[MUD-Dev] Persistent Worlds

[J C Lawrence]

On Fri, 16 Feb 2001 19:11:20 +0000 (GMT) 
the logos <the_logos at www.achaea.com> wrote:

> Yes, it's not realistic to have re-popping mobs. Of course,
> dragons and magic are also not realistic, and neither is eating
> and never having to use the bathroom.

"Not realistic" is dismissive and ignores what the model and purpose
the environment actually has.  One of the initial questions is
whether the environment is to simulate an external/other system and
to approximate its observed behaviour and what the acceptable
deviations are, or whether the requirement is that the environment
be self-explanatory (and thus somehwat self-consistent) within some
internal and likely self-referential model, or whether it is simply
that it shouldn't excessively surprise player's expectations of the
environments behaviour given reasonable familiarity with its more
general behaviour.  Explaining away, justifying, or even making
ingestion and defecation irrelevant and just something that
*doesn't* occur in a given world is fairly easy.  Dragons, magic,
fairy dust, angels, Cthulhu, reincarnation and pshycic phenomena can
also be wrapped in both self and externally consistant frameworks,
even for a hard science simulation model which looks to build
something which doesn't violate current scientific knowledge.

There'a a fairly lare scale here, tho not well documented, of a
range between a very hard science simulation all the way down to
something which sacrifies everything on the altar of "entertaining"
and "interesting", or against the standard of "interferes with
expression".

--
J C Lawrence                                       claw at kanga.nu
---------(*)                          http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/
--=| A man is as sane as he is dangerous to his environment |=--
_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev