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Idle

RPG Heroes Are Jerks 119

Posted by samzenpus from the leave-no-box-unopened dept.
I have to give him credit for smashing the vases to get the medicine, and finding the legendary wedding dress among the rags. However, he forgot to kill the peasants for xp and you should always check the fireplace for any remaining food.

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RPG Heroes Are Jerks More

RPG Heroes Are Jerks

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  • Let me just be the first to ask... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 23, 2010 @02:28PM (#31587276)

    ...lolwut?

  • No article... (Score:5, Funny)

    by haderytn ( 1232484 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2010 @02:29PM (#31587306)
    FINALLY

  • No Article (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Psychotic_Wrath ( 693928 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2010 @02:31PM (#31587334)
    How come this is still tagged with story?

  • Golden Axe my ass. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 23, 2010 @02:32PM (#31587340)

    You think RPG heroes are bad, well let me tell you something: it's been engrained in society since I was only 1-foot tall. Every time I run through a forest, someone decides to encamp right in the middle of the path between tree lines. This is so stupid! It's practically the same as sleeping on railroad tracks, or on a heavily-used road for that matter! And when I try to sneak through, the fuckers awaken and kick me so hard my meats and stuff fall out of my bag! Knockers like me need respect when we travel on our own roads!

  • Anyone remember Robotrek for the SNES, which made you knock before entering other people's houses?

    • Re:Robotrek! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by DrLang21 ( 900992 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2010 @03:40PM (#31588238)
      This is why I like Neverwinter Nights 2. Kill peasants and your alignment shifts towards evil chaotic, break into someone's house, you shift towards evil. For a hero, this is bad. For an anti-hero, this is good. And then your alignment affects how different NPCs react to you. It had a lot more potential, but I think they're doing a good job of making the alignment mean something in a video game.
      • Following the "Evil" alignment in the NWN games/DnD in general make you more of a villain protagonist than an anti-hero, really. The neutral choices/alignment "What do I get for my time? I have bulk discounts if it involves more than 50 heads. *lights cig*" is more constructive anti-hero material IMHO.
        • Fair enough, though I would call that scenario somewhere around true neutral or even lawful neutral. You aren't dedicated to doing good or evil. It's all about the what's in it for you.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by ezbo ( 1596471 )
        Jedi Knight Dark Forces II, kill civilians, get loots and Sith powers, don't kill civilians and get..... Jedi wholesome goodness?
  • RPG coders are just lazy (relatively speaking) and don't want to code those features. Whatever...

  • Karma (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Mekkah ( 1651935 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2010 @02:37PM (#31587426) Journal
    At least with some games (Fallout) it affects your Karma when you do these things, steal and whatnot.
    Fable too.. oh and you get attacked for theft.

    BUT it is SO easy to steal.

    • Re:Karma (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Enderandrew ( 866215 ) <enderandrew@NOsPAM.gmail.com> on Tuesday March 23, 2010 @03:16PM (#31587960) Homepage Journal

      It all started with Ultima IV, where the goal of the game wasn't to kill the big baddie, but to ascribe to a series of morals.

      Richard Garriot realized precisely this problem, the "protagonist" in most RPGs was causing as much harm as they were supposedly doing good.

      • I too immediately thought of Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar when I saw this story. I can remember being pretty high up on all of my virtues, then stealing some of Lord British's gold or attacking him or something. doH! I lost ALL of my virtue progress and had to start over building them up. Why I didn't just load from a saved game at that point, I don't know - this was over 20 years ago. :)

        Damn, now I feel like loading up Ultima IV in an Apple II emulator and playing through. :) Best. RPG Game. Ev

        • Best. RPG Game. Ever.

          That reminds me... I need to head down to the ATM machine and punch in my PIN number so I can select the amount of cash that I need on the LCD display.

          (Incidentally, I note that Idle still has a 20 character wide comment input box. I guess the CSS style sheet must be screwed up.)

      • And then the developers couldn't playtest it right because they knew exactly how much they could bend the rules, whereas people who played it really RP'ing the Avatar properly thought the game was way harder... but it was a pretty awesome game!

      • If you do something in-game that is immoral, and none of the NPCs are coded for a reaction, is it truly immoral?

