[MUD-Dev] Persistent Worlds

[Christopher Allen]

John Buehler wrote:

> 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.

This is the approach we took with Castle Marrach, and it was quite
successful. We created a backstory, and populated with castle with a
number of minor and major characters that we hosted. These characters
drive the over-arching plotline that will evolve over the next few
years. We know what things will happen no matter what, and what things
are likely to happen, and have some room for players to do things we
don't expect. I presume what we wrote is not dissimilar from a bible
for a television series, and is over 200 pages long.

Some of our more minor characters were created so that the Castle
would not initially feel like an empty place -- each of the
pre-created guilds had a couple of members. As each the guild
memberships filled out, these minor characters are phased out,
sometimes with something flashy like a death or duel, or just fade out
over time the same way some players appear to.

Other minor characters we created to make certain points. For
instance, we had a minor character that always lost duels, to show how
to honorably do so. Another example is that we had a character that
could not speak -- instead, he communicated solely through our gesture
system (we don't have emotes). This encouraged people to use gestures
in more interesting ways, and I'm quite proud that we now have a
player that has adopted this idea and has been playing a mute
character for several months now.

Some major characters like the Queen will almost always be hosted by
Skotos, but some, very slowly over time, we are turning some of them
over to players that have shown the ability to take on the difficult
responsibility of a character that must stick to a storyline. Not all
players are able to keep the good of the overall game in mind for such
roles, but those that can we value highly.

This approach initially was more hosting intensive then we hoped,
occupying 3 CE (Customer Experience) people more then half time, and
the rest of the company pitching in to help a couple times of
week. However, most of the transition is done and all of the
pre-defined guilds are run by players now, they have created many more
on their own, and some of the major characters have been cast. CE can
now focus on our next game, and the increasing tech support
requirements of a growing customer base.

-- Christopher Allen

------------------------------------------------------------------------
.. Christopher Allen                                 Skotos Tech Inc. ..
..                           1512 Walnut St., Berkeley, CA 94709-1513 ..
.. <http://www.Skotos.net>               o510/647-2760  f510/647-2761 ..

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