[MUD-Dev] interesting article on world size and finance

[J C Lawrence]

On Thu, 20 Apr 2000 08:31:48 -0600 (MDT) 
Fred Clift <fred at veriohosting.com> wrote:

> Due to various problems, I'm about 300 messages behind on mud-dev,
> so I dont know if this has been mentioned or not, but I found this
> article had some interesting views on travel in large worlds and
> on game economy.

> http://lum.xrgaming.net/rdot.html

So as to get this properly into the archives and thus indexed and
preserved for posterity (I'll also add it to the Library so that
becomes more of a useful shared DB):

--<cut>--
Thinking Bigger: Rate = Distance over Time
Issues in Online Multi-Player Game Development
An Essay for Developers by Delusion
(4/15/00) Delusion is a writer for "The Rantings of Lum the Mad". 
His past experiences with Ultima Online closely mirror Elisabeth
Kübler-Ross' stages of grief.

This represents the design goals I believe would create a new and
satisfying step forward in the genre of multi-player online
role-playing games. Direct examples from Ultima Online, Asheron's
Call, Everquest, and other games may be helpful in illustrating
specific examples.

Although I write this with the game developer in mind, it may be
valuable for players as well.  Too often, I think we as gamers get
used to the status quo and leave it to the game developers to ask
the big questions, like "What's next?".  If we don't want the next
generation of MRPGs to be about cybersex, eBay, credit cards,
camping, and laser-toting elves in leather bikinis, we'd best be
prepared to figure out what we do want them to be about, and to do
that, we have to address you, the developers, before you've made
your most basic decisions about your game.

Scale

A playing environment in this sort of game can, in my opinion,
probably not be too big. Ultima Online, a couple of years after
release, feels positively cramped, even on a new server.  Asheron's
Call features a world that is vast in comparison. Even so, Asheron's
Call will no doubt feel smaller a year from now than it currently
does, and honestly, it's shrinking fast as the number of
portal-casting item mages increase.

There's more to size than "length times height". Teleportation plays
a major role in how "big" a world seems. UO offers instantaneous
travel to anyone who really wants it, whether by direct casting of
the recall or gate spells, or through the purchase of recall scrolls
to use on a collection of purchased runes. To get from a popular
city on one end of the map to another popular city instantly is
trivial. In AC, the flexibility of instant transportation is greatly
reduced (especially for lower level and melee characters who do not
or never intend to add item magic to their skillset). The ability to
gate to a specific location requires more of a time investment in AC
than in UO - if you need any proof of this, compare the bribes and
rewards offered by other players for gating someone from Arwic to
Fort Tethana as opposed to a gate from Britain to Vesper, as well as
the frequency of the asking.

In addition to spell-based teleportation, it's built into the game
environment itself. In UO, moongates stand outside each of the major
cities like bus terminals for those who can't cast recall, as well
as certain other instant teleportation locales. In AC, there is a
network of one- and two-way portals. There are few locations that
are far out of reach of a portal, so with a little searching around
on various player web sites, you can find tools that make short
trips out of the most lengthy overland runs.

What if a game had no means of instant teleportation?

The most obvious effect is that the perceived size of the play
environment would seem much larger. There are advantages to this;
more so if the play environment IS actually bigger.  Making a
"distributed world" is possible, too: rather than have several
identical servers, each server would be different and players could
travel between them, though the travel should be difficult. This may
not be practical at all, if players tend to congregate in one area
of your world, and leave other areas empty. Detail to the proper
distribution of adventuring, socializing, and encounter locales
might be able to offset this "clumping" effect.

Economy

"Player-run economy" and "virtual economy" are often listed as
design goals in multi-player online games. Economy without locality
is hard to achieve. Locality is one of the reasons players create
their own spaces for trading - whether that be a cluster of
player-run vendors in a player-run town outside a city in UO, or a
weekly swap meet in an Allegiance Hall outside a city in AC. For
other players, locality isn't necessarily a goal, but a side effect.
Whatever the motivations of players, locality and economy stimulate
one another.

An instructive example taken from history is the town market
concept. In medieval Europe (and in some cities, before then), many
cities would set a 'market day' for people to peddle their
goods. Some sleepy English villages grew into major cities thanks to
being early adopters of this concept. Market day still exists to a
certain degree, I certainly saw it in England during my time there:
it was important to the community. The positive community effects of
this arrangement are nowhere near as strong now as they used to be,
as market day competes with the economy of scale when a shopping
plaza or mega-store opens up nearby. Although the benefits of
community versus convenience is a contemporary issue, it's not
exclusively so.  Regardless of how we feel this plays out in real
life, I think it's pretty clear that community is good for the
stability and longevity of online games, whether that be community
out of the game in the "extended play-space" of player web sites and
guilds, or a group of players who get used to seeing one another
in-game. In the realm of gaming, the "mega-store" mode of economy
(such as buying from anonymous NPC vendors who are always stocked
with the same items) is less beneficial to the game itself than a
player-driven economy: there's less value added when Jim's character
gets used to buying from Jane the NPC than when he gets used to
haggling a price with Fred's character, and the two start trading
with each other regularly, each adding value to the other's
experience.

I call this "local economy". It's an important concept that most
online games haven't embraced. The game design itself can lend to
local economy. Though none of the current games really attempts a
local economy, there's a slight difference between UO and AC that is
instructive.

In UO, game currency gold pieces are rather constant. Characters
store them in a bank, and those funds are available to them from any
other bank. Some NPCs selling large-ticket items withdraw directly
from characters' banks. To be in Britain and buy a house from a
merchant in Vesper, a player simply ensures his or her character has
the funds in that character's bank account (which of course follows
that character wherever it goes in the game), then travels to Vesper
- be it on foot or through teleportation - and makes the purchase
there. Players suffer no real inconvenience or loss by travelling to
Vesper and making their purchases than you would if they had
purchased it anywhere else.

In AC, game currency pyreals are still constant. Unlike UO, though,
characters have no banks.  Instead, they have a secondary currency:
trade notes. If someone wants a 10,000 pyreal trade note (which
represents a sum too heavy to be burdened with for any length of
time), the character pays 11,000 pyreals to an NPC. The 1,000
difference is a money-changing fee, and it feels to many players
like a service tax, which it is. If the character dies, about half
of the pyreals carried in hand are lost, but trade notes are never
lost. So instead of UO's secure bank, AC has something closer to a
secure wallet. When the character sells that 10,000 pyreal note, the
original NPC who sold it will purchase it back for 10,000 - any
other NPC will give 8,000. Instead of a 9% loss, a 27% loss. The
effect this has on characters is somewhat subtle, but it confers a
definite financial advantage to having a place to call "home" in the
game. This is especially true for those without item magic
teleportation. I feel the effects would be more pronounced on the
player-base if there were more big-ticket items to purchase in AC,
but even without it, it does encourage a small degree of local
economy.

If unlimited storage banks have a negative effect on local economy,
unlimited storage banks that a character can access from any city,
such as is the model of UO banks, is even worse. If you're going to
allow players to have what amounts to a safe deposit box, there
should be a game currency cost for this service per month, and if
it's not a fixed amount of storage, the price should increase as the
weight increases, and should be based on the highest weight amount
held per month. For instance, it might cost 3 silver shillings per
month if the maximum weight of the box in the month was 5 pounds,
but putting in a 100 pound suit of armor in the box (in this case,
more like a locker), even for the briefest of moments, would raise
the cost to 75 silver shillings for that month.

For currency banks, access to funds should be limited to the bank in
which funds were deposited. Most banks will probably limit currency
deposit to the currency of that realm: currency from other lands
will be accepted at the normal exchange rate, minus a fee. Some
border and port towns may allow different currency deposits or waive
the fee, reflecting a more cosmopolitan economy. A modest interest,
perhaps 1% to 5% per month, may provide a decent trade-off for this
extra layer of interaction. To avoid money transfer exploits, this
interest should be calculated on the minimum balance for the
month. With this additional source of money, it becomes important to
ensure that there are plenty of good reasons to spend it. A minimum
balance of 10,000 units, kept for 12 months and never withdrawn
generates 1,157 units in revenue at the end of the 12th months at a
1% rate, and generates 7,103 units in revenue at the end of the 12th
month at a 5% rate. Rates could even be different (and possibly even
fluctuate) in different banks to reflect the strength of different
nations and local economies.

What if a game had no means of instant teleportation? What if each
major city had its own currency?

The game engine itself would encourage local
economy. Computer-controlled monsters and NPCs might have a mix of
raw metals (and not just gold), and local currencies with an
emphasis on the currency dominant in the nearest civilized
lands. There would be fluctuating exchange rates based on the influx
of materials into a given kingdom. The exchange rates would hit
hardest those who had the most money and freedom to travel:
successful player characters. An enterprising character might be
willing to give you 240 gold Thujan crowns for your 2,000 copper
plugs from the next kingdom over instead of the 216 that the
NPC-controlled Commodity Exchange offers. What happens when the
local silver mine dries up? The currency of the Free City of
Harborstone might start using a lower fineness of silver for its
silver doubloons, making them worth less in exchange. This
complicates matters with the neighboring Principality of Bara, since
Harborstone doubloons and those of Bara used to be created similarly
and exchanged on par. The Prince might loose patience with the
situation, and finally have a means of convincing the Mercantile
Guild to support incorporation of the Free City into the
Principality, by force if necessary.

Trade

With local economy, and certain areas producing different raw
materials and trade goods than others, trade inevitably
follows. Trade between nations, trade between cities, trade between
guilds, etc. - some controlled by the game political engine and
NPCs, some controlled by player characters. In a world without
instant transportation, how do goods get from the buyer to the
seller? They travel by land and sea.

This implies merchant fleets and caravans. By merchant fleets, I
don't mean a boat like in UO where one person can stuff five tons of
metal armor on his one-man 30 foot sailboat and get it from point
Trinsic to Ocllo himself. By caravans, I don't mean a 200 strength
runner like in AC carrying 4 complete suits of Amuli armor from
Glenden Wood to his guild-mates in Cragstone.

Since our ideal world is a big place where travel doesn't occur with
a wiggle of the nose, let's assume a land-based caravan going from
one city to another. These two cities are at opposite ends of a
medium-sized nation, and perhaps that's a journey that covers one
twentieth (1/20) of the distance on the map, and it's either a
straight east-west or north-south line.  For comparison purposes,
one twentieth of the map in a straight line is half the width of
UO's Britain, or in AC, the distance between Nanto and Mayoi. Our
ideal world is much larger. Since these two cities are at opposite
ends of a medium sized nation, let's assume that's a distance
roughly equal to the distance between AC's Holtburg and Qalaba'r. I
can't easily put that into UO terms, because that distance would be
the equivalent of running from the southern tip of the main
continent to Vesper many times over. In AC, as a single character
with decent run, a flat out run without teleporting would take up
two hours or so, I believe. A caravan doesn't "run".

What happens on this caravan from Bylayve to Atsetal as it travels
the lands of the Kingdom of Estova? What attracts various sorts of
players?

A merchant character might be looking to earn a profit by purchasing
steel from the mountain town of Bylayve and selling it to the
shipwrights in the harbor city of Atsetal, and then purchase
glassworks there for the return trip.

