Let's talk about the legal systems in the RPG game.

Hello, the RPG maker community.
I would like to hear your logic or your opinions about law mechanics in the RPG games. I am talking about a limited consequence system. For an example, a player has a choice between breaking into a house or does a quest for a house owner to get an access into the house. If a player decided to break into a house, a player has a chance to get catch and fight with the soldiers or something like that. Another example is a player has a choice to do not pay a store, however, a player has a chance to fight with soldiers.

Do you implement the consequence system in your game? Do you think it is a good idea? Thank you in advance.

Yes, I love "evil" choices and having to fight the law is a good punishment. One of my favorite RPG maker games was about playing as a bandit criminal and your character commits loads of crimes. Eventually your bandit camp gets razed in retaliation after you become too annoying and you're forced to run for your life.

I find myself always eager to download and play games that advertise allowing the player to be "evil" or commit crimes.

In my project I was actually going to have it that depending on your choices, some of your party members will get annoyed with you. So sure, break into that house, but the highly moral girl is going to object to it. And so on.

However, it only was set up to affect relationships and in the end I cut the relationship system so I ended up dropping that for now. Maybe next project.

What if the player breaks into a shop and steals all its wares? The shop keeper would be ruined. They'd have to go out of business.

Better yet, what if the player stole all the wares from one shop and sold them to a competitor? One shop would go out of business and the other would grow, and possibly give the player a discount.

What if it was like Link's Awakening and permanently changed the player character's name to THIEF and every NPC addressed them as such?

I was watching a Let's Play of Bravely DeCliche, and a near-death Knight-Captain asks the player character to rescue his kidnapped idiot of a king. I had the thought that the player should be able to treat the Captain's wounds and convince him to take the throne, leaving the idiot king for dead.

I think the first game to implement such a system was "Ultima 4", where you had a number of virtues and needed them all maxed for the endgame - but the game didn't tell you that directly, only by the people reacting to a low honesty (was substracted if you paid less than the items were worth) with comments.
A lot of people who thought that was a loophole in the shop system had to put in a few extra hours to improve their values again - and proving in the process that it was indeed a loophole, because you could have gained a lot more money by being dishonest than you needed to max out your honesty again.

In general I liked how U4 made the story a lot more about behaviour than your regular RPG, but unfortunately later parts of the series reduced the focus on the virtues again, becoming more your regular RPGs - probably because too many players didn't like that part of the game.

Another game series that always had such an effect is the "Avernum" series (currently available through steam in its third reprogrammed engine), where you could collect almost every item (even the stones from the ground or the dirt in the trashcans), but in towns a lot of items were marked as "not yours", and if you took even one of them the guards in that town became hostile until you escaped from the town.


And once a group of movie students made a short movie exactly about that - the sarcastic comments of a medieval peasant to his wife when they tried to eat in their home and an armored knight/hero broke in and searched the room for valuables completely ignoring them. Unfortunately I lost the link to that video...

So yes, a lot of players know of this idea, and several game developers tried to implement something for this.
Unfortunately it is difficult to implement without destroying the fun for the player.
One problem for this is that a lot of players don't expect consequences for such behaviour, and if they're caught later in the game without adequate warning that might destroy their interest in playing on. But to give such a warning while not sounding as a wannabe-parent chiding their child is also difficult.

Skyrim did something else I like (to an extent). Even if the player wasn't caught stealing, sometimes if the player steals someone's stuff, the player will have armed thugs sent after them by the person they stole from.

Problem is that sometimes a beggar will hire some thugs somehow because you stole something small and meaningless. It was a feature that needed more work.

Maybe a karma meter will cause more powerful enemies to come after the player. Of course that could just be seen as a reward for bad behavior with experience and loot.

Thank you for you inputs @MMMm, @bgillisp, @Eschaton, and @Andar.
@Eschaton, I only want to start at small first and I am not going to do an overwhelm consequence system. I am not doing the judgment call of every action players commit. I just think the RPG city could have laws in place to make it is believable.
@Andar, I am more focus on the legal system like if you steal something in a game, you will go to jail. I am not focused on the judgemental of player choices.

You could reduce it to math. Let's say you do want to do a karma meter (variable). As the player breaks the law, this variable increases. And you can use a plugin or script to factor that variable into shop and inn prices. So, if the player breaks the law consistently, then prices will go up.

I believe it's this one you mean.

Nope and nope.

I once played a game where, at the inn, one of the choices was "demand to stay for free." I picked that just for fun, hoping for a silly comment or something. Instead I was thrown into a fight with the town guard. They splattered my party members, one by one, until I was sent back to the title screen.

I haven't touched that game since.

I guess what I'm saying is, unless your game is specifically themed around it, it's best to leave out consequence systems like that.

Id only implement a system like that if I could come up with a good concept with it that the whole game could revolve around. Its a bit too much work to just have as a quirky side feature for me personally.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me @Aesica and @VisitorsFromDreams

I've played very few games that let you do things that are against the rules of the game or its societies (except where you're literally forced into doing it in the storyline, like rebelling against a corrupt empire, which is common). You could find stuff like this a lot in the older Sierra adventure games, for instance, but I was never so much into those games.

