MUD Development Digest

[Dr. Cat]

> Date:  Wed, 7 Jan 1998 13:49:12 -0600
> From:  "Koster, Raph" <rkoster at origin.ea.com>
> Subject:  RE: [MUD-Dev] Commercial value of RP 
> 
> On Tuesday, January 06, 1998 7:18 AM, JC 
> Lawrence[SMTP:claw at under.Eng.Sun.COM] wrote:
> 
> > > On 29 Dec 97 at 13:39, JC Lawrence wrote:
> >
> > >>  Something that just struck me is that all the commercial
> > >> representatives we have on the list seem to espouse their games as
> > >> being RP games, and discuss their values in terms of the RP values
> > >> generated by their games.
> 
> Jon A Lambert<jlsysinc at ix.netcom.com> then engaged in some back n 
> forth which I've snipped to get to the next bit:
> 
> > Yes, but I'm looking at the more specific point that all of our
> > (active) commercial members strongly espouse the traditional RP values
> > of their games (ie immersive story based strongly characterised etc RP)..
> > JeffK was particularly vehement in this regard, tho Raph and Mike
> > also seem to concentrate on the traditional RP value set.  Even Dr Cat
> > (rarely seen here alas) would seem to be pushing a traditional RP
> > positioning for his game per his web pages.
> 
> Jeff was indeed quite vehement on it, in that his game is actually 
> attempting (noble attempt indeed but boy, scary in a commercial sense) 
> to model tabletop AD&D gaming to the smallest detail they can manage. 
> Yikes.
> 
> Dr Cat is from a MUSH background, and Furcadia is very clearly a 
> FurryMUCK in graphics, in many ways. So I'd go beyond "seems to be 
> pushing." :)

A few words before I vanish back into my hole.  The ISP that I had before 
would invariably bounce back any mail I tried to send to this list, our 
benevolent list-admin has fixed the problem for me by switching my 
subscription to one of my more reliable email accounts.  I still won't be 
posting to the list often - I'm too busy trying to get startups going & 
stuff to talk about the work much, as opposed to just doing it.  (See 
http://www.timesink.com for the latest, if you're curious.)  And I must 
confess the amount of list-traffic is way too high for me to find time to 
read it all, let alone reply.  But hey, I saw my name mentioned.  :X)

I'm actually from a MUCK background, and my partner 'Manda is from a MUSH 
(and to a lesser extent, MOO) background.  And our design goals and focus 
for Furcadia are a bit different, though with plenty of overlap.

When I discovered the MUD world, I figured they were divided basically into 
combat muds and social muds.  Later, it seemed to me I should be putting 
them in three categories, rather than two.  Combat is one category, but 
the "non-combat" group really consists of social and roleplaying.  These 
are somewhat related - particularly on muds like FurryMUCK, where there 
are strong "I want to roleplay" factions and "I just want to chat" 
factions that sometimes butt heads over what the world is supposed to be 
for, and what conventions for behavior should apply in the main public 
gathering spaces.

Anyway, to oversimplify, 'Manda wants mainly to develop, push, and 
promote the roleplaying aspects of Furcadia, whereas I mainly want to 
push the social aspects.  We also try to promote the ability to build 
your own areas, put out art and music patches, play around with games and 
puzzles other people made, or make your own with the scripting language.
(DragonSpeak is designed to be easy rather than being designed to be 
powerful, and has a number of design decisions and tradeoffs worth of a 
whole seperate post, I think).  There's no one catch phrase that could 
really sum up "why you should come play" without it appealing to only 
some of the audience that might enjoy it, while turning off others.  It's 
a tricky marketing challenge.

'Manda has said in the past that out of 10 people, you might get 6 
socializers, 3 combat-oriented types, and 1 serious roleplayer.  But her 
belief is that the roleplayers generate the events, stories, settings, 
etc. that entertain and draw in the other 9/10ths of your audience, so 
it's important to nurture it.

She's recently modified her theories to split up roleplaying into two 
subcategories.  There's the kind of roleplaying she's used to from places 
like AmberMUSH, and then there's "Persona Play", for people who just want 
to play "let's pretend", kind of like kids playing cops and robbers one 
day, and cowboys and indians the next.  Continuity isn't important, rules 
just take time to learn and slow you down when you're trying to play.  
These players often shift between their light roleplaying and socializing 
in a very fluid fashion, not feeling any need for a sharp division 
between the two activities the way serious roleplayers do (using terms 
like IC and OOC frequently for clarity, setting aside special areas, 
channels, etc. to support/enforce the distinction, etc.)

We're going to revise and extend the worldmaps this year with clearly 
labelled areas for roleplaying, socializing, meeting new people (a very 
different thing from going to socialize with people you already know), etc.
Hopefully this will work well.

Ok, that's my chatter for 1998, hopefully I can find excuses to stay 
quiet for another year now.  :X)

*-------------------------------------------**-----------------------------* 
   Dr. Cat / Dragon's Eye Productions       ||       Free alpha test:
*-------------------------------------------**  http://www.bga.com/furcadia
  Furcadia - a new graphic mud for PCs!     ||  Let your imagination soar!
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