A guild captain might be looking to get a large shipment of weapons
and armor purchased from the smiths of Bylayve to replace the
current guild finery, and from Atsetal, board one of the guild ships
for the final leg of the journey home, where his followers are
eagerly waiting for replacement of the sub-standard chain mail
they'd been using before the guild's newfound success.

The caravan consists of ten horse-drawn carts. Four carry the steel
shipment of the merchant.  Two carry the finished arms and armor of
the guild captain. Other carts are owned by other player characters
and NPCs who only have one cart of goods, or who share part of a
cartload with others.. Several of the people on the journey are
riding their own horses - in fact, the merchant has hired a bored
NPC to ride an extra horse he picked up in Bylayve: he wants to swap
out horses for his steel carts, since they're a little heavier than
a single horse can carry for that length of time.

Three of the other carts are owned by NPC representatives of the
Mercantile Guild of Estova, and they have two representatives along
on the journey. These two NPCs and the merchant and guild captain
discuss safety before leaving, and decide to hire a squadron of
mercenaries as a security detail for the trip. The mercenaries need
to be paid, and if any bandits (or worse) are encountered, their
standard contract gives them rights to plunder looted from these
adversaries after damages have been paid to anyone losing part of
their shipments. For their trouble, they'll take 3 gold Estova
sovereigns per day, rounded up. There are eight of them, and the
journey is expected to last four hours. They round up, so the
caravan leader will need to pay them 24 gold sovereigns at
Atsetal. The caravan leader has dealt with the mercenary leader
before, and they trust each other, so the caravan leader pays him 16
in advance. This is a contract between players, and not a part of
the game's interface, as PCs are involved on both sides.

What the PCs involved in the caravan aren't aware of is that the
mercenaries will actually be needed. There's a hostile nomadic tribe
heading through the area that the caravan doesn't know about, and a
straggling group of them will cross the caravan's path. They don't
like the King, and they blame his people for the murder of their
chief. Fortunately, the hunting party the caravan encounters number
only three, and one falls to his death during the brief skirmish.
When the caravan stops for water, two of the mercenaries need to
make camp for the day as their players' log out - they'll get
half-pay from the mercenary leader the next time he sees them, that
reduces the caravan leader's cost by 8 sovereigns, which means the
16 already paid is payment in full. Of course, the caravan's risk is
increased on the rest of the trip.

Obviously, an online role-playing game needs more than merchants and
heroes. What other sorts are served by a caravan?

       Travelers from one area to another who are not able to
       travel the route alone, have non-combatants, or who are
       travelling in a much more dangerous area than they're used
       to: everyone travels.

       Confidence men and nomads. Those accustomed to living on the
       periphery of society, gypsy-types, shady businessmen who
       need to leave town before word gets out.

       Assassins, road gangs, opportunists. Some might try to
       infiltrate the caravan, others might want to ambush it, try
       to overrun it when it's vulnerable at night, and others
       might have a specific target in mind. Of course, some may be
       crazed killers, but more about justice later.

       Monsters. Whatever your definition of 'monster', an attack
       on a caravan at 3:1 odds might be attractive. Intelligent
       civilized monsters might be attracted to wealth, and simple
       lumbering beasts might pass up a caravan completely if it
       doesn't smell of food.

       NPCs - nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd. NPCs would
       have the same sets of motivations as characters would to
       join a caravan.

Time

If the current crop of online role-playing games has taught us
anything about time, it's that trying to compete with Earth time is
a waste of time. Players don't use the in-game calendar to schedule
events: it's unwieldy, it generally has no connection to real time,
and there's no way to keep track of it out of game.

Whatever is done, time needs to follow an Earth standard, regardless
of what names you call the months and days.

In a truly large world, the time of day should not be a universal
constant. One side of a spherical world should be light, and the
other should be day. If tied to a 24-hour day, this poses an
interesting dilemma to players: If they usually play at the same
time of day, they might choose to live in a part of the world where
it's always 'day' during their play time. Or if they're villains, or
"wanted" in their country, they might be best served by living where
it's night during their playtime.

That's poses some unusual considerations. A better solution might be
to have a 48 hour or a 12 hour daylight cycle in-game. As has been
said before, tying to "real" time is necessary: if you don't do it
as a developer, your players will do it for you. If you have a 48
hour daylight schedule, you may have to come up with an in-game
reason the populace of the fantasy world keep track of time in
increments other than rotations on its axis. The standard list of
fantasy reasons come to mind, such as a planet that slowed down to
half its rotation speed, evil magic, a disruption in space/time;
keeping to a more "practical" reason might be more useful. Other
than the daylight cycle, the yearly cycle, and the lunar cycle,
human time is completely arbitrary and based on custom (the concept
of 'hours' is related to Catholic monastic schedules of the Dark
Ages, for instance) rather than laws of physics or mathematics.  The
more extreme faction of the French Revolution proposed a "day" of 10
daylight hours and 10 nighttime hours, each divided into 100 metric
minutes. I only use this as an example of the fungibility of time:
if you have a 48 hour daylight schedule, keep track in 24 hour days
and throw the discrepancy to historical and social custom rather
than crazy magic or weird planetary motion.

What is "Offline"?

Proper treatment of offline time takes care of many issues: travel,
trade skills, and sleep not the least of them.

A player log in his or her character, plays for a long session, say
eight hours on a rainy weekend. When the player is logged in, the
player's in control in control. Then you player logs off. What
happens to the character?

It's certainly not reasonable to assume that the character just
stands (or sleeps) there until the next time the player's ready to
play. Surely the character had better things to do than to stand
next to a bed at the inn during the six days the player went on
vacation.

