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Non-Combat Character Development In RPGs?
Thanks to Tleaves.com for their article discussing RPGs that tinker with the basic hack n' slash formula to "try to provide incentives for non-combat development." The author comments on combat-heavy RPGs: "Sometimes my best friend sees me playing Angband and asks me what I'm doing. 'Knitting,' I say, and this is pretty accurate - it's repetitive, mindless, and somehow comforting." But he suggests that, while levelling up via combat is great fun, "...there is room (and indeed desire among players) for higher aspirations as well", referencing Ultima IV ("most of the interesting parts of the game were actually unlocked by ethical development") and The Witch's Wake module for Neverwinter Nights ("Experience is meted out specifically for reaching various narrative goals. Combat yields no experience whatsoever.")
reward the non violent ways to reach the goals as well, so it doesn't matter all that much if you play an intelligent character that gets past the obstacles by wits and technical skills, or a mad sniper who can shoot anyone between their eyes before they can move.
indeed playing them through with a very non violent character can be great fun!(blowing the cathedral up with the nuke for example, instead of killing the boss in battle)
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
blowing up a cathredral with a nuke is non-violent to you??? Jeez, I begin to understand some of the shock & awe tactics the world has seen lately...
Non-combat character development?
:-D
Like improving your Cooking skill by grinding the bones of your foes into bread?
It's a strange new idea, but I like it!
As long as we pretend we can measure "character development" in terms of XP, levels, stats and skill points we ill always end up with a mediocre Diablo clone (that was in turn a rogue clone).
Pathman, Free (as in GPL) 3D Pac Man
But I like the way levelling is done in Dungeon Siege, with your stats changing as you use different weapons, rather than just being told "go change what you like".
It just makes more sense to me, that someone who has spent their life throwing spells at people probably wouldn't be able to say they got much stronger from it.
Wouldn't that basically be more or less what The Sims is? Sure, it is not set in a fantasy word and so on, but still. Basically we need some cross over of The Sims into the typical RPG story, or? Not that I personally would like such a thing though.
Next time the government tries to draft you into the army, just say "No thanks, I'd rather engage in some non-combat character development"
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I think the big problem is that a game can't be a subjective dungeon master. It doesn't know how to reward character development for character sake. In pen and paper RPGs, the GM can make the judgment call if a choice or activity is award-worthy (with XP or anything else) when it can't be measured by progress toward a goal. Even if the goal is life (like the Sims, which I admit I've never played), is it possible for the computer to detect for and allow every possible character development choice?
Now if a human being is on the other end, as is possible with multiplayer RPGs... are there any RPGs out there where one person "plays" the game master and other players play player characters, allowing for endless possibilities? If so, do they and can they bring anything to the table (so to speak) that pen and paper RPGs lack?
Alex.
If you want to see a well done game such as this, check out "A tale in the desert" ( www.atitd.com )
;) But the idea of a political game was interesting to me.
Its a MMORPG that has no combat in it whatsoever, its more politcs than fighting. (heh).
Very interesting concept, has a lot of neat ideas too like the players get to vote on what features the game devs work on next.
The pricing model is interesting for a MMORPG style game as well. You download the client for free and only pay the monthly ($14 I believe) subscription fee.
I haven't played since beta closed because I personally like combat, especially the kind where you kill other players.
As I don't like awarding experience ONLY for combat, as so many cRPG's tend to do, nor do I like the idea of awarding NO experience for combat. Seems to me that experience should be awarded based on task completed. Finishing off an opponent is, at least to my mind, a task. What I'd like to see implemented is a system that awards experience for just about everything, with the experience awarded for a given task weighted towards the class most suited to the task at hand. Fighter classes get slightly more experience for combat, rogue classes get slightly more experience for detecting, setting and disarming traps, picking pockets and assassinations, spell-casters classes get slightly more experience for successfully casting spells, bards will slightly more experience for social tasks, and so on.
Combat, like anything else, is a challenge that should be rewarded... especially when the class you chose to play is geared heavily towards it.
] D
I always hear people talk about spending hours playing RPGs and fighting just to get a higher level, and I don't get it.
I may have been playing the wrong games (mostly the Final Fantasy series) but I have never had a need to be any stronger than I was. Granted, I always take the long route through any dungeons to make sure I get all the treasure, but generally I have found that the storyline combined with the random battles make you exactly strong enough to face what's up ahead. If you're not strong enough, you're probably headed in the wrong direction.
