[MUD-Dev] Re: Marian's Tailor Problem

[Brandon Cline]

Koster, Raph wrote:

> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Dr. Cat [mailto:cat at bga.com]
> > Sent: Friday, August 14, 1998 4:54 PM
> > To: mud-dev at kanga.nu
> > Subject: [MUD-Dev] Missing MUD-Dev post (fwd)
> >
> >
> > I don't have much to say about this, other than I think you're
> > probably right.  If nobody has any desire to solve the Marian's Taylor
> > Problem in a way that's emotionally satisfying to tailors, as opposed
> > to a way that's emotional satisfying to warriors, then I don't think
> > you're ever going to get much in the way of active discussion about
> > MUSH-style approaches to roleplaying issues here.
>
> I'd love to solve Marian's Tailor Problem (a new scenario to match
> Dragon's Dinner?). The problem is that it is couched right now in terms
> of a game that ALSO supports combat. In a game that doesn't, it's not a
> dilemma so much as it is a lesser administrative problem--still one
> worth talking about, but not nearly as daunting. So far the solutions I
> have seen just about all involve changing the context. So let's frame
> the difficulty:



> In a setting which supports violence via a number of direct and indirect
> means, how do you let the non-violent players play without being
> impinged upon by violence?

Or if that's not possible, what degree, frequency and over all effect is
acceptable from said violence...  I.e. mugging, robbing, killing etc?Also,
if said tailor is then protected from violent acts, would he/she be able to
perform them?  What "area" if the tailors domain would be protected?  If
this was all somehow achieved would the tailor being put out of business by
the guy down the street be just as detrimental to his "playing the game" as
being killed in front of his shop would?

> And harder, how do you do it without human intervention?
>

One design direction I seem to take when looking at a few of the common
problems among virtual environments is to say, "What kinda of world, or
effect in the world would lessen the impact of this problem?"  I.e. if
there is no general who list "within" the game, and maybe no direct tell
<person> type command, how hard would it be to avoid "continuous"
harrasment from one player in general...

> Clearly, if you remove the "supports violence" bit, the difficulty just
> about all goes away.
>

There are a number of issues in a virtual roleplaying environment that seem
to arise from the attempt to remove "violence" totally from the world that
are just as daunting and hard to solve as the initial problem itself, which
is why I believe most of us don't go in that direction...

- Brandon Cline