[MUD-Dev] narrative

[Dave Rickey]

From: "Joe Andrieu" <kestral at dinar.ugcs.caltech.edu>
> Bruce Mitchener wrote:
>> Brandon J. Van Every wrote:

>>> This may sound like chops busting, but I can honestly only
>>> reflect on my experiences running freeform PBEM RPG games for
>>> periods of 1.5 months fulltime at 7 different times from
>>> 1998..2001.  The core issues are: I would like to deal with only
>>> 5 players max including myself. I would like those players to be
>>> inherently talented writers and actors.  I would like them to
>>> all have the same level of energy for content production.  I
>>> would like them to be in a similar ballpark of authorial goals.

>> This would appear to be a dream state.  Having 20% of the
>> population of a system enabled, willing and engaged in creating
>> content for a game is probably unheard of, much less thinking
>> about managing them and keeping them all working in the same
>> direction and with the same set of authorial goals.

> I would go further and suggest it is an undesirable state for most
> players.  I expect that as a writer, Brandon, you crave other
> talented writers. Yet the fact remains that most people are not
> talented writers, nor do they want to spend all their time and
> energy writing. People want to enjoy a well-written story; rarely
> do they have the talent or tenacity to write such a story
> themselves.

When people want to enjoy a well-written story, they go to a
bookstore, or pull an old favorite down from their shelves.  People
don't want a well-written story, they want to experience an
adventure.  That's not at all the same thing, and that's a *good*
thing, because we couldn't give them a well-written story by any
reasonable programmatic method.

What we (try to) do is create interesting situations for the player,
and let them resolve them.  When it works, the result *feels* like
an adventure.

--Dave



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