What if players could utilize the offline time and assign tasks?
Given a proper progressive skill system, you could make offline time
more valuable than the macroing which otherwise might take place.

A player's character should be able to do things when the player
isn't minding him or her*.  For one thing, the character must
sleep. That's merely the most obvious thing to do after eight hours
of heart-pounding combat, especially for those swinging a 50 pound
two-handed steel blade.

What about those characters engaged in trade skills? "Playing" a
blacksmith character in a role-playing game seems like an
absurdity. Crafting a chain mail surcoat is an exacting task that
requires many many hours of work, a high level of skill, and is a
job, not a hobby.  Creating ten plate mail leggings in 20 minutes
stretches credulity beyond repair. More to the point, blacksmithy,
bowyery, carpentry and the like aren't "entertainment", they're
things characters do for a living - what's more, they shouldn't be
means of "instant gratification".

Deciding how characters spend offline time would be more realistic,
and could be used to replace a lot of the multiple-click tedium of
current online role-playing game trade skills.  Clicking 1000 times
to make 10 plate chests in 1 hour is neither realistic nor
entertaining.  Instead, when a player logs off, the player should be
able to choose how the character should spend that time. This can
either be a simple selection, or preferably a customizable
scheduler.

Choices as to how characters spend offline time should be diverse.

       Weapons training. Eight hours of actual combat should remain
       much more effective than eight hours of offline training
       with a sword master, but given the choice between having a
       character do nothing and having a character sweat it out in
       a training barracks, the choice should be obvious.

       Stats training. In a stats-based game, it might be
       appropriate to allow a temporary (or permanent in some
       cases) boost to statistics for offline time dedicated to
       self improvement. A period of offline time devoted to
       practicing public speaking might raise a "personality" stat
       by ten points for an eight hour period.

       Travel. In a huge world, this is an excellent way to make
       travel more equitable. Allow characters to choose where they
       wish to log in, and base the radius of their eligible
       choices by the amount of time they've been logged off. In
       order to lessen "flee exploits", allow any character who has
       been offline for more than four hours to choose where he or
       she logs in. A character who has been offline for five hours
       should have a smaller radius of login choices than a
       character who has been offline for 24 hours. A character
       that's been engaging in weapons training should have a
       smaller login radius than a character that's been practicing
       fishing, since you can fish intermittently as you travel. A
       character that's been engaging in blacksmithy may have to
       "give up" some of the offline time for his skill if he
       wishes to instantly travel when he logs in, since
       blacksmithy keeps a practitioner in a specific workplace. In
       order not to diminish the value of overland trade travel,
       characters specifying a new login point should be required
       to travel relatively light on their way there or deal with
       very limiting radius reductions if weighted down.

       Trade skills. Any such trade skill where high-quality
       crafted items or bulk consumables are created by an artisan
       is applicable. Allow offline time to be non-consecutive: If
       a full suit of plate armor takes 80 hours to construct,
       players should be able to devote time to it as they see fit,
       and finishing once they've accumulated 80 hours. If they
       want to create a true signature piece and have the skills
       and supplies to do so, maybe another eight hours might be
       required to add enameling, engraving, or a more difficult
       design. Likewise, allow a carpenter to make more chairs or
       axe handles in 16 hours than in eight.

       Spell research and Language training. More on this later.

       Exploration. Again, more on this later. 

You don't want to encourage offline benefits to the extent that
being logged in is less profitable (either in terms of monetary gain
or character building) than staying logged out, but you do want to
make the benefits greater than eight hours of macroing. This can be
done by offering offline options (such as trade skills) that can
only be utilized in this offline time.

You also want to cap this activity, scaling it so that benefits
don't accumulate after a certain amount of time, such as 48
hours. Requiring two hours of login time before re-setting offline
use would be good, too, to reduce the practice of "refreshing" on
behalf of friends.  Travel time should probably be the only offline
ability to accumulate after this arbitrary time period: someone gone
for a few weeks should probably be able to log in at any civilized
area they could otherwise physically get to when they next log in.

A good customizable scheduler would be at the heart of this
system. Players should be able to direct their characters' offline
time as they choose, and distribute it as they choose, assigning
different priorities. Players will want to develop a system of
priorities to make the best use of their character's offline time,
using a graphically based interface, some of which might be
superficially similar to UO's skill lock interface. For example:

       Frank won't be able to play for three days for whatever
       reason. He wants his character Alyan to accomplish some
       tasks while offline. Alyan is a would-be knight, and is
       currently a squire. Frank sets Alyan's first priority:
       practice training with a horseman's flail until his skill
       has improved five points.  Alyan's second priority is to
       travel from the stable in Windheim to the stable in
       Cheltham, and lodge his horse there. Alyan's third priority
       is to complete a bronze sword he's working on: he has four
       hours to go. It won't be a great sword given Alyan's low
       ability in this field, but it will cost him 100 reales less
       to make one than to buy one just as good. After that,
       Alyan's last priority is to hunt small game and sell the
       hides, which isn't great money, but brings in a few dozen
       reales. The first tasks are expected to take up about 16
       hours of offline time, and the last one will continue until
       the offline max is reached. Of course, if Frank logs in
       earlier than expected, the offline schedule is interrupted,
       but may be continued upon logoff. Frank may either continue
       with the existing schedule, change it, or make a new one
       entirely.

* The remaining question would be "when the character is logged off
and doing things offline, does that character appear in the
world?". While remaining in the world might be an interesting
challenge, players should have control over the appearance and
demeanor of their characters. With that as a design goal, leaving
the PC to wander around (even if invulnerable) would be an
undesirable loss of player control. A player's friends shouldn't
have to guess if a player's character is "manned" or not.

