[MUD-Dev] MUD universe

[clawrenc at cup.hp.com]

In <199709061919.VAA04808 at xs1.simplex.nl>, on 09/06/97 
   at 09:19 PM, "Felix A. Croes" <felix at xs1.simplex.nl> said:

>clawrenc at cup.hp.com wrote:

>> No.  You need to think of side-effects, and non-linear routes to
>> desired states.  Consider:

>Such a system deals adequately with two problems: quests cannot be
>solved with a fixed ordered list of commands, and quests are properly
>integrated in the mud's storyline without resets.

>Two more problems remain.

> - Repetitiveness.  Minimum knowledge required to complete the quest:
>exterminate orcs until a princess-like person is encountered, escort her
>to the castle to determine her identity, repeat until solved. Even
>though the global configuration might never repeat itself, the part that
>is visible to the player will.  After solving the quest, the player has
>had no lasting effect on the world.  Good heavens, did Her Highness
>wander off yet again?

True.  This is largely implicit in my view of the function of the MUD
world to my players.  Rather than attempting to create a working world
where the players are injected as components, I'm concetrating on a
world which is deliberately crafted as the plaything of players, and
where an implicit goal for players is to reduce the world and all its
mechanics to toy status (a player is "bigger" than a world, players
create worlds, worlds are things to be made, destroyed, tossed about
and forgotten freely).

This is parallels by the SimPeep population question:  Do you have a
hidden (virtual?) population of SimPeeps which animate and support
your world but which a player can never see (all the hidden villagers,
the invisible city folk, etc)?  I don't.  What you see is exactly what
you get.  No invisible population.  

> - Blandness.  I want the type of quest where the player has to
>realize that the princess' uncle does not seem very anxious to have the
>princess rescued, that the court jester has an orcish brother in law, that
>the king's advisor has a wry commentary on every possible situation. 
>Hints and cues -- which not every player might catch -- should lead to
>their logical conclusion.  All this is very difficult to accomplish with
>a dynamic non-linear system, because it requires the programmer to
>foresee every possible contingency.

True.  This is also a question of litarary crafting and plot
construction.  It might be possible as an extension of giving your
NPC's motivations and basic plot structures to attempt to accomplish
their motivations with (see prior threads on the area which touched on
this.  I recall Miro and Jon as prime contrubutors here).

>I want both a dynamic system with wandering and kidnapping monsters,
>and detailed non-repetitive quests.  That is what led me to adopt the
>parallel universe solution.

Capiche.

--
J C Lawrence                           Internet: claw at null.net
(Contractor)                           Internet: coder at ibm.net
---------------(*)               Internet: clawrenc at cup.hp.com
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