[MUD-Dev] Persistent Worlds

[Travis Casey]

John Buehler wrote:
> rayzam writes:

> > That's another point to the issue. Spontaneous generation, per se,
> > occurs both for the ecology and the scripted NPCs. Now, you can model
> > the ecology with population rates, but what about the NPCs? Count
> > Dracula, once killed, is gone.. his castle goes into disrepair. Can
> > you model someone else coming into this position of power? Even so,
> > can you model the background/history that is inherent in that area's
> > design? I suppose this is a choice that the area/level developers make
> > in any game, but IMO a well-designed area has a history to it, and
> > thus can't be modelled outside of repopulating it, unless you can also
> > model the time inherent in the history, or employ a legion of
> > designers to continual update every bit of th e world [which negates
> > being able to automate it].
> 
> My attitude about this problem is that games should not be relying
> on backstory, and definitely not on a backstory that is well know,
> such as the legend of Dracula.  A living, breathing storyline is
> what is needed.  This king did that, that baron did this and so on.
> Create a running soap opera for players to pay attention to and
> interact with as individuals.
> 
> By analogy, I'd run Babylon 5 as my storyline (with the assumption
> that the series had never existed), and the players can be security
> people, StarFury pilots, engineers, PsyCorp, all sorts of stuff.
> But they don't get to be Sheridan or G'Kar or any of the other
> primary characters.  They are involved in the soap opera, and that
> gives them a solid 'history' for them to be interested in and to
> help propagate.  Backstory is irrelevant.

I think a better way to put this is that a gameworld should be
"self-healing".  Backstory can be relevant to a game without problems,
but if there is no way to generate new challenges for characters when
old ones are overcome, or to continue the game if a particular NPC or
item is lost, then the game has not been well-designed.

To keep up with Babylon 5 as an example, the creator of B5, J. Michael
Sheridan, planned the storyline with backup plans for what to do if
each of the important characters was lost -- since, after all, in
making this as a TV series rather than a novel, it would be possible
for the actor portraying a character to quit the show, die, or
otherwise be unable to carry on with the role.  In building a
long-term plot for a mud, one needs to take the same sorts of
precautions.

Thus, B5 had important elements of backstory -- such as what happened
to Colonel Sinclair at the Battle of the Line -- but there were
multiple ways in which that backstory could have manifested.

> As for repopulating the world, it's not necessary that the or even
> 'a' primary avenue of entertainment be eliminating characters from
> the world.  Non-lethal combat and a number of other approaches to
> conflict (whether NPCs or PCs) can be employed.  Personally, I like
> the idea of having NPCs die permanently.  Just as with my hopes
> about a closed ecology, killing an NPC should have consequences -
> such as the loss of the services of that NPC to the town.  Or the
> loss of the history of that NPC.  Kill the king and everything that
> any player was aware of about that NPC is now at an end.  It might
> be a bit like losing a family pet.  It's a bummer.

I agree with this part.  :-)

--
       |\      _,,,---,,_     Travis S. Casey  <efindel at earthlink.net>
 ZZzz  /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_   No one agrees with me.  Not even me.
      |,4-  ) )-,_..;\ (  `'-' 
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