        If you steal from someone in real life, it may not matter either. Sure, some guy came in and stole my mom's jewelry while we were out. Did he care that we felt "violated" or that some of those were heirlooms? Did it matter to anyone but us? If the thief is the protagonist, what's to make him care unless something happens to him in game?

        The catch is this: something needs to happen whether he ac

        • Except... in real life, you don't get physical or even relational rewards for not doing something that violates social contract - not-violating social contract is expected and you are treated as a member of society as a result. Violating social contract causes you to step outside the bounds of normative society and there are consequences. You should not be rewarded for not-robbing my house. You should be punished for robbing my house. The same fits well in most games and more accurately represents real life

      • It all started with Ultima IV, where the goal of the game wasn't to kill the big baddie, but to ascribe to a series of morals.

        It stared with IV, but it became awesome with VI and VII. They kept the aspect of morality, but lost all of the negative consequences.

        Every time you robbed someone blind in VI it'd beep and say "Stealing!" in the text window, and in VII the Guardian would sometimes pop up to admonish you for your evil deeds. Yeah, the bad guy was making fun of you for not being very Avartar-ish. S

    • Remember The Legend of Zelda? Steal a set of arrows or a bomb from the store keep and he'd roll your ass. You'd have to make a quick get-a-way for the door while he wasn't looking.

    • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Really, It's pretty damn easy to steal in real life, too.
      • yes, thankfully it's fairly simple to catch thieves nowadays too... I like having GPS or phone home chips in everything (though I do occasionally have concerns over the privacy issues)

  • LOL (Score:5, Funny)

    by Em Emalb ( 452530 ) <ememalb AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday March 23, 2010 @02:37PM (#31587432) Homepage Journal

    Yup. I've often wondered why the very people you're typically trying to save (in most stories) don't "offer" you stuff...instead, you gotta go through their home like a crack-head looking for the motherlode.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by russ_allegro ( 444120 )

      I used to think this, however when you are playing you only see from your perspective, how do you know there aren't a bunch of others who claim they are trying to help, to just fail or abuse people's charity. If the world was about to end I would imagine there would be lots of people claiming they would go and save the day. If I gave all my stuff to every one who claimed that, I would just be starving for the remaining time I had left. This is why I wouldn't want you going into my house taking stuff, and I

    • Re:LOL (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Rich0 ( 548339 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2010 @03:55PM (#31588424) Homepage

      Better still is the hero that has some kind of official backing from a kingdom, or government, or whatever who starts out with a knife and a T-shirt, and has to start out exterminating rats or whatever.

      Then he has to steal or earn money doing menial tasks to buy equipment.

      If this guy is the hope of the world or whatever, you'd think that the king who sent him out could at least equip him as well as the castle guards...

      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by H0p313ss ( 811249 )

        Better still is the hero that has some kind of official backing from a kingdom, or government, or whatever who starts out with a knife and a T-shirt, and has to start out exterminating rats or whatever.

        Then he has to steal or earn money doing menial tasks to buy equipment.

        If this guy is the hope of the world or whatever, you'd think that the king who sent him out could at least equip him as well as the castle guards...

        Sounds like a typical civil service job to me.

    • I mean, really -- they *sell* you swords. They aren't really interested in helping you or the side of good in general. And the few people who *don't* charge you want you to rescue their lost kitten or something before they give you the Gem of Shining Awesomeness or what not. So loot away, adventurer -- villagers are jerks.

      • Maybe it's like the villagers in The Seven Samurai. "Yes, we want the world to be saved, but that won't do us any good if we die in the winter because our food supplies were looted. We know you're our only hope, but we've been robbed by so many adventurers that we hide our possessions."

  • What the fuck? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by bcmm ( 768152 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2010 @02:38PM (#31587442)
    What the fuck has happened to Slashdot?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by brkello ( 642429 )
      Nothing. It is still the same self-perpetuating groupthink it has always been. Now you just need to filter out Idle.

      • I unfortunately can't filter it out on my news reader.

