[MUD-Dev] 3rd person text MUDs

[Richard A. Bartle]

On 15th June 2001, Colin Coghill wrote:

> Every MUD I've ever seen worked in the first person "you do this",
> "Bob laughs at you".  Has anyone tried it in the third
> person. Where you "look" in a room and see your character from the
> outside?

The original "Colossal Caves" Adventure, which isn't a MUD but has
similar issues in this regard, starts as follows:

  Welcome to Adventure!! Would you like instructions?

  > yes

  Somewhere nearby is Colossal Cave, where others have found
  fortunes in treasure and gold, though it is rumored that some who
  enter are never seen again. Magic is said to work in the cave. I
  will be your eyes and hands. Direct me with commands of 1 or 2
  words. I should warn you that I look at only the first five
  letters of each word, so you'll have to enter "northeast" as "ne"
  to distinguish it from "north".

In other words, the player is given the impression of moving some
entity around that isn't actually them but is their representative.
This is an unusual perspective, although it's not exactly what you
mean by "3rd person" because your representative would never
describe itself as just another object. The text would be reported
from the point of view of your representative, not of you, and
therefore would contain "I see..." rather than "you see...". There'd
be no reason why your representative would ever see itself, though.

I say "would" here because although Adventure begins with this
"instructions" paragraph, it doesn't actually proceed in that
manner!  It informs you:

  You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick
  building. Around you is a forest. A small stream flows out of the
  building and down a gully.

In other words, it uses the "normal" first-person point of view
thereafter.

I believe this comes naturally to most English-speaking people, such
that it wouldn't occur to them to use any other person or tense to
describe events. I certainly used it playing D&D years before I
encountered Adventure.

> are there any other advantages to this?

If you want your players not to feel immersed, or you have some
particular application where remoteness would be appropriate (eg.
possessing mortals as a ghost) then go ahead. A MUD where you feel
"you" are present is different to one where you're pulling the
stings of puppets; if you want the latter, go for it.

		Richard
_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev