[MUD-Dev] A footnote to Procedural Storytelling

[Paul Schwanz - Enterprise Services]

Travis Nixon wrote:

[snip]
 
> In the same way, it will simply not be possible to populate a large world
> with interesting "stories" as long as a writer is required to come up with
> them all.  (I'm sort of mangling the word story here.  What I mean is
> building a history of past events and a system for determining future
> responses to possible player actions, as opposed to a simple recounting of a
> sequence of events)   The costs would simply be unreasonable.  Sure, have
> writers for the big, major, world-changing plots, but to truly fill out the
> world and the characters in it, you need a lot more than that.

[snip]

> Now, I'm not all that sure I like the idea of canned quests to start with,
> but if you had a system that could take the current state of the world, and
> figure out something interesting for a player to do, you could have a lot
> more of these, and they would be dynamic and fit in the context of the
> current events.

[snip]
 
> So, back to the original point.  What we need here is two major things.  A
> way to create large worlds, and a way to populate them with interesting
> things to do / see / hear about.  er...well, ok, there are actually a lot of
> other things we need too, but those are two of the largest undertakings, and
> where a lot of my idle thought has gone lately. :)

It seems to me that your main focus is to find interesting things for players to 
do.  I would submit that this is the focus of _many_ of the complaints leveled 
at current MMORPGS (players don't call it "LevelQuest" without reason).  
However, I see this as quite removed (or at least capable of being removed) from 
the story issue.  Although either one will give your players something 
(possibly) interesting to do, there is a _huge_ difference between quest as goal 
and quest as story.  In other words, stories are not the only way to address a 
lack of interesting things to do.  Perhaps the largest limitation of the 
"sandbox" method is not that it doesn't have interesting stories (although this 
is a major shortcoming), but that it doesn't have interesting goals.  

The goals that are available are almost entirely individual in nature.  Get item 
A for your own personal use.  Skill to level X for your own personal glory.  
About the only social structure given to the player for the purpose of pursuing 
community goals is the (overly used) "guild."  But a group of players will find 
an event interesting if it affects the entire group.  

What if the construction of a large building gave a defensive bonus to an entire 
city?  Do you think that building such a structure would be interesting to 
members of that city?  Do you think that preventing the gathering of resources 
to build that structure might be interesting to members of a rival city?  

What if bringing an item to their temple gave a new spell to an entire class of 
priests?  In fact, what if priestly spells were totally icon dependant?  In 
other words, whichever group of priests has a unique spell icon in their temple 
can use that spell, but all others cannot.  Now, all priests want to bring as 
many icons as possible to their own temple.  I think that I would personally 
find this to be a very interesting goal.  

What if ambrosia were discovered to grow in a few spots on the map, and after 
farming and processing, it was capable of temporarily increasing the HP of those 
who ate it?  Wouldn't it be interesting to try to control the growth, 
processing, and control of the food of the gods?

I think that there are a couple of key changes which could really make MMORPGs 
very interesting.  First of all, provide much more depth of structure and 
organization for various interrelated groups of characters.  Nest groups within 
groups.  The Priests of Jad will benefit from obtaining the Holy Hand Grenade 
Icon, but their benefit is also the benefit of the military forces of their 
city, who really enjoy the big boom that it makes when they lob a premade Holy 
Hand Grenade spell at their enemies, but their benefit is also the benefit of 
the city, who depends on the military to keep them safe, yadda, yadda, yadda.  
Secondly, make powerful items affect many people (as defined by your organized 
groups) to a small degree instead of only affecting a relative few to a large 
degree.

In general, learn from the great goal management demonstrated in RTS games.  
There is much there that could be translated to MMORPGs.

Once we have this in place, then we can see about having some kind of 
overarching story that will _unify_ the various goals.  But we don't have to 
tell each individual a story.  Perhaps they will understand their own simulated 
life as a sort of narrative.  Perhaps they will understand the post facto 
history of their city as a sort of narrative.  (I don't really think of these as 
true "story," but I see that they can be interesting and entertaining, which I 
believe is our goal.)  I still think that the true story of the game is subject 
to the vision of a true writer (not some plot generator), but with the proper 
tools and support, I think a good team of writers would be capable of handling a 
high-level story line, bringing cohesion to the goals (interactively) pursued by 
the players.

--Phinehas

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			but not all things are expedient."
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