ramblings on resets and other random things

[Travis Casey]

There's been a bit of talk in other threads about long-term player
goals, allowing players to have a permanent effect on the game world,
and other such things.  These are all good things to have, IMHO.  The
major obstacle to these things is resets; if parts of the mud keep
resetting themselves back to a base point, how can you have long-term
continuity?

There are lots of ways to get around the need for traditional resets;
organic resets, permanent storage of changes, etc.  I don't think I 
have anything new to contribute in that area, so I'd like to talk about
something else:  Why have resets in the first place?  (Yes, I am going
somewhere with this.  Please bear with me.  :-)

The primary reason to have resets is because of the coder-player
time disparity; that is, it generally takes a lot longer to set up an 
area/quest than to explore/solve it.  Coders are therefore averse to
setting up things that will only be used once, or even a few times;
spending weeks of your life to set up the quest to destroy the evil
wizard Fribozz only to have it be experienced by one player for a 
couple of hours seems like a huge waste.

GMs of paper RPGs have the same problem, but they have a few options
that mud builders usually don't:

 - Reuse the same adventure with a different audience.  I have a
   low-level D&D adventure involving a group of goblins that I've
   run about a half-dozen times -- however, each time it's been for
   completely different people, none of whom even knew anyone who
   had been through the adventure before.  Since they have no idea
   that I've run this adventure before, their belief in the game
   isn't affected.  This doesn't work in muds because there are
   normally still characters around who have been through the 
   adventure before.

 - Make it up as you go along.  By coming up with a general outline
   of an adventure and then filling in the details on the spot, you
   can greatly reduce the time it takes to prepare the adventure.
   Mud builders, however, usually aren't around when the
   characters start into the adventure.  Even if they are, the 
   necessity of entering things into the computer instead of simply
   making them up and telling them to the players makes it near-
   impossible for the builder to keep up with the players.  Lastly,
   not everyone has the knack for this; even many paper GMs can't
   pull this off successfully.

 - Run the same adventure, but "redress" it.  For example, change
   the map a bit, turn it sideways, make the orcs into gnolls, and
   have the kidnapped princess be a mage's familiar instead.  A
   paper GM can usually combine this with making it up on the spot,
   by simply taking the materials he/she already has and remembering
   to say "gnoll" instead of orc, substituting the right stats on
   the fly, etc.  This one is possible with muds -- indeed, if you
   have access to a good search-and-replace function, it can be
   fairly easy.  However, having to redo a quest for each and every
   character who comes through rapidly gets old.

There is, however, another option -- reusing old pieces of several 
adventures to make a new one.  I think that this option is very
applicable to muds.  Many builders routinely create a new area every
time they come up with a new quest or adventure idea.  However, that's 
not really necessary -- there's no reason why areas, NPCs, items, 
and other things can't be reused, possibly with modifications.

To take the famous(?) "rescue the princesses from the orcs" 
quest -- why not use the same orc tribe in other quests from time
to time?  For example, maybe an evil wizard who wants to conquer
the area charms the orc chieftain into helping him.  Or a plague
could break out, but rumor has it that the orc's shaman has been
able to cure orcs who get it -- can you find out his cure?

Of course, individual NPCs can be reused as well -- does the princess
ever do anything *besides* getting captured by the orcs?  Maybe she's
going off to finishing school, and the king needs someone to escort
her safely there.  The same goes for locations; ever notice how many
muds seem to have forty or fifty different inns, in each of which you
can hear about exactly one quest?  Why not just take an existing inn,
and add a new script to the barkeeper's repetoire to describe the new
quest and how to get there?

This brings up a closely related topic -- cooperation among builders.
For this sort of reuse to work best, it's necessary for builders to
be willing to either let other builders modify their areas, or to
install changes for other builders.  A good model to use might be the
shared-world anthology, like Thieves' World -- writers were free to use
each others characters, locations, etc., but had to ask permission to
do anything major with them.  (Of course, in a mud, they'll probably
need to ask permission to do *anything* with them.)  There are also
"shared areas" -- pieces of the world that aren't "owned" by any writer
in particular, but which everyone can use.  In a traditional fantasy
mud, the main city might be such an area -- someone would need to be
in charge of changes, but there's no reason why any reasonable change
for a new quest should be refused.

The muds I've been on have seemed to have little of this kind of 
cooperation -- not because builders were hostile to each other, but
because no one seemed to even think of it.  IMHO, it makes good sense
for creating a changing world.

By reusing existing pieces of the mud, it might be possible to make
a new quest in a few hours or a couple of days -- and lowering the
level of effort to make a new quest that much would make one-shot
quests more feasible.  It can't completely replace resets by itself,
but it could provide a necessary amount of permanentness and "spice"
to a world built mainly on organic resets and other such ideas.
--
       |\      _,,,---,,_        Travis S. Casey  <efindel at io.com>
 ZZzz  /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_   No one agrees with me.  Not even me.
      |,4-  ) )-,_..;\ (  `'-'        rec.games.design FAQ:  
     '---''(_/--'  `-'\_)      http://www.io.com/~efindel/design.html

--
       |\      _,,,---,,_        Travis S. Casey  <efindel at io.com>
 ZZzz  /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_   No one agrees with me.  Not even me.
      |,4-  ) )-,_..;\ (  `'-'        rec.games.design FAQ:  
     '---''(_/--'  `-'\_)      http://www.io.com/~efindel/design.html