[MUD-Dev] Re: Room descriptions

[Hal Black]

On Sun, Sep 27, 1998 at 03:37:45AM -0400, apocalypse at pipeline.com wrote:
>  
> ALL quotes following are From: Hal Black :
> 
> >Thus, the main objection is probably to the fact that most descriptions are
> >viewer-independent, and therefore really not a true perception.  
> 
> And why shouldnt they be? What should a room say?
> what the viewer wants it to say? what the observer
> wants it to be within his perception? I'd have
> to say no on all counts. The room itself is independent
> of the viewer, its not part of his anatomy, but now
> walking into the room he has to do that complex task 
> every living thing does all the time. Cogitate, infer,
> and search. 

Maybe I'm missing something, but you seem to be arguing at cross-ends here.
You say first that the room itself is independent of the viewer, not part
of his anatomy, but you then say that divorcing feelings and sensations
generated by the entity's anatomy from the room is bad.

> How is being "viewer dependent" any truer a perception
> than what we alread have? Your just forcing the viewer
> to see a different perception..Who are we to say what
> they see? they're all different, they're all the same,
> they're seeing it without my knowledge, and without
> my knowing whats inside their head. So, how is saying,
> a stodgy old vampire takes no notice of the sun, or a
> baby must put the gum in his mouth (maybe he already did
> and dosent like used gum), or the business woman 

An infant will put anything it can get a hold of into its mouth.  Try it
sometime.  And remember, we can have that child's whole history if we want.
If the child has tasted gum before, the game engine can know.

> cares about her shoes...maybe shes rich, and LIKES having
> an excuse to buy more shoes, how is ANY of that any
> more a "true" perception than the room descriptions

Well, if she is rich and likes to have an excuse to buy more shoes, the
fault in the description would be that it not specific enough to her,
more context-placing needs to be done.

> in say Raph's post???? How do we know? We don't,
> and I would say that to get a "true" perception of
> the room, we let them percieve it, within the guidelines
> we establish, for the story-line we are advancing,
> to the ends we wish. Theyve come to us to be told a 
> story, to be put into another "reality", to play within
> our universes. Lets let them do the work they want to do,
> imagining.

It is more "true" because hopefully we can reduce a lot of the absolutely
false things that are portrayed and trigger emotions and imagination.
(more on this in a bit)

> >"Glorious sunbeams pierce the fluffy cumulus clouds here and bring joy\n\
> >to your heart as they caress your face.\n"
> >    }
> >
> >Obviously this is not viewer-sensitive as has been pointed out earlier.
> 
> Again, it, by pure force of what it is, must be
> independent of the viewer. And in so doing, has the power
> to make the viewer act in a huge array of ways. From
> a few lines of text, you have just caused that bored
> vampire (maybe...just maybe) to reflect, to pause, and
> maybe if he read it, and the room is designed to do so
> he may interact, maybe that sunlight episode, causes
> him to search out the means to aid himself...Maybe
> it causes him to search for a cure, to attain the power
> to be IN the light again. And in purely game terms, it
> adds depth to those that perceive its meaning, AND
> in so doing maybe some cynical players complain, and
> the ones who see what its trying to do, explain it,
> thereby increasing the enjoyment and immersion for all.

On my mud, if that was a static room description, here is what would happen.

    > exit cave
    [first comes the room description]
    Glorious sunbeams pierce the fluffy cumulus clouds here and bring joy
    to your heart as they caress your face.
    [player thinks, what the @#$@?  I am a vampire, is this some kind of
     joke?  Goodbye immersion.]
    [now the player gets some information about what is happening to his
     body]
    You yell a harrowing scream, a scream more profound than any mortal man
    can know as the flesh melts from your body like the paraffin of a statue
    from a wax museum in a kiln.

And to answer your question, who are we to say what a given person feels
when they are in a given locale?  We are the gamemasters.  If you design a
race of creatures, take a fictitious race that I will make up that are like
drow elves, for instance.  Much like cave-dwelling salamanders and fish,
this race has somehow evolved to not have pigmentation or protection from
the sun.  This race will therefore have evolved to hate the sun.  Because
perhaps in the world I've created, being blind, crippled and burned by the
sun makes one sterile at best.  So, anyone of this race without an
instinctive fear of the sun will die.  Thus, by natural selection, 99% of
this race will have a fear of the sun.
 And because we are trying to place this person in a role, we as gamemasters
should not tell them to feel something that is out of character with something
they DO feel.  This race will not be caressed by the sun, they will be burned
by it. 
  As another example, take someone playing some kind of magma-dwelling
creature.  Certainly they will have different feelings and reactions to a
swimming pool compared to a human.  They will likewise have different
reactions to the lava pit.

> 
> >It is much like those point-of-view narratives they used you make you write in
> >grammar school.  Write about your room from your point of view, your mom's 
> >point of view, your cat's point of view, and a roach's point of view.  The
> >challenge is to write room descriptions the same way.
> 
> Id argue those assignments were meant to look outside yourself,
> and in so doing to "see" yourself. A very true wisdom is the
> fact that its hardest to see yourself. By trying to
> see outside yourself, you see what you miss everyday. And
> again, this is exactly what that great sunlight-vampire 
> example does, its perfect.

