FW: [MUD-Dev] Interesting EQ rant (very long quote)

[Kevin Littlejohn]

>>> "John Buehler" wrote

> Obviously a major point in why we disagree.  You're either not
> concerned with moving the checks and balances of implications for
> character actions far from reality, or you figure that the players
> will be able to deal with that new balance point.  "They can deal
> with dragons and magic, so why not characters that magically
> discover secrets?"

How do you deal with characters _not_ knowing things they could
realistically be expected to - like the location of all the places
nearby their home town, the toughness of most creatures, the names of
all the people they've grown up with, the history and fabric of the
world?

This may be a hard point to make - but one of the most jarring points
in starting a new game is stumbling into a stupid situation, getting
completely worked over (either by being killed, or by flubbing a
conversation with an NPC, or stumbling too far from town and getting
lost, or whatever), and thinking "but my character would really have
known that if they grew up here".

The ability to go research stuff on the web makes up for that to some
extent - it also helps balance bugs in the game (example: EQ has an
Iksar quest that involves walking around 10 troopers getting them to
sign a restraining order.  The second trooper demands a quill to sign
with - yet I cannot find the quill, and if I hand the paper over
without the quill, he acts as tho he got the quill.  The bug isn't
mentioned anywhere that I found, but I found a website that lists
items - search for quill, and none of the results appear to match the
requested item.  Ergo, I presume a bug, and try it out without - and
pass. If I hadn't had the web resources available, I would have spent
hours swearing at the game and it's designers trying to find the
non-existant quill), as well as providing a sense of community (and
acknowledging that no matter what, people _will_ share information in
the manner that's easiest to them - if that's web boards, then so be
it).

Basically, until you can instill a player with all the knowledge they
should have within the game as they start, the outside areas of
knowledge gain (even down to strategy guides and similar) are a
valuable offset.  I don't believe you'll find a way to solve that one
for casual gamers - there's no way they're going to want to learn up
your religion system, your politics, your world, before they play -
and if they don't, they could easily gaff on these details, unless you
make all those details devoid of application/meaning in your world.

Incidentally, my SO, Susan, pointed out the other day that various
people on here are struggling to put disincentives in front of people
for communicating - in what is essentially a communication forum.
Perhaps you should be _encouraging_ people to share and build
community that way?

KevinL

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