Earl's Musings: Player Slavery and why no one ever does it probably

I'm sure I've mused about player slavery before. But in checking the list of posts I apparently haven't. So in that case, here we go, player slavery! It's one of my favorite ideas. The idea that when you lose you don't stop playing, you just become a slave. It's hot to actually experience your consequences instead of just reading a bad end story. But now that I'm adding it to Shield High, I COMPLETELY understand why it's so rare. It's such a difficult thing to make happen.

I am of course, still making it happen. Just expect slavery in this update to be slimmer than I'd promised. I'm finishing up the random events right now, and then I'm going to start building your outs. Now, I imagine my issue isn't one that most people encounter. My problem is that writing some of this content is mindnumbingly boring. I will actually have to go back and redo this event one day probably. But the main problem you encounter is "How do I make this still gameplay?" So, since shitting on Fenoxo went well, I think I'll review some other games and how they do it, and give some thoughts on the matter.

Shield High(RAGS version): Ah the vanity, putting my old work at the top of the list. Wonderful job me. Player slavery was a thing that appeared three times in Shield High. You could be Karen's slave, Andriana's slave, or Stacy's slave. Karen's slave is questionable because getting there required losing a nearly unloseable fight. However, once you were a slave, you had a pretty simple thing going on. You'd arrive at school, go and see your Mistress to get your random prescribed sex scene where she bosses you around, and then you had to try and find the plot that lead you to escape. This plot was entirely dependent on which girl enslaved you, and once you got free, I'm pretty sure the game broke. In hindsight, it wasn't the best system. It worked, but the single avenue out aspect of it is pretty lame. Overall it was a basic system that fitted the basic game but I'm not gonna call it good by any means.

Skyrim: Skyrim is probably the biggest lewd game I know. If you have a fetish for bondage and glitches, it'll be heaven. If you only like one of those things, I really hope it's glitches, but bondage will work out too. The slavery comes in the mod Sanguine's Debauchery. It's a pretty straight forward mod that makes it so that when you lose a fight you might be taken as a slave by someone who beat you. I haven't played out a full term of slavery. Why not? Because it's fucking boring. At first at least, it's a lot of sitting around and getting fucked. I'm under the impression there's more down the line, however Skyrim isn't stable enough for me to have found it. Honestly? Despite it's problems, it's still pretty good. For being modded in, it's a good solution, and I imagine a system like this built into a core game would be more enjoyable. The core problem is that you need something...more.

That having been said, there is Submissive Lola, which I do enjoy a lot. You can ask to be a slave to your companion, and once a day they fuck you (when you ask them if they want to, which is appreciated) and otherwise you go on with your adventure. However returning to towns can often result in short side quests, fetching your master something, or being paraded through town naked. There's some other things, instead of fucking you your master might apply a limitation, and you can also ask for spankings to help improve the rate you level up at. I may or may not be considering a similar feature for Shield High in the future.

Fallout New Vegas: Much like Skyrim, it's a buggy piece of shit. It's focuses are scattered and seemingly random, and overall the porn mods just aren't finished. However, there is "msex: Veronica" I think it's called. It lets you submit to or dominate Veronica and Cass. It's a bit like Submissive Lola, but I found it to be overall a more pleasant experience. You could set how long it would take for your Mistress to want something, from about 40 seconds up to 8 minutes. When the time was up, she'd talk to you, and give you a task. Sometimes it was a simple fuck, other times it was not being allowed to wear clothes, or move. Or you'd have to fuck the nearest stranger. It's a good system overall, though the not moving one was rough because it felt arbitrary. You got a small wander space, but no indication of how big it was. Otherwise however, I really enjoyed this system. Of all of them, I probably liked it the most. Content-wise it felt like it interacted with the world the most.

And so now that I've listed four methods of player slavery, the rant about why it doesn't happen much. The simple answer is making enough content to make it worth the limitations is hard. How do you make something that could go indefinitely feel fresh? I don't think you can. And that's before you consider every other question. How long should slavery last for? How much of the game should it dominate? Like, being a slave for 10 minutes every time isn't bad. But it's also not fulfilling if you're into that sort of thing. But being a slave for an hour every time might get dull. Perhaps there could be a middle of the road solution? I don't know. I've not yet solved this dilemna. All I've solved is knowing that making slavery content is hard, and I regret ever deciding to do it.

I feel there's more I could say but...1 it's long and 2 my brain is frazzled right this moment. So I shall stop here, write some book instead, and then write a bit more of this porn.

Pudding Earl

P.S. Once again, looking for recommendations on places to try out some porn games and places one can buy porn games. Suggestions on both appreciated greatly.