A Heroic Game

Numina III is designed to be a heroic game, which is an easy thing to say, but not as easy a thing to define when someone asks what that means. The staff of N3 would like to take this opportunity to express in more detail what sort of game we are hoping to run and more specifically what we mean when we say “heroic game.”

## Character Choice and Players in a Heroic Game

Not every character in Numina III will be the classic ideal of a hero, and we hope to delineate a difference between a heroic game, and a game in which all the characters must be heroes.  It is definitely not our goal to severely limit our players’ creativity and choice of character traits. Some characters will be flawed, and in the course of the stories we tell together, they will grow and change. Some characters may be heroes at times, but at other times their resolve will fail them. Our goal in the running of a heroic game is to give every character the opportunity to make heroic choices.

Sometimes these heroic choices will be explicitly presented as part of an ongoing plot or story, and sometimes they may be an inspiration that comes to you and the other two people awake at 5am. These opportunities for heroic choice, whether they come from the minds of staff or the minds of players, will have the power to drive the stories, and change big and small parts of the game world.

We would like our game to be a place where being a hero isn’t about always doing the right thing, it’s about the desire to do the right thing being a guiding force in the choices that drive the story. And while characters may not always succeed, and in some circumstances may even fail to let “doing the right thing” guide them, there is no place in a heroic game for characters that try to do the more harmful thing. Player characters in a heroic game don’t try to make the world a worse place, and players avoid creating a situation that is not fun for other players.

## Shared Responsibility and Storytelling in a Heroic Game

We believe that creating a heroic game is a shared responsibility. Some of the contributions of staff toward this common goal is providing heroic choices, and to avoid passively forcing a certain choice. In our view, a heroic game does not mean that  making the most noble choice will result in good outcomes, and making any other choice will result in bad outcomes. Numina staff is not interested in creating a game where you just have to click the right option to get the “good ending.”  We equally appreciate players with stories about imperfect characters who do not always succeed at their personal and external goals. Heroic choices will ultimately have heroic outcomes, but your character not being ready to make that choice will become a different story of its own, with more opportunities for heroic choice.

There may also be times when your character makes that most noble choice, and in-world bad things still occur. It may sometimes appear that your character’s heroic choice has failed or even backfired. Staff is often in the business of making bad things happen to empower an even more heroic conclusion, so we hope that you will stick with us through these more fraught collaborative storytelling moments.

## Community Culture in a Heroic Game

Finally, we also want to touch upon the out-of-game element of a heroic story. It is the fabric that allows for a wide variety of characters to make a wide variety of choices and still maintain a fun play environment for everyone. We like the phrasing adopted by several other games out there, and that is “Play to Lift.”

Playing to lift means that there is a behind-the-scenes focus from both players and staff on the impact of our actions and choices on other folks in the game. Playing to lift encompasses a wide variety of things but generally boils down to trying to make our impact on other’s games, if we choose to have one, a positive impact.

Playing to lift encourages a conscientious community culture that allows for things like the “Redeemed” foundation, where a player may choose to embody a morally imperfect character and yet also make the game and the community a better experience by when and how they choose to display that imperfection. When not every character has to be a classic save-the-puppies hero, this kind of consideration for others will be the bedrock of running a heroic game.

We’d also like to cover a few questions we have gotten in the past, with those answers intended to reveal even more about what a heroic game looks like to us.

## FAQ

### Q: Can I play a villain?

A: No. Our PvE antagonists may see you as villains, but they’re the real bad guys. We love playing villains and if you absolutely need to play one, come NPC for us! While playing the game as a PC though, we ask that any nefarious activities have a good intent at their heart, and that some out-of-game consideration has been taken to avoid a negative impact on other players.

Numina III is explicitly designed as a PvE game because we feel that players targeting other players for villainous activities such as theft, assassination, gaslighting, and deceit does not serve our goal of a positive community culture or of a heroic game. We welcome characters with an edge to them, but ask that you design your character so that those edges are always pointed in a PvE direction.

### Q: Does that mean PvP is not allowed?

A: Correct.  This seems like a great time to try to delineate the difference between character conflict and PvP. Character conflict is certain to come up at times when characters in the game have different ideas about how to resolve something or have conflicting desires. Character conflict can be a part of a good story and a good community culture when underneath the conflict, the players who choose to be involved are still conscientious about not letting the conflict make the game less fun for others.

Character conflict becomes PvP when it gets violent (this has never failed to negatively impact player fun at a game like Numina which is not built to support physical character conflict), or when the character conflict becomes a player conflict in which the people involved do not prioritize keeping the game fun for others. It’s the responsibility of players to discontinue their character conflict if it starts to turn toward PvP, and the responsibility of staff to help find a solution if asked by the players involved in the conflict.

### Q: Can I play a criminal?

A: Yes, so long as the above goals are kept in mind. Your character should be a criminal if that is the best way to accomplish their good-at-heart goals, and as a player you should design them so that their chosen criminal activity is not intended to negatively impact the fun of other players. As with playing a villain, please make sure criminal activities are pointed in a PvE direction, and give out-of-game consideration to the impact of your criminal actions on the fun of other players.

As a singular example, it may be possible to be an assassin if you work for a guild whose goal is to better the world by removing awful people from it. Part of our shared responsibility on staff will be to include these sorts of organizations in the world.

### Q: Can I play a former villain?

A: Indeed! There is even a foundation for it. Just be sure to write your redemption arc into your character history and, if your villain pulls a few tricks out of their past self’s toolbox, to make sure that they are pointing them at NPCs.

### Q: … what is a villain?

We mean someone who does harmful things for selfish or malevolent reasons. Some of our NPC antagonists will be villains, and some may not be. We feel that this type of character would make a poor PC for our game due to their negative impact on plot options and the fun of other players. Additionally, we on staff have more fun and enjoy the game more when we feel that we are supporting stories about making things better.