[MUD-Dev] Commercial value of RP

[Mike Sellers]

At 07:42 AM 1/10/98 PST8PDT, Miroslav Silovic wrote:
>Mike Sellers <mike at online-alchemy.com> writes:
>> Not only that, but it doesn't always work.  I heavily RPed several
>> (okay, many :) ) incognito characters on M59, and only rarely was
>> the RPing picked up.  I once challenged a guy to a duel in fairly
>> florid language, and his only response was "yah, whatever dude."
>> Sigh.  If the environment doesn't encourage RP, those who make the
>> effort will soon give up even trying.
>
>Eventually I concluded that the main ingredient to the ammount of
>roleplaying you'll see on the MUD is the ammount of user-to-user
>interaction necessary to accomplish any given goal. 

I guess that depends on how you define roleplaying and how you define
in-game goals.  In M59, people had to cooperate to kill the yeti or to turn
on all the braziers in the underworld, or to get a token to the
duke/princess, but I never saw much in their interactions that I'd call
real roleplaying.  Same with in UO with people cooperating at making armor
or shirts or mining ore so they can buy a ship or a tower together; it's a
common goal, but it doesn't introduce much if any roleplaying.  Or maybe my
sights are just set too high.

My best memories of RPing have to do with seeing the world through my
character's eyes in a way that had some personal or emotional impact.  My
favorite "Call of Cthulhu" character, Guido Lentini (gangster and member of
a family that controls a large cheese-making empire :) ) has worked with
others in the group towards common goals using everything from bribes to
his favorite SMG; but the real *roleplaying*  comes out in times when I
have had to choose to help one character over another based on Guido's
relationship with each, not with my relationship with the players behind
them, or when I have had to react based on Guido's view of himself and the
world.  

This is difficult to describe, but I think to some degree it comes down to
the relationship between plot, theme, and character in fiction: our
characters live (via our roleplaying) only to the extent that we are able
to flesh them out.  The events that happen and the goals they are working
toward are the plot, but this is just a lifeless string of events unless
there is some theme, likely different for each character but no less
personal and real for that, that binds the whole together and gives it some
human context.  

Another way to look at this is contained in the story of Beowulf, as it's
changed over the centuries.  As I understand it, the story progressed along
lines something like this:

1) We went out.  We killed the monster. 
2) We went out.  We killed the monster.  We came home and got drunk.
3) We went out.  We were scared.  We killed the monster.  We came home and
got drunk.
4) We went out.  We were scared.  We killed the monster.  We saved our
village.  We came home and got drunk.

Most RPGs/MUDs/etc are at 1) or 2) above: just the external facts, perhaps
with a little heroic celebrating.  The addition of the internalization
evident in 3) is signficant, and is the beginning of real theater,
roleplaying, and satisfying fiction.  With 4) we see the beginning of the
addition of the theme, the human-mythic context that makes the story
*meaningful* and adds human context to the string of events.  That, I
guess, is the kind of thing I'm going for in my games (tabletop or online).
 I continue to think that there is immense commercial and human value in
this, but that actually doing it is no easy feat.


--

Mike Sellers   Chief Alchemist -- Online Alchemy   mike at online-alchemy.com

"One of the most difficult tasks men can perform, however much others 
may despise it, is the invention of good games.  And it cannot be done 
by men out of touch with their instinctive values."  - Carl Jung