Goyyyio
Sergeant
This kind of sandbox roleplaying games without a storyline, where you can influence the world, pretty much work like improvisation acting:
In improvisation acting, sometimes you have a base which is the characters and the world/place, after that you just act and improvise accordingly. It's also important that the characters, actors, interact with each other accordingly, for example, an actor comes with an idea, the other actors should react to this and come up with a response that makes sense, sometimes breaking expectations, sometimes just following the idea. This is called action - reaction. If the actors don't react, or start making nonsensical reactions, the scene becomes awkward, it becomes unbearable to see, and the immersion breaks instantly.
So what this has to do with roleplaying, and Bannerlord?
Well roleplaying is fascinating to me, mostly the group of people that meets up to roleplay are often mocked for playing fantasy games, but for me, roleplayers are just improvisation actors having fun, D&D games is pretty much that, making storylines on the go and every actor reacting to each other accordingly, same thing happens in Bannerlord, people create their characters and start to interact with the world... And here's the problem. The NPCs in this case are the ones supposed to replace the actors, they ARE the actors actually, but this is more like acting with mannequins and pretending they say things to you and react, because the NPCs have barely any response to give according to your actions. Kill someone's child, you barely get any reaction, just a line and that's it. Your wife is impregnated, yeah, no dialog about that, being the unstoppable champion of tournaments without a single loss, no reaction to that, you get a few lines after you get married, that's cool. The thing is getting married happens after you make a barter transaction wherever the lord is standing, so that's underwhelming nonetheless.
You see what I mean, I think this game has every tool to make roleplaying possible, but the characters are so dull. So boring, and gameplay wise they don't do anything either. The world should react in any way possible. Returning to killing someone's child, you could get some dialog lines, sure, but you need the action too, what if depending of the NPCs traits you either get a lord building armies to chase you only out of spite, or a more cool minded lord would send hired killers to your doors, or even get your own children killed, or a king may continue an unwinnable war because of anger of revenge, letting you use that in your advantage. You know how much these little, little details would spice up the game a thousand times more, because your actions have consequences in the world and you can see them, you can cause a chain reaction that could make you win a war or have your family killed. Take that into any aspect of the game and you have a solid RPG.
I know a lot of players create immense stories out of this game, and I'm happy you can do that, I wish I could, I just see bland reactions and my actions getting me nowhere but the same place I was before.
(I was writing this for the RP mod but it became too large and I thought it could be a thread of its own)
In improvisation acting, sometimes you have a base which is the characters and the world/place, after that you just act and improvise accordingly. It's also important that the characters, actors, interact with each other accordingly, for example, an actor comes with an idea, the other actors should react to this and come up with a response that makes sense, sometimes breaking expectations, sometimes just following the idea. This is called action - reaction. If the actors don't react, or start making nonsensical reactions, the scene becomes awkward, it becomes unbearable to see, and the immersion breaks instantly.
So what this has to do with roleplaying, and Bannerlord?
Well roleplaying is fascinating to me, mostly the group of people that meets up to roleplay are often mocked for playing fantasy games, but for me, roleplayers are just improvisation actors having fun, D&D games is pretty much that, making storylines on the go and every actor reacting to each other accordingly, same thing happens in Bannerlord, people create their characters and start to interact with the world... And here's the problem. The NPCs in this case are the ones supposed to replace the actors, they ARE the actors actually, but this is more like acting with mannequins and pretending they say things to you and react, because the NPCs have barely any response to give according to your actions. Kill someone's child, you barely get any reaction, just a line and that's it. Your wife is impregnated, yeah, no dialog about that, being the unstoppable champion of tournaments without a single loss, no reaction to that, you get a few lines after you get married, that's cool. The thing is getting married happens after you make a barter transaction wherever the lord is standing, so that's underwhelming nonetheless.
You see what I mean, I think this game has every tool to make roleplaying possible, but the characters are so dull. So boring, and gameplay wise they don't do anything either. The world should react in any way possible. Returning to killing someone's child, you could get some dialog lines, sure, but you need the action too, what if depending of the NPCs traits you either get a lord building armies to chase you only out of spite, or a more cool minded lord would send hired killers to your doors, or even get your own children killed, or a king may continue an unwinnable war because of anger of revenge, letting you use that in your advantage. You know how much these little, little details would spice up the game a thousand times more, because your actions have consequences in the world and you can see them, you can cause a chain reaction that could make you win a war or have your family killed. Take that into any aspect of the game and you have a solid RPG.
I know a lot of players create immense stories out of this game, and I'm happy you can do that, I wish I could, I just see bland reactions and my actions getting me nowhere but the same place I was before.
(I was writing this for the RP mod but it became too large and I thought it could be a thread of its own)
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