Sexout Companions in Peril

[sen4mi]

Something I've thought about but have no clue how to do: take Loogies tryouts and deflect it. Make the legion/powder gangers/fiends ambush your group and take a female companion captive. You then get to go all Liam Nieson in "Taken" rescuing her.

 

You might have her be captured when you are in talking with Caesar.

 

And Caesar can explain that while you carry his mark, he does not think your companion is worth bothering with. But that if you want to use this opportunity to show your abilities to the Legion that he will merely watch you in action...

[Kashked]

Can I also just bring up the plain fact that the main thing about an RPG' date=' to me, is the opportunity to play as someone decidedly [i'] different [/i] than who you are IRL?

 

Heh, my thinking is pretty much the same, which probably is the reason that in any game that gives me a choice I go for the non-human races, orcs, elves, dwarves, aliens, robots or whatever, and in games with only humans, I tend to go for a female character. The point you brought up about watching your PC's butt is also highly valid.

 

Personally though, I have had a lot of problems coming up with a suitable PC for F:NV with Sexout installed, being the roleplaying purist I am I don't want to "brake character" just for my joy of watching pixelporn, yet I DO want to experience all Sexout has to offer. For me the hardest part has been justyfing why a woman who can kick ass all the way from Goodsprings to McCarran would turn her butt-kicking career on hiatus for a butt-fucking career. I have tried playing chars that I have handicapped in the fighting department, but they still manage to handle everything thrown at them it seems. I think that it is ironically the "Deadlier combat" mods I have that basically offsets the need for RPG-skills, since the weapons are realisticly deadly anyhow.

 

In any kind of molestation fantasy I'd much rather be the male molesting or being molested. Being the woman has never interested me.

 

If it's a fantasy, why should we assume that the player fantazies about being the PC? Is it not more likely that he creates the PC that he is fantazising about? What I mean by that is that there aren't really any female NPC's in NV that I would fantasize about, however my PC is another matter...

[Jexsam]

That's the thing about player characters. They're a little like art. Even if you're told what you're supposed to do with them or think about them (art; "This angry chicken represents internal strife" vs character; "You will be immersed in this world and become this character"), that does not guarantee that's how a person will interpret it.

 

Some people see that angry chicken and identify with it, feel the anger, know deeply what the artist meant.

 

Some people see the angry chicken as representing something totally different; rather than a strife-filled internal commentary, they see a simpler thing, a study of motion and color, white feathers and harsh reds. But the emotion either doesn't register or is secondary to the visual presentation.

 

Still others see the same angry chicken and say "Hey, that's an angry chicken".

 

In much the same way, some people will indeed become immersed, and will truly aim to be the character. For some of these people, they can't conceive of taking a game any other way, so they look at guys who play sexy women funny.

 

Then there's the ones, like me, who, instead of seeing themselves as the character, see the character as their own entity with their own personality. We make characters of either sex, and that sometimes means scantily clad turbo-sluts. Other times it means chiseled paragons of masculinity. Still other times it means skinny little weenie-men with no skills at all, depending on the character you want to shape.

 

And then there's the group who sees the whole thing as a sort of sandbox, and all the NPCs, player character included, are merely action figured to be thrown around, beaten, bashed, and abused in every imaginable way.

 

I'd bet money that the vast majority of people who use slave/abuse/rape mod targeted towards female player characters are in the second and third groups, with only a few outliers from the first group who actually do imagine themselves as the characters.

[sen4mi]

I'd bet money that the vast majority of people who use slave/abuse/rape mod targeted towards female player characters are in the second and third groups' date=' with only a few outliers from the first group who actually do imagine themselves as the characters.

[/quote']

 

If you are correct, then I am not in the majority.

 

But, like some other people, I do struggle with role playing issues. For example, how can I reconcile "I do not have a choice" (in case A) with "I have a choice" (in analogous case .

 

But I wonder, in games where your character gets shot and lives on, do you think people usually imagine they are someone other than the character?

 

Anyways, I think this gets into that "suspension of disbelief" issue which can plague all narrative fiction.

[TheLordofMist]

As an author and roleplayer, I enjoy putting myself into the position of a character. I pride myself on my ability to create compelling, believable characters. In fact, one of the greatest compliments I ever got was in regards to a post-apocalyptic short story I wrote in first person from the viewpoint of a teen girl who watched her parents and her little brother get murdered by some thugs over a package of bottled of water during the evacuation of their hometown.

 

She couldn't tell the story was written by a guy.

 

I approach Fallout characters the same way I approach any characters. A good character exists outside of the author. A good character should feel like someone you could walk out the front door and bump into at the mall. For instance, right now I've got two active stories going:

 

The first one is a guy named Caleb Santiago. He's a retired cop from The Hub who lost a bunch of money he invested in a supply caravan down to New Vegas (the Van Graffs saw to that) and decided to go investigate. So far, he's managed to figure out who trashed his caravan... but he's still trying to sort out why. He's rounded up a group (thanks to Companion Share & Recruit) he calls the "NCR Highway Patrol", and spends most his time organizing security for the local caravans from the Highway Patrol station outside Primm. He's a bit too attached to his job for romance, but he's got a little bit of a thing for Layla... the NCR Deserter he recruited after wiping the floor with her and her buddies over at the V&V.

 

My other character is a girl named Nessa, though she goes by "Queen Bitch" around her friends. She's a jet-addled, psycho-pumping pill-popper with a mean streak a mile wide and a love for all things that go 'bang'. When she's not busy smoking something or screwing someone, she works as a liaison between the Fiends and the Khans. She and her sister, Gabby, also go out on the occasional NCR-Hunting raid... just on the off chance they manage to find their father and put a bullet in his head.

 

 

My previous character, Nathaniel O'Rourke, was a cigarette-smoking silver-tongued con man who spent the entire game seducing women before robbing them blind. Under the surface though, he was a twisted sonovabitch who enjoyed making others suffer. He was prone to taking anyone who couldn't be seduced by force, then selling them off to the legion for a nice little payoff. Eventually his deeds caught up with him, though... he got pissed off and shot an NCR trooper right in the face without realizing that there was a small squad of his comrades just up the hill. He died in a hail of gunfire, never to plague the wastes again.

 

Now, obviously, none of these characters is me. If they were, well... I'd have to be very... -very- schizophrenic. Anyhow, the point is... these characters are merely the vessels through which a story is told. When telling a story, it's not about getting into the mind of my characters... it's about taking a step back and creating a mind within my own, then wrapping a body around it. Men, women, dogs, birds... it's all the same for me.

 

Though the focus is upon the player... the experience for me is the unraveling of that character's story. If I play a female character and she gets jumped and raped by a bunch of bandits... that event comes to define her. I play her differently. Either she becomes consumed with the fear of that event... diminished... and begins to live her life in constant horror of the thought that she could be taken advantage of again... or she grows. She becomes hardened... cynical... no longer ignorant to the very real dangers of the world around her. If she's a particularly sleazy girl, sometimes she's too drunk to remember or too horny to care. If she's a particularly devout/reclusive girl... sometimes it will shatter her entirely. The same goes for my male characters. The sadistic ones are a product of some warped childhood or a traumatic event which turned them into cold, hard, emotionless monsters. Some of my male characters are out looking for a quick buck, some of them want to make the world a better place, and some of them just want to eat. The slavers either care more about money than they do about human life, or they don't see people too weak to defend themselves as being worthy of their 'freedom'.

 

Perhaps it's because I'm so enthralled with the creation of characters and the telling of stories... but this ability to simply create the character, play it out along it's course, and watch it all unfold through a first-person viewpoint that isn't my own... I essentially play the game in the Second-Person.

 

I am a narrator and director. Both surrounded by the story and controlling it, but not perceiving myself as a PART of the plot itself.

 

Still... I love to hear about how others play their games... it makes for fascinating reading.

[Kuroshu]

Giant post that I actually read.

