[MUD-Dev] Maintaining fiction.

[Matt Chatterley]

> From: Matt Mihaly <the_logos at achaea.com>
> On Mon, 11 Jun 2001, Matt Chatterley wrote:

[Snippage]

>>  Hmm. The more comments I read on PermaDeath (henceforth PD!),
>>  the more I think that its a concept which fits only games with
>>  very strong emphasis on roleplay. In such games, the concept of
>>  "Character" is much more strongly defined, and hence, the death
>>  of said "Character" is far more than the loss of some stats and
>>  the necessity to pass over a bunch of equipment.
 
> Yes, I'm starting to feel the same way. I'm not sure permadeath is
> anything more than a meaningless marketing term unless it's a very
> strongly roleplayed game. In most of the games I've tried that
> claimed to have permadeath, someone's new character acted just
> like the old one. Really, it was the old one, as a character is an
> idea that isn't represented in stats and equipment and database
> entries.

Yeah.

The PC *is* represented by its database entries, stats, etc, etc
(and for games which have very few of these, its equipment defines
what it can do, too), but, many different characters (stat-wise) can
have identical personalities and basically, IMHO, /be/ the same.

This conclusion is natural to me (I've always been a Roleplayer, not
a Rollplayer, to reintroduce a couple of old terms), but, it still
leaves me flailing in the dark as to whether or not I want character
data to be lost upon death in a game which isn't strong (or fully
enforced) roleplay.

Advancement in the game which I'm designing is probably going to be
based on Experience Points, but, where XP relate to character
/experiences/.

Fighting would give you experience in combat, training up relevant
skills, but, killing 2000 Kobolds would provide no more experience
than killing a few hundred, which in turn provides little more than
killing dozens. Your PC would learn a lot about Kobolds in the first
couple of fights (mostly represented in his portable bestiary; you
could look up the Kobold and review what you'd learnt).

A lot of XP will probably be earnable by travelling, working through
puzzles and generally /adventuring/ (coping with life in the wild,
adapting to new situations, and so forth). Mind you, I may yet scrap
the XP concept, since I'm not sure what it will really gain you. In
a skill orientated system, your skills would train to reflect your
experiences anyway.

Hmm. I'm a bit stuck, really.

-Matt

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