[MUD-Dev] Persistent Worlds

[John Buehler]

> Travis Casey

> To give a concrete example, let's take the old "orcs in the hills"
> setup.  You *could* set things up so that the players can't ever
> completely wipe out the orcs -- e.g., using a "hidden population" of
> orcs, from which the orcs will rebuild.

> Alternatively, however, you could plan ahead by asking yourself --
> what's going to happen if the players wipe out the orcs?  Is there
> some other menace in the hills which the orcs have been keeping in
> check?  Could someone else come along and decide that the orc
> caverns look like a nice place to live now?  Without the orcs
> holding the hills, will the local population expand into the hills,
> and if they do, what changes in the local area will come about
> because of that?

> The first method is relatively easy, but, IMHO, unsatisfying.  The
> second method requires story planners (and ones who can fairly
> quickly adapt, at that), but, again IMHO, would make for a more
> satisfying, more real-feeling world.

I generally agree with you here, but there's also the fact that the
gamemasters can almost ensure that what they need to happen can
happen.  For example, if the orc village is a village of 1000 orcs, it
will be almost impossible to assault and wipe out.  But if it's a
village of 100 orcs, it will be manageable.  The gamemasters set up
the village one way or the other.  If they make it small, then their
story planning obviously has to be able to adapt.  If they make it
large and nasty, they are obviously intending that the village (well,
fort) is supposed to stay there for a while.  Probably for story
reasons.

This is the kind of thinking that I'm assuming the story tellers will
go through when laying out challenges for the players.  Some will be
trivial and won't impact the story at all.  Some challenges will be
moderate and might impact the story.  Some will be tough and the story
planners have a few ideas on how the world can react to the player
activity.  Some will be impossible because the story planners really
want the story to unfold a certain way.  I would hope that they make
it believably impossible, of course.  For example, Sauron's home in
the case of a combat challenge.

> Ok -- I see the point of disagreement now.  We're defining
> "backstory" in two different ways.  To me, backstory is what
> happened before to set up the current situation.  Any real-seeming
> world *has* to have this sort of backstory to make any sense.  It
> need not be written out in the form of a story -- indeed, I agree
> that it's generally better not to do so.

Yeah, any pertinent backstory should be presented *in* the game, not
via some document to be read before playing the game.  And *in* the
game doesn't mean that there's a document to be read while playing the
game.  I want the virtual world to be experienced by the players, not
dissected like some...  game.

JB

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