R P G A M E R . C O M   -   E D I T O R I A L S

Hygiene Gets More Airtime!

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FAN EDITORIALIST

After reading last weeks' editorial 'Hygiene' by fan contributor Gabriel Ang and having a good laugh, I simply had to comment about the scope of his editorial. To call this a 'rebuttal' would be an inaccurate description, because his points are well founded and I found myself agreeing to his logic. Therefore, rather than use an unfriendly term like 'rebuttal', this editorial would be better off labeled as 'Comments on the editorial Hygiene'.

Basically I felt that while Gabriel's points made good logical sense, the bathroom-hygiene issue was overly emphasized, to the point where it would be unfair towards developers by setting our gaming expectations too high. True, today's RPGs tend to take on a more realistic setting and I have no doubt that developers will continue to push the envelopes of realism in their games, but to write such a specific editorial to ask for bathroom interactivity is what I term 'realistic overkill'.

Gabriel literally nitpicks the fact that the role of the bathroom is generally ignored in many RPGs, when there still exists a large amount of other non-realistic aspects in today's RPGs. What about your human adventurers being able to defeat behemoths over 10 times their size in normal battles? Or the part about the band of heroes being able to waltz into any abode they damn well please and plunder whatever treasures may lie there without any resistance? And don't forget the part where a night's rest will literally change your party member from 'sick vegetable' to 'energetic do-gooder'...the list goes on. If a night's rest on a normal looking bed can cure anything from poison to petrifaction, its a safe bet to assume your heroes have the foresight to visit an imaginary bathroom located somewhere in the magical inn. Sure you may not be able to find an actual bathroom in the said inn, but neither can you find all those medical apparatus needed to cure the multitude of afflicted negative status effects yeah?

In a nutshell, bathrooms really do up the realism factor and I support Gabriel's recommendation for such interactivity in future games. However, its unfair to expect such intricacies in games right now when there still exists a lot of unexplained phenomena in today's RPGs. Perhaps in the future, when RPGs really bring realism to a new unprecedented level, and the roles of bathrooms are still left neglected, the original Hygiene editorial can be brought out once again.