[MUD-Dev] A footnote to Procedural Storytelling

[Travis Nixon]

-----Original Message-----
From: Brian Green <brian at psychochild.org>
To: mud-dev at kanga.nu <mud-dev at kanga.nu>
Date: Sunday, May 14, 2000 4:43 PM
Subject: Re: [MUD-Dev] A footnote to Procedural Storytelling


>Now, to splash some cold water on Travis's ideas. :)


Phew, thanks!  Cold, yet refreshing. :)

>Travis Nixon wrote:
>
>> Server says:
>>
>> Hey, look, I need a new area here.
>>
>> Well, let's see...what's the nearby terrain of areas that I already know
>> about?  Based on this, I can determine the possible terrain types that I
can
>> put here.  Well, there's a rainforest right over there, so that discounts
>> the possibility of putting a full-blown sand dune desert here.  Let's
look
>> in my table of possible adjoining terrain types and percentages, and
choose
>> one.
>
>Sounds good so far.  Obviously, this won't be trivial to implement.


Not trivial, no.  Hell, none of this is trivial by any twisted stretch of
the imagination.  But I can see the beginnings of a path there.  It's just
an animal track as of yet, and I'm not really sure it leads anywhere, but
who knows.

>> Ok, now we have a forested mountainside, but it's devoid of animal life.
>> What kinds of things are most likely to live here?  Where might they
live?
>> Figure that out, put down some wildlife, some giant spiders here, a
wolfpack
>> there.
>
>Uh oh, here's where you could start to get into trouble.  Are you going
>to shoot for a "realistic" ecology?  What do the giant spiders eat?
>What does the wolfpack hunt?  Are you going to keep track of the
>populations?  If the prey leaves the area, are these animals going to
>move on?  Or, are you happy with having an unrealistic ecology that may
>end up being more fun?


I'm of two minds here.  I know that UO tried to go to far towards the
realistic ecology side, but, fact of the matter is, unless you have a truly
huge scale, with wildlife outnumbering players by factors of millions, an
unrealistic ecology would be best.  Although some of these "story/events"
very well could be groups of predators that wander around getting into
trouble.  But I'm thinking that would be driven by story/events, rather than
prey/predator relationships.

>> Ok, so we have this thing, we'll call it a third pack of goblins, that
are
>> pacifists.
>
>Uh oh, here's where you get into serious troubles.  You forgot about the
>issues of large player populations and persistence.
>
>So, say a group of hack'n'slashers meets the pacifists first?  They
>promptly kill the pacifists for (experience/practice/phat
>lewt/fun/choose your own).  Now, all your setup was for naught.  And,
>since your world is persistent, you can either re-spawn the pacifists
>("d00d, l3tz c4mp da m0bz"), or you have to have a way for your current
>setup (the two warring tribes) able to evolve into the same situation (a
>pacifist group).  I thought we were still struggling with how to
>procedurally set up stories, not how to procedurally set them up using
>in-game elements. ;)


But you're missing the point here.  A group of hack'n'slashers meets the
pacifists first?  Great, hopefully they had fun killing a bunch of
defenseless goblins.  Doesn't matter to me, I have absolutely no (or at
least very little) personal investment in this scenario as I wrote it.
Because in theory, I didn't even write it.  And in my world-view, if the
pacifists are killed off, well, they're dead.  The world would be dynamic,
so if those same players came back a month or so later, there might be
different things there (particularly if they killed off all three goblin
tribes, in which case the area would no longer be "interesting" and would
need to have something else develop.  But no, the pacifists would never
"respawn".  And if the orc stronghold were stormed, and the orcs wiped out
(a grand feat indeed, considering that it is huge and contains literally
thousands of orcs, and would require a very large-scale attack), well, then
the stronghold belongs to the victor.  Maybe enough orcs escaped that they
hide out in an allied city (if there is one) while they regroup and rebuild.

I've got sort of an interesting circle here.  These type of story/events
won't work unless the world is big enough that there can be enough of them,
but the world simply can't be big and varied enough unless these things are
being automated.

>> Yes, I realize this is a very contrived example, but I really think that
>> doing something like this is not totally unreasonable.
>
>The setup is not the part I have a problem with.  It's how the players
>interacting with the elements you've placed will act.  I'm sure
>developers even more jaded than I am could come up with even more
>horrific stories than this.


Again, I didn't place these elements.  I have zero personal investment in
this "story".  I frankly don't give a rat's arse if they "ruin" it, as long
as they enjoy themselves enough to keep playing. :)  Of course, that's
assuming I even knew this "story" existed.  That's sort of the point of
being able to automatically create things like this, is that your breadth
can be absolutely immense.

>> Imagine you're the first adventurers to reach this particular
mountainside.
>
>"d00d, p0st thi5 0n str4ticz, u get fr33 l3wt!"


Ok, so they post it on stratics.  But, the pacifists are all dead.  No more
free loot. (those goblins were pretty piss-poor anyway)

>> It turns out these goblins have for some reason turned away from their
>> spiteful past, and want only to die in peace in the village where the
caused
>> so much destruction.  So you befriend them, and vow to leave them in
peace.
>> Maybe you even think to check back periodically to see how they're doing.
>
>Until someone else comes along and kills them all for
>(experience/practice/phat lewt/fun/choose your own).  Again, you have to
>remember that there are other players and that the world is persistent.
>Other people can (and will) come along and change something you worked
>hard to set up.  And, once they change it, it isn't going to be "yours"
>anymore.  There are no saved games here.


Ok, I'll grant you this.  It would be truly a sad day if a group of players
came along and wiped out this peaceful city.  And yes, I know things like
this would happen.  But there's even a good story in that, because if the
town's "heroes" could find out who destroyed their friends, they could go on
a quest of revenge.  But I do feel obligated to say once more that I didn't
work hard to set this up. :)

>I like Phinehas's quote, "All things are permissable, but not all things
>are expedient."  Just because you can do something doesn't mean it
>SHOULD be done.  I think the system needs a lot of work before it'll
>stand up to a typical group of players in a typical game, especially a
>massive commercial game as discussed before.


Well, I do remember saying that it was the beginnings of an idea, not an
algorithm, but I do appreciate the comments. :)  And while not all things
SHOULD be done, I think this is one that should. :)




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