[MUD-Dev] PvP Systems

[John Buehler]

Jon Lambert writes:

> Those are just props.  They aren't necessary to role-play.  And they
> often distract from role-play.  They spoil scenes because they
> introduce actions, events and dialogue that just isn't wanted or
> appropriate.

You speak as if roleplaying is the highest form of game play.
Roleplaying is one way that a player enjoys the game experience.  My
use of NPC props - and they assuredly are props - is to provide
players with a constant reminder of the fact that this genre works a
certain way and that the mood of the town is angry or joyous or
opressed, whatever.  If I want my gamemasters to run a story and
provide entertainment to my players, I'd have to convince and/or
recruit roleplayers to play the parts that I need.  That's no way to
run a business where I'm providing a paid entertainment experience to
my customers.

My approach to telling a story is to have my NPC wranglers (I love
that term) manipulate the NPCs to cause certain activities to take
place.  They do their own thing and the players are invited to observe
and react.  They are not invited to go up and talk to the captain of
the guard.  He's an NPC, and while there is a wrangler who controls
the captain, that wrangler is not going to talk one-on-one with the
player.  So NPCs remain service-providers.  If you have accumulated
faction with one, you can ask for favors from them using a canned
interface.  It's not roleplaying.  It's just a gameplay element that
will be fun to some.

Player to player interaction takes place independent of the NPCs.  For
example, the assault on the orc village.  Players roleplay and plot
and plan and then assault the village, hopefully for roleplaying
reasons (although we know it'll be "for the hell of it").  The NPC
wrangler who runs that area of the world will cause the orcs to react
in some way so that there is an element of real intelligence in the
encounter, not just mindless force on force.

I'm primarily concerned with consistent quality of service, and
roleplayers don't provide it.

> There is a large audience of role- players that views dialogue with
> NPCs as a patent waste of keystrokes and time.

And I count myself among them, despite the fact that I am not a
roleplayer.  But as a game feature, interacting with an NPC can be
entertaining when I tell others what I have done.  It's a very 'gamey'
way to play, but it's viable for some degree of entertainment.  That's
especially true when I don't feel like interacting with other people
right now.

> Even so in a mud, these "smart" NPCs become little side-quests of
> guess the magic words to activate them and get what you want.
> That's an additional level of game that rewards the GOPer, it
> doesn't do anything for the RPer.  RPers need audiences of humans
> not bots.  There's a difference.  You see, this is forcing players
> to react to the world.  You are casting the roles...not players.
> The other way is allowing the players to create the roles and
> character.

First, I don't want my players spending their time trying to carry on
a conversation with an NPC.  That's silly.  As I said, I'd like
players to think of the NPCs as service providers.  One of the
services that they provide is ambiance for the towns and other areas
where characters concentrate.

Second, I very definitely want players to react to the world.  Many
folks are far more interested in having the players control the world.
That only works for a limited population of players who are of a like
mind.  I'm after a paradigm that works for massive playerbases (tens
of thousands).  It's a far more vanilla experience than most
roleplaying enthusiasts will be interested in.

> > Imagine, in contrast, a town with only players in it.  Nobody >
> establishes the atmosphere of the town, so it becomes whatever the >
> players say it is.  > The only reason there isn't an atmosphere
> established in such a town is simply because you are starting from a
> base of game players.  Start with role-players and you'll get an
> atmosphere.

Whose atmosphere?  The one that I wanted or the one that the
roleplayers want?  Am I supposed to convince them of how to roleplay
in my world?  Do I hire them?

I really think that some game publisher needs to hire roleplayers to
actually run NPCs at minimum wage or some such thing.  That's really
what roleplayers want to do.  They want to *act*.

> You can force these players to dress up in fancy medieval clothes,
> put them in a medieval town, force them to say good day, thee and
> thou and other magic words to make the little robots wandering
> around do unusual things.  You still won't get them to role-play.
> You just get mice in your maze looking for cheese in funny outfits
> and saying strange things because the cheese happens to be easier to
> come by that way.

I don't want my players to roleplay beyond functional roleplaying.  I
want them to enjoy the world.  What I want to avoid is players who do
things that are very counter to the atmosphere of the game world.  The
NPCs serve as a reminder that your character is in a medieval town.
Or in a futuristic town.  Whatever.  Non-roleplayers need the props as
reminders.  A cast of extras to run the NPCs would be great, but I'd
never rely on a cadre of volunteers.  I'd have to produce high level
scripts and have the actors figure out how to present that script.
I'd have terrible security problems of keeping any information about
the script secret, etc.  Blech.

> Of course not.  But the purpose of role-play is to entertain other
> players.  It requires 2 or more humans, not a human and a machine.
> Now a game where the vasy majority of players _are_ role-players is
> almost guaranteed to be entertaining and atmospheric regardless of
> the presence of props.

Yup.  Where ya gonna find the roleplayers that are willing to provide
consistent quality of service to the rest of the playerbase?

> The functional/immersive style of roleplay is well illustrated by
> Armageddon and Threshold, and is done pretty well there.  :-) The
> other styles are not represented on this list.  The best way to
> illustrate these other styles is to go out and play those games,
> Cajun Nights, Chiba City, Children of the Moon, OtherSpace, etc.
> There are dozens more.

What is the size of the player base of some of those games?

JB

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