Empire of One

Here let there be no question: I have been Imperialist. I have built a railroad up to a massive resource in another biome, broken into that facility through the wall, killed all of the residents regardless of nature, partially disassembled the structure to export its resources, and set fire to the remainder when I was done.

I put a double chest on the middle floor, by the massive hole in the wall that was originally a small hole with a door so I could control access to the rail platform.

As I tore down the Woodland Mansion from the top down, I accumulated materials in that chest. When I had enough stacks of items to make it worth the run, I hauled it all out to Ballantrae Station and dropped it in the Castle-bound dispatch box. When that box was full, I ran a load of stuff to the Castle, and the colonialist cycle was complete. The materials were expropriated and taken to the center of Empire, to be worked immediately or stored for later use as the Imperium sees fit.

Now, I will admit that I tore down the mansion to some extent out of pique. It cost me two respawns, a pair of admittedly well-worn enchanted diamond boots, and rather a lot of experience. Having reached the top, I took an axe to the place, ripped the roof off the room at the far top end, then started on the top of the walls. I brought that room down level with the floor, then started a lather rinse repeat across the top floor of the mansion, but came to a point where I had more work to do than I wanted and more materials than I could easily export.

In the process, I extracted a massive amount of dark oak, red and white carpet, cobblestone fencing, and other materials to pay for my efforts. In taking a structure that wasn’t mine, that I marched in and by force of arms took.

Make no mistake: I brought superior technology, better resources, and Imperial logistics. I imported carved pumpkins and iron blocks and built four iron golems, two on the middle floor and one each on the upper and lower.

Those made more difference than I can readily express. I had leashed the iron golem on the top floor and had it with me when I got jumped by the last evoker and the vindicators that spawned with it. I got respawned. By the time I got back to the site, in time to collect all the stuff I’d dropped (but only 7 experience, anything over that is just lost), the golem was wandering about idly, and a couple of fancy items were floating nearby, including a 7-ingot stack of gold and a totem of undying. Okay, I lost experience, and I also lost the experience I could have gotten by taking the defenders out myself, but I gained their loot, so if we’re judging by capitalist standards then I made a profit and everything is good. I now have free access to the entire facility.

Except this bugs me. This is the game rewarding me massively for acting in the most high-handed, invasive, imperialist fashion I have the entire time I’ve been playing. (Except for the Ocean Monument, but it gets its own section.) I came in with superior firepower and better logistics and the ability to heal and took the place because I felt like it. Once I had it, I mined it for resources, which meant tearing it down block by block. There was a room with a giant cat statue made of dyed wool blocks. Huge thumping thing. I have a pair of shears. There’s a shepherd in a nearby village who’s buying black wool. I came into a rather large supply of that, just had to disassemble this statue and sell it off for the materials.

Is there a game where acting like the British East India Company has some negative consequences? I’ve heard of a few options but haven’t really looked into them. I really like the sandbox nature of Minecraft, I like the ability to search for resources, put stuff together, advance your technology, build something you actually want to show to other people, hey, I made all this progress from wooden tools up to a castle with an enchanting room, that’s pretty cool. But wow, the shit it not only lets me get away with, but encourages by the game mechanics.

This is something that gets talked about in roleplaying circles quite a bit, the idea of encouraging player behavior through the game mechanics. If you only award points for confirmed kills, the players will become bloodthirsty and will start attacking anything the GM introduces. Well, okay, not all groups, but I’ve been in a couple that went kind of video game it-moved-shoot-it after a while. If you give points to players for defeating an enemy, whether that means having them arrested, or exposing their plans and bringing down public ridicule upon them, or just killing them, and you give them the same points for each option, the players may become lazy, and just make a quick die roll to kill the prisoners and be done with it, move on to the next thing. Again, not saying it’s all groups, but it’s there, and players, like water, tend to take the path of least resistance. If you give more points for clever thinking, and maybe an advantage outside of points for setting up future story elements – egads, they’re back for revenge! – or otherwise contributing to the story in a significant way, then the players will seek to gain those points by being inventive, by laying their own pipe, by actively participating in the storytelling process. You get what you pay for. If you pay the players XPs to kill monsters, they’re gonna kill monsters. If you reward them taking agency and contributing to the story, they’re going to be looking for plot elements they can introduce or use to advance the story.

So anyway, back to Minecraft, this really feels like the game is pushing my ethics in a highly capitalistic and imperial/colonialist direction here. The game has rewarded me, as I keep saying, for this behavior. Now it’s up to me what I do with the materials that I’ve seized, and what my next course of action is. There’s always mining to be done, and I have a couple of abandoned mineshafts I’m still clearing out, but I need to be looking for my next Large Project. I was thinking about a sweep of the area starting from the Castle and doing a spiral pattern, making sure all the dungeons have been located. As I’ve said before, I don’t have a problem looting a dungeon. The clever mouse has gotten the cheese. I’ve beaten the system and taken the stuff for repurposing. It wasn’t being used anyway, just sitting there in a chest as bait and reward. I need to reconsider my ethical stance in regard to this game, and to how I am playing it. A party that doesn’t like the murderhobo paradigm can subvert their characters’ reality in many ways. The players can also find another game to play. I have to think about this. Suggestions are welcome, click the envelope below to e-mail me or use the other buttons to find me on the Fedi or other locations.