[MUD-Dev] On socialization and convenience

[Adam Martin]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Tresca" <talien at toast.net>
To: <mud-dev at kanga.nu>
Sent: Friday, June 15, 2001 1:23 PM
Subject: RE: [MUD-Dev] On socialization and convenience

> On Thursday, June 14, 2001 12:43 AM Raph Koster posted:

>> Even our recovery areas suffer from this. Yes, we pretty much
>> make you go to cantinas and taverns, because you need to heal
>> wounds. But that means that the only people whom you will meet in
>> cantinas are wounded people and healers. And maybe a
>> bartender. That leaves out a lot of types of player--the
>> politicians, the crafters, the farmers and the animal trainers.

> RetroMUD faces this dilemma.  We have over six different kinds of
> channels for players to talk to each other from anywhere else.  We
> have news posts.  We have guild boards.  They can send tells to
> each other.  They can speak out loud.  They can whisper.  AND we
> have inns and taverns.

> You can sit down at a tavern.  NPCs will sit there too.  You can
> chat with them.  You can order drinks, buy food, listen to rumors.
> It reproduces, quite nicely, the effect of the WEB (World's End
> Bar, if I remember correctly) from AmberMUSH.  Only on a MUD.

> And as you can probably guess, no player is interested in sitting
> at the tavern at all.  Why?

> You don't get healing from taverns, so there's no real reason to
> go.  You can get drunk, but that doesn't necessarily help you
> (GOPers see this as just plain stupid).  Players are only a
> channel away.  Taverns are supposed to serve the same purpose as
> they would in real life -- a social setting (presumably, to swap
> adventure stories, to get together to party, etc.).  But they
> don't.

> Instead, they gather outside of "North Gate" of Keystone City.
> That's the launching pad for parties.  But that's not always a
> safe place to be.  Because players can build their own castles,
> they decided to build something called the "Chat Tower."  Chat
> Tower is where everyone goes if they only want to chat, in person,
> and be safe from wandering monsters.

I don't understand. What is wrong with that? It sounds perfect to me
- you have a game which has generated its own natural
tavern-equivalent. I would have thought you would be celebrating the
fact that your game was flexible enough to allow the players to
create the "Chat Tower" in the appropriate place.

Why are you so desperate to force people to use taverns as meeting
places?  By allusion to realism, I'd point out that historically any
tavern not cited in a position where it was required (e.g. like the
Chat Tower being created because that was the location where the
players needed a meeting place) would very soon go bust from lack of
custom.

It seems to me that the only situation where you need to encourage
people into taverns is where there is no such socializing already
going on in the game; but then I'm of the school of thought that you
shouldn't be forcing people to play the game "your" way all the
time.

Adam M

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