be substantiated, or the heroes spotting villains doing crazy supernatural or sci fi stuff out in the woods. It is a common movie gag that the heroes try to tell their parents or the cops about the bad guy but get shrugged off as fibbing kids. In any case, with cellphones these outlandish activities can be substantiated and the police can get involved. Or, they could, in the 2000s and early to mid 2010s. Now with the proliferation of photoshopped and AI generates images, I suppose sending a picture of a maneating bigfoot in the woods to your local police station probably wouldn't elicit them to spend 3 hours driving over to look for it.
In any case, with cellphones these outlandish activities can be substantiated and the police can get involved.
If the situation is in any way threatening to you, the police will only get there in time to investigate your death. This is, obviously, not very helpful.
I suppose sending a picture of a maneating bigfoot in the woods to your local police station probably wouldn't elicit them to spend 3 hours driving over to look for it.
And why would they? It's not illegal to be a bigfoot. Besides, somebody did that. The famous bigfoot photo is all over the Internet. Has it helped?
If you are going to go through the bother of creating a videogame where you have to concept and model all of the environments and assets from scratch, then why replicate the boring mundane world that you already inhabit? Why not create something that does not exist? A fantastical that piques the imagination?
Another issue is that Western gamers seem to have an obsession with nitpicking details, that seems to drag down their enjoyment and cause negative reviews/word of mouth which in turn diminishes sales. "This isn't historically accurate!" or "Why don't they just whip out their smartphones and call for help or take a picture of the monster or this guy with superpowers and send it to the police or upload it to the internet?". Etc.
Completely disagree, one of my main issues with many Japanese games is how little they pay attention to the details.
In lots of Jap games, if you ask even the most surface level questions about how their worlds work, they fall apart. If the plot works only by ignoring the easy solution that exists in the world, your world building and story are bad.
In lots of Jap games, if you ask even the most surface level questions about how their worlds work, they fall apart. If the plot works only by ignoring the easy solution that exists in the world, your world building and story are bad.
you could say the same thing about real life :weeb:
In lots of Jap games, if you ask even the most surface level questions about how their worlds work, they fall apart. If the plot works only by ignoring the easy solution that exists in the world, your world building and story are bad.
Asians are conformists who rarely question things about the world, and so they probably don't notice or care.
In lots of Jap games, if you ask even the most surface level questions about how their worlds work, they fall apart. If the plot works only by ignoring the easy solution that exists in the world, your world building and story are bad.
Asians are conformists who rarely question things about the world, and so they probably don't notice or care.
Yes, but the fault is with unthinking Orientals, not Westerners asking basic questions.
In lots of Jap games, if you ask even the most surface level questions about how their worlds work, they fall apart. If the plot works only by ignoring the easy solution that exists in the world, your world building and story are bad.
Asians are conformists who rarely question things about the world, and so they probably don't notice or care.
Yes, but the fault is with unthinking Orientals, not Westerners asking basic questions.
Yes, but remember, most Jap games are for Japs, and so this isn't an issue to them.
