Non-violence in encounters: Rock, Paper, Devious

So, last time I took a look at how Taming Dreams handles its non-violent encounter system. The game takes what could be any regular combat system but dresses it up in a completely different way that is cohesive with the narrative to make encounters feel different without making separate mechanics for it.

But one thing is clear in Taming Dreams, non-violence is the only option you have. The nature of the foes you face makes using violent means nonsensical enough that it's completely impossible to the player to even attempt. This makes it rather unique, especially compared to the game I'm looking at today.

Renowned Explorers: International Society

Renowned Explorers: International Society, or RE:IS (the Dutch verb and noun for travel, love that), is a turn-based tactical rogue-like adventure game. Set in the loosely based on reality 19th century, you assemble a crew of three explorers out of a pool of 24 total explorers to go on expeditions and amass as much gold, status and research as possible to become the Most Renowned Explorer. 

So there's a lot of mechanics to the game in the video and even more in the full game ranging from roaming the expedition map to managing your resources on the world map, but it's the combat system that I want to focus on specifically.

Unique to the game's combat is its attitude system. All your actions in combat come in one of three attitude flavours: Aggressive attacks to physically assault your foes, devious speech to enrage, sadden and terrify your foes and friendly speech to excite, encourage and impress your foes. Each of these actions decreases an opponents will to go on by reducing their Spirit, or in the case of Friendly actions, they can also increase the Spirit of an ally. Aggressive actions work based on Attack and Defense while Friendly and Devious actions work based on Speech and Speech Defense. 

I am Peace Treatying the hell out of these sheep

These three attitudes work in a rock-paper-scissors way, Aggressive trumps Friendly, Friendly trumps Devious and Devious trumps Aggressive. In the case that your attitude trumps the enemy's generala ttitude then you get a defensive bonus. If you are in the attitude weak to the enemy's then you get a defensive penalty. If you are in the same attitude then you get a bonus to actions that trump the opponent's attitude. So being Friendly to a Friendly opponent can give you a big backstab bonus on an Aggressive attack!

Combat gets pretty complex.

While this sounds easy on paper, it's anything but in practice. Crewmembers generally fare better in one or two attitudes than the other, a Friendly and Aggressive fighter doesn't do well with Devious speech while a Friendly and Devious speaker isn't much help when being Aggressive. Further complicating things is that some enemies can adapt to your attitude, many human opponents will mimic your attitude while some will even try to counter your attitude. Some enemies also get stronger if you are in a certain mood. It may be tempting to be Devious to an Aggressive opponent but they might get a massive increase in Attack or Speech if you do that!

Oh god

Complicating things even further is that the attitude shifts depending on the actions you perform. Use enough Friendly actions and your attitude becomes Friendly, but keep in mind that once you are Friendly it only takes one Aggressive action to have that become your dominant attitude and it takes 5 Friendly actions to shift the attitude back to Friendly.

We can still be friends. Right?

While each attitude works similarly in that they all reduce the enemy's spirit bar, each attitude also has its own distinct benefits and drawbacks. Aggressive actions sightly reduce the enemy's mood and generally are focused on dealing as much flat-out spirit damage as possible. Devious actions lower the enemy's mood and give them negative status effects (Enraged, Terrified, Saddened) that reduce a stat by 25% if their mood is negative. Friendly actions uniquely give a large boost to the mood and either give a positive (Excited/Encouraged) or negative (Impressed) status effect that either lower or raise a stat by 25%, and they can also be used to heal allies and raise their mood and give the status effect.

So many emotions.

Since every attitude is good for something else and every enemy is weak to either physical attacks or certain emotions you'll often want to shift attitudes, making combat very dynamic and giving big importance to the order of actions taken and their effects on the attitude and the enemy's mood. This is especially important in encounters where you get special bonuses for ending the battle with a certain dominant attitude as well as temporary stat buffs depending on your dominant attitude.

Hooray for diplomacy! And also broken UI!

So overall the game and the combat do a great job at integrating the attitude system in a meaningful way, it's a unique system and it adds a lot of variety to the combat. It also gives the game more longevity, you might have kicked the oppressive emperor out last time by being Devious, but what if you make friends with the emperor? What if instead of convincing the Abbess to give up her treasure, you just knock her and her nuns to the ground violently? 

Turns out your party are a bunch of very nice people.

The game's comedic and light-hearted tone goes a long way in justifying the sometimes silly outcomes. Since every enemy and encounter in the game is beholden to the attitude system, you'll get into all sort of bizarre situations, such as llamas spitting on you to sadden you, hugging mummies, clown-sacrificing friendly cults and overly attached villagers who really want your shoes. Most battles are still against aggressive enemies but there's plenty of enemies who are devious or even friendly.

Well that doesn't sound so bad.

