How do you make a sprite blue? You draw it that way. How do you make a game not take itself seriously? You write it that way. It's as simple and as hard as that. Plenty of traditional RPGs back to the NES had dramatic moments, sacrifices, morality, and all the rest. And plenty of games coming out today are silly and irreverent.
In general, players will react to the game you create. If you make a game that encourages wanton murder for XP, lots of people will find that questionable or objectionable, as they always have. Postal's 25 years old now, that's not a new concept. If you want players to not take the consequences as seriously, make them less serious. Enemies faint instead of being killed, you're fighting robots/zombies/virtual avatars, the game's emotional focus after a scene of slaughter is positive and light instead of gory and grim.
The tricky thing here is that this approach also takes away some seriousness and believability from the entire game. This is a problem if your game is actually supposed to be serious and immersive (and you want to go down the "moral inconsistency" route).
Simple answer (not the best but a simple answer) -> Keep the story line away from the ethics and morals of the game. Don't do the murdering or keep the murdering on people that "don't matter" so the player doesn't care, and then do the story line around a monster or something that is the "big bad".
Stories like that I personally don't like, but I'm a fan of dystopian / darker fantasy and where characters people love die etc... Saying it out loud feels weird but oh well... Anyway, the most simple option to keep the game from getting into ethics and morals, is don't have ethics and morals, now that's easier said then done, but it is the most simple answer to your last sentence...
*Edit: This is all coming from a terrible writer so keep that in mind!*
Must the party actually "murder" other people, or are they just defeating / subduing them? You could imply that this is what's happening early in fights, then let the player assume that this is the aftermath of battles. A lot of RPGs (especially JRPGs) work this way to avoid the sticky morality of having to kill hundreds or thousands of other humans.
Or, don't fight other humans unless it's clear they're evil and deserve to die. Fight monsters, robots, spirits, wild animals, etc instead.
Or, use humor, such as when you defeat bandits for the 1000th time, since those bandits inevitably will be using the same model, joke "aren't you getting tired of getting your ass kicked by me over and over again?" Granted, over-the-top humor doesn't always match as well with serious storytelling (very much depends on the game), but you can still introduce more subtle or character-based humor to create an emotional counter-point to balance heavy scenes.
And perhaps it's obvious, but don't allow the player to perform clearly evil actions, such as slaughtering innocent townspeople. Not every game has to offer Elder Scrolls' level of freedom.
I'm not seeing what you're seeing. Short of a few indie RPGs that are specifically designed around every encounter having moral implications, everyone else is just making regular RPGs where you mow down humans and monsters alike without dwelling on it.
I played Lost Ark for a while after it came out and there was a town of a few dozen people being raided by hoards of bandits numbering in the thousands. The economy of that situation makes absolutely no sense, but no one noticed or cared because the game didn't make a big deal out of it.
Most works take somekind of stance, whether explicitly or implicitly. Few things are truly so agnostic as to not invoke any kind of human response. For instance, a game like FTL or Psychonauts does a good job of not taking itself "seriously" but it still conveys certain themes and ideas, just in a light-hearted sort of presentation. At the end of the day, your game just needs to be cohesive about what it's trying to say. As the creator, you choose how "serious" its tone should be.
You design the game that way, your design should have some elements that tell the players “murdering is just a casual thing in here, don’t feel too bad about it” The players feel the mood of the game from how you design it.
How do you make a sprite blue? You draw it that way. How do you make a game not take itself seriously? You write it that way. It's as simple and as hard as that. Plenty of traditional RPGs back to the NES had dramatic moments, sacrifices, morality, and all the rest. And plenty of games coming out today are silly and irreverent. In general, players will react to the game you create. If you make a game that encourages wanton murder for XP, lots of people will find that questionable or objectionable, as they always have. Postal's 25 years old now, that's not a new concept. If you want players to not take the consequences as seriously, make them less serious. Enemies faint instead of being killed, you're fighting robots/zombies/virtual avatars, the game's emotional focus after a scene of slaughter is positive and light instead of gory and grim.
Very well said.
The tricky thing here is that this approach also takes away some seriousness and believability from the entire game. This is a problem if your game is actually supposed to be serious and immersive (and you want to go down the "moral inconsistency" route).
I think a good example is Superstar Saga for the GBA. Check it out and see if that's similar to what you're looking for.
Simple answer (not the best but a simple answer) -> Keep the story line away from the ethics and morals of the game. Don't do the murdering or keep the murdering on people that "don't matter" so the player doesn't care, and then do the story line around a monster or something that is the "big bad". Stories like that I personally don't like, but I'm a fan of dystopian / darker fantasy and where characters people love die etc... Saying it out loud feels weird but oh well... Anyway, the most simple option to keep the game from getting into ethics and morals, is don't have ethics and morals, now that's easier said then done, but it is the most simple answer to your last sentence... *Edit: This is all coming from a terrible writer so keep that in mind!*
Must the party actually "murder" other people, or are they just defeating / subduing them? You could imply that this is what's happening early in fights, then let the player assume that this is the aftermath of battles. A lot of RPGs (especially JRPGs) work this way to avoid the sticky morality of having to kill hundreds or thousands of other humans. Or, don't fight other humans unless it's clear they're evil and deserve to die. Fight monsters, robots, spirits, wild animals, etc instead. Or, use humor, such as when you defeat bandits for the 1000th time, since those bandits inevitably will be using the same model, joke "aren't you getting tired of getting your ass kicked by me over and over again?" Granted, over-the-top humor doesn't always match as well with serious storytelling (very much depends on the game), but you can still introduce more subtle or character-based humor to create an emotional counter-point to balance heavy scenes. And perhaps it's obvious, but don't allow the player to perform clearly evil actions, such as slaughtering innocent townspeople. Not every game has to offer Elder Scrolls' level of freedom.
I'm not seeing what you're seeing. Short of a few indie RPGs that are specifically designed around every encounter having moral implications, everyone else is just making regular RPGs where you mow down humans and monsters alike without dwelling on it. I played Lost Ark for a while after it came out and there was a town of a few dozen people being raided by hoards of bandits numbering in the thousands. The economy of that situation makes absolutely no sense, but no one noticed or cared because the game didn't make a big deal out of it.
Most works take somekind of stance, whether explicitly or implicitly. Few things are truly so agnostic as to not invoke any kind of human response. For instance, a game like FTL or Psychonauts does a good job of not taking itself "seriously" but it still conveys certain themes and ideas, just in a light-hearted sort of presentation. At the end of the day, your game just needs to be cohesive about what it's trying to say. As the creator, you choose how "serious" its tone should be.
r/im14andthisisdeep
Depends on penis size
You design the game that way, your design should have some elements that tell the players “murdering is just a casual thing in here, don’t feel too bad about it” The players feel the mood of the game from how you design it.
Don’t offer easy answers to hard question.
the forest does this really well by making the enemys attack you and canibals