[MUD-Dev] "gossip"

[Patrick Dughi]

On Mon, 20 Nov 2000, Ted Milker wrote:

> On Mon, Nov 20, 2000 at 04:16:20AM -0500, Josh Rollyson (dracus) wrote:
> > Additionally, at each exchange, the "gossip" would grow less credible. 
> > So while the first 2 or 3 NPCs in the chain may consider it credible,
> > others might not, until they hear of similar events, or hear of the
> > events from more NPCs.
> 
> I like the ideas presented, however, I don't quite understand
> this part.  Why does the gossip get less credible as time goes
> on?  Wouldn't it make more sense to use some combination of the
> gossiping NPCs stats to determine how much credibility is
> assigned?  If the mayor of the town is saying this to his wife,
> it's probably pretty credible, but if his wife is known as a
> gossip, it might not be quite so credible when passed on from
> her.  However, if the person who hears this from the mayor's wife
> also hears about the incident from someone else, then the
> credibility increases.  Also, except for the really "gossipy" NPCs,
> NPCs shouldn't pass on all of their gossip tokens to every NPC
> they meet.  But with "gossipy" NPCs placed strategically around
> town, gossip can still spread rapidly, especially in smaller
> towns.
> 
	I can think of one reason why - current gaming systems don't
usually emulate every character that actually exists in a city/town/etc. 
If you login to the standard diku, you'd notice that there are no
children, and except for a barmaid and recpetionist, no women in the
starting town. Also no houses, or non-substiance-level stores. Etc.

	They're not really even close to towns, but that's okay.  Just the
effort required to be realistic for alot of these learning behaviors is
immense, whereas the effort required to just make them work in a
reasonable manner is really ...reasonable.

						PjD


_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev