[MUD-Dev] Report: MUD-Dev dinner of 10 June 2000

[J C Lawrence]

<<Partially replied to on Meta>>

On Sun, 11 Jun 2000 21:35:29 -0500 
Raph Koster <rkoster at austin.rr.com> wrote:

> J C Lawrence:

>> How to build a decent and interesting world which embodies
>> complex player-based political and social systems and is yet
>> populated by players who login for only brief periods and in
>> general just don't care about and are not interested in investing
>> themselves in the game.

> You arrived at a solution, yes? Please share. ;)

Umm, yes.  We came up with an extensive architecture and design
notes for such, but unfortunately I laundered the jeans in which I
pocketed the napkin I made the notes on without removing the napkin
first.

<sigh>  (I won't comment how often I do that IRL)

As more recent conversation has mentioned, until the social
semantics and politics of VR become an assumable understanding in
your player base, you end up having to classify your player base
into two sets -- 1) heavy players who dedicate significant time to
your world, and 2) occassional players.  This places the dedicated
players as glue; they hold the systems together even if they aren't
necessarily the builders or the active participents in this system.
They're the human knowledgebase -- in terms of data, social impact,
social contiuity (which is really what we're talking about here),
and cultural definition.

The problem of course is building a system which is resilient to
overwhelming and almost entirely tourist population.  (Europe hasn't
been so lucky, let alone Rome versus the Barbarians (Quake ala the
gladitorial Colusseum?)  So you end up fracting your design into
two.  One to support and encourage the less common heavy players,
and the other to support and minimise the chaotic impact from the
occassional players without making them powerless (some sort of
heavily damped mediator).

Discussion of mediating technique fizzled within a couple sentences
on the generality of, "Oh, yeah, you'd have to damp the swings."

--
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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