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

[John Buehler]

Matt Mihaly writes:

> 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.

In the roleplaying sense, characters communicate.  I was attempting to
underscore the fact that it is a fiction.  If characters truly
understood what was going on, I'd have the exact mechanism that I'm
after: characters would be smart enough to roleplay all by themselves.

> 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.

And I think it's clear where we each stand.

>> 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. [snip]

> 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?

I guess roleplayers would like it, but I'm not overly worried about
them.  I'm simply pursuing what I believe to be a normal and natural
expectation of cause and effect in the game world that any
conventional player would want.  If I'm going to call something a
secret, it must operate like a secret.  If the way the game
environment functions doesn't support it being treated like a secret
(such as players being able to publish 'secrets'), then I'm just
causing grief for my players.  Especially the more casual ones who
just want the game world to 'work'.

>> 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.

I don't want to eliminate that stuff.  Part of the entertainment of
the game is to tickle people's brains.  But those are things that
players bring to the operation of their character.  The discussion of
in-game secrets has to do with keeping in-game knowledge in the game
world.  The players are no obligated to use their brains to solve
in-game problems such as 'who knows the password'?  The challenge that
I've eliminated is finding the web site that lists the password and
how to use it.  You have to solve those problems in the game world.

JB

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