SouthLab: player character questions (race and class).

[joshksingh]

SouthLab currently has a greatly stripped down selection of races and classes compared to other roguelikes. There are three races: humans, elves, and dwarves. There are four classes: managers (warriors), physicists (archers), logicians (wizards), and brewers (fighter-mage hybrid). At the moment I have a number of issues

Comments

[joshksingh]

Athlete is a new one. You're probably thinking about when I first mentioned the class name changes; apparently I wasn't totally satisfied with Manager, and you suggested Executive. I did initially decide to change it, but "executive" isn't really a standalone word compared to manager, and I've also thought it might be especially confusing for the many roguelike players who don't natively speak English, among other problems, so ultimately I changed it back. I may ultimately change it to something else entirely, who knows.

http://joshksingh.livejournal.com/62859.html

Or maybe you just had a dream about an Athlete name controversy.

I'm only now realizing I could've just called the rogue class Lawyers. But like a nut I was thinking about insurance. And I guess actually lawyers are comparatively blatant, while actuaries by nature work behind-the-scenes to fuck you over. Perhaps lawyers could be the fighter-mage class; they are certainly skilled in various manners of terror and destruction, whether at point-blank range or via arcane instruments.

After adding Actuaries, though, I started thinking perhaps there's enough context to frame brewers properly even if you're unfamiliar with university brewing schools. But I'll assume that's wishful and try lawyers in the spot right now.

So while you didn't suggest Lawyer you did at least get my mind somehow going there. So the acknowledgment I mentioned in that post is still forthcoming.

[joshksingh]

I was having a snarkgasm. I think the whole actuarial mission lines up with the rogue concept. Their work can silently destroy you, and yet you hardly know who the hell they are or what they're really doing. That is the rogue's bread and butter; they need the shadows and the sleight of hand. Actuaries only need shadows and sleight of hand figuratively, but that's the joke. The thing about the Salesman is that wouldn't come of a specific Ockham University program. Unless I'm having a brain fart.

Linguists aren't really rogue types. Yes, we're confusing, but we're openly so, and quite boring to boot. So the Linguist would be a better fit in the mage or fighter-mage slot, I think. I suppose I could replace Logician, but I wanted a philosophy title somewhere, evidently. At the time I think I was trying to get a fairly broad cross-section of the student body, in a way. At least if I leave Logician as is, Lawyer makes a little more sense; the class has to be relatively effective with magic, and lawyers do have to be relatively effective at twisting logic. Although unlike the Logician that twists logic for its own sake, the Lawyer twists logic to leave you open for a sword in the guts.

I had to remind myself today not to get too carried away with the names, though. When you get down to it, that's just cosmetic. It's the actual characteristics of the classes that are important to balance out. I also still have the race questions to attend to. Maybe I'll fiddle with the numbers now and see what I can work out.

[joshksingh]

Perhaps I'm being overly jaded about actuaries. If I think of something spectacular to replace them with then I probably will. My first thought for the slot was accountant, frankly, so I was leaning in that direction to begin with. I've obviously taken the view that anyone dealing in risk assessment has kinda dropped the ball on this planet lately, so I didn't question my impulse to make them the shady, self-preserving rogue class, although in real life actuaries are protecting their own jobs more indirectly by protecting their employers. Protecting a big bank or insurance company is hardly a noble calling anyway, at least in my opinion.

So it's all borne of my rather negative perception of the financial sector generally and especially the insurance industry. They all need their actuaries, and somewhere in there the actuaries aren't doing their jobs. Of course, as a socialist I have a different idea of what their job should actually be: to protect us, not try to find efficient ways to screw us.

That said, my game, my bias. ;)

[joshksingh]

Yeah, my perception of accountants isn't that negative either. I think it must be rank high among the most dull professions, but not necessarily the most shady. Books can be doctored, but there are plenty of accountants who aren't out to protect the wealthiest. I'd imagine in fact that a large (if not larger) proportion of accountants are employed by individuals or mom-and-pop shops to sort out their budgets and do their taxes. Another thing that occurs to me at least is that accounting isn't necessarily the most esoteric pursuit; as long as all the numbers are in front of us and given enough time (and tolerance for tedium), anyone with some arithmetic know-how could do their own accounting. Actuarial science, on the other hand, is about as clear-cut as Dick Cheney's foreign policy. Most of us assess risk all the time in our day-to-day lives, but I'm sure few of us really know how an actuary actually goes about it. They're supposed to account for pretty much every factor there is, apparently even emotional factors, and that alone leaves me scratching my head. Basically the profession looks like little more than a casino magic act to me. Granted, that's a bit of an exaggeration, like all of the class-name connections.

All that said, "assessment" to me is a red light word. I take it for granted that almost anyone who provides assessment or consultation is a con artist. So I guess Consultant could be suited in the same way, except it's relatively vague and uninteresting.

Stockbroker and Politician are interesting. I'll chew on those. The key is the description I wrote up for the rogue class. Actuaries certainly use their assessment sleight of hand to evade trouble as much as possible, and they do it in a relatively indiscernible (stealthy) way; even the ability to handle doors and traps fits, since actuaries are naturally supposed to be on the lookout for threats. The key skills for this class compared to others would be Dodging, Stealth and Secret Handling; the typical (non-ogre) rogue would also be modestly trained in Blades as well as Darts and Blowguns. They'd probably start lightly armoured and equipped with a dagger and some darts and/or a blowgun. A few potions of poison wouldn't be out of the question either. The emphasis is really on staying in the backdrop as much as possible and picking your spots according to risk. In the game context, these characteristics wouldn't even be entirely self-serving, since every character's quest is to defeat Dr. Mae Kinizz and save the University. So all my cerebral(?) humour to this extent is secondary.

[joshksingh]

Politician does seem to work. "Olden days" doesn't really apply as much here, since Canadian politics has figurative fisticuffs by nature. But then I suppose the point comes up that politics isn't necessarily like that elsewhere, even stateside. Republicans are kind of like that, although in general when politics is that involving it's supposed to be in some manner effective, not just wasting everyone's time out of spite. But I digress.

One problem that's occurring to me is that politicians usually don't come from any particular university program. I've never heard of a politician that was actually a political scientist (which would explain why they're so generally inept). On the other hand I guess a lot come from either law or business, and I have business covered with the fighter class. So Lawyer leans in that direction. Maybe Attorney would be a better word. But a quick 'pedia glance suggests that word isn't very universal at all, so I guess Lawyer is the best choice from that camp.

The game objective could certainly be taken in self-serving ways. That's why I qualified with "entirely". The backstory at the moment suggests that the character is doing it almost against their will, but you're free to develop the character any way you want during play. That said, the restricted mechanics of SouthLab give you far less wiggle room than in Soulthieves, so whether or not the player feels their character's motives are to any extent self-serving is somewhat irrelevant. The most self-serving thing you might be able to do is collect all the items you possibly can, but this is a typical roguelike objective and you wouldn't really be stealing things. Arguably there's also the possibility of going out of your way to kill everything you can, although in a dungeon full of monsters trying to kill you, "out of your way" is vague; I don't think I'll allow you to attack or kill non-hostile beings in SouthLab, since in this game it wouldn't serve much purpose, so that's completely discounted.

In Soulthieves, of course, it's very possible to actually play a self-serving game. But it's that breadth and complexity that inspired me to begin the SouthLab project to develop the underlying game engine in a much more constrained context.