[MUD-Dev] Usability and interface and who the hell is supposed to be playing, anyway? (Was: PK Again)

[Travis Casey]

Caliban Tiresias Darklock <caliban at darklock.com> wrote:
>On Friday, September 19, 1997 4:43 AM, Miroslav Silovic
>[SMTP:silovic at petra.zesoi.fer.hr] wrote:
>>
>> On Xyllomer MUD, for example, there is a bard guild, and they do have
>> musical instrument skills. The trick is that there is also a songbook
>> objects. You spend a few hours writing the actual song, and then
>> showing it off to the people in the inns. While spammy, many people
>> actually /like/ writing poetry (particularily about the recent events,
>> as bards are supposed to do), and many more in fact /like/ listening
>> to it.
>
>And where exactly does the game mechanic of your character's skill in
>musical instruments enhance this process? Or to put it more simply,
>couldn't I just as easily do this *without* having a musical instrument
>skill? Just say 'join the Bard's Guild, and you will be automatically
>assumed to have some reasonable measure of skill with a musical
>instrument'? Why should there be a 'lute' or 'lyre' skill that I have to
>spend my time and effort in improving and maintaining?

I think you're making a possibly unwarranted assumption here -- that the
musical instrument skills on Xyllomer MUD are non-binary.  The mud could
be doing it exactly as you describe, and still describe that as "having
musical instrument skills."

>More specifically, if I have a 98% in my music skill, but in RL I write
>really shitty poetry, am I getting the in-game respect that I would deserve
>as one of the outstanding master bards that my skill obviously reflects?
>And if I have a 5%, but I write really great lyrics, am I still considered
>a crappy wanna-be bard?

Player-player interaction is not the only kind of interaction there is.
Musical instrument skills could be useful in interacting with NPCs.

To go off on a tangent for a moment, there is no such thing as a useless
skill -- only a skill that isn't useful in a certain set of situations.  If
there's a skill that's useless on your mud, it's only because you haven't
thought of and added uses for it.

To give a few examples with musical instrument skills:

- Some magical items could be musical instruments which must be played
correctly
  in order to work, or which work better for characters with high skills in
using
  them.

- Many creatures in myth and legend use song to lure victims.  In these
sorts of
  legends, humans with excellent musical skills are sometimes able to save
the
  victims by singing or playing.  There's no reason why such a thing
couldn't
  be set up on a mud.

- Bards might work their magic via singing or playing -- i.e., their musical
  skills could be factored in to determine whether they succeed in a spell.

For more ideas, check out AD&D's bards, the Greek legends of Orpheus, or any
fantasy series in which music figures in magic -- e.g., Alan Dean Foster's
_Spellsinger_ series.

>> I am. Saying that someone is a 'black' says nothing about his or her
>> psychology. Saying that someone is a powergamer is a purely
>> psychological qualification and therefore very relevant.
>
>Address this from the religious angle, now. Isn't a person's choice of
>stated religion indicative of their psychology? What makes someone a
>Christian? A Jew? A Moslem? A Satanist? Don't all of these groups have
>their own beliefs? You're trying to tell me that to say "let's get rid of
>group X" across the board is on some level ACCEPTABLE?

I'll say that it is, when speaking of muds.  The admins of a mud are like
the owners of a house who are throwing a house party -- it's their
house/mud,
and they don't have to let in anyone they don't want to.

Before someone attacks me as racist/sexist/religionist/whatever, let me say
that I don't believe that anything but a person's actions should make a
difference in whether or not they get to play on any mud that I run --
however,
if other people want to run their muds differently, they have a right to do
so.  (Of course, this sort of issue can get very complicated -- if admins
are
running a mud on a machine that belongs to a public university, can they
limit
who can come in, since the public is supporting them?  Assuming that they've
bought their own machine and pay for their own network connection, though, I
don't see any reason why they shouldn't be allowed to run their mud however
they wish.  I wouldn't play on such a mud, but then, they probably wouldn't
want me there.)

>> > What if English isn't my native language? What if my vocabulary isn't
>quite
>> > as good as yours? How do you handle verbs that have multiple meanings?
>>
>> What if I am illiterate? What if I am stupid?
>
>There is a difference between knowledge in a different area and knowledge
>on a different level. I feel relatively certain that there are several
>subjects I can bring up about which you would know jack shit. The converse
>is also true, you can probably bring up several things I know nothing
>about. That doesn't make either of us illiterate or stupid. It makes us
>different, and it is this very difference that leads us to game in groups
>in the FIRST place.

I'm not sure how the above paragraph is meant to apply to the subject of
natural language interfaces vs. traditional command-based interfaces... even
command-
based interfaces built by English speakers tend to use English sentence
structure
implicitly, and are therefore going to be more challenging for non-English
speakers.  (E.g., "put red sword in bag" -- what if the user's native
language
would structure such a sentence as "sword red put bag in")
--
       |\      _,,,---,,_        Travis S. Casey  <efindel at io.com>
 ZZzz  /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_   No one agrees with me.  Not even me.
      |,4-  ) )-,_..;\ (  `'-'        rec.games.design FAQ:
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