[MUD-Dev] You, the game of philosophy.

[Derrick Jones]

On Fri, 12 Dec 1997 coder at ibm.net wrote:

> 
> On 10/12/97 at 01:26 PM, Caliban Tiresias Darklock <caliban at darklock.com>
> said: >On Tuesday, December 09, 1997 5:40 PM, coder at ibm.net
> [SMTP:coder at ibm.net] > wrote:
> 
> ...perceptive analysis of RP vs GoP ellided...
> 
> Thanks.  Very well written and said.  <bow>
> 
> I don't have much to add other than that I agree.  I also find myself in
> a halfway house.  I have almost no interest in RP, and don't enjoy RP,
> yet I'm not a straight power-gamer.  I just find RP irrelevant and
> mildly distracting.  I'm a systems player.  My interest is the system
> and the functioning of that system.  I want the sense of disecting and
> redefining an actual organic living thing when I play...  

Very nice way of putting it.  When I play, I feel like a 9 year old with a
chemistry set if the game is _really_ good.  I note with some interest the
social structure within the muds I play, and I've noticed that the
strongest character bonds are formed OOC between the players, who then
have their characters befriend the other player's character simply to
continue the OOC friendship.  Those ties have always been secondary for
me, with the game mechanics taking the spotlight.  I'm one of those
players that likes to press buttons to see what they do, and get very
upset if they do something strange (worlds should be internally
consistant!!!!) or worse yet don't give me any interesting buttons to
press. I like to find bugs (but I do report them!!!), and take it as a
sign of immortal indifference if they are not fixxed.  Mudding for me
reaches a pinnacle of excellence if I can PowerGame, but I cannot 'game
the game'.  I wonder if this is possible, or if one derives itself from
the other...I certainly haven't seen it.

> The social
> aspect of MUDs is entertaining, even fascinating, but the attempts to
> make that society into a reflection of RL societal forms, or to model it
> after RL forms is distasteful.  
Not so much distasteful to me, but uninteresting.  I talk to people I'd
rather run through with a sharp object all day long.  (customer service) 
I don't like the thought of doing the same thing in my free time and not
getting paid for it.  I've tried RP on a few occasions, but it doesn't
take very long for my characters' homicidal tendancies to isolate
themselves from the virtual community.  I found it simply impossible to RP
a decent, rational person for some reason...maybe because I'm forced to be
decent and rational with indecent and irrational people in daily life.
(Hack and Slash can be very theraputic)

> I've been following the current threads
> on jerk players with much interest and deliberately little comment.  I
> strongly suspect that many here would consider me a jerk player.  A
> couple examples, referenced before, probably illustrate:  On MUD1 there
> existed a paper bag.  The bag internally was comprised of two rooms. 
[snip]
> Very quickly the bag game changed to:  Find as many players
> as you can and put them in the bag, then get the dragon and drop him in
> too, peer in the top to watch the slaughter/fun.

I see this as more of an experiment to see if it could be done.  Finding
such an inconstant object within the game begs for it to e used in tis
manner.  'Jerk' would be reserved to the player who systimatically
attempts to keep the number of connections as low as possible by killing
off players as quickly as they relog for an extended period of time.  I
personally wouldn't mind befalling to the fate of being trapped in the bag
with the dragon once (maybe twice), but it would get old if it was a
regular thing to be snatched up unprovoked and sent to my death.  An
interesting twist would have been to reserve the ability to do this trick
to the first player who discovers it...

> I am a GoP player in JeffK's terms.

Okay...what does GoP stand for? been seeing it for a month now, and been
assuming its something along the lines of PowerGaming (Game or Playground
player???)

> Sellers championing of societal forms for MUDs has also gotten me
> thinking.  Raph has commented before, and I agree, that a MUD society is
> the one thing that comes along for free with a MUD, and is also the one
> thing you can't remove.  However, Seller's approach to trying to
> simulate an MUD-internally consistant society, essentially an RP society
> based on treating the MUD world as a morph of RL and transplanting
> mutated RL societal forms to it bugs me.  I'm not clear on the extent to
> which it bugs me, but it does really bug me at a very fundamental level. 
> There is an aspect of this approach which seems expressly counter to
> what I'm trying to do with the game and its societies.  Then again,
> perhaps it is my conservative/libertarian roots showing thru.  Perhaps
> it is the inherent narcissism of such internally self-referential
> societies which bugs me.  I'm not going to delve there now. 

What has bugged me with some RP muds is forcing a particular society on
the game.  The society should form as a natural extension of the
characters existing within the gameworld, and any artificial constructs to
circumvent the gradual utilitarianism of mud society gets 'in the way' of
actually playing the game.  Society in RL has formed as the most useful
way for mankind to survive.  Mud society should be an equal tool for the
mud denziens to flurish.

> For me the interest in a MUD society is functional.  I'm interested in
> it as a functional reaction to and attempt to gain survival advantage
> over and within the game.  To this extent the societies are abstracted
> from the game, but are equally products of the game.

Exactly.

> In another light
> the societies and the game are mutually predators, mutually prey,
> symbiotic parasites, with the key difference that each exists selfishly
> and with some attempt to be an internally closed system.

Hrm...may this only be true of some externally imposed society?  A society
that forms around the game (characters banding together for mutual
protection...sound like a familiar concept?) could be viewed as a predator
upon the game as players would seek dominance over the gameworld (natural
human tendancy to control one's environs...the key IMO to separate humans
from other animals is this tendancy to adapt our envirnment to us, and not
the reverse).  However, the game would serve as a fostering parent to the
society, especially if the world is immersive, internally consistant, and
dangerous.

> Its not something I immerse myself in as a replacement reality. 
> It is however something I admire and experiment with _as_ a replacement
> reality without assuming that reality.  It is for this reason that the
> paper bag and B52 above are so neat.  They are expressly *interesting*
> features of a replacement reality.

They are the nifty reactions I got in my chemistry set.  Things that make
you sit back and think *wow*, *nifty*, or at least *heh*.  The best
outcomes are the ones that first make you think *nifty*, then after
thinking about it *dooh* for not anticipating it, which in retrospect you
had every reason to expect.

Thank you for reminding me to view my design as a player.  I keep looking
at it as a future admin, and in the process lose track of where I should
be headed.

Derrick