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

[the_logos at www.achaea.com]

On Sat, 10 Mar 2001, John Buehler wrote:

> Matt Mihaly writes:
 
>>> As I said in another post, the player doesn't get to know that the
>>> password is "Porkmelon".  This is why I don't damage the
>>> suspension of disbelief.
 
>> No, you don't damage it, you wreck the suspension of
>> disbelief. Characters communicate. To pretend they don't, or that
>> they can't communicate useful knowledge is what is unbelievable.
 
> Characters do NOT communicate.  We rely on suspension of disbelief
> in order to act like they do.  Players are communicating, and that
> is the essential problem here.  Because players communicate, they
> can rely on many venues to communicate, not just through their
> characters.  When players communicate, it permits their characters
> to act as if they have knowledge that clearly has not been presented
> to them in the game world.  That damages my ability to suspend
> disbelief.

Characters don't communicate eh? My goodness, what an odd world they
live in where they don't talk to anyone else. Myself, I assume that
characters are fairly normal beings and communicate regularly.

> Now for MY point.  My point is that if we ignore the fact that we
> are disbelieving the communication mechanism, we have to acknowledge
> that there are out of game mechanisms that accomplish the same
> communication.  And that's because the players are in fact the ones
> communicating and not the characters.  Because of this reality, a
> character CAN know things because its player knows them.  And if
> things like passwords can be known to players, then they can be
> transferred in venues other than the game world.  This damages MY
> ability to suspend disbelief because I will witness things in the
> game world that just can't happen.

Fair enough. I guess this boils down to whether you think a chinese
wall between a character and a player is possible (it isn't of course,
but presumably you're arguing for as much a one as possible) and
whether it's even desirable.

 
> The mechanism that I'm talking about is intended to require the
> transfer of information in the game.  I don't let the players know
> that the password is Porkmelon.  They cannot use the word in
> conversation because they don't know what it is.  They can only do
> the in-game action that transfers the in-game knowledge between
> characters.  I require the characters to communicate, while you only
> permit characters to communicate in a way that also permits players
> to communicate.  I'm happy with the first part of your approach and
> would be content if players limited themselves to it.  But they
> don't.  As soon as players know a secret, they communicate it to all
> other players - not through their characters.

Ok, this I understand. What I don't understand is who you're appealing
to? Is it appealing to the roleplayer (this is about roleplaying after
all) when characters can't even free-form roleplay with each other,
due to an inability to communicate?

 
> If players wouldn't game the game, I'd just let the players know the
> passwords and communicate them to each other through their
> characters.  As I've said, that isn't what happens.  The downside to
> that fact results in effects that I want to remove from the player's
> experience in the game world.

Well, ok, but you can't ever do it. As has been discussed here many
many times you can't stop players from applying their own
intelligence, rhetorical skills, logical methodology, etc.

--matt

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