[MUD-Dev] Remote client connection

[Travis Casey]

On Tuesday, June 20, 2000, Phillip Lenhardt wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 20, 2000 at 03:52:36PM -0400, Travis Casey wrote:
>> Tuesday, June 20, 2000, 2:33:03 PM, Phillip Lenhardt wrote:
>> 
>> PL> A multiple choice mud interface could be just the thing you need to help
>> PL> direct players to the meaningful choices presented by a situation instead
>> PL> of implicitly allowing them to do meaningless things.
>> 
>> That, to me, is a problem for roleplaying.  For good roleplaying,
>> meaning should come from the *character*, not from the *scenario*.
>> Things that are "meaningless" from a standpoint of "Do you defeat the
>> monsters?  Do you get the treasure?" can be extremely *meaningful*
>> from the standpoint of "What kind of people are these characters?
>> What motivates them and how do they act?"

> I don't see how giving a limited menu of choices in a situation prevents
> players from giving meaning to their characters. Who says that "say" and
> "emote" aren't choices on that menu?

It limits the choices characters have to what the game designer
considered to be "meaningful choices".  I have to hope that the
designer thought of the things that my character might want to do.  My
character may want to do something that's "meaningless".

You could put in say and emote choices, yes -- but that's no longer
preventing them from doing "meaningless things", which is the part of
what you were saying that I objected to.

> If you're character is a paladin
> and that paladin is talking to a good priest, why should that paladin
> have the option of attacking the priest? After all, it is not good
> roleplaying to do so since it is totally out of character.

How do you know it's out of character?  Are all paladins the same?
Can paladins not be mistaken?  What if I want to play a fallen
paladin, and am in the process of having him fall?  What if I want to
play a flawed paladin -- a good man with a bad temper?  Simply by
leaving off the "attack" option, you're both giving me information
that I might not have had (that this is someone I'm not supposed to
attack) *and* restricting the kinds of characters I can play.

> And if the
> paladin has a good in-game reason to attack the priest, then the menu
> would present "attack" as an option.

Of course, this requires keeping track of all possible in-game reasons
why someone might do something, which is an AI-complete problem in a
game world where players have their characters talking to each other
freely.

>> Now, for an adventure game, multiple choice prompts might work very
>> well -- but for a roleplaying game, they're very limiting.

> Limiting, yes. "Very" limiting, debateable. After all, text interfaces
> in and of themselves are limiting and I would argue that the interesting
> possibilities of the text interface are far from exhausted; otherwise,
> why are we talking about them? :)

*All* interfaces are limiting -- they just limit in different ways.
A multiple-choice interface, to me, seems to discourage roleplaying,
which is not something I would want to do.  IMHO, roleplaying is about
making choices in-character; by trying to channel those choices to be
"meaningful" ones, you're encouraging players to only role-play
certain types of characters.

> I don't see limits as walls to run into, I see them as walls to climb
> towards new heights. 

The question, though, is whether there's anything up there I want to
get to.  :-)  If I want to play a game where my choices are limited
to what the game designer thought was meaningful, I have several
Fighting Fantasy and Lone Wolf gamebooks on my bookshelf.  If I want a
multiplayer game that claims to be an RPG where my choices are so
limited, I'll call up one of several bad GMs I know.  When I'm playing
an RPG, I don't want to feel that I'm having to work around the GM or
game designer in order to play the character I want.

--
       |\      _,,,---,,_    Travis S. Casey  <efindel at earthlink.net>
 ZZzz  /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_   No one agrees with me.  Not even me.
      |,4-  ) )-,_..;\ (  `'-'
     '---''(_/--'  `-'\_)





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