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

[Adam Wiggins]

[Richard Woolcock:]
> Derrick Jones wrote:
> > > Correction, the characters YOU play are puppets. Or at least you
> > > believe so.  How can you be so certain that my puppet isn't me?
> > Pretty much so.  You'll still wake up tomorrow if my game-world proves too
> > dangerous a place for your puppet to survive.  My design is even friendly
> > enough to allow your puppet to exist if the real world proves too much for
> > you to handle.  (Do you know the difference between the two? If so, then
> 
> This may be going a little off-topic, but if your 'puppet' can exist without
> you, is it really a puppet?  In your mud, is your character:
> (a) A 'mud' person, who's personality you temporarily replace with your own

If you *replace* their personality with your own, it's not role-playing,
which is (I thought) the whole point.  The idea is that you create
a personality for them and then play that personality to the best
of your abilities.

> (b) An empty shell, a 'puppet' which just sort of sits there without you.

I don't know what kind of muds you've been playing, but my character does
just sort of sit there without me.
As for single-player PC games, generally your character has a bit more
built-in personality - in most side-scollers, a long delay without
player input will cause your character to get bored, start looking around,
scratching their ass, whatever.
Characters are indeed empty shells.  The difference is that I insert
a personality which I created for that character, and which exists in
my own head.  So while the personality may *belong* to me, it is not
me.  It may or may not be anything similar to my own personality.

> This is a serious question - I know at least one person on this list is
> doing something with players being 'spirits' who take over bodies when they
> want to interact with the real world (or something like that).  Another
> way of thinking about it...when you log off, if your character didn't 'vanish'
> or 'go to sleep' would they (a) flop on the ground, maybe twitching a bit, or
> (b) go down the pub (or whereever else they usually hang out)?

JCL's system (the one to which you refer) has scripting for characters,
whether they are currently being 'played' or not.  So the answer is both
a and b, because they will just stand around if you don't tell them to
do anything specific, and they will go to the pub if you script them to.
Thus the player never looses control of their character, even when they
are not playing.
Personally, I like to remove the characters from the gameworld.  They
are 'asleep' because their consciousness (== me) has left them.

> I suppose you could even expand on (b) - perhaps the body will do things if
> left alone for a while?  or maybe it'll answer back to some of your 'commands'
> with things like "Attack the dragon?  What sort of idiot do you think I am?".
> However I don't personally like taking control away from players, unless
> they are drunk or something.

Another popular area of contention on this list.  I *like* directing the
character's actions according to their instincts, whether the player
agrees with this or not.  The most prominent example being the berserker
rage - while in it, you have very little chance of controlling your
character.  You get no status reports about wounds, nor are you affected
by wounds except for completely debilitating stuff such as missing limbs.
All characters show up as 'your enemy' or 'your foe'.  Attempting to do
anything to anyone (such as pat them on the back) will generally turn
into an attack on the closest person.
I think this is a lot of fun, but I can see how others would find the
lack of control annoying.  Most of our control restrictions are a lot
simpler - not being able to pull an arrow out of yourself due to a
low pain tollerance, for example.