[MUD-Dev] Life

[Jeff Kesselman]

At 09:04 PM 6/2/97 PST8PDT, you wrote:
>On Mon 02 Jun, Adam Wiggins wrote:
>
>> > I am a roleplayer. The game to me is about story.
>> > If you kill out my character before I have had a chance to fully
>> > explore that story you have taken soemthing very personal and precious
>> > from me.
>
>> Ah...another good analogy.  Unfortunately, there's a small problem with it
>> that I think is point of my argument.  *When*, pray tell, is the novel
>> complete?  Never?  When you decide it's complete?

To answer this in short, from my perspective... usually yes, wehn the
roleplayer decides its complete.  Usually a character hits a reasonable
"retirement" point where most of the potential in its immediate story has
been exploited.  Like any author's character howevre it may come "out of
retirement" from time to time as a supporting character or for a "short
story"...

Where then, you ask, is the place for death? (He said, anticipating the
question). Why do you VEER have death other then when rthe player decides
its time?  The answer is the percieved danger thing I was talking about.
Without the tension of percieved danger, it is hard to develop a character
psychologicly or develop its story (which are really  part and parcel of
the same thing.) In a typoical roleplay game however tehre are 2 elements
to that danger-- the player's actions and a judge's actions.  The judge's
actions are for the BENEFIT of the player.  It benefits the player to have
acertain level of challenge but that challenge is carefully managed to keep
it reasonable.
A judge who throws 10th level NPC against his 2nd level players doesn't
have a game group very long.  

Similarly a game that allowsd such to happen is likely to lose its
roleplayers.

It goes deeper then this, though.  The judge has NO agenda.  It is not his
goal to wipe out the PCs.  His goal is to give them a good challenge that
they cna liekly overcome. In contrast, in a PvP situation, the other
players' goal is generally NOT to amuse the player they are attacking, it
is to amuse THEMSELVES at the potential expense of the other player.

Does this lay out the differences clearly enough?  

JK