[MUD-Dev] A footnote to Procedural Storytelling

[Kevin Littlejohn]

>>> Brian Green wrote
 
> But, why not allow some human input on the smaller stories, too?  Some
> of the most fun I  had creating "stories" on Meridian was when I worked
> with a small group.  Maybe it was simply spoofing an NPC's dialog, or
> maybe spawning a few "strange" monsters in an area, but these events
> were always remembered fondly by the participants.  Moreso, I'd say,
> than the "world-altering" events we did try to run....  

Brings to mind part of Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson - one of the
characters in that book (I think it was that book, they have a bad habit of
blurring) works as an actress in a VR setup, providing voices and
mannerisms for basically scripted parts in 'interactive fictions'.

I'm thinking the idea might be valid - is there space for a new industry of
people acting out the roughly scripted parts of NPC's on MMORPG's?  So that
wide-brush stories are automatically generated, a very small team who know
the world well pick the appropriate characters and make any human-touch
tweaks to the story as required, then a larger staff of actors are employed,
given the character, and the rough story from that char's pov, and told to
act it out for the players.

Dunno how feasible it would be, but it seems to make sense - means you can
have worlds that the players can influence (by auto-generating the
wide-brush events from interactions inside the world as they occur), but
the human touch still enters the picture.

KevinL



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