[MUD-Dev] Asheron's Call, Story and Population Density.

[Christopher Kohnert]

Sasha Hart wrote:
> 
> I think grouping must boil down to a big list of pairwise
> interactions: If John yells,"Hi"- what that really means is that
> everyone in the Red Eagle clan hears John (that is, Mary hears John,
> James hears John, etc.)

Hopefully that's not the only thing the group provides. For instance,
Mary hearing James complain (either through some inter-group or direct
communication) about John's yell should be just as meaningful as Mary
hearing it herself.

> This is a terminological disagreement, if any at all. I certainly
> agree that groups can be made to create a richer kind of interaction
> than simply bumping into someone and trading animal parts.

Yeah, I doubt there'd be much room for disagreement there. *G*

> I think the approach of setting up more elaborate structures which
> make occasions for interaction and control their content (e.g. a
> corporation putting out an open ad for new employees to apply
> resulting in people working together,a guild structure wherein
> multiple people's welfare depends on the same commodities resulting
> in them working together to protect those, a quest wherein multiple
> people are drawn into conflict over the same resource, etc.) is one
> very good concept for making interaction meaningful (or useful or
> whatever you like) and not just frequent.
> 
> I'm not interested in claiming that my outline was a complete
> taxonomy of useful techniques in social play. Rather, I'd like to
> claim that it makes more sense to worry about the quality of
> interaction (e.g. by employing techniques such as what you outlined)
> than things which will probably just affect the quantity of
> encounter (e.g. population density.)

Absolutely. The quality of interaction is much more important than the
quantity. My reply was really drifting off on a bit of a tangent however
(from my original thought). What I meant to say was that I really think
the persistence of the group, while providing an additional dynamic to
interaction itself, can also bump up the quantity of interactions as
well. Meaning, some event which previously only included two or three
individuals can be spread out over some time and thereby touch a larger
number of people, a bigger bang for your buck so to speak. The
differences in the type of interaction (group vs individuals) wasn't
really what I was aiming at addressing. But of course, those are
immensely interesting as well. *G*

Chris
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