Re: Renfield
And the normal "gameplay" is often just a chore.
If a game like Slave Maker can make menu-and-daily-schedule based gameflow work, why not a high-end 3D game?
It's part of the design - is the player character simply a puppet which carries out the player's desires, or are they a part of the simulation? What happens when the player's motives diverge from those of their character? If the player wants to focus on the exciting and sexy moments in their character's life (note: the answer is "yes"), then how do we handle the routine day-to-day stuff? Do we just skip the boring parts and do exciting stuff constantly (e.g. Call of Duty), or do we include boring segments in order to modulate pacing (e.g. GTA IV), or do we try to include enough
difficulty in the boring parts so that they serve as mini-puzzles (e.g. The Sims)?
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Player-vs-character conflict is a useful factor to consider. SlaveMaker, for example, will occasionally tell you that your character is too tired to act. Corruption of Champions won't let you initiate sex if you're insufficiently horny. Upon encountering this sort of frustration/failure, the player can usually correct the problem in <60 seconds of gameplay, return to the scene, and view the desired outcome. In CoC, the player usually has Yes/No control over sex scenes, but this control is temporarily lost if the character gets too horny.
If the player character is part of the simulation then their needs become yet another resource to be managed - like Gold coins or Mana points. Obviously, this creates distance between the player and character (which is generally undesirable); if the conflict is large enough then the player may begin to
hate their character. On the other hand, it tends to delay gratification (forcing players to "earn" each sex scene via gameplay) which can be a good thing. This approach can also improve replay value, since it rewards specialization - on your second playthrough (or NewGame+) you might setup your character with more Sex skills and fewer Combat attributes.
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If the game includes "needs" or "drives" for the main character, then they must be correctly tuned to reflect both the game's intended
pace and its intended
tone. Fallout is an obvious example - your character needs water, so you must keep moving and you must scavenge supplies from the wasteland. These goals are aligned with those of the player (see the world, meet new people, kill them and take their stuff) so the system works. The player character becomes a non-entity; just a mask for the player's own role within the game world.
NWN2: MoTB used a pseudo-vampirism system to induce tension. The game engine allowed the player to Rest almost anywhere, which made combat too easy. The vampirism mechanic punished/discouraged Resting, which increased the combat difficulty. It also confronted the player with small moral choices at regular intervals: do you feed your addiction, or do you abstain and suffer withdrawal? The player's goals (explore every corner of the map, kill everything for EXP, loot every chest, hang around in town completing every quest) conflicted with those of NPCs ("please stop devouring souls", "please leave our town ASAP") and those of the player character ("let's hurry up and resolve the main plot before this curse destroys me"). The player was forced to consider the main character's impact on the world, which added emotional weight to their interactions with plot-critical NPCs, and foreshadowed some of the major moral choices which the player would be called upon to make.
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AA2, by contrast, aims for a "player=character" approach with minimal conflict. Barriers between the player and their goals are mostly
external: the girl you're wooing may not be interested; other characters can intervene to cockblock you; the current location may not offer any privacy; most outcomes are determined by invisible dice-rolls; the clock itself will limit your opportunities. You might be stymied because you're character isn't
able to do something (e.g. not enough Charisma to seduce the cheerleader) but never because your character is
unwilling to follow your orders. Your character has perfect sexual stamina and every sex scenes will last exactly as long as you want it to. If you completely abstain from sex and just play "Studying and Afterschool Sports Simulator" then your character will never complain.
This question might have some impact on the Renfield design when you start sketching out the player-choice scenarios. Should the player's character refuse to rape a defeated opponent, in spite of the player clicking Yes, because
"No thanks - I'm not into dudes" ? If the player is
trying to lose a fight (because they want to see the resulting GoR scene) does the character express disappointment and/or resistance? Perhaps this feature could be accommodated using the text-variation code that you demonstrated a few pages back - a reluctant character might toss in a few more "No!"s among the grunts and groans. Some players might even
prefer to see their female characters showing resistance, while others might like the idea of an initially-resisting heroine who can be corrupted into becoming a total slut.
If female-protagonist stuff is unfamiliar to you, then you can probably do some more rudimentary "market research" via DLSite tag statistics. Or you could just setup an informal poll on ULMF and ask people for their opinions.
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I just remembered another great example of
unintentional player-vs-character conflict. Dwarf Fortress. This is a simulation game focused on city-building, but it also includes a single-player adventure mode. Every character within the game has a system of thoughts, emotions, desires, and relationships (family, friends, rivals, leaders and followers, etc).
Due to a programming mistake, the player character is included in this simulation. The player is in complete control of the player character at all times, but if you carefully Examine your character at particular moments you might notice that he's
weeping in remorse and horror at all of the terrible things that he's seen.
At the end of a tough fight, you might think "I just slaughtered a giant werewolf! I'm a total badass!" But then you look at your character and realize that he's in post-traumatic shock and that
he would have run away from that fight if he was actually in control of his own actions. "I just forced a terrified peasant to fight for his life against a giant werewolf! I'm a psychopath!"