Spell Research

With a highly diverse spell selection, researching magic becomes a
possibility. UO had no spell research program, EQ had the beginnings
of one, and AC went a little further in this regard, adding random
reagents to the process.

A big world would be complimented by a broad range of magic, and
research as a "doorway" to these spells is a valid factor that
serves to regulate the distribution of high power magic. A magic
research system like AC's serves to delay the acquisition of spells
rather than truly regulate their distribution. A spell system in a
current online role-playing game should be wide enough to
incorporate several different types of magic. Many (if not all)
magic systems should be dependent on research.

With offline spell research for all but the more basic spells, you
can have a great deal of control over how spells are allocated, and
more interestingly, dynamically add new ones without having to plug
in complex reagent formulae which merely serve to delay the
inevitable.  You can add a powerful new spell, and specify the
level/skill required to properly research it. You can further
specify that only a finite number of people per server can learn it
per week, or limit it to those researching it in a particular
nation, or characters of a particular religion or ethic belief.

The player should have options on offline spell research, such as
choosing a certain class of magic (cleric prayers, wizard spells,
druid-style ceremonial magic, voodoo-like fetish magic, whatever),
and perhaps "directing" the nature of the research. Directing
research toward "offense spells" should make discovering new magic
less likely, but increase the odds of getting an offensive combat
spell considerably. The more narrowly defined the spell type (cleric
prayer defensive healing magic, or conjurer ceremony creature
summoning, for example), the more focused the research should be -
less likely to get magic, but more likely to get exactly what it is
the player is looking for if magic is found.

Magic can be made more interesting than it has usually been. While
there is certainly a large place in a magic system for reagent/level
spells cast by an individual character, other methods of spellcraft
are often ignored. If there is any other alternative in existing
games, it's usually clerical magic, which is assumed to be granted
by a deity without involving physical components like
reagents. Other options are available, too, and they can be added in
addition rather than instead of traditional spell magic: group magic
crafted by characters pooling their powers, "mental magic" -
psionics - that are assumed to come from a person's inner will,
ritual magic like voodoo and witchcraft that involve fetish magic,
incantation, and appeasing dark powers, demonology (but only if
demons are something truly to fear, and if the chance of having
slight control over one is worth the risk of the horrible
consequences), etc.

Exploration

Many real-time and turn-based strategy do not allow the player to
see the entire playfield.  The player can see the areas his or her
units are in well, and can see general details about areas where his
or her units have passed but are no longer near. This is usually
called "fog of war". A similar system would serve a large-area game
well. Although this sort of information will be gathered together
and put on fan web sites, having a more accurate map in-game has
definite advantages.

The more time you spend in an area, the more accurate your in-game
map of that area would become. A cartography or land lore skill
could add further benefits. Scrying magic should also serve to
improve the map. As a certain area became more and more familiar,
the more details you would see: topography, rivers, cities and
outposts with their names, encampment areas, dungeons, etc. Players
should be able to "compare maps" in a specific fashion, so that one
player could trade a certain section of their map for a certain
section of someone else's. The accuracy of this copying could depend
on a cartography skill and the level of detail of the source map: it
shouldn't be a give-away. Not only would scrying serve to "flesh
out" areas of the map, scrying spells for spying on others should be
more effective in areas where the character's map is more
complete. Characters should be able to annotate their maps with
location information and other text labels as well.

Offline time could be spent on exploration. Since there wouldn't be
any danger in exploring this way, progress should be much, much
slower and measured compared to the amount of detail gained by
actual online time spent in those same environments.

Language

One of the context-shattering elements of current online
role-playing games (the US servers, anyway) is that the majority of
the characters are speaking the same language. The only alternative
to this is to either speak in another language, or to make an
English pseudo-dialect up, such as the Shadowclan and the Picts have
in UO. While this is an interesting solution, it has serious
limitations: an "orc" that only speaks "orcish" is going to see the
English of other characters and the player has to be vigilant if his
"orc" doesn't understand the common language.

Let's look an example of another option:

       In order to keep this simple, let's discuss it in the
       context of a historical role-playing game rather than a
       fantasy role-playing game. Assume you're playing a game that
       sets the PCs as Roman soldiers and their enemies. Your band
       of Roman scouts are out in the northern periphery. They
       encounter an angry (but not yet combative) pack of
       barbarians. Actually, they're Gauls, but as a typical Roman,
       you don't make these sorts of distinctions. Your character
       doesn't speak Gaulish, and none of the Gauls speaks
       Latin. One of your fellow scouts, Tivus, speaks Gaulish at
       50%, having come from a northern area of the Empire. The
       leader of the Gaulish pack has a very high intelligence
       score, so despite the fact that he doesn't speak Latin, his
       intelligence gives him a 10% communication bonus, so he'll
       know to phrase simply. This gives Tivus a 60% communication
       level with the Gaulish leader.

       The player of the Gaulish leader sees Tivus's greeting, and
       notes an indicator that tells him that Tivus's pronunciation
       accuracy is a little over half. He knows that if Tivus does
       not understand his words, they will get translated wrong,
       and that less translation failures will occur if he uses
       short words. His player types:

       "This is our home. We want you to leave. We will not let you
       pass, but we will not pursue you if you leave."

       Tivus sees an interface indication that this is Gaulish, and
       it reads "This is aguli hom. We want vetat to leve. We will
       not can you passe, but va will not egak you if yu leave."
       This is because the text parser is going to screw up some
       words, and mildly alter others to represent that 40% lack of
       communication. Had he typed "Leave our territory at once,
       you are not welcome here!" it might have come out as "Leav
       our ekavah at on, you ae not korveg heree", which is still
       intelligible, but less so because the longer words have a
       lesser chance at proper translation.