I believe that if you need to spend hours doing mind-numbing tasks just to be able to keep playing, you're either A) doing something wrong or B) playing a badly-designed game.
(but then again, what do I know...)
A good example of this is in the MUD called Threshold. Its been a few years since I played, but the creator/god implemented a system to do this. Unfortunately, he did this by making combat extremely tedious and time consuming (IE in between fights you had to spend 5 real time minutes or so 'polishing your sword' or it would rust and become useless- and during this time you couldnt do anything else... just sit there and stare at the area's description essentially.) Essentially his goal was to slow the pace of the game down, and force you to make social contacts, but instead of increasing the rewards for social contacts and 'fame', he just neutered the combat system. I eventually stopped playing as hacking and slashing become so boring that I had more fun going back to the programming assignment I was working on.
But to get a bit back on topic, spending time in Inn's and making friends (there was a whole system where people could formally introduce each other (IE through special 'invite' commands) and establish a social network, and one would gain experience points from this. Additionally, joining guilds, clans, and other groups also earned you points. The concept was great, those who were looking for more of a social outlet could enjoy the game and still become 'powerful'. The real problem was the implementation and the fact that progress through social means was painfully slow.
This MUD had the potential to be one of the greatest ever, as it had an excellent social, economic, and guild/clan system that ensured you would not travel through the game w/out meeting people. Unfortunately the (single)creator was a real arse at times and imposed draconian restrictions that really F'ed up the amount of fun to be had. Its still the only combat oriented MUD I have played whose players actually roleplay, which is quite an accomplishment, IMHO. To see how it works, I recommend trying this MUD out, if its still around. It may not be since the creator gave enhancements to those who donated money to him, which is a clear violation of just about every MUD codebase license (definitely his too, which I think was MUDOS).
In computer RPG's I almost always choose charaters who are physically weaker, but more intelligent.
... if you could find them.
Problem is most games really penalise you if you do this. Even the ones that do allow you to finish some quests without combat, usually don't award the same XP as for the violent solution.
Example : You have to find some kind of treasure, you play sweet talk a guard to let you in and sneak past all the other enemies. You finish the quest and get 1000XP. The brute force player kills the guard and everything/one else. He also gets 1000XP for the quest, but he also gets another 1000 form combat.
Hadly seems fair, and it makes the game so much more difficult for non fighting characters.
A few games have been better than the rest. Fallout I & II stand out. A big portion of quests had non/minimal fighing solutions
I also liked Morrowind leveling up mechanism - instead of having on big pool of XP you develop skills individually. If you use a skill (like sneak, security of speechcraft) successfully, it improves. But at the end of the day you still had to do quite a bit of fighting.
siener's youtube channel
I was playing Gauntlet Legends for Dreamcast and realizing that I did everything possible to destroy generators before tackling the enemies. This minimizes the # of enemies I killed, but minimized the amount of experience I gained. The game encourages stupidly shooting as many enemies as possible, rather than finding intelligent solutions.
RPGs should try to recognize intelligent behavior patterns. Experience should be gained for rapidly defeating an area, finding secrets, and making efficient use of ammo and special items. I know some action games offer bonus points for defeating enemies in a cool way (Ex: IF the last hit is a jumping melee attack, rather than just hiding and shooting from a corner). This would work with experience as well.
The game eGenesis bascially fits this category. No combat. Just tradeskills and building things.
Quest for Glory is an old series made by Sierra. Consider it a cross of King's Quest and an RPG.
You have 3 character classes to pick from: Fighter, Magic User, and Thief. In the later games you can also be a Paladin, however, you have to earn that right in the earlier games first.
Your character has 20-30 abilities. Strength, intelligence, dodge, parry, vitality, magic, lock picking, climbing, and various others. At the start of the game, your character is assigned points to each attribute based on his class. You are also given some points to assign however you like. If you want, you can even do something like give a fighter skills in magic, although that would take up a large portion of your free points.
As you play the game, your skills improve by doing activities that correspond to them. i.e. the only way to improve your climbing skill is by climbing stuff. Things like your strength will go up as you fight. Your magic skill goes up as you cast spells. Individual spells had a skill level too.
Admittedly, climbing and throwing usually were rather tedious skills to improve. But the rest really weren't. They'd improve as you went through the game normally. It was a nice touch how the first time you tried doing something you'd suck at it and have to try several times, but by the end of the game you'd be good at it.
