[MUD-Dev] Incorporating Plot/Backstory/Scenario Design Tools

[Nathan F. Yospe]

If any of you have done commercial writing, you've probably had at
least one run in with commercial writing organization tools.  Sort
of like the UML tools for software engineering, these utilities aid
in structuring a story.  One example:

  http://www.write-brain.com/power_structure_main.htm

Now, it strikes me that a commercial mud might want to actually
desing a set of similar tools for generating backstory for cities or
locales, for creating major NPC characters, for event plots, and for
player scenarios that get used in quests.

A sufficiently game-aware tool might even automate large parts of
design and generation to the point that autogenerating tools could
be employed.

This might actually allow those gems of designed-in cleverness
within an autogenerated world without any visible seams...

For me especially, with a world that has its rules and in large part
its geographies (or at least the geologies that impact them)
generated, this may be exactly the kind of supplement to the
lego-like grab and move and shape and insert building tools I have
designed that would allow builder designed stories to really work.

As a writer, I have always dismissed these tools out of hand, as I
would any UML tool as a programmer... UML doesn't address the type
of design I do, because what I do is miracle-working, not assembly,
and these tools, I'm afraid, are not really meant for an
artist... but then, they are the perfect thing for someone who
hasn't mastered the basics of making sense within the story
framework.

--
Nathan F. Yospe - Physicist, Artist, Programmer, Writer, JOAT with a SAK


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