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

[Adam Wiggins]

[Richard Woolcock:]
> Adam Wiggins wrote:
> > 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.

I should point out, of course, that this becomes less true as you
move the focus away from role-playing.  I would say that, in general,
the average diku or lp player *is* their character as far as personality
is concered.

> > 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.

Yeah, we have a lot of stuff like this, mostly to add flavor but
sometimes for gameplay purposes.  We do simple sentence distortions
for some characters with low intelligence where we replace every occurance
of 'I' or 'I'm' with 'me' or their character's name.  Thus you get
'me break down door' or 'thugg break down door.'  Others with low
intelligence see the sentence as it was originally written.  By the
same token we have a certain race who is know for its pretentiousness.
We insert 'thee's and 'thou's in the proper places to help this along.
Naturally others of the same race see the sentence in its original form.

> > 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.

Fear or pain as a physical reaction, no.  That's left to my character.
I may well feel these as emotional impact, however - fearing for ones
character as one might a favorite pet.  I've also seen mudderes
wince in pain or even cry out when their characters are severely hurt.

But yes, your point is valid for the physical sensations, which is why
we have code to handle it.  This does take control away from the character,
but it adds to the game IMO.  See my example about the wimp with an
arrow in his leg.

> > 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'd like to change it as well, but Orion and I discussed it at great 
length and finally decided that we couldn't settle on any improvement.
We certainly don't want to require scripting, nor do I consider any
script intelligent enough to deal even mildly well with the complex
stimuli in our world.  If you've got any other ideas, I'd like to hear
them.

> > 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?

Go for it.  It's not completely mine - there are plenty of muds which
gag your hitpoint display or shut off your ability to flee when you
berserk, which is where we started from.  However, we were watching
this terrible movie called 'Eric the Viking' (rent it if you get
the chance, it's the best bad movie I've ever seen), and there was
a character called Sven the Berserker.  He would constantly fly into
rages at the wrong time, which resulted in him trying to headbutt
a dragon the size of the goodyear blimp (with his father, also a
berserker, yelling 'No Sven no, not now!'), and later on he couldn't
get himself mad enough to go berserk during a real battle (which had
him hopping around banging his forehead into things trying to make
himself really mad).  We decided that the form of berserk which is
currently popular is far to controlled and straightfoward; we wanted
something which players could try to control, but which mostly controlled
them.  All in all, berserkers don't live a real long time.  But dang
are they fun while they last.

> > 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.

I love this sort of thing; it really brings me into my character.
It's one thing to have a character description which says, 'He is of
the finest upbringing and cannot tolerate the slightest discomfort.'
It's another thing to be lying on the ground bleeding, unable to pull
the arrow out of his skinny little leg.  I can understand how someone
might dislike this, however.