[MUD-Dev] New laws. (was: Player Manipulation of Environment)

[Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt]

On Thu, 29 Nov 2001, Travis Casey wrote:
> Thursday, November 29, 2001, 9:38:22 AM, Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt wrote:
 
>> There is also no problem in incoorperating information about
>> events that the player/audience/character would 'naturally' not
>> have access to, like say explain that;
 
>>   "Since you yesterday convinced the guard not to show up for
>>   duty, he has now indeed not shown up and the entrance is left
>>   unguarded"
 
>> Even if the player/audience/character have no 'natural/physical'
>> way of knowing it. That trick has been used in many singleplayer
>> games, and would not suffer too much if incoorperated into
>> multiplayer games.  (I know that some list members would shiver
>> of the idea of moving away from 'simulation' this way, but its a
>> neat narrative trick that just works too well not to use it).

> I'm not sure that I'm understanding this point.  Can you elaborate
> on the example?

Simple example from Toom Raider;

Laura Croft pulls a switch, then theres a cut-scene to a gate
(somewhere else than Laura's current location, and _not_ visible)
and the gate opens.

Clearly, its important for the game and the story that the player
knows that this exact gate was opened. Its neatly woven into the
storyline _curcumventing_ the otherwise naturalistic simulation
based environment (unless you she's psychic but i don't think thats
the point).

Similar techniques could be used in the narrative of a MUD to tell
of some of the effects of the player/audience/character actions,
even though they logically would not know of them. This would
clearly ensure the 'distance' from the story needed to see a larger
scale arc of the narrative that otherwise would be lost to them by
_ensuring_ the important facts are given to the
player/audience/character.



Hans Henrik Stærfeldt   |    bombman at diku.dk    | work:  hhs at cbs.dtu.dk      |
Address:                |___  +45 40383492    __|__       +45 45252425     __|
DTU, Kemitorvet,        | Scientific programmer at Center for Biological     |
bygn 208, CBS.          |  Sequence Analysis, Technical University of Denmark|

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