Orc Quest; or, A Critical Examination of Agency Through in Interactive Fiction (Warcraft)

[FractiousDay]

I would think every group in wow is vulnerable to cultural issues its all the elves, trolls, orcs, humans ever talk about

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I mean, are they? Sure every group might be more or less vulnerable, but my point is that the Orcs because they've had 30 years of disruption, upheaval and reform, are uniquely vulnerable to new forces coming in. None of their cultural instituions are well established enough to resist populism, for example. The shaman couldn't resist the Fel, Thrall's reform agenda couldn't resist Garrosh, and the Horde in general was unable to resist Sylvannus.

To use an irl example, ancient Sparta was an extremely conservative culture. Their instutions including the wealthy Spartan heiresses, the ephors and the dual king system all contributed to a system which was slow to change, very difficult to reform and ultimately collapsed due to these issues.

Conservatism is one of the advantages people sometimes ascribe to consitutional monarchies in general, the idea that you can have an apolitical figure who can somehow restrain reactionary forces. I don't agree with this but my point is that some states or communities have instituions which make them inherently conservative, which give greater power to historical precedent. It's really difficult to change the US Constituion, as another example.

Stormwind appears to have some sort of oligarchic/noble assembly (which in this quest got blown up lol), Ironforge might be more monarchist but is also full of dwarves who tend to be very conservative anyway because they're all stony, and the Trolls have a series of different instituions which moderate changes. If one Loa gets too powerful, or if an immoral monarch is ruling, or if there's some sort of popular movement then all the other instituoins will resist.

The Orcs don't have institutions that are powerful enough to do that sort of thing. We have the Clans, the Shaman and the Warchief really, but none of them seem to be able to effectively constrain the others if there's issues.

I should also say this is to say nothing of the non-state instituions of the Orcs. There are very few of them, there's no non-clan military forces which might hold anyone to account, there are relatively few NGOs like the Earthen Ring.

How would this be resolved? We've discussed constituionalism in WoW before but one key thing would be to decide whether it's desirable to build up the clan system and strengthen it, or to build up more 'Horde' forces, eg orcs being commanded by non-orcs, but as far as we can tell that's just very difficult because the orcs are just so much more powerful than the trolls or tauren. Thrall specifically excludes Caine as a successor candidate as he's not an orc, though he later evidently realises this is problematic and appoints Vol'jin.

 

[FractiousDay]

So, watched this the other week; 'The Lost Art of Collectivist RPGs'. To summarise, the video discusses how modern RPGs, which require significantly larger budgets and are marketed to a larger audience, are now more focused on fulfilling autonomy and wish fulfillment for the player and are reluctant to restrict people in any way.

The video contrasts this with the Gothic series, which has the player embeded within structures and systems of power within the society presented in game.

It's a good video, I disagree with some parts and I'd note for example that it can be quite frustrating to choose between different factions, and also frankly that a lot of the games referenced are super janky to the modern player.

To discuss this subject in terms of Warcraft, I'd say that WoW isn't really an RPG, you don't play a role, you merely go through the game as a sort of generic protagonist. People criticised this in the recent voicework where all the characters your PC supposedly knows well are actually strangers to you and just bellow 'Champion, go get me 20 bear assess' etc. I suppose it depends on your level of verisimilitude and engagement with the story really...

In terms of the actual mechanics though, WoW is a bit of a mix. In some areas, the PC is only there because an NPC has asked them to help out. You are specifically called upon to lead an attack (in the manner of 'Champion Warfare' as I have previously discussed. You venture to a new area, you take part in the campaign and then you slay the dragon at the end. There might be some other attack going on, but that's probably diversionary and actually you're making the strike that will be decisive.

By comparison though, there also seems to be a thing in the new expansions where the player takes on a role as a regime-ender. They move to and fro trying to take down a particular group and elevate a more friendly member of that group to the leadership, thus allying that group with the relevant faction. In that you have to go round each of the zones trying to help people out and winning favour and you get kicked up the chain of command as you go, getting referrals from people.

I don't necessarily think though that means that WoW is a collectivist RPG. Characters are largely undifferentiated, any combination of race or class are basically all the same and we get ridiculous situaitons where Sylvannus orders you to betray her and actually its inconsequential. Similarly, we see the setting becoming somewhat of a soapbox, for example recently some dragon guy attacked the new night elf tree and like 20 faction leaders (that is, the 'main characters') jumped down in a cinematic to attack him.

In terms of this quest, I did not necessarily mean for you to be kicked up to the higher ranks so fast. I've explored this a bit in my Traitor Quest a couple of years ago where I didn't want the character to be commanding stuff all the time, I wanted to explore life at the bottom and the voice of the sub-altern.

Given that in this turn Grok will be elected Warchief and assume a position among the most powerful and influential people on the planet, clearly we have been unsuccessful in keeping stuff 'low key'. There could have been some very interesting roads not taken, but I suppose in this case its simply been that the character generation and various impacts have led Grok to such a case.

This will be somewhat of a challenge for me, as I want to keep this as Grok's story, not a Horde planquest. We're still here to explore agency. That means here then that we're still firmly in a 'collectivist' rpg, but it does mean that the general questions of agency will continue. Indeed, if anything Grok is further constrained as Warchief than he might have been before I suppose. We'll see how that goes.