[MUD-Dev] Self-Sufficient Worlds

[Zak Jarvis]

> From: Lee Sheldon [linearno at gte.net]
> Sent: Tuesday, May 23, 2000 12:44 PM

> I look at story in large scale games as being made up of lots of
> little stories.  I'm not trying to seed an entire game world at this
> point... heck, I'm not trying chaos theory at all right now, the
> word tends to scare people who pay me to think stuff up... but
> the idea is to seed a bunch of smaller stories and see how they
> fit in the grander arc, or if they create one (the ultimate idea)
> of their own.  Anyway, since I have been creating stories
> quests and errands for well over a year, and haven't found the strain on
> resources to be as unreasonable as you fear, there's not much more I can
> add.  It's not a theory with me, you see.  I'm just doing it.

I think perhaps before this discussion can actually progress -- and I'd
really like it to -- I'm going to need to better define what exactly my
goals are, and how I define story.

First of all, my goal with this though experiment is to develop a system
that allows upwards of 10,000 simultaneous players to participate in the
ongoing story of the world, utilizing a clearly defined system in gameplay
oriented environment (IE, a gameworld with mechanics for character
advancement and achievement; skills, levels, stats, item acquisition, etc).

By 'participate' I mean fit into, become a part of and otherwise
consciously and unconsciously manipulate and alter the outcome thereof.

I am specifically courting Unforeseen Consequences. It's often been stated
that if the players are presented with a dragon, they will kill it.  That
is only true so long as they aren't supposed to. If the dragon is intended
to be killed, they will instead tame or befriend it and use it to raze
villages.

I want to harness the contrarian nature of the players and put it into
service of the narrative, story or drama of the world.

I might be using the word 'story' differently than you. I'm not talking
about static arcs or predefined events. The difference -- I think in
essence -- is that I am talking about stories that become evident only in
retrospect, hence my early comments about biography (horribly brain-farted
into autobiography and throwing my whole argument into a tailspin).

What I want, ultimately, is for the biography of a sizable portion of the
player population to contain the puzzle pieces which tell a series of
larger and larger stories - stories which are not mapped out beforehand,
but flow out of the interactions between each other and their environment.

Given my definitions, how would you use a team of writers to accomplish my
goals?

I still maintain that handcrafting events which involve tens of thousands
of players individually is neither achievable nor desirable.

-Zak Jarvis
 http://www.voidmonster.com





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