Name? Job? Bye.

[kingtycoon]

Alright- So I went and played Ultima IV again – I still haven’t beaten it and don’t care if I ever do, video games – fah, who cares if you beat a video game? I like that one – did you know that Garriot made it because of a letter writing campaign from upset D&D mothers? They were mad about their kids playing these games – so he went and he made a game about being a good person, the best person, actually. A real shift from the games of the genre that are simply stated – genocide simulations. In the game you’re summoned to Brittannia so you can demonstrate and espouse the 8 virtues that Lord British has come up with – Humility, Compassion, Sacrifice, Honor, Valor, Justice, Honesty and Spirituality. A lot of it is hokey – Spirituality? Brittannia? Lord British… It’s cute and kind of dumb – but, there’s a germ of real virtue behind the all the thinking in the game. Anyhow – you play the game and the things you do bring you in line with these virtues – like, you can’t fight guys to the death, you let them run off, you have to meditate a lot and… solve puzzles in dungeons – it’s a game, it sometimes can’t hit what it aims for. Still – I like it, the idea behind it.

When you start out you’re in the real world and you go to a carnival and a gypsy asks you questions where you choose between the 2 of the 8 virtues and then you get assigned a character class based on them. If you choose honesty you’re a mage, and humility you’re a shepherd - just for example. Anyhow – I like that, I like a lot of what’s in there, but I think about what I can do with it. Make something for myself – and really there are resources out there to make something really ambitious – a video game even, but I don’t think I’m aiming at that. I’m thinking more about someone specific. I could come up with a setting and rules and run a game – but it wouldn’t be anything to the people I usually play with, they’re immune to these kinds of Aesops – I don’t even try to run a game about pursuing bushido codes or whatnot – I just demonstrate that with bare minutes of preparation I can come up with the weirdest ideas ever and then make them react to things. It’s not a deep experience, but it’s a fun one, very diverting. But then there’s someone who probably could stand to have some education in virtue, and who comes closest of anyone to taking the things I say and do as being divinely inspired. My kiddo. I figure, maybe it’s time I went all in and became a Dungeon Master Father. She’s curious about it, imaginative, interested in trying something out – I think maybe I can put together a virtue-reinforcing little interactive story for her.

Since I kind of thought of doing this, it stands to reason that I’m definitely going to do it- that’s just how I am, you understand, but details remain. So, for example – I need to think about the virtues that I think matter – maybe come up with a way of scoring them, maybe put together an idea of what tasks are going to be involved in becoming more attuned to one or the others and so on. So I have to set this up – before I get into thoughts about setting and so forth (old hat really, I can build a city on my daily commute, history, language, people, economies – all of it) but I want to think about what the virtues will be – and then come up with a cosmology that has some interrelationship with them.

So here’s where I’m starting – 3 classes of virtues, that for the sake of symmetry have a matching number of sub-virtues.   The classes are based on how you think – internally, how you present yourself outwardly – attitude, you see, and what you actually do. So I want to get all Aesopy on this and come up with them. Probably I’ll have to come up with better correspondences between the individual virtues of each class – some way that they inter-relate.

So, first steps, I’m thinking I should put this up and out in case anyone has an opinion that can help me out – some other thing or some idea that I’m overstating. I want to help her out, you understand, help her to find the qualities in herself that she’s going to need in order to be a better, more solid person.

I was thinking of Aristotelian virtues, mainly – the idea that virtue is just being good at being a person, and a failure of human characteristics is what it means to be a bad person, lacking in virtue. I like that idea, just generally – I don’t apply it at all! Protestant upbringing you understand – the inner self is all that matters, the afterlife is the only real world and so on. Not my actual opinions, but if there’s someone who overcomes their childhood I haven’t met them. Still, I don’t know very well how to be a right person, but I understand that I have a responsibility, so I’m going to try and execute it using the powers that I have as best I’m able. One of the things I have is smart friends on the internet – what do you guys say?

Comments

[aslant.livejournal.com]

Well I like that little chart you've got up top! I'm trying to think what values I would want to pick if I were doing something similar for my daughters. I value compassion and empathy, and the Buddhist idea of compassion for the self (as a way out of the feminine socialization of not caring for the self), and things like bravery and honesty. I'm thinking of William Stafford's writings on nonviolent resistance (can't think of where but he wrote a piece about being a silent but important witness to a playground beating, choosing to stand with the underdog even if he couldn't defend the kid), on peace as an actual value to teach, connected to dissolving prejudice and racism too. As a feminist I would value teaching things like recognizing oppression, violence that's unspoken, intersectional oppression too. Some of this is maybe more "here kiddo read some bell hooks" territory but... I despair of devising any kind of story that might teach these kinds of things, I'll be intrigued to read along as this project goes! Learning to speak about your own identity is a big one. Learning to articulate your own values. Maybe the quest is to identify her own values through the course of the story? Kind of how in some classrooms they start out the year with the kids defining their own classroom rules, so it feels authentic in some small way rather than a regurgitation of received wisdom.

This project of yours reminds me a lot of Stephenson's the Diamond Age, that magic everything-teaching book computer in it. It starts with the most basic basic thing and then one day you wake up a warrior princess scholar or whatever, because the book is designed to get you there no matter how humble your origins. Have you read it?

[kingtycoon.livejournal.com]

Yes, I read the diamond age, actually at a really bleak and frightening moment in young Agatha's life. It's to her mom's credit that her kids aren't at all effected by her monumentally terrible choices. She did okay at doing terrible.

I felt like the writer really overestimated as kids abilities by age but still liked it.

I feel like some of your suggestions aren't going to work for me because they're purely artifacts of our culture and not universal - which is the big fun of fantasy you know? That you can mock up and prototype different cultures and try and simulate what might be a universal or constant virtue.

[mordicai.livejournal.com]

I mean, I think about this a lot? Mostly at a distance though, what a group of fictional people think the best traits are.

[mordicai.livejournal.com]

Two axises; behavior & thought?