Emergeant gameplay

Random thought: if apostrophes ('s) are used to contract words (didn't = did not), what is "ain't" short for? Never really thought about it before.

What is Emergeant (possibly spelt wrong) gameplay? Well, I'm going to take the annoying route and write a shirtload before I even answer that question. Read on.

Long time readers (you poor, poor saps that you are) will know the crush I have upon the concept of customisability and openness in games. In many ways this is what attracts me to particular types of tabletop games, since if you get agreement from the other players, you're able to do anything you want. Computer games have it tougher, since you're stuck operating in the parameter's defined by the game, unless you've got an expert team of modders behind you and several months to kick back and waste while waiting for them to pump out the finished product.

One of the reasons I was originally so attracted to stuff in Warhammer 40,000 is the sheer fact you can do almost anything in it. If you have an entire galaxy to work with, it makes sense there are so many things that aren't covered in the rules. The Space Marines (the primary imagery used for the game) are recorded as having thousands of chapters (individually led armies), of which I think they have precise information for about a couple of dozen at most, and names for a hundred or so more. With that degree of option available, players can paint up and design armies in almost any way they like. There always seems to be a method available to make room for anything the players can come up with (within the rules and common sense knowledge of the backstory, of course). This openness is a requirement to make a game I will genuinely enjoy (though Games Workshop really buggered up plenty of stuff with Warhammer 40K).

Why am I repeating myself about my love for open stories? I recently began replaying Mount and Blade. I've gushed about it on this blog before, so I'll save you that pain, but I really NEED to tell how awesome today's gameplay with it was. My main character is the stock standard heavily armed and armoured Knight. He's a total dick who lances people in the face in standing fights, if you refuse to fight him he raids, loots, and burns down villages for his own wealth, and if you try to outnumber him he retreats to one of his three castles (and 1 city) and waits until you go away. The only time he can really be drawn into a fight he may not be ready for is if you besiege his castles/city without him present, at which point he'll raise an army from his standing forces, head to the castle and hold you off.

Now picture this scenario, two of his castles besieged at the same time. The character shows up with his army at the first castle and helps hold off the oncoming forces, but in the process loses half his forces. Here I made a miscalculation. Normally my castle forces are good enough they could probably hold off besiegers themselves, but the second castle I went to was at half strength (not sure why, it's a game I loaded from months ago). So my reinforcement army was at half strength, my standard defense army was at half strength, shouldn't be a problem, right?

Then I find out the attacking force is literally over 1,000 men. I was defending the castle with 100.

Holy crap. It was a white-knuckle battle. You... you PLEBS have no idea how elated I felt when I managed to scrape victory out of the battle. Twice the enemy managed to push through defenses and establish themselves on the walls, and twice I had to drop my crossbow and help directly in the battle to fight them back onto their ladders. When I realised the sounds the NPCs were making suddenly changed from grunts of battle to cheers of victory, I felt triumph.

Then I felt like an idiot because I'd gotten so involved in a computer game.

This is not a scenario pre-programmed into a game, not a scripted sequence, or part of a major battle. This is Emergent gameplay. This is not programmed at all, just through the way the game story unfolded naturally I ended up in a white knuckle tense situation. Knowing that I am one of the few to end up in a situation like this and triumphant despite no advantages on my side is what made it great. When you play a linear game, while some of the challenges can be amazingly designed it is always designed with the idea in mind that it is possible to beat. Through a gameplay situation emerging naturally in an open world, there is no way to know if it is even beatable, all you can do is try your friggin' hardest.

That is also the potential drawback of emergent gameplay. Imagine if through no fault of the player, they end up in an unwinnable situation. That can really ruin the enjoyment of a game, when all of a sudden the character they have worked so hard on suddenly can't go further, all because of things that happened in the background.

To continue with the use of Mount and Blade as an example, in one of my early games I made a character with the idea in mind that he would ally himself with a particular kingdom. Through behind the scenes calculations and battle results, that kingdom ended up on the back foot so strongly that no matter how good (or in some cases, ungood, to use a 1984 word) I was and how much I influenced battles, it still was completely pointless, and I would get my arse whooped no matter what. While, easily enough, I could have swapped the character over to another kingdom or just started from scratch, it left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth to know how easily background events could screw over my plans.

Still, I'd say the benefits are worth the cost.

Game Developers, all eleventy billion of you that read this blog, more open-world gameplay please.