[MUD-Dev] Roleplaying in Muds

[Miroslav Silovic]

Malcolm Valentine <spin at fastlink.com.au> writes:

> So it is perfectly ok for Boffo the warrior and Jill the thief to
> stand around in the forest exchanging ICQ numbers and email
> addresses...? Even worse, for them to harass other players for their
> details so they can contact them off-site.

Actually, this touches on my own experience with banning OOC
communication in order to enhance RP.

<soapbox>
You Can Not Roleplay Without OOC Communication.
</soapbox>

Being IC all the time is good for immersive experience, but -that-
isn't roleplaying, that's, well, immersive experience. To turn it into
a roleplaying experience, you need to have a role in a drama (some
also call it a story) - a grander chain of events that your character
is a part of.

The problem with grand chains of events, or 'the pig picture', is that
it needs to be organised. For example:

[public] Boffo: I'm considering doing a wedding. Anybody here playing
   Iron Court servants, could you connect them?
[public] Bubba: Why don't you just contact the Servant Guild leader,
   online, and ask him to send you his guys? He has them on his
   channel?

Okay, for something more Earth shaking:

[were+] me: We're going to tar and feather a leech, anybody else wants
   in? You hear a howl from the bayou, or get a phone call, just join
   up with us.

Note that in both of these cases, OOC communication is used to
simplify things that would otherwise require a long time just to go
from room to room and talk to people - and do things that are actually
fun.

I also contend that RPG and GoP don't mix well, and one of the reasons
for it is that OOC communication either annoys or is abusable by
GoPers (it's a corrolary of RPG being cooperative by definition I
use).

--
How to eff the ineffable?



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