        • Sure you can! Just create a filter with yahoo pipes, or subscribe to somebody that's done the heavy lifting for you already. Have a look at, and you should be able to find something helpful there. http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/search?q=idle+slashdot&x=0&y=0 [yahoo.com]
      • But it used to be about nerdy things. Real nerd things, not just video games and politics. The typical article 8 years ago was Linux running on some guy's toaster, or a review of a new programming language book. Now it's all about demonizing China, bashing religion, American politics, or ridiculous nonsense posted to Idle. There is so much anger and so little curiosity and constructiveness. That's fine for other news sites, but Slashdot is supposed to be special and different.

        The guilty pleasure of Unix co

    • Re:What the fuck? (Score:4, Funny)

      by characterZer0 ( 138196 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2010 @02:49PM (#31587610)

      Fire Lord's goblins are taking over the kingdom.

      "News for nerds, stuff that matters."

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cruff ( 171569 )

      Looks like business as usual to me.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by euxneks ( 516538 )
      It got infected by the internet.
    • Good question! Every other
      section (it, yro, polls, etc)
      has a comment field that
      spans the screen. However,
      idle has this narrow, little po-
      dunk comment window that
      is exactly 20 characters
      wide. What's up with that?
    • From the FAQ

      Why has Slashdot become so successful?

      Slashdot is successful for the same reasons anything else is. We provided something that was needed before anyone else did, and we worked (and continue to work) our butts off to make it as good as it could be.

      Answered by: CmdrTaco Last Modified: 10/28/00

      Those were the days....

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by wizardforce ( 1005805 )

      They figured that adding idle would lure a few digg users and at the least generate a ton of discussion/page views complaining about idle. You know what? they were right. It did generate a ton of comments on the issue and to top it off I bet that more people like us are complaining about idle than those who block the entire section. It's like car accidents, a traffic jam forms because of all the people who slowed down to take a look. Now it's to the point where idle has effectively infected Slashdot and

      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by osu-neko ( 2604 )
        Bye... can I have your stuff? :p

        • Bye... can I have your stuff? :p

          Wait... what?

          The only "stuff" we have on slashdot is our userID... why in the hell would you want to trade a 4-digit ID for a 7-digit ID?

          So you can troll other Ancients* pretending to be a noob?

          I'm confused.

          *By the way, I'm now referring to all 5-digit IDs as "Old Ones", all 4-digit IDs as "Ancients", all 3-digit IDs as "Methuselahs", and I dare not refer to anyone of lower userID lest my eyes be rent from their sockets and my bones ground to dust.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Shadrone ( 95875 )

            Wow, Im an "old one"?
            Now I feel old. :(

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by BobMcD ( 601576 )

            http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IfYouDieICallYourStuff [tvtropes.org]

            Everyone who publicly threatens to quit playing a MMORPG, especially City Of Heroes, will always be met with at least one reply of "Can I have your stuff?" among other mocking. They almost never actually quit.
            This Troper recalls the popularity of this phrase for the World Of Warcraft forums came after a Community Manager, who's account name was Eyonix, posted that phrase to one of these threads, presumedly annoyed by the many of them being made. (World Of Warcraft is one helluva Cash Cow Franchise, with its many fans making the Fan Dumb even more noticeable.)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Dan667 ( 564390 )
        Usually, when people complain it is because they like something and aren't leaving. People who really leave don't complain, they just leave.
        • I am complaining and I have left. I actually logged on to say that this does not belong on Slashdot, even though it is funny. I am here because I was sent a link to this.
      • So, they generate these huge numbers of page views for what purpose? Even before I was given the boon of cutting off ads, I run no script and ADP. So the huge numbers of page views are probably not giving them much of anything. But for us, the loyal and grateful readers of /. always ready to suck up to CmdrTaco and crew, we gained something from this article. Valuable and hopefully long lasting.Something that will make /. a much better and improved site, and that, sir, is your absence. Now STFU and GTFO!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ewe2 ( 47163 )

        Or you could, you know, be positive and post a nerdy story or contribute a worthwhile comment on another story instead of giving more air to one you apparently hate. If that doesn't take valuable time out of your obviously busy day, of course.

    • > What the fuck has happened to Slashdot?

      "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters."

      Now don't you feel foolish?

    • What the fuck has happened to Slashdot?

      Taco and Co. are trying to encourage posters like yourself that think "Slashdot is Serious Business" to consider leaving. Sorry, but you tend to write the most awfully boring posts.

