[MUD-Dev] Commercial value of RP

[Travis Casey]

Brandon Cline <brandon at sedona.net> wrote:
>On Wed, 31 Dec 1997, Travis Casey wrote:

>> I believe that any well-designed, realistic mud will make a good 
>> environment for roleplaying.  To explain why, let me first give my 
>> definition of roleplaying:
>> 
>>  Making decisions about how your character will act based on the 
>>  character's personality, rather than on such bases as what will give
>>  the most advantage in the game or what must be done to win the game.

[further explanation cut]

>Not to repeat JCL's point, but using Travis's opinion of
>what "role-playing" is, is "that" a viable comercial pursuit?  The
>comercial RPG games atm, seem to have the ability for "role-playing" but
>in a competitive game, where possibly the players are paying by usage, or
>advancing through time spent, are they going to be willing to put forth
>the extra effort to "role-play" and/or is/will the game reward the players
>for role-playing?  Basically, if the game can be played without
>role-playing, how will you get the people to role-play.  Also, if not
>everyone is willing to role-play, how do you keep the ones that don't from
>detracting from other peoples ability to role-play within the environment?
>
>  In approach to some of those questions, I agree that first off, a
>realistic and well designed, interactive world/environment is a must,
>either that or a very flexible world structure like some of the Mush/muse
>etc bases.  

Personally, I doubt that many people on a commercial mud are going to 
roleplay much, if at all.  IMHO, most of the players are probably never
going to have been exposed to muds before, most will never have played
paper RPGs, and even those who have experience with muds or paper RPGs
won't have actually roleplayed (using my definition from above) in them.

The majority of players will (again IMHO) be familiar with the concept
of an "RPG" only through single-player computer "RPGs" -- most of which
do not encourage or even allow roleplaying.  They'll be used to games
where the emphasis is on finding the right way to accomplish the goal,
not on choosing goals for your character.

This doesn't, however, mean that all hope is lost.  You can encourage
and enforce roleplaying in many ways.  A few that spring to mind:

 - Limit information.  Even experienced roleplayers often have trouble
   keeping "what the player knows" separate from "what the character
   knows."  It's possible to move some responsibility for this separation
   onto the mud itself -- e.g., by having "recognition" routines which
   give names for people the character knows, but only descriptions for
   people the character doesn't know.  You can also limit how much
   information players have about the exact abilities of their characters
   and their equipment, and limit the amount of information you give 
   about the game system -- the idea being to force players to build an
   idea of what their characters can and can't do through experience
   rather than by an analysis of the rules.

   Naturally, you'll never achieve *perfect* player/character "firewalling"
   through this sort of thing, but it can help.

 - Try to keep things "realistic".  If the game world works like a real
   world, players can make judgements based on "what would really work"
   and have confidence in them.  If it doesn't, then players are reduced
   to trying to figure out the rules and "work" them.

   Note that this means it's difficult to get people to roleplay in
   "silly" games.  I'm not saying that it can't be done... just that
   it's harder.

 - Allow players to choose their own goals.  Many games are designed with
   the idea in mind that players *will* do certain things, with no thought
   given to whether those things are logical.  A classic example is giving
   out experience points for killing monsters and nothing else -- such a
   system strongly militates against anyone choosing to play a non-violent
   character.  

   Under my definition of roleplaying, you really *must* allow players
   to choose their own goals for their characters in order to allow 
   roleplaying -- if the players must pursue certain goals, you're 
   limiting their freedom to choose their characters' actions in 
   accordance with the personality they've defined.

   This leads naturally into the next point...

 - Remember that players will do what they're rewarded for doing.  On a
   mud in which the best rewards are available by killing monsters, players
   will kill monsters.  If the best rewards are available by killing other
   players' characters, the players will do so.  This is really the last
   point taking a different form -- if players can choose their own goals,
   but can only be rewarded for a few of the possible goals, the choice
   becomes somewhat moot.

   [Aside:  this is why I like advance-through-use skill systems.  They
   allow the player to choose goals (which, if any, skills they want their
   characters to be good at) and reward them for pursuing those goals
   (advance the skills which the character uses most often).]

 - Lead by example.  Create one or more characters of your own and roleplay
   it/them on the mud.  

Basically, if roleplaying is your goal, keep it in mind as you design and
build the mud.  Consider changes on the basis of how well they will
support and encourage roleplaying.

One last comment... many people talk about rewarding roleplaying by 
giving out experience points or other in-game rewards for it.  Personally,
I think this is a bad idea, on two counts:

 1 - It encourages certain types of roleplaying over others.  In order
     to be rewarded for roleplaying, it's necessary for one's roleplaying
     to be *noticed* -- which means that players who wish to play shy or
     taciturn characters are at a disadvantage.

 2 - Judging the quality of someone's roleplaying is iffy at best.  It
     ultimately comes down to the judge's idea of what the player's
     character is like vs. the player's idea -- if the judge's and the
     player's ideas are close, the judge will likely think the player
     roleplays well.  If their ideas differ, however, the judge is 
     likely to think that the player is roleplaying poorly -- when it
     may be that the judge simply doesn't have a good understanding of
     the player's conception of the character.

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