A few examples that I can think of offhand:

• In World of Warcraft, you can trespass into the opposite faction's cities and outposts. You pretty much know what you're getting - the town guards (and real players in the town) are going to attack them. They can kill you; you can kill them; if multiple real-life players are feeling playful you can talk in gibberish or dance. Nothing nuanced or particularly useful, but it's there and it makes sense.
• In Civilization IV, you can disobey the UN's rules, but your people consider you a villain and it costs you a lot of Happiness in your cities (dropping your civ's productivity). This is designed more as a tactical game mechanic, rather than something that the player would feel morally obligated to do.
• I only played a little Skyrim, but there are limitless opportunities to steal, murder, dabble in forbidden arts, and generally break the law. In my first hour with the game, I was invited into someone's house as a guest, and I saw a lot of food on their table. Each food had an action button for 'Take'. Being accustomed to JRPGs, I took the foods. Cool, tasty food! A second later, the homeowner called me a thief and started attacking me - and other townspeople decided to get in on the act as well! Between experiences like this and the one that @Aesica mentioned with the Inn, I think that this proves how important it is to set up the right expectations for your player about what will happen if they do things.

Overall, I think such a system has potential, but (unless it's designed in a very gamey way as in WoW or Civ IV) it needs to be very clear to the player what they are doing (i.e. it would be bad design in most games to allow players to break the law without realizing they are doing so), and the risks and rewards for doing so should feel balanced enough to make the decision interesting for players.
I feel that there's also a lot of potential for interesting scenarios to occur where breaking the law could arguably be seen as doing the morally right thing - such as harboring a fugitive who is a victim of persecution, or orchestrating a jailbreak (perhaps including bribing or killing guards) to rescue someone about to be hanged for murder after being convicted on very sketchy evidence.

@Wavelength, thank you for your input. You write very well. Are you a writer or a novelist?
I understand @Aesica idea that you need to be clear with the player's decision and tell what will happen if they did that action.
I thought of idea when players enter a corrupt city; I will inform them that they can bribe wardens.
However, if players enter a city that enforce strict laws; I will inform them that punishment of laws are very harsh and try to do not break the laws.
I will tie with the court system in my game.
Do you think good idea, anyone ?

Yeah, as long as you inform players somehow (character cutscene, etc) that they can't just run around and loot whatever, it should be a bit better. Also, let the punishment fit the crime. In the example I used, saying "I want to stay for free" to the innkeeper hardly warrants death. On the other hand, breaking into people's homes and stealing valuables might be, but only in strict, authoritarian places. In our own society, that kind of thing usually results in incarceration--or, if the house's owner happens to be armed, maybe they'll try to fend off the player for intruding.

@Aesica, thank you for continue discussion. I will autorun text and cutscence to direectly tell to players if I did something like that. The players did not know about something, I couldn't fault them.

First I thought about the crimal punishments for wrongdoing, but now after I read the comments from other deleveper. I think I will only to light sentences in the law system (fines and ban from store until pay fines).

My goal is to show variety of city operation.
I think new city should have new something.

After all, I do not want players to get upset, mad, or stop play my game.

Thank you for the kind words, man! :kaoblush: I did a lot of technical writing when I was an IT consultant, but I definitely would not call myself a writer in the artistic sense.


I think this is a good idea in general - just remember that showing is always better than telling. For example, when the player enters a very strict/totalitarian city, they might see a quick cutscene of an NPC being dragged off by the town guards for a minor crime, which sells the idea (and sustains immersion) better than a notice onscreen which says "This city's law enforcement is very harsh; be careful about breaking the law!" (having the notice is not that bad, but it's less effective than the quick scene).

Even little touches for clarity such as a UI label that reads "Steal" instead of "take", if it's going to be considered theft, go a really long way toward making everything feel fair and intuitive to the player.


Again, you've got the right idea. While certain systems may require punishing the player's character for their decisions, you never ever want to make the player feel like they're being punished. Light sentences, like a ban from the store until you pay the fine for what you stole, makes a lot of sense and I think that's good design.

You can even have the offended party (or town guards) give the player an unfriendly warning ("Hey, buddy, don't think I didn't see that. You better put it back if you don't want trouble.") rather than enforcing any material punishment the first time it happens in a town (which will be useful if the player, for example, hits an action button by accident).

(Here's an example of the opposite: I once played a PS2 RPG Maker game called Ursus Quest: Tree of Life, which allowed you to pursue a life of crime as one possible profession. If you got caught, one possible punishment was to spend 3 in-game days (about 30 real-life minutes) in prison with very little to do. I loved Tree of Life, it was a great game, but this particular design element was terrible, filling a half-hour of my game experience with nothing but emptiness and frustration.)

More severe punishments can be okay where appropriate (e.g. for murder of an NPC), but only as long as the player will still feel engaged and excited. For example, if the player commits a serious crime in that strict city, you could trigger a (mandatory) quest where the player needs to outrun/fight off town guards trying to capture her, or finds herself in the town jail and needs to find a way to break out. If implemented well, these quests would still be fun for the player and would feel appropriate, even though the character is being punished.

It does in Ye' Olde Fantasy apparently

@Wavelength, I would "More severe punishments can be okay where appropriate (e.g. for murder of an NPC)," I would not allow that decision because a player has to roleplay a hero after all. Thank you for showing examples to me.

I like your idea of break out of jail on the antagonist's kingdom when heroes get captured by villains. I think corruption can occur in every form of government if the rules did not enforce in practice and the rules did not enforce equally.

I like RPG world creation that why I detail about it.