[MUD-Dev] Persistent Worlds

[J C Lawrence]

On Tue, 20 Feb 2001 19:02:37 -0800 
John Buehler <johnbue at msn.com> wrote:

> What can I say?  I take exception to backstory documents because
> they implicitly promise far more than the game world can provide -
> generally speaking.  I don't want to goof around with quests and
> the like.  

I'm not fond of backstories for a different reason:

  They have a tendency to pre-cast the world, resulting in odd
  juxtapositions and inconsistance as ideas are force-fit to try and
  lie within a previously written back story.

  They're generally not well thought out, especially as to
  consequences and second order effects.

  They're usually badly written, poorly delivered, and in general
  distractive.

Which doesn't mean that there should be no introduction in the
general case.  There needs to be some point of familiarity to start
from for the player, even if that is a carry over from previous
products in the genre.  However, my preference for backstory is for
it to be a process of discovery that is revealed by exploration and
activity within the game world.  That doesn't mean that NPCs preach
history at you, or that there are long cut scenes or text blobs that
attempt to force feed context to the player (they can work but they
rarely do), but that the world consistently presents the apparancy
of being the product of history, and not the product of recent
invention.

This can be as simple as ruts in the cobbles of roads suggesting
that the trade route to the next town was once both active and busy,
burn marks on walls revealing that the castle was once assaulted,
defaced statues of figures not out of political favour, currency
which references the potentates sitting when it was minted, and so
on and so forth.  The question is _depth_, and the perception of
organic growth, not some-geek-thought-this-up-last-night.  Signs of
human activity over extensive periods, presented in a manner that is
consistent with itself and consistent with humans attempting to live
plausible lives.

--
J C Lawrence                                       claw at kanga.nu
---------(*)                          http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/
--=| A man is as sane as he is dangerous to his environment |=--
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