Good People

I've written a bunch about frustrating people and things a lot since coming back to blogging, alongside the worst monster in history, Pilot. It's hard not to. Our society and government works on calling out and punishing people who do bad things. Now, maybe that's a bad way to run humanity, just as it's a bad way to train a dog, but that is a discussion for another time.

It's got me thinking about the good that's out there as well. I play a lot of video games, as you may have heard. I enjoy all sorts, but some of my favorites are large, open world games like Fallout or Skyrim. Games where you can go anywhere and be whoever you want to be. Want to have an evil playthrough? Go for it. And good luck with that.

Every time I try an evil playthrough of a game, I've failed. I just end up feeling bad. My real life morals come to haunt my in game world. Of course, this doesn't stop me from murdering any random person that the game marks as "enemy", but I don't like to be mean to anyone not marked as enemy.

This also pops up in my D&D campaigns. I'm a DM that generally is just there to have fun with my players. So far, I have not killed any of them, though I did manage to turn my wife to stone. This was later reversed as everyone else was fine. This past weekend I pitted my group against a Gem Greatwyrm which is basically a super ancient dragon that is massive and can kill everything. I had previously given one of my players a Vorpal sword which insta-kills any enemy on a natural 20 roll.

So, yeah. That big bad boss fight lasted about ten minutes in real time and none of them were even injured. That player feels bad, but they shouldn't. They're the heroes and I gave them the weapon. And they won! I'm on their side in the end. I want them having fun.

When I was young I was naive enough to think I was the only person that felt this way with video games, but as I've aged and communicated with others I've found that the majority of people don't want to be mean. I think we'd all act this way in real life if we just had a chance to pause and wait like we do in video games. You can stop and think about your responses before you send them back.

Stop and think before you open your mouth is always good advice. Even if you aren't just speaking. Is that food safe to put in your mouth? Think about it.

I guess this is all to say, for anyone who is nice to NPCs in games, good work. Keep our world positive no matter where we are, you shit goblins.