[MUD-Dev] Re: MUD-Dev digest, Vol 1 #163 - 25 msgs
Travis Casey
efindel at earthlink.net
Fri Jul 21 13:03:26 CEST 2000
Thursday, July 20, 2000, 8:18:54 PM, Tamzen Cannoy <tamzen at worldbenders.com> wrote:
> At 6:54 PM -0500 7/20/00, Raph Koster wrote:
>>Another perspective on this same issue: I ran into an interesting
>>perspective when discussing design with someone else in the computer game
>>industry recently. He disliked some ideas I suggested regarding "social
>>professions" in an MMORPG because they were means of advancement that
>>measured your actual, real-life skill at certain things that were social in
>>nature--eg, using reputation systems to propvide advancement for being good
>>at social activities like getting crowds to come to your tavern, for
>>example. The logic was that in an RPG, the point is what skills reside on
>>your character, not your "self."
> It is to laugh.
> I'm sorry, but a stupid person cannot convincingly play a genius. If
> you don't got things like diplomacy and tact in RL, you aren't gonna
> be a very convincing ambassador. Etc. You gotta work with what you
> got.
Correction: a stupid person cannot convincingly play a genius without
help. In paper RPGs, there are several ways to let someone play a
character smarter than him/herself. For example:
- Give the player more time. A slow thinker may be able to come up
with a good plan if given time to do so; his/her character in the
game can then be said to have come up with the plan quickly.
- Give the player more resources -- more information, access to other
players to help make decisions even though his/her character
wouldn't have that access, etc.
- The GM can help. As a parallel example, GURPS has an
advantage "common sense". If a player takes that advantage for
his/her character, the GM makes an intelligence check for the
character whenever he/she feels that the player is doing something
stupid. If the check succeeds, then the GM must warn the player.
This allows an impulsive or thoughtless player to play a character
who is not.
- The GM can interpolate. For example, if a player's character is
supposed to be a tactical genius, but the player's combat plan has
obvious holes in it, the GM can simply think how he/she would fill
in those holes, and assume that the character did that.
Unfortunately, due to the different nature of muds, I don't think these
would transfer well.
--
|\ _,,,---,,_ Travis S. Casey <efindel at earthlink.net>
ZZzz /,`.-'`' -. ;-;;,_ No one agrees with me. Not even me.
|,4- ) )-,_..;\ ( `'-'
'---''(_/--' `-'\_)
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