       Tivus uses the interface to indicate he wishes to speak
       Gaulish instead of Latin.  He says to the Gaulish leader "We
       are few. You are many." he then points to a bluff in the
       direction from which your party came. "May we rest there for
       a while before we leave?"

       The Gaulish leader sees Tivus's text, but with the same
       degree of inaccuracy that your friend saw the Gaulish
       leader's at. The other Gauls see it a little less
       accurately, at 50%, since they lack their leader's
       intelligence bonus. You, however, see both exchanges as a
       person with 0% skill in Gaulish. Since the leader has a 10%
       bonus, your overall level of communication with him is
       10%. The best you can hope for is a word or two to be
       correct, and you will understand none of what has transpired
       until Tivus tells you...

       ...or, of course, until the Gauls decide that you're just an
       advance scout troop for the Seventh Roman Legion and decide
       that their interests are better served by charging you and
       bashing your skulls in rather than allowing you to press for
       time.

Written materials might need to be unreadable except at a certain
(high) level of communication between two parties, or translated
once only to avoid allowing multiple translations in order to
eliminate the errors.

Language training can be another offline character development goal,
and this degree of separation helps to eliminate the "casual
internet chat" environment of many online role-playing games while
providing a framework for upholding character race/nationality
differences.

Internet apps like ICQ and IRC minimize the amount of separation you
can expect to accomplish.  For 3D accelerated games, it's simply not
as convenient to switch back to the desktop to check messages, so
the effect in these games is not very noticeable. In any event,
preventing users from switching back to the desktop to prevent such
programs (or others) is an undesirable goal: it's your game, but
it's your customer's computer.

Context, Part I

Context is crucial. Through context, you convince your players that
you take your own game seriously. Out-of-context elements in your
game are red herrings. Players introduce out-of-context elements all
the time. One of the best ways to avoid this to any degree is to
lead by example: if your players see you adding out-of-context
elements to the game, they'll not see any reason to avoid doing so
themselves.

Common pitfalls include:

       Support characters with silly names: GM Fruitloop, GM
       Fatality

       Pointless references to real life.

       In-game celebration of Earth holidays: Your world is your
       unique creation. Litter it with holidays that would make
       sense in-game. While some midwinter festival has been a
       common feature in many cultures in our world, there's no
       need to assume that a decorated pine tree or gift-giving be
       an integral part of it. Most nations have a distinctly
       national holiday, but not necessarily in the middle of
       summer nor involving pyrotechnics (or arcanotechnics). Most
       cultures have celebrated a springtime holiday of rebirth and
       renewal, but they aren't required to involve rabbits,
       painting eggs, pastels, and chocolate. We know what to
       celebrate in our real-life cultures; use holidays in-game to
       illustrate the uniqueness of your game's various cultures.

       Anachronisms: Cannons in a world that hasn't invented other
       firearms of any sort, let alone sophisticated
       artillery. Combustion engines powering a flight vehicle in a
       world that has no history of combustion technology.

Much of that is merely keeping your game in line after basic design
decisions have been made.

Perhaps more interesting than keeping context is how to establish it
in the first place.

Context, Part II

The current crop of games are all set in a medieval-like fantasy
world where magic is commonplace. UO and EQ share many common D&D
fantasy/mythological monster clichés: dragons, undead, trolls, orcs,
etc. AC is set in a similar world, though most of its monsters are
unique rather than being drawn from the same cast of characters as
most other game. Even so, some are very similar: drudges resemble
orcs, gromnies resemble small wingless dragons, banderlings resemble
gnolls, and monougas resemble ogres. EQ is even more steeped in D&D
tradition than UO, with a full complement of pulp-fantasy elements
such as dwarves, elves, halflings, and the lot.

It would be good for the genre for someone to think differently. And
this doesn't mean abandoning a D&D cliché to adopt a sci-fi
cliché. It doesn't mean combining the two to make the next wave of
"steampunk" games, and it doesn't mean emulating cyberpunk RPGs.

You can make a fantasy role-playing game that avoids
clichés. Honest!

Where does your world take place, and what sort of game are you
making?

       High fantasy: Here's a bit of advice: "It's been done." High
       fantasy is usually the "traditional RPG" with humans,
       demi-humans, dragons, undead, orcs, trolls, and magic that
       is about as rare as an automobile is in our world. If you're
       going to do high fantasy, there's going to be little to
       fundamentally separate your offering from UO, EQ, and even
       AC, SB, and UO2. Strictly speaking, high fantasy simply
       indicates the author/developer's attitude toward magic. If
       you're going to use high fantasy, you'd best be original
       about it.  A campaign that took place a properly horrific
       Hell, given a grand scale and opportunity for advancement
       beyond the lot of a cursed soul, could provide plenty of
       opportunities for a truly unique MRPG experience.

       Low fantasy: This sort of world has been explored more in
       fantasy fiction than in RPGs of any sort. The definition of
       the genre revolves around the treatment of the
       supernatural. Low fantasy generally has few "fantastic"
       elements about it: magic is not an everyday part of life,
       there are less "supernatural" elements (creatures with
       magical powers as well as spell phenomenon), and that which
       does exist is often toned down to the point where it is
       never really demonstrated in a way where it must be presumed
       to exist: much like the common attitude toward Medieval
       Europe, most educated people consider magic to be
       superstition, though many may believe in it fervently. Low
       fantasy tends to involve stories about people and their
       interaction rather than epic quests against evil, though
       much Arthurian literature is a good example of "epic low
       fantasy", often involving no magic at all, or at most, magic
       whose existence is not presented to the reader as an
       established fact. If high fantasy is the world of the
       demon-fighting elf paladin with a mystical sword and a bevy
       of spellcasting followers, low fantasy is the world of the
       weathered mercenary who needs to decide if his stomach is
       more important than his morality.