Another great touch is when you beat a game, you could export your character and use it in the next game with the same skills. Generally, if you made even a little effort to improve your skills, you'd end up with a better character than you would get if you started the next game from scratch. If you did put some effort into improvement, you'd have a really kick ass character for the next game.
As to the effect of the classes... a lot of puzzles would have different solutions depending on your character type. Some differed only slightly, while others had a rather significant change. Each character type also had their own unique subquests. They're very good games, and highly replayable.
As always when there's a thread about RPG, i recommend to everybody to give a try at Tibia (more infos here). Which is a free multi player online role playing game for windows and linux. Sadly the linux client isnt up to date and really suck by now, maybe sending an email asking for update is worthwhile (?) if you like it (by giving a try at the win32 version)...
;-).
Though you still have to train killing small monsters to get skills, there's some points i'd like to develop about this game, and more generally about other rpg. This is probably obvious to everybody playing such games, but in fact they're actually rewarding and giving you some kind of 'XP', while perhaps not shown in your stats. I wanted to write about it, because peoples dont often think about it. While you could go killing other peoples, looting, or training alone, quests are a good way to get the 'XP' i'm thinking about. Of course, they give you some reason to be playing the game, you must solve them, find a special object, kill a hord of mutants, or save some princess (which is always captured by the same phoenix that keep resurecting), and more.
- It may be a riddle, the quest is a challenge to your mind, you have to solve a puzzle, understand what the devolopers were thinking about, perhaps refer to some litteracy you may find on the web. For example i remember of a quest that let you (hardly) find a secret scroll with strange characters on it and which was signed by "Geoffrey Chaucer". It's rewarding because you had to search and find more infos about him to understand the message. The whole point is while doing that you learn new things.
- Killing monsters while solving the quest of course get you some XP in your stats anyway. But some other 'XP' you get here are when the quest is too hard for you. You learn to find friends (socialize), make associations or work for some peoples (trade), or even manipulate other players (politics).
Socializing and politics are a good way to learn how to meet peoples (especially if you're a geek scotched on your computer the whole day). You learn how to present yourself, how you create [a list of] contacts which can be usefull -at one time or another- between themselves, giving you the benefit to know what's going on in other fields of [real or virtual] society because you are contacted first when someone needs something. And this gives you a "first turn", you can act before others. And, IRL, to find a job
Trading is also a good way to get better skills in and out of the game. You learn where and how to buy or sell, and know how to make benifits from small/large towns markets. I got really suspicious about the prices that real life merchants where giving me, and i'm now really hard when trading, looking for other merchants, and what does it costs me to buy/sell stuff. I nearly saved 25,000 euros when i arranged my new house, and it makes a real difference -- trust me.
Though those two are of course about getting 'XP' in real life, you still get the following one for in game playing, the goal of the quest often brings you something. First is getting an item which may be useful to you (modifying some of your stats), or that you can sell at a good
-- search the web
As gaw made me notice, it's about rpg not, online rpg... sorry for this oot post...
-- search the web
In almost all MMORPG games the only way to get experience is to kill something, whether it be monsters, other players or whatever.
The reason for this is simple: If you give players a way to 'level up' without some sort of risk, then all the 'cheaters/hackers/macroers' will never fight and will find whichever trade skill grants the most xp and develop a macro or cheat program that allows them to 'level up' until they are the highest level possible in the game so they can:
a) Tell everyone they 'won'.
b) become a player killer and slaughter all the 'stoopid noobs' who try to 'level up' the way the game's designers intended, or
c) Immediately lose interest in the game as there is no longer any challenging content and unsubscribe.
Check the track record of any MMORPG out there (and I've played a lot of them, EverQuest, Asheron's Call, Anarchy Online, Meridian 59, Ultima Online, Shadows of Yserbius, The Realm) and you'll find that somewhere, someone found a way to get easy experience (or money or the magic widget) without any risk to themselves, word spread at somewhere approaching the speed of light and within hours/days the servers had to be brought down for emergency maintenace to fix the problem.
EverQuest has a relatively interesting way of handling trade skill development. They make almost all the good trade skill recipes (that create items that other players are willing to buy) require either very expensive items (i.e., jewelry making) or rare ingredients that can't be purchased in stores (brewing, etc).
Asheron's Call is different in that most trade skill items can be be purchased in stores, are very reasonably priced, but in most cases require that you visit multiple stores/vendors to acquire all that you need *and* that all the good trade skill items require fairly high trade skill numbers. Unlike a lot of other games you actually earn experience by successfully completing trade skills, but the experience goes directly into that trade skills number. They have also recently added the ability to earn trade skill experience by completing some minor 'quests', but unfortunately those quests involve performing trade skills on the teeth of an Ash Gromnie (a small, lightning breathing dragon-type creature) so someone needs to go out and slay a Gromnie to recover a tooth before a trade skiller can use it.
