[MUD-Dev] A footnote to Procedural Storytelling

[Lee Sheldon]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: mud-dev-admin at kanga.nu
> [mailto:mud-dev-admin at kanga.nu]On Behalf Of
> Travis Nixon
> Sent: Friday, May 05, 2000 4:19 PM
> To: mud-dev at kanga.nu
> Subject: Re: [MUD-Dev] A footnote to Procedural Storytelling

> 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.

Travis, I understand your point about the level of detail being so
overwhelming that an automated solution seems attractive.  As a theory it
would seem to have a validity, but your assumption that it's not possible,
or that the costs would be unreasonable, baffles me.  You have no direct
knowledge of this.  It remains theory because people ASSUME it can't be
done.  But we have examples of it being done all around us.

I'm going to rein in here and say that automated systems need to play a
strong supporting role, and I agree with several things you say below...
however...

Entertainment with tons of "interesting" stories, done on schedules far more
rigorous that a persistent world would EVER require, is produced now in
television.  The difference is that sufficient resources are expended to
produce that product.  In truth the writing costs are second only to the
acting talent costs.  But unreasonable?  No.  Simply a recognized fact of
life.  It's a matter of priorities.  You want to populate your world with
interesting stories written by human beings?  There is nothing except the
knowledge how, and the willingness to make the attempt, stopping you.

And one final word on cost.  Yes, I work in the world of commerical gaming.
I get paid for it because I have demonstrated an expertise at it over many
years.  But there are thousands of members of the Writers Guild of America,
and only a small proportion of us make a good living at writing.  That
doesn't mean we are the only "good" writers.  There are many out there who
will work for far less, and work well.  The paradigm shift even for a mud of
modest expectations is to allow one or two or more of them on to the team.
I think you'd be absolutely amazed at the results.

> Here's an example of what I'm talking about, from Everquest: The Fiery
> Avenger quest.  Now, having never actually done it, I don't
> know all the
> details, but from what I do know, it's a fair "story",
> invovling, among
> other things, the ressurection of a lich, so you can kill him
> again.  (ok, I
> didn't say it was necessarily a good story)  Basically,
> though, what it
> boils down to is collecting items X, Y, and Z, and giving
> them to NPC W.
> Now, since I don't work for Verant, I can't say how many man
> hours went into
> this quest (any of you eqers care to comment on this?), but from the
> player's perception at least, it took them many months to
> implement this
> quest.  Obviously, it wasn't months of doing nothing but
> creating this quest
> (or, if it was, you really need to hire new writers), but
> obviously there
> was a lot of thought put into it before the final
> implementation.  But this
> is just one quest, for one item, for one class.  And on top
> of that, it's a
> completely static quest (which isn't surprising, considering
> the nature of
> everquest...funny how Miragul never figures out that he's
> been found).  If
> they spent even just 10 minutes creating and implementing
> this quest, that's
> about 9 minutes, 59 and 9/10 seconds too long for the kinds
> of worlds I want
> to be able to create.

Again, see above.  I've played just about every "quest" I can for my class
(ranger) and my level (46) in Everquest.  None would take longer than a few
minutes to write.  I could create hundreds of stories per month for that
game engine as is, stories that actually DO have some interest.  But you
want to create a story per second?  Why?  Don't try to overwhelm them.  We
have limited story-capacity in our brains before we get confused and start
shouting on street corners.

Create enough GOOD stories to feed the player's own stories.  If they start
from a solid foundation of good storytelling, their stories will be all the
better, and more entertaining to them.  And THERE you have automation in
story generation that is far easier in the long run than AI.

> 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.

I agree with this one hundred percent.  Exactly what I try to do.  As part
of the package.

> But as long as you have to have a human writer/designer
> behind the scenes
> (or even people playing NPCs), this will be an unachievable
> goal.  Because
> if a human writer decides that the magician's guild needs
> supplies, and
> sends a player to fetch them (granted, not exactly the most
> glamorous of
> quests, but that doesn't mean players won't do it), well,
> when the player
> comes back, the guild should have what they need for a while.
>  They shoudn't
> send the next player that walks in on the same errand, 30
> seconds later.
> But it takes that human writer almost as long just to think
> of the errand
> and implement it (maybe longer, if you don't have the ability
> to implement
> things like this on the fly), than it does for the player to
> do it.  Combine
> that with a player to implementor ratio that could quite
> easily reach tens
> if not hundreds of thousands, and you have a serious problem
> keeping up with
> the players. :)
>
> By the way, in case there's any confusion, I'm talking about
> the realm of
> massive, commercial games here. :)

Well really, then!  Massive COMMERCIAL games.  Then the money CAN and SHOULD
be spent, and you'll have nothing to worry about. ;-)

> 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. :)

Oh, and nothing I've said above should indicate I'm not in favor of doing
this AS WELL.  It's essential.  I simply think it's death to rely on it
alone.

> Oh, there's just one other thing that I personally need.  A largish
> development staff, and a spare 20 or 30 million dollars to
> pay them for the
> next few years.  Anybody happen to have anything like that
> laying around
> anywhere?

Happily there does seem to be a bit of that around. Just make sure that
development staff includes some writers, and you're on to something!

Lee




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