[MUD-Dev] Maintaining fiction.

[Phillip Lenhardt]

On Tue, Jun 05, 2001 at 10:58:48AM -0700, Trump wrote:

> While it's nice to see that at least one person got the point of
> the original post, it's frightening that many were too distracted
> by the specifics I chose for implementation to get the big
> picture.  To summarize:
 
>   If you want to promote roleplay in your so called RPG you need
>   to reward it where possible, lead by example and avoid anything
>   that might jolt someone out of thier suspension of disbelief.
>   Existing games commonly place fiction breakers even in the basic
>   gameplay (showing damage numbers).  While this doesnt
>   necessarily make your game bad it does make a much less
>   immersive game.  If players see in character discussion in
>   everything that relates to your game.  Even your website,
>   fansites, comments from the devs, etc they are much more likely
>   to join in and be in character themselves.  While you can never
>   have 100% and there are times when you need to be OOC (CS for a
>   newbie) getting 80% participation is much better than getting
>   20%.  If you want your MUD to just be a hack and slash adventure
>   game, that's fine, this discussion has nothing to do with those
>   types of games.
 
> So, instead of saying what *I* would do.  Let me ask what *you*
> would do to make your RPG more of an RPG and not just an Adventure
> game?

Thank you for this summary of your position, it makes replying
_much_ easier.

For small-scale text games I think this problem has been solved. All
you have to do is make potential players fill out an application
form (ala http://www.armageddon.org/intro/revisedinto.html). To my
knowledge, that sort of thing weeds out 99% of the people you don't
want to play with. I'm sure it would work for a graphical game as
well. And for large-scale games I think the point is academic, since
I don't really think there are tens of thousands of people that want
to play the kind of game you are describing.

As for me, I do enjoy playing a role, but I'm not fanatical about
it. And I am certainly capable of operating in more than one context
at a time, so it doesn't bother me to discuss football scores while
simultaneously pretending to be a dwarven miner negotiating the
purchase of a new pickaxe.

I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes on this subject (taken
from an actual face-to-face session):

        "Quit saying 'quaff'. Just because we're playing D&D doesn't
        mean we're having a Renaissance Festival."
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