Reality vs Fantasy (was Re: [MUD-Dev] Law of Resource Congestion)

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

Mordengaard wrote:
> 
> I've come across a phrase I'd like to share; Suspension of Disbelief.  Now
> I'm sure this is old hat to most of the more *ahem* vocal members of this
> list, but for the lurkers, here's a synopsis.  The basic idea is that people
> like the familiar, and they know how things work.

Another way to put this is that your game/story/movie is a contract with
the player/reader/viewer. Their end of the bargain is to pay attention
and keep track of the characters, locations, and situations you provide.
Your end of the bargain is to ensure that those characters, locations,
and situations make sense -- for appropriate values of sense. Shirley
Jackson once said that while your reader is probably willing to accept
that there *is* a land of Oz, he will probably NOT be willing to accept
that he can see it from his window. You are permitted (and expected) to
bend the rules of reality a little, but when you bend them too far you
trip a little internal trigger in the mind of your player/reader/viewer
which immediately turns your carefully constructed environment into what
most people would call a load of crap. (I highly recommend Shirley
Jackson's essay "Notes to a Young Writer", which applies quite well to
any pursuit involving fiction.)

It's not quite fair, but there it is. The closer you can get to that
line, the more "original" your work appears -- but if you cross over it
even once, your "original" work becomes ludicrous and unacceptable.
There are a few basic rules that need to be followed on this, which I'm
going to boil down to an incomplete list of broad concerns.

- Your environment should be familiar. Gravity pulls down, water is wet,
sugar is sweet, fire is hot, people are not blue. The list literally
goes on forever. (Another good rule of thumb: if it's different, don't
call it by the same name. If sugar is sour, don't call it sugar. Call it
sutrel or something.)

- Where your environment is unfamiliar, it should be consistent. "Twice
is always." As soon as the player comes across two examples of
something, he will expect ALL further encounters to correspond to those
examples. Two ugly dwarves means dwarves are ugly. Two cold fires means
fires are cold. Two blue people means people are blue.

- Where your environment is inconsistent, it should be sensible.
Whenever a pattern formed by the "twice is always" rule is broken, there
must be a reason the player can accept without much difficulty. When he
encounters a person that is not blue, that person must have an
explanation readily available, and the explanation must be reasonable. 

- Where your environment is inconsistent and insensible, it should be an
aberration. If your player finds an experience odd and confusing, that
experience must be *generally* considered odd and confusing. If there is
no forthcoming explanation for the two blue people, the non-blue person
should be just as surprised as the player is.



_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
http://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev