[MUD-Dev] Maintaining fiction.

[Freeman]

> From: Jon Lambert [mailto:tychomud at ix.netcom.com]

> I had thought about that angle but then I have a little trouble
> defining who the other people really are, and whether it's simply
> a majority view or unanimous view.  Do you confine "others" to
> those who knew Bob the recently deceased?  Then Bob is dead is
> most of them agree that Bob is dead.  Certainly even if Bob2 is
> played by the same player, they might still conclude that Bob is
> dead, and Bob2 is a wholly different character even if
> substantially similar in personality to Bob.

I'm thinking that everything in a MUD is make-believe, and sort of
the point (at least partly) is to attempt to make all the players
believe the same thing.

Some players will pretend they are elves in a MUD with no elves,
others can pretend they are remote-controlled orcbots in a fantasy
world, and so on.

Some players will pretend their character isn't really dead in a MUD
that is supposed to have permadeath.  Others will pretend their
character really is dead in a MUD that doesn't have permanent death.

Ultimately the MUD can't *make* anyone believe *anything*.  The
challenge is to create a world compelling enough so that most of the
players mostly believe mostly the same thing most of the time.

Some players will refuse.  Eh.  So what?  I *don't* see that
permadeath is fundamentally different from anything else you might
want to implement.  It doesn't bother me if people want to pretend
to be elves or starfleet captains in UO, for that matter.  That
doesn't mean that "fantasy" cannot be implemented on account of the
players will play whatever type characters they want to.

I also think these are two separate discussions: "How to implement
permanent death so that mostly the players go along with it"
vs. "How to implement permanent death so that most of the players
don't quit playing when they die".

We'll never have the second discussion if we constantly stop with
the first one to say "It can't be done because some players won't
buy into it no matter what you do."
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