  • Seriously? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Nialin ( 570647 )
    Sure it was funny, but...

    Many a family tree needs trimming.

    Even Slashdot should follow its own wisdom.

  • What surprises me is that people are bothering to moderate this.

    Wait, since the box is so small, am I supposed to use a haiku instead?

  • A day late and a dollar short (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    There has been a whole game (an RPG) made about this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon:_Remix_RPG_Adventure
    Had funnier jokes too.

  • Totally Inaccurate (Score:5, Funny)

    by Chagatai ( 524580 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2010 @03:33PM (#31588170) Homepage
    This video was totally inaccurate. The NPC actors didn't repeat the same thing over and over when the knight approached them.

    "Where are you taking grandma?"
    "Where are you taking grandma?"
    "Where are you taking grandma?"

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by skine ( 1524819 )

      Then you talk to them:

      "I've heard that Janus was searching the Large Pond. Perhaps there is treasure down there..."

      "Where are you taking grandma?"
      "Where are you taking grandma?"
      "Where are you taking grandma?"

      "If you're looking for a shield, you should go to Max's Armor Emporium in Greenswellburg..."

      "Where are you taking grandma?"
      "Where are you taking grandma?"
      "Where are you taking grandma?"

  • Basically, you're all just trying to think of how we can relate this to an operating system argument, rather than nostalgia for 16bit consoles. And throw in a slippery slope argument, whammo, it's f*ing Ebaum's world in here. No, it's just funny/weird and a little misplaced. Enjoy or ignore. Slashdot should welcome the diversity (err, pagehits) and attracting new members, as long as they don't stink the place up with lousy posts (like this one). It is hard to be relevant with such an irrelevant OP though.
  • ...is the image next to the article (!). Makes me think of the knight from Monty Python who would smack people in the head with a chicken when they said something stupid.

    Now that you mention it...
    • I hope you realize that the "image" next to the article is actually an embedded video entitled RPG Heroes are Jerks.

  • I played this quirky little game named Earthbound just this week, and the heroes actually don't steal stuff (it's even pointed out by a NPC at some point).
    The only situation where you actually "steal" is optional and the owner actually goes "How could you...?".

  • That was a funny video. But what an annoyingly long ad for Nintendo I had to sit through!

  • Mass Effect 2 and looting (Score:5, Funny)

    by sammy baby ( 14909 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2010 @05:09PM (#31589338) Journal

    Okay, this struck me as pretty funny. Mass Effect 2 is pretty conventional for an RPG in that there's a lot of random "break into this wall safe you just happen to be passing by" action. And despite the fact that the game has a classic Bioware "light side / dark side"... no wait, sorry, "Paragon / Renegade" meter, it never seems to budge, no matter how many times you appropriate other people's property.

    Normally I'd have overlooked this as just another silly convention of the genre, but there's a scene quite early on in the game where you stumble across a pair of looters ransacking apartments in a part of town gutted by a plague. The looters point out that the residents are mostly dead, and therefore not likely to care. But of course, you get the dialog option that says "No more looting."

    It just struck me as funny, considering that on that mission alone, I had already collected a bunch of cash by hacking bank terminals and raiding the coffers of a quasi-legal mercenary group.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Jedi Alec ( 258881 )

      Not to mention that around the next corner, there's a husband and wife cowering in fear behind their locked door, and you get to open up *their* wallsafe without so much as a comment, but I believe you can earn some Paragon points by convincing them to make a run for the clinic.

      • Stuff like that really breaks the immersion. But too realistic emotional reactions would make most games creepy.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Rich0 ( 548339 )

      Don't forget that you're on a quest to literally save the universe. You have a custom-built starship that probably cost half a city to build, with technology better than anything that can be found anywhere. You've already saved the universe once.

      However, the organization backing you puts you on a strict budget that barely pays for your ammo, and to get deals on better guns you end up hawking product endorsements to every shop on the Citadel. And of course you can just about double that income by robbing

  • There's an elixir in almost every single clock.

  • Is it me or is FlashBlock extension blocking this embedded video? It isn't on my three PCs with Mozilla's SeaMonkey v2.0.3.

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