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

[Travis S. Casey]

On Tue, 25 Aug 1998, Caliban Tiresias Darklock wrote:
> I personally witnessed Travis Casey jumping up to say:

> And through initial introduction! If your players are introduced to the
> world through things that whack you in the face with THIS IS A GAME, then
> you're not going to have the same mindset as if you go through something
> like a lifepath generator (R. Talsorian's "CyberPunk 2020" has been a great
> starting point for my efforts in this). The key is to give the player a
> perception that his character is not a playing piece, but a REAL person
> with real goals, skills, and background. MUSH style gaming often does this
> by requiring you to write a detailed background for approval by one of the
> staff. I find that this works really well, but is very labor-intensive for
> the staff.

Yep... indeed, when/if I get to set up my "ideal mud", I'm planning on
using a web forms-based character generator (to make it easier to use a
lifepath or point generation system) and require approval.

> >As I've said before, my
> >definition of roleplaying is playing a character as if it were a real
> >being existing in a real world, instead of simply a playing piece in a
> >game.
> 
> I'd agree here, but...
> 
> >Thus, from my point of view, increasing the "realism" of the game
> >automatically encourages roleplaying.  
> 
> I have to take exception here. There are a lot of things that are realistic
> (hunger, thirst, bathrooms, disease, crime, procreation) but are NOT FUN
> and therefore distract from the true effort of playing the game. The player
> ends up *fighting* the system instead of working with it, and eventually
> has to resort to the sort of activities (scripting, triggers, etc.) that
> encourage viewing the character as property rather than as a separate
> living creature. 

I think we're in agreement, but just not seeing it.  Let me make one
statement that may shock some of the people here:  roleplaying is not
always fun.  IMHO, in those cases where it looks like roleplaying and fun
are going to collide, roleplaying should yield -- since I want to create
games, not simulations.

Thus, while I think that greater detail always encourages greater
roleplaying, because it helps the player understand what the character is
going through, that doesn't mean that I want to use the maximum possible
level of detail in my games.

[I use "detail" here instead of "realism" to make it clear what I'm
talking about, since "realism" has several meanings.  IMHO, the most
important meaning of "realism" in RPGs is "plausibility," and that's what
I generally mean when I use "realism."  

Hmm... maybe I should post my old rant about meanings of realism here
sometime...]

> >> and *ongoing*
> >> problem solving is very difficult to code. 
> >
> >Possibly.  No one's done it yet (that I've seen, at least), but that
> >doesn't mean it can't be done.  
> 
> Precisely why I called it "very difficult".

Well, I'm not even sure that it's very difficult... although that's
getting into being a matter of opinion.  It takes a lot of work, yes, but
I'm not entirely convinced that it's difficult work.

To try to make it more clear what I mean, imagine building a wall.
Putting one brick on top of another isn't difficult, but building a large
wall is still a lot of work.  In the same way, I don't think there are any
really hard problems involved in an automated or semi-automated mud
"puzzle generator," but there are lots of little problems... enough that
no one's actually made the effort yet.

> >Limiting the scope of what you're doing always
> >makes it easier -- the trick is in knowing what's broad enough to stay
> >interesting for a good length of time while still being small enough
> >to be easy to implement.
> 
> Yeah, that's the hard part, isn't it? We're all basically shooting in the
> dark on this, when push comes to shove. :)

Yep... and I think there are several different marks out there to hit as
well.  Some mud concepts will appeal to group A but not to group B, and
vice-versa.

--
       |\      _,,,---,,_        Travis S. Casey  <efindel at io.com>
 ZZzz  /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_   No one agrees with me.  Not even me.
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