In most games an approach like this would be rather odd, but given that your characters are renowned explorers, it makes a certain degree of sense. Your goal as explorers is not to conquer other cultures by force, it's certainly a route you can take, but there's no reason why you can't just talk your way through villagers who think you're suspicious, or why you can't just send them off by being exceptionally rude. Likewise, if the expedition crew loses enough morale to a devious enemy or a friendly enemy convinces them to join their cult or give up the treasure then the expedition is a failure just as much as being sent away with violence is.

I can live with this game over.

In the end the game does a good job of having a sensible and unique take on the non-violence in combat idea. A Friendly run is just as viable as an Aggressive run and either approach will hit different roadblocks, but you'll often find that being flexible with your attitude will serve you well, you can spend a third of the battle complimenting the foe, a third shooting them with guns and a third telling them they smell funny and you'll likely do better than if you only took one approach. There is admittedly some silliness in how nobody ever seems to die or get seriously injured even in aggressive combat, two of your explorers are 14 or even 12 years old yet going on global expeditions, or how it only takes a few apologies to make up for shooting an abbey full of nuns, but that's just because ofthe lighthearted tone of the game, it's all part of the sanitized, quirky adventurous spirit the game has. Everyone can get along and men and women from all countries can band together to make great discoveries, find great treasures and unearth powerful secrets.

Yes, even the literal GHOST PIRATE can be convinced to be a better person. :)

It's absolutely one of my favourite combat systems ever, the complexity is staggering and the narrative and quirky dressing makes it all the better. It's no wonder I keep coming back to this game!

Non-violence in encounters: The hug is mightier than the sword

My, my, it sure has been a while since I last wrote one of these. I've been quite busy with my internship and been playing games a lot too. But there's one game in particular I've been playing a lot, Renowned Exporers: International Society, and its combat system got me thinking about how different games implement non-violent options into their encounter systems rather than allowing diplomacy or charms to avoid encounter mechanics altogether.

Killing with kindness

To specify that a bit, when I talk about encounters, I don't mean they have to be physical confrontations, rather they play out like traditional violent RPG combat with similar mechanics but a different, non-violent flavour. Violence is so entrenched in RPGs mechanically that basic terminology like combat, attacks and damage tends to have a violent bent even though the mechanics of an RPG don't have to be violent, hence the use of less loaded terms such as encounters, actions and rapport or spirit.

With that said, there's three games in particular that have these elements that I've played in recent times and they all take a different approach to the idea. These games are:

1. Taming Dreams

2. Renowned Explorers: International Society

3. Undertale

Taming Dreams

If you're reading this blog then you probably know what Taming Dreams is. Taming Dreams is an episodic non-violent character-driven RPG for mobiles made by one very particular person. There's only three episodes released so far, and chances for more episodes are looking grim, but the game does an excellent job of integrating its mechanics and its story.

You ever tried whacking your bad thoughts with a stick? Not a good idea let me tell you.

Since the game's encounters pit the party against their own or other people's thoughts manifested in a physical form, referred to as Miasma, they cannot rely on sheer physical force to fend them off. Rather rather have to rely on a combination of skills gained from mementos, equipment with important sentimental value, or from Miasmon that have previously been tamed. 

Yes Mardek, good demonstration.

The encounters have their fair share of complexity, every character and Miasmon have sentiments (basically elements except more emotion-based), an emotional state, possible moods and personality runes to keep track of. It all combines into a surprisingly robust encounter system that is fun to play around with and explore synergies within.

Yeah just cheer up your nightmares. What could go wrong?

These are all interesting intricacies that further distinguishes the game from feeling like other games but also does a good job of integrating the narrative and character into the encounters themselves. Dealing with random Miasma is a lot less jarring than having JRPG heroes mercilessly beat down anything and anyone that stand in their way but then taking pity on the boss who's sending all those mooks their way in the first place because the narrative demands it.

WOULD YOU SLASH A MODESTOAT WITH A SWORD?

Another thing of note is that there is an asymmetry between the enemy and player actions, Miasma attempt to destroy the will of your characters to go on by overloading them with emotion while the player attempts to build rapport with the enemies to tame them. Rather then lowering the enemy's will bar, you raise their rapport bar. It's no difference mechanically but it totally suits the game's themes, it's a distinction made for the sake of the narrative.

Don't worry Deugan, the Anxark won't bite you, it'll only break your mind. :)

And that's what the encounter system in general boils down to, you could take all these same mechanics and dress them up differently and wind up back with a regular violent combat system. I don't think this is inherently a good or bad thing, but I do think it's interesting when compared to...

Oh, wait, it's past midnight. Well, then that comparison can wait till tomorrow for now. I think I'll go to bed and cheer up my nightmares a bit.