When I played AC I created a trade skiller who was trained in Alchemy, Fletching and Cooking, but who was also able to hold his own in a fight against most lower level creatures. I got him high enough level that he could perform the trade skills I needed and then switched to a different character for my regular adventuring play.
To the best of my knowledge, Ultima Online is the only MMORPG that truly allows you to be a tradesman and completely ignore combat. It also does not have a non-PvP (Player vs Player) server so your tradesman is always at risk of being ganked by some 12 year old punk with too much time on his hands.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
referencing Ultima IV ("most of the interesting parts of the game were actually unlocked by ethical development")
The storyline was advanced by noncombat means, but every single point of experience was awarded for combat, and the path to almost every goal was littered with monsters for you to hack your way through. Ultima VII actually had a great deal less combat, though it really failed to challenge me in any way...
I don't know that I can call being combat-oriented a bad thing any longer, it's just the way CRPG's are made. It certainly beats The Sims.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Basically any system that tried to make this really work would need to have one of two things:
-- quite linear plotlines, so that the "quests" or whatever you wanted to call them would be intelligible and fun to play toward; or
-- actively involved "GMs" who could recognize and reward interesting styles of play.
This is why MMORPGs don't turn my crank right now. The oversight of the admins isn't enough to keep up with abusers of the system, leave alone reward cool styles of play. Any 14-year-old D&D GM could do better. And the open-ended play, while it sounds like such a cool idea, just doesn't seem to end up rewarding anyone but thugs, in one sense or another.
Even linear, single-player systems don't manage to do this very well. Fallout was a great game, but the little side quests wouldn't come close to the XPs from three Death Claws in a nest. And there they had a chance to carefully place the stuff in the plot, which you can't do in an MMORPG. The lack of structure encourages the kill-to-level-up treadmill. Probably the payment structure does too.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
RPG's are for fags.
Seriously though, if you were making a game in which the PCs were trolls or giants or ogres, I would think cooking would be a good skill to have and develop. If nothing else, such a game should give you prestige, reputation, or experience, if you can come up with new and ingenious methods to create dishes of your enemies.
(And you have to make provisions for food preparation as well; plating is really important in RL, and I imagine that at least some giants or ogres or trolls might feel the same about their food...:-) )
An Iron Chef CRPG with Chairman Kaga as a troll...imagine the ingredient list. ;-)
I think, to a large extent, you can't really compare the modern narrative structure to the structure employed in telling or playing an RPG; it is an apples-to-oranges comparison. Yes, the standard literary tools can help to advance an RPG campaign; however, one of the differences of the RPG versus a traditional narrative is that the RPG's story is not predetermined; the traditional narrative is. Also, the idea that the characters of an RPG's story will have an effect on the story is something that is foreign to most traditional narratives (storytelling to an audience may allow for some improvisation depending on the audience, but generally you don't see a lot of improvisation in the traditional narrative structure). I think the idea of a traditional narrative character advancing in a subtle, gradual way over the course of a story is something that would be difficult to achieve in all but the longest of RPG story's; changes in RPG characters need to happen fairly regularly, they need to be noticeable, and they need to take in account a often compressed timeframe for the story (whereas a traditional narrative story may take months or years to complete in the story, in a typical one-shot RPG story you're talking about days, maybe weeks).
I'm not making a value judgement about the superiority of traditional narrative vs. RPG; I'm just pointing out the difficulty in using the hallmarks of a successful story in one as a model for a successful example of the other.
I think for an RPG story to be successful there has to some form of interactivity present for the characters, especially in the form of allowing the characters to have a noticeable impact on the story. A lot of CRPG designers have taken interactivity to mean allowing a player to interact with their story in terms of combat, that may or may not have an effect on future combats in the game; as far as having an effect on the story, most player interaction tends to be superficial at best (scripted conversations being a perfect example; other than getting snippets of information if you talk to certain characters in the right order, what effect do these really have on the game?). I think most of the dissatisfaction with CRPGs stems from this disconnect: the interaction in a CRPG pales alongside the interaction potentially offered in a RPG.
