“A static hero is a public liability.  Progress grows out of motion.” – Richard Byrd, Explorer

Hero.  Champion.  Principal.  Leader.  Stalwart.  Defender.  Adventurer. 

When asked to describe how they see their character, most players of RPG’s tend to respond with words like those I’ve listed above.  We want to be champions.  We want to play adventurers.  We want to feel like heroes. 

The boxes and websites that sell these games to us market to that desire.  Individuals or groups pose heroically, usually facing off against some villanous or epic monster.  The implied idea is that this game will give you the opportunity to play a leading role in such an exciting story.

We buy the games.  We load them up and we click start.  We create our characters, often choosing some exotic humanoid race and selecting some strong or heroic sounding character class.  We load up the game and within minutes we’re asked to perform a quest to help the local folks.  Here we go!  This is what we wanted!  This is why we bought this game!  Now, let’s get out there and…kill 10 badgers. 

Now, I know I know I’ve sort of addressed this subject before, but I wanted to specifically talk about the “kill 10 rats” quests that a new player first sees (and the previous post was specifically geared toward guild writs in EQ2).  The entire idea still grates on my nerves a bit. 

I think back to when I was running Earthdawn and Mechwarrior and Shadowrun campaigns.  I can’t recall the last time I made the players run their characters through anything even remotely referred to as a quest that involved them killing 10 of anything remotely mundane for the sake of helping a village out.

In my mind, aren’t there regular, mundane townsfolk available to kill these pests?  Seriously, doesn’t anyone have a housecat available or perhaps a set of hunting dogs ready to chase down a few rats?  If you were creating a pen-and-paper campaign setting, is this the type of activity you’d set up regularly to challenge your local band of “heroes”?

Honestly, can you just see it now if this were the norm in our most enduring works of fiction? 

“Upon my word!” said Thorin, when Bilbo whispered to him to come out and join his friends, “Gandalf spoke true, as usual! A pretty fine burglar you make, it seems, when the time comes. I am sure we are all for ever at your service, whatever happens after this. But what comes next?”

Bilbo saw that the time had come to explain his idea, as far as he could; but he did not feel at all sure how the dwarves would take it.

“I feel we should exterminate all the deer here in this glen, to better provide the nearby folk with fur for winter’s clothing.  And after, we should collect up 10 bundles of firewood for their cooking.  And for the cooking, we should endevor to then kill 10 more deer, for we will have neglected to fully utilize the carcasses of the first deer we killed…”

Seriously, I cringe when I see 20 deer within view randomly roaming around.  Even better, I love seeing 20 bears just meandering hither on yon, striding randomly over the hills and forests of the worlds we choose to live in online.

I often imagine some imaginary virtual DNR agents going absolutely crazy when they see such massive populations of bears out roaming the countryside.  Seriously, at the density you see bears in most games these days, one would think that they’re damn near destroying their own fragile virtual ecosystems. 

Speaking of which, why do we accept such populations as normal?  I’ve gone camping hundreds of times throughout my life, sometimes in some pretty brutal conditions.  I actually live IN Minnesota, and have spent more hours outdoors than most computer geeks my age could probably comprehend.  I’ve yet to see an actual living bear, and only on a handful of occasions have I seen tracks at all.

Now, I’ll grant you that within my industrialized society, bears are far more scarce than they were a century or two ago, yet I bet even then you’d be hard pressed to find any accounts of large packs of wild bears wandering the countryside in groups of 20 or more…

Even if they were, why are adventurers being hired to take down bears?  Are these magic bears?  Are these bears inherently evil?  Are these bears wearing armor?  Seriously, I realize that our characters are supposed to be stronger than the average inhabitant of the worlds we live in, but doesn’t the bar seem a tad low on that “average” when we receive quests that include mundane animals, anyway?

In other words, why are we hunting snakes and rats and bats and deer and bears in the first damn place!?  Shall we then follow that up by heroically planting the spring wheat and courageously milking the cows before breakfast? 

I’m going to write a book based on the daily “adventures” of my MMO characters sometime.  On page 20, you can read about how mighty Kendricke was tasked with killing deer in the local glen.  On page 130, you can follow the adventures of Kendricke as he tracks down some deer for the local authorities.  On page 647, you can turn the pages to see Kendricke mercilessly slaying some deer in the hinterlands.  On page 1,132, Kendricke is finally hunting some deer…

I understand that MMO’s have to have some reference points for players.  I also appreciate that only so many different creature models can be put into MMO’s to begin with, and that there’s not a lot of room for “fluff” creatures.  I can appreciate that writing unique quests takes a lot of work to both design and test. 

And really, it’s irrelevant to me.  Because I want to play a protaganist online.  I want to be a hero.  I want to adventure.  I want to perform tasks in-game that virtual bards will want to sing about. 

What bard wants to sing around running mail?  Or hunting rats?  Or stalking deer?

I say leave the extermination to the local sherrifs and huntsmen.  I want to be a champion.  I want to play an adventurer.  I want to feel like a hero.

Though it seems counter to most current designs, I’d prefer less population and quests, in favor of making the remaining population and questing more engaging and exciting.  I want less quantity if it means more quality. 

I realize this can lead to a real issue of competition within most games.  However, using creative instancing and quest triggers, I think you could very well shift a game’s focus from “grinding” and “camps” toward engaging storytelling. 

I think that in many ways, the MMO’s today are too far removed from their roots around the dinner table.  I often wonder if too many game designers are thinking more like software developers and less like pen-and-paper Gamemasters.  I realize that these are different beasts we’re talking about here, but the ultimate goal for both should still remain the same:  tell a compelling, epic story, and allow the player to participate in the formation of that story.

How many MMO’s live up to that simple desire?  When’s the last time you felt as though your character was a protaganist, and not merely part of the supporting cast?

When’s the last time you felt as if your character was a hero?