[MUD-Dev] Re: Room descriptions

[Koster]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Adam Wiggins [mailto:adam at angel.com]
> Sent: Monday, September 28, 1998 2:48 PM
> To: mud-dev at kanga.nu
> Subject: [MUD-Dev] Re: Room descriptions
> 
> First of all, Raph, I think your perception of the "accepted wisdom"
> is a bit off the mark.  

I'd call it the "accepted wisdom" on this list, rather, and also the
"accepted wisdom" in the various building manuals and the like on the
Net...

> While it may be true that the "don't-impose-feelings-
> on-players" school of thought shows itself often in area 
> writing guides, this is RARELY put into practice.  I don't think I've
ever 
> played a mud which didn't use the word "you" at least a few times in
room 
> descriptions; most use it copiously.  This despite the fact that area
> writing guides always state that the word "you" is a no-no and should
not
> be used.

Right; area writing guides say don't so it. Poor builders do it anyway.
The results are dreadful, and I don't quarrel with that. Allt he
examples cited thus far (vampire facing sunlight, little girl drowning,
and your own vampire in the crypt) are AWFUL examples of area-writing,
regardless of whether the intent is to impose emotion or not. The
accepted wisdom is that it should not be done. Sure, accepted wisdom is
poorly put into practice, but that's not my point, really.

What I am interested in here is whether there are good ways to impose
perspectives (more than emotion per se, I am interested in forcing the
player to experience reality differently) that are not getting explored
here on the list because we are all convinced that a full interactive
environment that is determinedly non-narrative is the way to go.

> So my view is that the whole method of writing an area by imposing a
> storyline and emotions upon the viewer/reader is actually 
> done to death.

Is it done to death because people are trying to do it the other way and
are bad at it, or is it done to death because people are actually
seriously trying to take a stab at doing it right, though?

> Legend is probably the most extreme example of this method, 
> and does an
> extremelly good job.  This is true of much more than just the room
> descriptions, I might add; if you recall the conversations we had over
> email long before either of us had joined mud-dev, I took 
> exception to the inflexible story-based nature of the quests, while
you 
> assured me that this was Legend's whole goal.

Yes, Legend was always a heavily narrative environment. But I would sya
that it does not go anywhere as near as, say, Physmud++, which was, as I
recall, going to include things like forcible alteration of one's
experience of the environment based on forcible changing of the
character's personality (cf the love potion that I remember fondly from
descriptions).

> So given that this method HAS been done to death (does anyone disagree
> wit this point?), I find more sparsely described locations 
> (rooms) which have a higher degree of interactivity and changability
much 
> more appealing to work on, just because I feel that it has rarely been
done, 
> and never done well.

Let me state that (obviously) I have no problem whatsoever with making
an environment like that; UO shares a lot of that design goal. What I
was trying to raise was the issue of whether that's the right or the
only direction for muds.

> This all began the very first time I played a mud, where I 
> made my way through the typical mud areas.  It looked something like
this:

[snip great example of bad area building]

>   When I started to realize that it was all just text and 
> very little actually *did* anything, I was extremely disappointed.
Rather than 
> walking through an interactive world, as I had been led to believe, I
was 
> actually walking between props much like those fake buildings they 
> used in the old Hollywood westerns.

I had the same experience, of course. I imagine we all did. But I would
not call the goal of having a fully interactive environment even
necessarily contradictory to what I am discussing. You can have a fully
interactive environment that still imposes a perspective or a worldview
on the player, I would think. 

> And yes, one of the *first* things I implemented when I got a 
> chance to code
> was having the extra descriptions in the room respond to 
> object manipulation
> commands with generic messages other than "You don't see that 
> here." 

Ah, good. :)

>  Of
> course, it's just as frustrating in the end to me.  If you 
> can't interact
> with it, what's the point of it being there at all? 

There's a lot of things which you may not be able to supply useful
interactivity for but which may serve great atmospheric or narrative
purpose. If there's a dense fog swirling in the room, are you really
going to code a physics system capable of handling it being dispelled by
a fan, when all you needed was the impact of seeing fog?

>  As you 
> say, Legend is
> a special case, and does what it does very well.  But I think that the
> other extreme, the one that you refer to as "accepted 
> wisdom", is rarely
> done, and has never been done to the same extreme.

I'd agree that it has not been done to the same extreme. I'd question
whether Legend took what it does to a very great extreme, actually. I'd
say that there's a lot more there to explore, and I am wondering how
many people are exploring it. (Notice that I personally am NOT, really;
I brought up the topic basically in order to get people to examine
preconceptions and assumptions).

I personally happen to think that maybe the narrative thing if done
well, could be a great teaching tool, an interesting experience, and
also perhaps a lot more accessible to people than a freeform environment
with no direction. That doesn't mean that it's better than the current
accepted approach--I am not syaing it's the right way to go, but maybe
it's not the WRONG way after all.

-Raph