 

I play it similarly but I always have a save were I play as "me" (I also have a testing save for both male and female should I need to test a mod.)

 

I also try not let myself or any of my companions die, since they remain dead or I load my save from the last time I slept(in-game). If I feel the need to start over I simply delete that character's save after he/she dies.

I would make a short story/diary of the character but I have bad literature skills. All my stories are in my head.

But they all basically start of having amnesia.

 

The topic seems a tad bit off-topic now. The thread came from talking about a mod where we save our companions/not a rape-fest/Male PCs being all heroic bad ass/female PCs not being weak I get raped all the time to a I'm a bad ass, Kicker of asses in the wasteland, to a thread discussing how we play...

[sen4mi]

The topic seems a tad bit off-topic now. The thread came from talking about a mod where we save our companions ...

 

You are right' date=' and I contributed to this mess, and I apologize for that.

 

To try and get it back on track, I am going to skip reading any other off topic comments in this thread (edit: came back and read, so I am not good about keeping this kind of promise to myself), and I am going to offer some suggestions for "rescue the prince/princess" scenarios:

 

First, My Kind of Town already has you rescuing Deputy Beagle. He is cut from classic "Bimbo" cloth, except for being male. You could think about extending this encounter and maybe include an optional plugin that gives him a sex change (for guys that have their hearts dead-set on rescuing girls).

 

Meyers could receive analogous changes (though he is decidedly non-Bimbo). For [optional'] compatibility with Loogie's work, you could introduce a new building where he is locked up (and perhaps restrained), and an additional side-quest to free him. If you want to do a quest which bends depending on whether tryout powder gangers is installed you can either (a) test if it's there and offer different choices based on this, or ( ignores it and requires someone build a compatibility override plugin. But to allow these options you should make it not crash when both are present.

 

To balance any extra difficulty with Meyers, the other quest paths should get comparable (or worse) changes. The easy way to do this involves requiring side-quests from later on in the game. Major Knight's quest might also plausibly require you complete another rescue missing (that you are building in this thread). Primm Slimm's quest might be extended to include a small fetch into Helios One's observation level and/or REPCONN's test site?

 

And maybe my thinking here will inspire other people to suggest rescue quests?

[KainsChylde]

Getting back to the original topic, editing existing companions either custom or vanilla has been discussed regularly here as being tricky. Some companions are stubborn and fight changes (I.e. Sunny or Cass) and others are sensitive, breaking easily (Willow). Perhaps a new, custom companion is in order? A Princess Peach type, who from the first time you meet her is constantly needing to be rescued from someone/something.

[TheLordofMist]

Firstly, it seems to me that identifying how people play the game actually serves a purpose to the original point of the topic... which is to say, how does one make a character that the player is compelled to keep safe.

 

And how do you turn what is essentially a game-long escort mission into something that feels IMPORTANT to the player.

 

As I mentioned above... my raider character has a sister. She's about as simple an NPC companion as they come, but because of her importance to my character's story... it actually feels like keeping her alive and well is important while I play. Not everyone plays the game like I do, however.

 

It seems to me that, if one were going to actually make a character and set up the scenario in which the player must protect them... one would have to first understand what it is that makes ANYONE feel like they need to protect anything. And that's a lot to ask of someone. I think the key to success in creating such a scenario is all about creating more companion characters that actually serve some greater role or purpose... something that makes the player WANT to keep them alive.

 

Companions in most cases are mortal anyways... so making them somehow connect to the player character... be it through usefulness, emotional attachment, or just plain being weak and needy... is a tricky subject. No one companion will ever appeal to all types of players, either. So there's that to consider as well.

[ChancellorKremlin]

It's not so much as u-turn as thinking out loud. Which of those is my opinion tends to vary by my mood.

 

So are you in a more male-oriented content mood at the moment then? If that is the case, you should check out SexoutAffairs.

 

Sorry to derail the topic (again) - I'll create a topic to discuss this issue specifically, which has received a lot of interesting replies that deserve to be answered in their own right.