[DGD] GurbaLib

[Dread Quixadhal]

|Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2004 12:19:19 -0400 (EDT)
|From: Stephen Schmidt <schmidsj at union.edu>
|To: dgd at list.imaginary.com
|Subject: Re: [DGD] GurbaLib
|Reply-To: dgd at list.imaginary.com
|
|On this subject, one might wonder why it is that DGD doesn't
|have a mudlib that offers more than mudlibs for other drivers,
|since DGD offers so much more than other drivers. A few musings
|on that subject follow.
|
|The biggest thing DGD offers, from a game perspective, is
|persistence. A game world can be altered by players and
|the alterations will remain. This is not the only feature
|in which DGD outstrips other drivers, but I think it's the
|one most visible to players of games running on DGD.
|
|Unfortunately, for the typical fantasy adventure, this is
|a drawback rater than a gain. After the player kills the
|goblin king, the game is over until the game resets and
|the goblin king magically springs back to life. Similarly
|for recovering lost treasures, rescuing princesses, and
|so forth. It is bad for the game, not good, if these
|things are permanent achievements.
|
|One can try to design features into the game to "explain"
|resetting of the game world, but that approach is counter
|to the idea of persistence. What's the use of using a
|persistent driver if all you're going to do is put
|non-persistent behavior back in via the game design?
|Also, the mechanisms needed to explain the resets within
|a consistent story line are complex.
|
|What DGD needs (needs in the public domain, anyway; Skotos
|is outside the scope of my comments here, and I'm not
|terribly familiar with it anyway - if someone who is
|wanted to comment on its relation to this topic, I think
|that'd be great) is a "killer app", a game concept that
|isn't traditional fantasy adventure and that uses persistence
|as a fundamental of the game design. DGD ought not try to
|compete on the tradition grounds of LPMud - its feature
|set inherently pulls it in a different direction.
|
|The reason traditional fantasy adventure works with resets
|is that the players are a small part of the game world
|anyway; they don't have important roles in the society
|in which the game is set. Thus, if their acts are
|impermanent, it doesn't matter much.
|
|The DGD "killer app" game should reverse that. Players
|should be important people in the society of the game
|world, capable of taking acts which alter that society,
|which are then reflected in the game world through the
|persistence of DGD. For example, building a castle
|which would then attract NPCs to form a town around it.
|Or destroying a castle and dispersing the town. Or
|something similar in whatever setting you do like, if
|you don't like fantasy adventure.
|
|Steve

Very nicely written!

I'd like to add my two cents to this thread by saying that you don't
have to have things as black or white.  The traditional mud is based
around resets and a facet/drain economy -- one where players "harvest"
mobs for gold, which is then drained away again by equipment,
training, and other in-game perks.  The ultimate result of this kind
of structure is the "level grind", where players are forced to kill
hundreds or thousands of the same kind of creature until they are
powerful enough to move on to the next area, and repeat the process
until they reach the plateau where no further content is available to
them.

A fully persistent world with NO resets and a fully closed economy
would, as Steve points out, require a constant staff of admins to
create new content on the fly, else the players would exhaust what
exists in the world and discover a virtual "heat-death" of the game.

To find a middle-ground, we need to try something new.  One idea I had
ages ago (and I'm sure many others have through of this too) is to
allow mobs to spawn and evolve in reaction to each other as well as
player activities.  That is, when you start the clock, the orcs in the
mountains will gradually start wandering, as will the goblins in the
forest.  At some point, they may encounter one another.  If they do,
they can either fight one another over resources, or ally themselves
for some other (coded) goal.  Maybe they both worship the same deity
and team up to further those ends.

In any case, when players start running into mobs, and killing them
for loot, the mobs shouldn't just die and reappear... but neither
should they be forever destroyed until a game master creates new
ones.  Allow for the idea that the event was witnessed.  If a band of
orcs gets killed near a city, perhaps a straggler watched and reported
back to camp.  Maybe the orcs will mass and attack the town if it
happens often enough, or maybe they will pick up and move further
away... allowing the city to expand, or a new enemy to move in.

Thus, persistence is maintained in the sense that if there was a
goblin camp near the city, that camp remains until it is destroyed or
packs up and moves away... and that it doesn't just reappear if
something happens.  But at the same time, nothing prevents new mobs
from moving into the area, either by the hand of a game master, or by
some code that decides a new tribe or orcs might be needed (as the orc
population is now too low, and the human population hasn't filled the
void).

I also totally agree that the players need to be more than cogs in the
wheel.  If the best you can hope for is to kill stuff to get more
equipment, to kill more stuff... you're in level-grind land, and may
as well toss out persistence.  In that respect, I think players need
to grow and shape the world alongside the game masters.  They should
be able to spend their wealth to build housing, and expand the city
borders.  Work to establish a new village somewhere, and set up trade
routes that need to be patrolled so the merchants (both NPC and
player) don't get ambushed by bandits (both NPC and player!).  Perhaps
players can engage in competition for nation-building as they (and
their guilds or other organizations) become really powerful (I'm
thinking along the lines of the old text game conquer, or empire).

So, the big question then is... how can we build a mudlib that allows
and encourages that kind of thing?  A persistent world that can still
evolve and populate itself without constant GM handholding, but which
can be micro-managed by a staff who wants a tight storyline to
develop?  I'm too much of a n00b at LPC to have any answers here, but
I 'd love to hear what other people think.

PS:  Sorry if this gets double-posted.  I didn't realize I had subscribed
under my old email address and tried to post it from my new one.  Since it
hadn't shown up yet, I figured I'd just repost as it's not THAT long. :)


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