[MUD-Dev] multiple intelligences

[Brandon J. Rickman]

On Mon, 20 Oct 1997 09:54:09 PST8PDT "Travis Casey"
<efindel at polaris.net> wrote:
>>Brandon J. Rickman <ashes at pc4.zennet.com> wrote:
>>I've only read the first few sections, but the "types" of intelligence are
>>pretty easy to fathom from their names: linguistic, musical,
>>logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal and
>>intrapersonal (there may be others).

>I'd like to point out that character "intelligence" can exist in multiple
>ways.  One way might simply be a rating, which has no explicit game effects,
>but which the player is expected/required to roleplay.  At the opposite
>extreme, the character might be set up to automatically take certain
>actions -- e.g., defend him/herself from attacks.  In the middle, a
>character's
>intelligence(s) can be used to manipulate the data that the player receives
>from the game.

The most satisfactory use of this last type is when you call it
"perception" (specifically in Chill, anyone know others?)  But, of
course, all these different types of intelligence are only useful
_within_ the game context, and in most mud-type games the
"roleplay" intelligence scores pretty low.

>IMHO, character intelligence is a good thing, and players should be required
>to roleplay their character's intelligence.  (That's a little less onerous
>in my ideal mud, since I think players should be free to design their
>characters within limits.  Thus, if you have to play a really dumb
>character,
>...
>what many muds already have -- I don't like the "type kill and wait" combat
>style.

So with required roleplaying you really need to figure out how the 
computer/mud environment actually enhances the roleplaying 
experience.  Keeping track of details unrelated to personal
character stats would be my concern, if I was concerned with a
high roleplaying environment.

>>Further, a multiply intelligent character wouldn't be as horribly crippled
>>by a single low score in one area, unlike AD&rnt/D where low INT almost
>>guarantees you will get roasted by the next evil magician.  There might
>>actually be some challenge in playing a character with intellectual
>>shortcomings, or a disproportionate skill in one area.

>I don't see where low INT does much of anything in AD&D -- saving throws
>vs. spells are based on class and level, and sometimes on WIS or DEX, but
>almost never are affected by INT.  Still, there are other systems where
>your point is true.

Yes, I was fudging the D&D lore a little.  And unless you play by-the-book
D&D, the stats, high or low, don't really matter much at all to the
game.

>I think it should be mentioned that "intelligences" can be factored into
>other attributes -- for example, in AD&D, spatial and bodily-kinesthetic
>intelligence should be considered part of dexterity, interpersonal
>intelligence should be part of charisma, and intrapersonal intelligence
>should be part of wisdom.  Musical, linguistic, and logical-mathematical
>seem to be left in the "intelligence" attribute.

One possible extention of this is that the raw stats (INT, DEX, &c) 
only indirectly relate to what you have called attributes; dexterity
(as opposed to DEX) is a weighted average of BODY-INT, DEX, and FOO.
If you don't like doing the calculations on the fly you can cache
them (eating up virtual storage but not disk space, eh?).  And,
to add a little more humor to this post, you could create the
"your INT is now you DEX" spell, possibly very useful against
swarming insects or other low-intelligence monsters.

>Another note that should be made is that all of the intelligences seem
>to correlate very well in the real world -- that is, if you're good at
>one of them, you're probably good at the others as well.  Thus, it may
>be more efficient (in the sense of having fewer numbers to keep track of)
>in a realistic game to keep one intelligence score and allow advantages
>and disadvantages that change specific intelligences (as GURPS does, for
>example).

No, no, no.  The whole point in bringing multiple intelligences up was
to clearly split the functions of intelligence into _unrelated_ areas,
where ability in one area has no direct/discernable effect in other
areas.  Otherwise we might as well say, "Most characters have average
abilities and they should not be able to excell in any skill beyond a
standard deviation."  If you treat intelligence as just one big
number, as most muds do, then "equal" characters will always have
the same intelligence score.  This is crap.  Any game where my
character is statistically indistinguiable from any other is simply 
an optimization game, i.e. I want to take the shortest path to the
next level because my level is the only thing(*) that distinguishes my
character from the others.

(*) In an objective sense.  I may be a better roleplayer, or at least
a more enthusiastic roleplayer.  Or I may be a truly outstanding twink. 

>Which is not to say that separating them is a bad idea -- doing so would
>make it more apparent to players that they can have them vary from each
>other, and would also be natural for a mud that doesn't have advantages
>and disadvantages among the options in character creation.

I think there may be an optimal number of stats for a specific game,
but this optimum is rarely realised in the current state of mud.
More is better.  I think we've argued about this before.

(I'm willing to take a big gamble in making unusual tradeoffs between
database (disk space) size, virtual (world space) size, and 
perceptual complexity.  Gosh, that almost sounds like my thesis.)

- Brandon Rickman - ashes at zennet.com -
While I have never previously found a need for a .sig, this
may be considered one for the purposes of this list