[MUD-Dev] Maintaining fiction.

[Brian Hook]

At 08:22 AM 6/6/01 +0100, Adam M. wrote:

> We were the most appallingly dumb and pretty inept pair of thieves
> the world had ever seen. Great fun though.

And it can be great fun to roleplay a fighter with 11 STR or a mage
with 9 INT (the prototypical bumbling mage), but this is usually
only fun occasionally.

People are angst ridden enough about not being smart enough,
successful enough, strong enough, healthy enough, good looking
enough, or talented enough in the real world that perpetuating that
into a game seems to be rather self-defeating when trying to offer
an immersive escape from reality.

I had a conversation once with someone who felt that you can enforce
"true" RP by only allowing the computer to generate scores for them.
Analogous to the AD&D rolling rules of "roll the dice, and you keep
those scores in the order you rolled them, and you can make choices
from there".  Not very flexible, and flatly, not very fun if you
roll 6 STR and you really wanted to be a warrior.

But this was all in the name of "true role-playing".

Don't get me wrong, I think purists have a role to fill in this
world.  But I don't see a mass market game that will appeal to them,
much like an art-house film won't appeal to the mass market.  Of
course, there will always be those that poo-poo the "sheep", aka
"mindless herd" aka "the average idiot" and don't want to target
them, and I say "More power to you!"

Me...I like to write games people play.  But I'm goofy that way =)

Brian Hook

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