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

[Richard Woolcock]

Adam Wiggins wrote:
> 
> [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.

Hmmm I'm not entirely convinced.  I can see your point though.

> > (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.

Even if he gets attacked?  Most stock muds I know of will make your character
defend themselves - and you can set a wimpy level to specify at which point
you are so damaged that you will flee.  I have also coded 'anger' which
makes you strike out at people randomly from time to time, 'fear' which
prevents you initiating combat and makes you try to run away as often as
possible, 'love' which prevents you attacking the person you love, and
forces you to follow any orders they might give, and a couple of other
(not relevent) 'emotions' which can force your character to do things against
your wishes.  To be honest they are just very simple bits of code, but its
the idea I'm trying to get across.  In real life people are often victims
of emotion, so why should you be different in the mud?

This isn't quite the same as I was suggesting above, but its on a similar
wavelength - how much control should your character have without you?

> 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.

Interesting side note - if my players have no Linguistics (skill) then
whenever they speak their sentences are 'distorted' (often with swearing
and so on added).  They don't see this, but other players do - the 
result is that people who can't speak properly often end up insulting
other players.  On a similar note, when I get the time I plan to code
'ass scratching', 'nose picking' and so on for players with no Etiquette.
Of course, they won't see that they are doing it (because it will be
an unconsious act for them - they have no manners).  I don't consider
this to really be 'loss of control', as the player is unaffected (and
ignorant) of what they are doing.

> 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.

Yes but you have to remember that while playing the character, you are 
unlikely to feel real fear, pain, or whatever.

> > 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.

This sounds like a good compromise...

> Personally, I like to remove the characters from the gameworld.  They
> are 'asleep' because their consciousness (== me) has left them.

This is something I'd like to change in my mud.  However I don't think I
will take control away from players unless they 'quit'.

> > 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.

Interesting :)  I could quite nicely slot something like this into my
player recognition system for (vampire) players in frenzy.  Mind if I 
borrow the idea?

> 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.

Yes it can be very annoying.  I was just curious to see if anyone had
coded anything similar, and if so - how well it worked out.

KaVir.