       Historical fiction: Think of historical fiction as low
       fantasy set on Earth. Historical fiction has not been dealt
       with in the major MRPGs. Historical fiction would involve
       more research than creation: if the whole world is
       simulated, at what time? What sort of conflicts existed, and
       who were the major players then? If you set the game in
       100AD, is your game centered around Rome, or do you simulate
       the Americas and the Orient and the dominant cultures there,
       too? Your historical research will come into play: plate
       mail, muskets, feudalism, central Christian churches, and
       crossbows did not exist in 100AD. What's more, common
       stereotypes and historical revisionism need to be
       avoided. The Gallic Celt of 100AD Gaul is markedly different
       than the Pictish Celt of the Scottish eastlands, and
       portraying them as happy-go-lucky nature-loving primitives
       would be shoddy research at best. Without your fantasy
       monsters as a cash spigot, you're going to have to use other
       motivations: war between established foes, internal warfare
       of political treachery, exploration of newly discovered
       lands with hostile inhabitants, and so forth. Given the
       Roman attitude of "barbarians", ranging anywhere from those
       considered unhuman and approachable only in terms of warfare
       to those "barbarians" who were assimilated into the Empire
       itself, even if after a history of conflict, there is
       clearly plenty of room for differentiation.

       Historical fantasy: Or perhaps "historical fiction" with a
       fantasy twist. What if your game took place in Europe in the
       Dark Ages right after the discovery of codified and
       reproducible magic, alchemy, witchcraft, and/or demonology?
       How about a feudal Japan under similar circumstances? If a
       game based on historical fiction seems to be too hard a sell
       (I personally think, done right, it could explode), this
       might be an alternative.

Thought needs to be given to creatures. How similar is your world to
Earth? Are familiar Earth animals present? If not, what lives in the
niches occupied by various mundane creatures?

Developers get caught up in simulating a "virtual ecology" in a
world where the constants are much different. How many pigeons would
you see in our urban areas if birds were killed for feathers to make
arrows? In a world where some degree of warfare or hunting is
undertaken by the majority of the population, the answer is "very
few". Herbivores are going to have to be much smaller and
resourceful in areas that have fewer plants. Animals can be much
bigger in areas that have superabundant prey. Whales eat krill
swarms, brontosauruses grazed in water filled with vegetation, "big
cats" can only survive in areas with large amounts of prey. This
isn't to say that you should have an ecologically accurate thousand
rabbits for every wolf: your players are going to be less interested
in rabbits than wolves, no doubt, and more interested in "marsh
lurkers" than wolves. Rather than fret about accuracy, use
"hinting": in areas with no (prey), there shouldn't be any
(predator). Don't use your server's valuable resources keeping track
of how many rabbits wolf A has eaten. In areas with abundant (prey),
there should be more (predator), unless (predator's predator) are in
great numbers nearby.

The artist Wayne Barlowe has written books about alien
worlds. Thought is given to subjects like biospheres that make
sense, issues of prey and predation, and to the individual
creature's place in its environment. There are many lessons in this
"whole environment" approach to world design.

If nothing else in a world is near human, how did humans get there?
Magical transport from Earth or other unnamed lands seems generic
and unsatisfying, and encourages players to bring the same
characters they've played in other games into your game. In UO,
humans came from Sosaria as well as Earth. When players bring in
their existing character personas, they dilute your world. The
solution isn't to lay down the law on your players, the solution is
to provide them with alternatives that make them want to play in
your world, rather than just show up.

Context, Part III

Everything your players can do in your world must be make sense to
the fiction. Repeat this phrase often. This is one of the ways you
give your world context. The existing games have serious flaws in
this category:

       In Ultima Online, one of the biggest offenders in this
       regard is resurrection.  Especially disorienting is the way
       the game fiction treats death. When a fiction-centered NPC
       dies, that's it - he or she is dead. There might be a
       funeral, a search for the body, or mourning. When a PC dies,
       his or her ghosts jogs over to the nearest wandering healer
       or shrine and shrugs it off. While the idea that "death
       should mean something" has validity, the simple fact is that
       if death is anything other than permanent, the difference
       needs to be backed up by the fiction.

       When Seer or GM-controlled plot characters died, that was
       it, they were dead.  Sometimes, when dealing with players
       with less experience with plot events, people would
       effectively scratch their heads wondering why the character
       didn't resurrect. Other ghosts would follow that ghost and
       try to help them to the nearest healing point. When the
       post-event fiction was written up, death was death, and
       never explained otherwise. In events and plots that I had a
       hand in, I always strove to provide some reason to explain
       this. Sometimes, it was sufficient to explain it with the
       concept that dark "soul-banishing magic" was used which
       prevents the soul from re-entering the body. Often, this was
       enough, and the players were more likely to respect the
       outcome without going back to their guilds bemoaning the
       silly way in which events treat death.

       In Asheron's Call, any player has the ability to send
       instant communication to any other online player in the
       game. By using the /tell command and other features, you can
       instantly message people by name, your patron, your monarch,
       or your fellowship. With the friends list, you can tell the
       moment that character is logged on. Rather than cave
       entrances to underground dungeon environments, often the
       entry is a shimmering portal on a plain. While the portals
       are explained in the fiction (and are, in fact, central to
       it), the instant communication is not.  The only way one can
       logically explain it in the context of the game is to
       attribute it to some sort of psionic power or other
       telepathic ability, but no such explanation is offered. To
       have that communication without an explanation of how it
       takes place gives private conversation in AC a very
       Quake-like feel.

