[MUD-Dev] Re: Room descriptions

[Travis Casey]

Some random thoughts inspired by this thread...

On rec.games.frp.advocacy, there's an idea of a "group contract".
This is an agreement among the players and GM(s) of a particular
gaming group about how the game will work, what sort of behavior is
acceptable, etc.  In most cases, it's an implicit contract rather than
an explicit one, but it's still a useful idea.

This idea is applicable to muds too.  The way Raph's describing it,
part of the group contract of Legend is that players may be put in
situations where their character's personality is going to be changed
(e.g., when you're supposed to be experiencing things as Beowulf, at
that point, you should be trying to emulate Beowulf's personality, no
matter what your character's normal personality is).  In such a case,
I don't see any problem with descriptions telling you how your
character feels -- the describer knows what your character should be
like in that place.

Some of us work under a more traditional group contract, where the
personality the player sets up for the character is supposed to be
sacrosanct.  In such a case, room descriptions should not tell the
players how their characters feel, since not all characters will
necessarily feel the same way.

Thus, I think the best answer to Raph's question is:  it depends on
the mud, and possibly on the place in the mud.

--
       |\      _,,,---,,_        Travis S. Casey  <efindel at io.com>
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