[MUD-Dev] RE: Knowledge Modeling -- WAS: -- Interesting EQ rant (very long quote)

[Zak Jarvis]

> From: John Buehler [johnbue at msn.com]
> Sent: Saturday, March 10, 2001 3:40 PM

First off, I have no idea what happened to the formatting on my previous
message, but it got wacked somehow. Ack!

<EdNote: I'll fix it in the archives>

>> I've sense tossed out all those theories. They're were all built
>> around =3Dy initial honeymoon period with multiplayer games. I grew
>> gradually =3Dore and more disillusioned with it until finally I
>> felt "Dammit! No one =3Dakes this world seriously!".
 
>> Of course they didn't. It was a *game*. Moreover, it was a game
>> that could never, ever live up to the billing of an alternate
>> world.
 
> Perhaps you misunderstand what I'm after.  I'm after entertaining my
> players, not in getting them into an alternate reality.  I've been
> trying to articulate this delicate balance point in another forum
> and have been failing miserably.  Perhaps I'll be a little more
> successful here.

Then what this all comes down to really is implementation. How much
character knowledge is "fun" to model?

In my opinion, the "fun" modeling of character knowledge would be
having a character that won't do things that are stupid or life
threatening until the game is quite certain that is what I want as a
player. Brian Hook's earlier example of the city Kelethin is a perfect
illustration.

I'd consider it a good use of knowledge modeling that my character
wouldn't gleefully walk off a platform to his death unless it's what I
really wanted him to do.

I'd like it if my character would automatically hide when he's
'afraid' of a monster (IE, encounters a creature that he has no chance
of defeating).

I'd like it if I could query my character on matters of social
protocol, history or racial background.

I'd like it if my character would call attention to things in his
environment which are of use or interest to him.

I'd find it cool if my character could gather useful information about
whatever task was at hand while I was offline and present it to me
when I return. Even if that information was just where I should be
looking to learn something.

I'd like it if my character knew about important things that have
happened while I've been away and inform me of them.

I'd find it very useful if my character automatically kept track of
and could tell me about his goals and quests and update those goals
when they've been impacted by world events that have occurred while I
wasn't around.

I agree with you completely that modeling character knowledge is a
great way of attracting the magical casual gamer.

I'm really not so keen on the idea of special commands to trade =
knowledge with other characters, unless all communication were equally
abstracted.  It adds a needless layer of complexity to communication.

A far better solution (though more complex from a development =
standpoint) is not using puzzles or quests that lend themselves to OOC
'spoilers'.  >From the simplest form where each character gets a
different password, to the slightly more complex method of each
character gets a randomly generated constellation of NPC's for his
personal quests, to the significantly more difficult broad, deep
random quest generation.  (Emphasis on broad and deep).

The latter approach is the one I'm personally most interested in. I
keep threatening to do a write up about this...
 
>   The case of an in-game secret password is the topical example.  I
>   don't want to present a piece of information as a password
>   (implying secret) when the actual use of that password by the game
>   and the game community completely eliminates its secrecy.

It seems to me that the more elegant solution here is the 'Eyes Wide
Shut' solution. The people you would give any such password to know
you shouldn't have it because you didn't receive it in the normal way
and set the 'I've got the password' bit. So giving the password isn't
effective. Sure Bob can tell you that the password is Porkmelon, but
you just aren't Bob and they know that.

I'd probably leave out the dead prostitute though. Unless it fit.

> multiplayer environment.  Other players are liable to ruin a
> player's entertainment completely by accident.  Often, it's just a
> side-effect of the game design that nobody saw coming.  In this
> analogy, the

Hmm. I'm unsure how the method you seem to have been describing
effects this. If a players entertainment is ruined by another player
knowing something he or she shouldn't be able to know, how do you
prevent other and potentially significantly more intrusive OOC issues? 
I'd be far more annoyed by a player talking abortion politics than one
who knew the secret password. In fact, there are about a million
things that it would be outright impossible to prevent -- short of
totally restricting communication -- that I would find far more
disruptive than the commodification of supposedly scarce knowledge.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
"Then there comes a tall, beautiful, suffering lady, and her they fit.
 Long hand, narrow hand, suffering, slender hand, the gloves fit you!
 Happy, overjoyed gloves; and poor, dear, unhappy lady"
                        -Robert Walser (Translated by Susan Bernofsky)

-Zak Jarvis
 http://www.voidmonster.com

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