[MUD-Dev] Something in the water

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

On Thu, 26 Jul 2001 12:54:58 -0700, J C Lawrence <claw at 2wire.com> wrote:

> Is there an effective difference between:having Bob actually go
> away and practice Kung-Fu alone, or having Bob go away for a while
> and not be played, and then return Bob to the game with the
> backdrop of "He's secretly become a Kung-Fu master"?

Yes. Bob's desire to become a kung-fu master must be strong. He must
be willing to invest the time and the effort. Each day, he will face
difficult and near-impossible tasks. He will be tempted to give
up. But he will not, and that is how he *becomes* a kung-fu
master... instead of just "that guy from that time when we did that
thing, and he's got a GUN, oh no, where's my gun, oh bugger". (Were
you surprised? I was so surprised.) RP is something of a
carrot-and-stick situation, but it's more like you jump for the
carrot and someone hits you with the stick.  If you keep jumping,
you'll get the carrot, but it's later replaced. The key is to keep
putting up with that guy who's hitting you with the stick.

RP is really sort of twisted. The entire point of RP is often to
have bad situations and overcome them. Being *in* the bad situation
has a certain value other than getting past it.

>   Does Bob actually need to go away and RP learning Kung-Fu in the
>   woods where even the bears are blind?  > Is there value in Bob
>   doing that?

Yes. Bob may be seen by people without his knowledge, who could warn
his targets that he's off in the woods learning Tai Chi.

>   What loss is there if Bob just doesn't log on for a while, and
>   then starts logging back in as a kung-fu master?

It wouldn't be sufficiently rare. Anyone can just not log on for a
while.

>>  There is, of course, one exception: Bob can impress an admin
>>  with his devious plan, and convince the admin to give him
>>  special consideration.

> What does that consideration amount to?

A player edit. Which amounts to favoritism. And it's not fun,
anyway.

> The core of my argument is that the system _AND_ other players
> perforce occupy an external viewpoint and therefore can only apply
> the external definition of RP.  Ergo, the internal definition of
> RP is not on distracting,

Vague thought... WoD MUDs divide all skills into three groups:
physical, mental, and social. Theoretically, you could apply actions
to physical skills and speech to social skills, with a certain
cross-pollination for mental skills.

> its inapplicable to attempts to design or implement a system of RP
> quantification based on anything other than self-evaluation.

  > Quit
  On a scale of one to ten, how much fun did you have today?
  > 7
  You are awarded 5 RP points for enjoying yourself.
  Goodbye...

;)

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