[MUD-Dev] Motivating people

[clawrenc at cup.hp.com]

In <9707250216.89el at ami-cg.GraySage.Edmonton.AB.CA>, on 07/24/97 
   at 11:24 PM, cg at ami-cg.GraySage.Edmonton.AB.CA (Chris Gray) said:

>...Discussion needs to be seeded. Chris
>L. does that every now and then, but really, others of us ought to do
>that too. ... and I'm certainly not as
>subtle as Chris L is!

<kof>

<sputter>

I'm subtle?

>So, I would say that if you want activity on your mailing list,
>you're going to have to find something that interests the list
>members, and start a discussion - something a bit controversial, but
>not too much so. And no, its not going to be easy, and all your
>effort could be for nothing if you don't get lucky in your topic and
>handling of it.

Good point.  That's something I've done here often enough.  A
generally good case is to take a recent post, find a common assumption
that the majority of the rest of the list is already known to agree
with, and then deliberately disagree, and create a world model,
hypothesis, test case, scenario or whatever where that point is NOT
true, or is true in a very very different way, and write about that.

You'll get instant response as your membership finds their tacit
assumptions challenged, and a lot of new thought and creativity can be
sparked as they realise that there are many more ways than one to
approach any common problem of model.  

Note that you can't go *too* far out as you'll then lose them totally
and they'll just write off you and the post as a temporary aberation. 
I have a hard time restraining myself from going so far out, and so
instead spend my time creating fun and amusing scenarios which tie the
far out weird ideas back into commonly accepted playbility/fun/etc. 
(cf the Trash Collectors, the Orcs, the mana system, the body
stealing, etc).  This way the odd stuff remains outlandish, but they
have an enjoyable garden path to lead them into thinking that this
really odd new stuff might actually both be fun *and* interesting. 
ITMT you also get to test out your ideas by trying to actually wrap
them around something in a game world -- an very useful thought
process.

--
J C Lawrence                           Internet: claw at null.net
(Contractor)                           Internet: coder at ibm.net
---------------(*)               Internet: clawrenc at cup.hp.com
...Honorary Member Clan McFUD -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...