(Yeah, I'm sure many of us who've played RPGs for some time have experienced the GM who thinks that either combat is the main interactive element of the story, or that player interaction is solely limited to the choices that the GM might make in terms of their story...:-) )
The designers have to put more work in to expanding the definiton of their settings to allow different players to different things (even if it is ultimately from a limited number of choices) that can have an effect on how the story will unfold. What's a little sad about all this is that the pen-and-paper RPGs have at least some component for dealing with non-combat activities in adventures; I think the designers don't tend to implement the non-combat portions, though.
(In some instances, the designers don't completely implement the combat portions of RPG engines, either. I'll use D&D as an example: D&D has a fairly extensive ruleset for psionics; I can only think of one D&D game (I believe it was a Dark Sun game) that had any kind of psionic component to it). D&D 3e has 'feats' which allow characters to bend the rules to their advantage in certain areas; I have yet to see a game based on the D&D 3e ruleset which has a full implementation of the 'feats' system. Vehicle combat isn't touched in most games, but there are rules for it. Leadership rarely comes into play in many games, even though many CRPGs have fairly large mass combats involving a lot of different allies. These are just some examples; I'm sure I've missed some.)
(Not to mention, there are other RPG engines out there, besides D&D: Storyteller, GURPS, Fuzion, FUDGE, various diceless systems, etc. Designers have tended to use either s
Beyond Zork is an example of IF that blurs the line between RPG and text adventure, at least somewhat. You get stats, you get combat, the stats have an effect on your interactions with the story, and you get the benefits of interactive fiction: a text parser, multiple solutions to at least some of the problems you encounter in the story (at least some of which tend to be non-violent), and fairly descriptive and well-written text descriptions. I'm sure there might be others, but this game immediately springs to mind...
I agree that most IF isn't really interactive; even the interactive fiction of Infocom (maker of Beyond Zork) wasn't all that interactive. That said, would games from Looking Glass (Ultima Underworld, Thief, System Shock) qualify as IF? (I guess you could put Deus Ex in their as well; I've never played it though...) You get a graphical description of your worldview rather than a textual description, but you can have a rather significant impact on the environment through your actions...
And would they blur the line between IF and RPG? System Shock 2 allows a player a great deal of interaction with the environment, and you do have to deal with a collection of stats and skills that will have an effect on what you can or can't do in the game...
(Same can be said of Ultima Underworld; not sure about Thief...)
Yeah, magic in CRPGs tends to be underwhelming at best (except as buffing or fire support for your front-line fighters...).
I always liked the idea of being able to make a spell more or less difficult to cast, depending on how powerful the spell was; i.e., if you trying to do 6d of damage on a 3d spell, that would be more difficult...or if you were trying to do 1d of damage on the same 3d spell that would be less difficult. I think you can do that in GURPS; I can't think of any computer games at the moment that allow you to do this.
At least, it provides a rationale for wanting to put more points into skill with a spell: you'd want to research the spell more to make it easier to do on-the-fly substitutions in the future (making it a little easier to tackle the giant with 20d of hit dice...).
(That said, IIRC, D&D 3e allows a spell caster to do this with 'feats'; I'm not sure which of the games based on the D&D 3e ruleset allow those feats to appear in the game. D&D 3e also allows 'feats' to switch energy types when casting spells; if a spell uses fire to power it, a caster could get a 'feat' which allows that caster to substitute acid or even sound instead. I think that's a cool concept, that makes sense; the caster's learned a different version of the same spell.)
*sigh* I wish some designer would bite the bullet, and code the Ars Magica magic system; it at least assumes that a lot of the spellcasting a mage will do will be ad hoc...
I'd really like to have a store in, say, Evercrack. A couple of bot salescritters to buy and sell the basics while I'm not logged in, plus the opportunity to trade for more interesting stuff when I have the time to play.
Why should a rogue get XP for fighting a monster directly? Wouldn't it make more sense to reward the rogue for sneaking behind him and attacking it with a backstab? I'm not saying he shouldn't be rewarded at all, only that the reward should be dependant on rewarding the character's actions based on the character. If it's a system where character is easily discernable by categories such as class, then it makes this option all the more easy to implement.
If a wizard defeats a monster with magic (or at least casts a one or more spells) then that should be rewarded.
If a barbarian attacks a monster without resorting to stealth, then that should be rewarded.
These are only a few examples however and obviously subjective to interpretation. The point however is that character advancement should primarily occur when a character is acting in accordance to his role or nature.
That said, I am more in favor of granting experience for quests than I am for combat.
