[MUD-Dev] Maintaining fiction.

[Brian Hook]

At 05:10 PM 5/29/01 -0700, Azeraab at dies-irae.org wrote:

> Fake death is a fiction breaker.

So is a 19" monitor and blurry graphics and a flaky net connection and
a login process.  Sorry, I don't mean to be so facetious, but the
suspension of disbelief is pretty much required to be happy in a
computer game, and if "survivable death" breaks fiction...well, you're
not going to be happy with most computer games.

> The most important reason to want to have perma death is to keep the
> all important fiction alive (We are talking about RPGs here right?)

Such as the "important fiction" of "Crap, my ISP puked while I was
fighting Lord Gilgatroll and now I'm dead...forever"?

> I guess you really need to decide early on how important RP is to
> your game.  Most games which profess to be RPGs are really just
> adventure games(AG) in a fantasy setting.

This is where we enter the very dangerous land of "My definition of an
RPG is the correct one".  You can take "RPG" very literally or you can
look at it historically.  The very first PnP games that Gygax, Arneson
et. al. ran were basically war games where the players enacted some
obligatory roles, but by and large it was still a war game.  They then
focused on the specific characters instead of armies, and things
became very "personal", but by that point the world of RPGs were
firmly entrenched in dungeon crawl loot fests.

So historically speaking, RPGs are pretty much the horrifyingly gross
dungeon crawl loot fests that we love to make fun.  But, for some
reason, are much more popular than "pure" RPGs where your acting skill
is more important than your STR, DEX and +3 Killer of Mages.

I'm not defending these classifications, but merely pointing out that
claiming one classification as the One True One is an open invitation
to conflict.  I remember a quote from Lord British (I think) where he
said something to the effect that an RPG was different from a Role
Playing Game (which isn't as stupid as it sounds, because I believe
the context was "What gamers think of as an RPG is different than what
a Role Playing Game is".)

> Bah, that example didnt come out as well as I had hoped, but I'm
> sure you all know how the fiction is broken.  Any attempt to
> actually roleplay is stifled and one is quickly forced into playing
> EQ as a flat AG or quitting altogether.

There is no doubt that EQ is a goal-oriented RPG.  It's still an RPG
because you do, in fact, play a role.  The roles just happen to be
predefined (i.e. classes and races), and it's up to you to decide how
"in character" you wish to be.  One reason that EQ isn't, say, an
action game is because player "twitch" has very little to do with the
final outcome of a battle.  The few times where your lag and/or
coordination really matter in the game are because of lapses in
judgements of zone designers (as per my earlier discussions on why
lava and tree diving are completely counter to the spirit of these
types of games).

> My thought is that games like this should not be allowed to call
> themselves RPGs.

Cf. earlier discussion on labeling.

> In order to actually have an RPG you must keep in character at all
> times.  NEVER break character.

This is just as big a strait jacket.  What if you want to be Drizzt,
the Good Dark Elf?

> gold.  There is no roleplay there.

There is no roleplay in drinking Coke, eating pizza and having a side
conversation about the exhaust mods on your car, but these still
happen when you're sitting around playing Gamma World with your
friends.

> Seeing that you have 415 of 533 hit points left is BAD.  How can you
> suspend disbelief and just roleplay when you know that a sword does
> 12-14 damage and you have 40 hit points?  Suddenly someone hitting
> you with it isnt scary anymore.  It's just math.  Give some
> feedback, but hide the numbers.  If they are found out, so what, but
> dont put them out there for everyone to see.

Egads, so I'm guessing you don't consider any RPG that uses dice to be
a good thing?  Or does the GM get to be the only one that sees the
outcome?

I take the opposite stance -- the devs have an obligation to come up
with a very robust, sane set of mechanics, and they should even
publish them (just like a PnP RPG).  These mechanics can then be
dissected by rules lawyers and statistical modeling freaks for
"fairness" and "balance".

Obfuscation, in my experience, rarely leads to a more enjoyable gaming
experience.

> In order to create a game that actually fosters RP you must start
> with the Devs.  Call them something else.  Many MUDs use Immortals -
> this works.  Now they cant talk about things like NPCs or the 'net.
> You must develop an in character to out of character dictionary.

Ugh.  Now you're delving into the land of semantics and nomenclature
for their own sake.  When someone does a /petition My net connection
is hosed...is this a problem on your end?  is the GM really supposed
to say: "I'm sorry, but our Silver Cord is strong and your cord to the
Ethereal Plane is weak"?  And then your newbie player that is
frustrated already has to break out his or her magic decoder ring in
order to get a straight answer from customer support?

When you're trying to get customer support, the LAST thing you want is
an artificial communication barrier between you and the people trying
to help you.

> A sample translation:
 
>    "This NPC is trapped in a wall and I cant click on him with my
>    mouse. My ISP is crappy today, my ping is about four hundred and
>    I have lots of lag. I think I'll just log and send an email to
>    the developers about this bug."
 
>    "This native is stuck in a wall so I cant tap him with my
>    wand. My silver cord is not very strong today and is over four
>    hundred knots long, so I am suffering from the ethereal winds. I
>    think I'll just go to sleep now and send a messenger to the
>    ministry of tourism about this anomaly."

The problem is that you've said the same thing, but you've made it
more work for someone reading the second paragraph.  This isn't any
more "in character" than the first one, it just covers it up with some
bright lights and shiny imagery, but underneath it's still techie
speak.

> Now that you have the basic vocabulary you must build your game
> around the fact that you dont ever want to injure your player's
> ability to suspend thier disbelief.

Obviously you want to avoid egregiously hosing a player's ability to
_enjoy the game_.  For some people, this means avoiding things that
inhibit their suspension of disbelief.  For example, naming an orc
King Bubba Smith.  This can be fixed with very little ramifications.
Having your GM stuff speak in Lingua Obscura harms a lot of people and
probably only helps a small group.

> Now that you have prevented the devs and the game itself from
> ruining the immersion you must tackle the players. They can be one
> of the biggest enemies of roleplay.

Treating players as the enemy and, even worse, dictating a style of
play to everyone isn't going to win customers.  It's going to annoy
everyone that doesn't share your EXACT same philosophy.

Now, I'm not saying that you need to make a game a free-for-all loot
fest with no rules, but there are some relatively easy and sane things
to do to encourage RP and some things are probably a bit too extreme.
Some easy things:

  - "faction" on items.  Good items can't be used by evils and vice
  versa.

  - "faction" on spells.  Evils get a mana penalty for helping goods.

  - etc. etc.

These can still potentially hinder gameplay to some extent, but at
least they're vaguely rational.

-Brian

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