[MUD-Dev] Re: Character development [was Re: ]

[J C Lawrence]

On Fri, 17 Apr 1998 07:40:46 PST8PDT 
Travis S Casey<efindel at io.com> wrote:

> On Mon, 13 Apr 1998, J C Lawrence wrote:
>> Travis Casey<efindel at polaris.net> wrote:

>>> Now, what *should* a guild be... that's another question.  :-)
>> 
>> There is a more fundamental question that I raised the last time
>> this area came up:
>> 
>> What problem in the game-universe is the guild an attempted
>> solution for?
>
> Does it have to be a solution to a problem?  

Umm, yes.  The problem may be IC, OOC, emotive, social, cultural,
physical (RL or virtual) etc, but it must remain a "problem" in that
its something whose solution adds to survival (subjective quality of
life is a survival metric if only on the morale count).

> Or, rather, does it have to be a solution to any problem other than
> the fact that humans like to congregate together, and tend to do so
> with those like them?
 
Positive re-inforcement and all those other tags apply.  Group
behaviour is definitely a survival trait, especially in the classical
friends and allies model.

>> Turning this around:
>> 
>> If there were no guilds, but everything else in the game was the
>> same, would the players form "guilds" even without any server or
>> hardcoded support?  If so, why?  What survival threat in the
>> game-world would the players be attempting to mitigate or prevent
>> via guilds?

> Not everything in the game has to revolve around the players -- if
> the NPCs in your world would logically form themselves into groups,
> then those groups should exist, whether or not the players would
> want to join them.

Quite.  For logical consistency of course one would presume that those 
NPC structures exist due to survival pressures in the NPC's existances.

>> Once you have the answer to that question you can approach
>> designing your guilds in a way that is both acutally useful in your
>> gameworld and doesn't have logical inconsistencies with the rest of
>> the game world.

> I agree... I'm just pointing out that guilds don't have to be a
> solution to any problem that the players have in order to exist, and
> that they don't necessarily have to "solve a problem" in the sense
> of helping survival -- the "problems" they solve may be purely
> social/emotional in nature.

<nod>  We agree explicitly -- I'm just using a broader pen than thee.

--
J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw at null.net
(Contractor)                               Internet: coder at ibm.net
---------(*)                     Internet: claw at under.engr.sgi.com
...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...

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MUD-Dev: Advancing an unrealised future.