[MUD-Dev] UO rants

[John Buehler]

> Paul Schwanz - Enterprise Services
> Sent: Friday, September 01, 2000 10:27 AM

> Evidently, you want some interaction between the ones
> who have carte
> blanche immunity from war and the ones who are engaged in war.

1. I want to geographically separate areas where war is being waged from areas
where war is unheard of.

2. I want war to consist of players versus gamemasters, not players versus
players.

3. I want a feathering of danger levels from the almost purely combative areas
to the almost purely peaceful areas.

Number 1 ensures that players must make a conscious decision about whether
they want to be in combative areas or peaceful areas.  Number 2 ensures that
the combative actions are directed at NPCs, not at other players.  Because the
combative NPCs are only in specific areas, players don't control where the
combat will take place.  Only the gamemasters will control this.  Number 3
ensures that players will be able to pick what sort of danger level they want.

Nobody has carte blanche immunity from war.  Geographic locations ensure
immunity from war because there's nobody who wants to engage in war there.
Because I don't believe in instantaneous transportation, this means that in
order to flee from combat, you do it the old fashioned way.  And even while
leaving the combat area, you might encounter a roving band of monsters who
snuck in behind the good guys' lines.  That's because number 3 above says that
the danger level goes down at a ramp, not stepwise full-to-none.

  But
> it will be very
> difficult to keep such interaction from directly influencing the
> war.  And if it
> influences the war, then it should not be invulnerable.  If those
> who are farmers and
> merchants can impact the war, why can't the war impact them?  But
> perhaps you won't
> allow any action which can truly impact either side?  At this
> point, I think you'd be
> better off to provide two different games, or the same game on
> different servers.

You may be assuming player versus player war.  I don't believe that such a
thing is tenable, given all the goals that I have in mind.

> The game world *will be* predicated on surviving a bunch of nuts,
> whether those nuts
> have big knives or not. ;-)

Granted.

> Stamp collectors and warmongers coexist in real life.  Stamp
> collectors, however, are
> not *guaranteed* a life of peacful existence.  In fact, it behooves
> stamp collectors
> to pay taxes and vote in order to promote a government which will
> protect their way of
> life.  If stamp collectors are given no guarantee of immunity from
> war in real life,
> why should they be given one in a virtual life?  Yet this lack of a
> guarantee doesn't
> seem to keep stamp collectors from enjoying their pursuits in real
> life.  Why should
> it keep them from enjoying a game?  Of course, warmongers are not
> guaranteed conquest
> either.  How can you cast your net wider than this?

Let's stop implicitly debating this topic.  The game is about entertainment.
Stamp collectors aren't interested in the thrill of doing stamp collecting in
a war zone.  You claim that stamp collectors keep doing their thing in real
life even when war is a possibility.  I tell you that when war comes along,
THEY DO NOT ENJOY IT.  The game is about entertainment.

When we have 'war' in these games, the players do not experience wounds
personally.  Their characters do.  The players don't look into the shocked and
anquished eyes of their opponents as they hack them down.  They don't smell
the carnage after a battle.  They don't feel the slipperiness of blood on
their armor and their clothes.  Why?  The game is about entertainment.  We
sanitize war so that it is 'entertaining'.

There are many concessions to entertainment that we make in these games.  A
lack of need for washing, cleaning, sleeping, visiting the garderobe, etc.
Those things are significant in the ebb and flow of mortal humans' lives and
would significantly impact the way that the virtual world works, but we don't
put them in.  The game is about entertainment.

I'm trying to bring together lots of different types of entertainment in ways
that are interesting to the afficianados of those kinds of entertainment.  The
guys having their war don't have a bunch of powerful pacifists come in and
call off the war.  The bad guys don't suddenly just retreat and never come
back.  That's not entertaining for those interested in combat.

I don't want players hopping into other games when they get tired of killing
things - or being killed while stamp collecting.  I want players to simply
travel to a different place in the world with their same character.  Or to
stay where they are and see if they can pull off that new form of
entertainment in the circumstances that they're in.  It's all up to the
player.

> Why can't we make them other than conscienceless superhumans so
> that they can be kept
> in line by realistic measures?

Sure.  One character per player, combined with permadeath.  No reprieves, no
resurrections, no workarounds.

Not very entertaining.

> Why not make the virtual world more like
> the real world by
> trying to give characters a conscience and restricting unrealistic
> superhuman
> capabilities instead of making it less like the real world by
> inserting arbitrary and
> unrealistic guarantees about a player's ability to pursue stamp
> collecting?  In the
> real world, *all* things are permissible...even pursuing war against stamp
> collectors...but not all things are expedient.  Stamp collectors
> should be given the
> ability to ensure that making war against them is not expedient,
> but I think that
> making it impermissible is a step in the wrong direction.

Tell me how it would work.  Any response that I could offer would be based in
speculation on what you have in mind.

JB





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