Saturday, August 4, 2007

THE GUIDE

The first step in any epic RPG is what traditional Dungeon Masters like to call "the gathering of the companions."

This is the part of the future grand story which explains why an elf, a half-elf, a dwarf, a human, a pegleg pirate, two werewolves, and a gender-confused-looking-for-salvation vampire donkey, got together. This usually leads to the "Seer/Prophet/God" character who convinces/bribes/scares the group into actually accepting the suicidal quest to take on the alien-technology augmented demonic forces of the ruling planetary empire to save the princess/restore freedom/bring peace/ or buy a soda at the corner store.

Perfect World gives us: The Guide, and the in-game help system: Alt+L, or simply L. And then the specific Race Elder of which of the three races (Human, Wingkin, or Beast) that you chose becomes the "Seer/Prophet/God" figure. It is the The Guide's quests that introduce us to the hours of wholesale slaughter we are about to embark on. It is the Race Elder who imparts the raison d'etre for our pixel and bits heroes.

The simplicity of this would have been great, but as stories goes, there really isn't much of a reason why the character does what he does. Its left to the basic instinct of the player that he wants to play the game thats why he's going to do these quests in the first place. What? You mean? Yes, if a player wanted to, he could ignore all the quests and just go about on his merry way. Talk about too much freedom!

But as it is, people do not install a game, spend money to go online so they can sit in a virtual world to watch the grass grow, or in PW, for the herbs to respawn. And thus, reluctantly, there I was, with my Role (sorry I keep calling it character, old habits die hard, though I honestly believe they should have just called it character in the first place, because Role just made it sound too much like a script, but that's me) er, where was I? Oh yes: There I was eventually with my Role jumping hoops for the Guide, the Elder, the Tailor, a Runt, a Dog, a Ghost, a General, etcetera, ad nauseam. When in truth, I could have just said no...

But then the Soulless had to be stopped.

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