Although it appears the issue being raised by the posts here is not one of advancement, but the role of non-combatants in RPGs.
I think this is ultimately a good thing, although there has to be a sense of balance. UO I think is a good example of how non-combatants can be well integrated into a game world. That said, I don't want to be stuck in a virtual world where I have to spend weeks on end weaving wicker baskets just to make a buck.
Two examples: on SHENMUE, there is not much combat, and when it happens, it plays like Virtua Fighter. All ZELDA games have levels with action and puzzles. Still, they are as story-driven as any stat-driven RPG.
I like the way these games play: no hours planning your battle strategy, no menu-based combat, but still as much story developement as regular RPGs.
Circumcision is child abuse.
I'm sure you've all read stories about characters in the AD&D worlds that have small adventures, but don't actually battle things. I would like a game to closely mimic this. Say, a theif would get equivalent experience to killing monsters by picking locks and pockets. The harder / bigger the individual you pick/pickpocket, the more experience you gain.
Another issue that I have with current RPG's is the difficulty of raising a magic based character. Magical ability should be more a mixture of magical ability and experience, and not just dependant on the level. If I practice casting certain spells, I should be able to get more profficient at casting them. I also should gain enough experience to gain levels.
When "training" in the stories of classic RPG's, the sorcerors and wizards hardly see battle, rather they are underlings in a guild-like environment. They run errands, get taught specifics on spells, and learn the patience and fortitude required for magic. Learning magic by killing monsters is rediculous.
I think that the guilds in existance are good, but they need ranks and responsibilities. If you are a grand master, you can expect to spend most of your time teaching apprentices, whereas if you are a journeyman, you can expect to be performing your skill in the field. There could be grading scales for how well your character does in certain areas, all based upon your inborn skills and personal memory (which I think ought to be a fairly random thing). I don't know anyone in real life that got to choose what they would be good at, and what they would suck at. An RPG just lets you lead a different life than the one you live now.
Another good way to gain experience and levels, I think, is to have the moderators recognize how well you play your role. If you play the role of the inexperiences and slightly slow witted blacksmith, than you should be rewarded. I'm tired of people getting into RPG's, just to walk around 5P34K1NG in 13375P33K.
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
Essentially this all comes down to the appearance of subjective scoring in RPGs. All RPGs are basically objective games - you want to accomplish certain objectives. Initially, and for the more simple-minded among us, this consists of a Diablo style hack-fest - earning experience for each kill. In the paper and pencil world this is usually known as a hack-n-slash dungeon crawl.
Sometimes that can be fun.
However, IIRC at some point late in high-school most of us managed to grow up. Suddenly it just didn't make sense to kill all the orcs just cause they were orcs. Usually the orcs were raiding some village for some reason - the goal was to stop them from raiding the village. If you killed all the orcs, that certainly stopped the raids. Maybe you only needed to kill the chieftan though - or perhaps you could even convince the orcs that it was less of a hassle to try and kill the vllagers (not likely).
A lot of this simply speaks to the change in perspective away from absolutes of good versus evil; traditionally RPGs represent good as being absolutely good - what they are, and what they do is _good_ simply by virtue of their alignment. Evil is the opposite - they and all their works are evil simply because that is their alignment. Eventually a lot of people find it's not enough to simply say "I am good therefore I must kill that Orc, because he is evil".
Ultimately this all translates into a game which is still objective (in terms of accomplishing objectives) - but not necessarilly absolute. The Orcs might be defeated, and experience gained by creating a damn to seperate the two settlements, and making it very difficult for the orcs to raid the village. I think they were trying to do this a bit with D&D 3rd edition - by introducing a Challenge Rating to monster descriptions. Monsters don't literally have to be destroyed to be defeated.
I think the trouble is balancing the gain of experience in RPGs with the accomplishment of goals and the excercise of skills. Eveyone has different tastes in that regard. Some people prefer level and class based systems, while others want skill based systems. I think ultimately that type of judgement is best handled by people and a skilled GM - perhaps rewarding players based on judicious use of skills to accomplish goals. A bunch of human fighters storming the Orc caves and killing them all, or a lone elf ranger sneaking in and killing the Orc chief, or a dwarvern engineer building a damn - all defeat the orcs, and gain the same experience - maybe the fighters recover more treasure, but they're more likely to need it to replenish the resources they used. This gives the appearance of subjective play, allowing multiple paths depending on the player's skills and approach - but is ultimately still an objective, goal based game.
and they'll just say "Get in the barrel bitch!"