Explaining the conveniences of your game system in your fiction is
your job, not your players'.

The Law: Players

Ideally, your game world would be treated as such, and your players
would have a common sense approach to decency, fair play, and what
does and doesn't constitute appropriate behavior...

...and if you design with that assumption in mind, you'll be in for
a rude awakening.

You need to make very clear what is and isn't acceptable behavior,
and enforce it diligently.  This doesn't mean you have to have a
draconian set of policies; this simply means that whatever your
policies are, you need to communicate them very clearly to your
players and the staff which enforces them.

Contrary to the UO model, this needs to be kept in mind during the
design phase rather than ignored by programmers as a support
responsibility that takes effect after the development work is
done. Adding accountability on top of a structure not designed with
such concerns is a difficult process, needlessly so. Give your
support team the tools they need to properly administer the game as
soon as it's out, don't put it on the back burner.

AC has taken a line on exploitation that neither UO nor EQ has
tried: programmer accountability. When Turbine releases buggy code
(as every programming team does from time to time, this is the
nature of the beast), this is treated as a problem with Turbine, not
a problem with players, and steps are taken to resolve the issue
without punishing players for problems they didn't cause. OSI has
usually seen fit to ignore its mistakes until something brings it to
a head or until the player community can scream no louder, and
Verant is more apt to hold its players responsible for avoiding any
activity which even resembles AI exploitation, let alone willful
exploitation by players. This often puts OSI and Verant (even more
so) at war with its players, which poisons the relationship of the
development staff and the customer.

While a "zero tolerance" program might make sense in situations
where, due to game design, a certain exploit is unpreventable (there
will always be a dupe bug in UO unless OSI makes fundamental changes
to the way it tracks characters across server boundaries, which
simply isn't practical), Turbine's model seems more desirable for
situations where a code-based solution can be coded into the next
patch. Turbine's publisher, Microsoft, allots Turbine a generous and
predictable patch size allotment per month, which has given them
flexibility in this regard. If your patch allotment (or your
development staff size) is small and you're not ready to make that
sort of commitment to closing exploitation loopholes, it is that
much more critical that your support and development staff have a
very clear picture of what is and isn't exploitation, harassment,
and violation of your usage agreement. UO in particular has had a
poor track record in this department, and has had problems since the
beginning with GMs disagreeing on what is and isn't a violation of
their TOS.

The Law: Characters

Danger needs to exist, and many of your players are willing to dole
it out. The problem is that if you make it too easy, you get
remorseless killing without consequences.

In a large world, there is room for different societies with
different laws. Perhaps much of the "civilized" world has similar
laws against murder, thievery, and crimes against the state (leading
insurrections, for example). A character that lives in one kingdom
and who kills a soldier of the king's guard will almost certainly be
wanted dead by the authorities in that country. In an enemy nation,
however, they might consider such an act a heroic deed and welcome
him - as long as he confines his killing to the subjects of his
former king rather than the citizens of his new home.

Some areas may be completely uncivilized and not have any sort of
law enforcement. Others may be so different from the norm that they
become a haven for criminals.

However this works out, there needs to be a means to keep criminals
out of areas in which they are no longer welcome, and the
consequences for risking being caught in those areas must be
severe. A militia of NPCs and PCs may have an order from the King
that allows them to hunt down known criminals. If this is at all
practical, it's much better than invincible guards popping out of
nowhere. There's a completely different feel to a player when a
character gets whacked by an instant-kill guard the moment he
crosses an unseen city boundary and that of being hunted down by an
angry mob that grows the longer it's evaded. Maybe the odds are
still miserable, but if there's a slim chance that, properly
executed, freedom can be had by escaping the kingdom or city, that's
more entertaining. In feudal and pre-feudal societies, the law
wasn't apt to "forget" the wrongdoings of criminals, either, so in
cases of serious crimes like murder, the guilty character shouldn't
be able to stroll back into the capital after a few weeks of beating
down "evil" creatures or persons. Only in rare cases should this be
possible. For lesser crimes, the law isn't as apt to remember the
offender as long.

Regardless of how death is treated in your game, the penalty for an
"outlaw" character getting caught by (or brought to) the law should
be significantly greater than the penalty for normal death at the
hands of a personal enemy or a monster.

If players are able to form communities with their own laws, members
of the law enforcement arm of that community should be able to flag
a character as a known criminal. This opens up possibilities of
misuse, but given that player communities are generally small and
easily avoidable (cities don't move), each will in time earn a
reputation among other players, and lawless cities aren't going to
attract as many merchants, though they may attract more mercenaries
and those looking to hire them.

In any case, there should be places where the most vile criminals
are not hounded by the law.  Areas like this are dangerous, and
anyone entering them should be prepared for danger.

Conclusion

The MRPG development community is going to find out very shortly if
there is enough room in this market for five or more concurrent
offerings. I believe that the first title that represents a
significant evolution over the current works available (and several
in-progress) may have a chance to grab a majority market share from
a currently-fractured player-base spread across several games.

UO was ambitious even for its flaws. EQ attracted an audience that
preferred a 3D environment or who had not found UO to their
liking. AC attracted an audience looking for the next "good
thing". The titles in development are going after a finite number of
users who will play more than one game concurrently, or are willing
to switch from one to the other. I think they'll find that there
aren't any more "free rides" in this genre...

...it's time to innovate again.

Delusion

--<cut>--

--
J C Lawrence                              Internet: claw at kanga.nu
----------(*)                            Internet: coder at kanga.nu
...Honorary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...


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