I agree that given the context of Legends, playing the role of a young boy,
if just for a minute, can give a vampire great insight.  Maybe this happens
in a dream, the vampire dreaming when he was a young boy.  Great, fabulous.
But NOW, he is CHANGED.  For a vampire to see the sun and find pleasure
in it is a very big assumption that will not fill all cases.  For a vampire
wishing death, yes.  For a vampire trapped in a well as in the movie
"Interview with the Vampire"  (I can't remember what happens in the book
exactly, but that scene in the movie was very vivid for me), not by choice,
would invoke quite a different reaction.  That's why I think we should 
just provide hints when we can, and leave the imagination to the player.
Nothing is more frustrating for me as a player to be told that I'm feeling
something that I'm not.


> >One of the things that I have planned for my mud is to do some observer-
> >specific rendering of sensations.  Certainly everyone doesn't see things the
> >same way, or even notice the same things.  This may even extend to context.
> 
> The first part is interesting, and merits exploration. The 
> second part however, is a self-proof of why a room
> description must be not conforming to EVERY 
> viewpoint. If sam and mark walk into the room, and sam
> sees one room, and mark sees an entirely different room,
> in the SAME room...How can that be possible..Your doing
> what you didnt want to do, your forcing mark to NOT 
> see what sam sees, however minutely or broadly...Who is to say
> mark DOSENT see what sam sees and vice-versa?

If Sam and Mark are twins, certainly they will see almost exactly the same
things.  However, if Sam is blind and Mark can't smell, they will certainly
need different descriptions of the perfume shop if you really want to put the
player in the role they are playing.

> If you leave the room description alone, and write
> it cleverly enough once, it will evoke the myriad
> of responses and reactions your looking for.
> I cant even begin to think of a description that
> wouldnt work for everyone. The room description
> is a magical thing in my eyes. It has so much power
> in so little space. Try this one...
> "The room is clogged with a greasy, black, oily smoke on which
> you cough."

What if I'm in a spacesuit in this room.  I have my own, pure air supply.  For
me to read this sentence would mean that my suit has been compromised.  Maybe
it has, and then I would certainly cough.  But not by default.  Imagine the
frustration of a player in a spacesuit who came into this room, found himself
coughing, and took the suit for repair.  They find nothing wrong with it, so
he comes back.  Same problem.  Soon they have an entire scientific team show
up to debug the suit in the field.  Etc, etc.

I would prefer something like this:

Mark not wearing any protection.
    > go west
    [first he sees the room description]
    This room is clogged with a greasy, black, oily smoke.
    [he takes his first breath in the room]
    As you inhale, your lungs burn and you start to cough.

Sam in his spacesuit.
    > go west
    [first he sees the room description]
    This room is clogged with a greasy, black, oily smoke.
    [he takes his first breath in the room]
    You inhale the clean air from your spacesuit.
    [or maybe there is no message at all??]

Sam in a leaky spacesuit.
    > go west
    [first he sees the room description]
    This room is clogged with a greasy, black, oily smoke.
    [he takes his first breath in the room]
    As you inhale, your lungs burn and you start to cough.
    [Sam thinks, hey, there is a leak in my spacesuit.]

    
> >For example, a cannister labeled "Bio-hazard" will certainly attract more
> >notice in a day care building than in a pharmaceutical factory, where there
> >may be hundreds of such cannisters.
> 
> Oh thats backwards...A pharmaceutical facility, like shipping companies
> like chemical companies do daily drills on how to clean up
> and prevent toxic problems. They live, and breathe to not mess up.
> They notice every canister, its position, its condition, etc..
> (This I know from first hand-experience working at a plant
> where "back-planes" for all kinds of computer devices were made).
> I was doing network design, and I was reminded daily of hazardous
> areas/items/procedures, and i was nowhere near the toxic stuff that
> they lay down over the "copper tracks" on the boards.
> And a daycare center? why would they take more notice?
> Would they know what the symbols meant? it could be a tank
> of helium for all they know, they have NO idea what it is,
> means or does, it has no relevance to them. They leave it
> there, until someone freaks and says "OH GOD!! get it out!!
> its toxic!!"..

You are in a pharmaceutical facility.  There is a day care facility there for
the children of the employees.  There is also the research lab, where the deal
with a lot of hazardous material.
  It would seem to me that it would be more remarkable to find a bio-hazard
waste cannister in the nursery than in the research lab, where things are
daily parts of the job.
  This is almost on another topic though - what the user sees when he walks
into a room that he's been many times before.
  For instance, in my real-life apartment, I have a pretty cool table.  The
first 10 times I walked in and saw it, the only thing I saw in that room
was the table.  I'd think, damn, I love that table.  Then I bought an
entertainment center that is too big for my tiny apartment.  Now, I walk into
my apartment and the only thing on my mind is "that entertainment center is
too big in there."   I don't see my cool table anymore, unless I am sitting on
the couch looking at it...  Then I think... "that's a cool table."

> MY OPINION : Why do we have to spoon feed them a "stack of boxes?"
> as an independent room item, thats part of the problem already, 
> most players lack imagination, thats why they're bored. They're 
> getting spoon fed too much info, or in the case of a "bad" 
> description, too little. Games in general appeal more to us at 
> a younger age, and the ones that force us to imagine,
> within a set of defined inputs, (for me at least) 
> were the best.

I think situations should be descriptive as possible...  But where appropriate.
Otherwise, as a player trying to play a role, I just feel angry when I am
forcefully removed from my role by the engine telling me to feel a certain way
when I wouldn't, or when someone starts talking about the home-run race in
a medieval game.