[MUD-Dev] narrative

[Sasha Hart]

[Dave Rickey]

> They expend effort doing something for an NPC, and they get a
> predictable reward.

This appears to have become a common doctrine of late: "Players want
predictable rewards."

I wonder if it is really true. It is at least interesting.

On the supporting side, in my opinion, is Neverwinter Nights (the
somewhat maligned single-player campaign).  It was bland, but moved
forward in a very smooth and even fashion.  I would place the credit
squarely on a very fast, even, and sufficient stream of rewards,
with no particular variation in how far ahead or behind I was
relative to the creatures I was fighting / traps I was opening etc.
The goodies kept on coming, and I kept on playing. It was like an
incredibly consistent but bland restaurant which you keep coming
back to because the service is good, even if the food is just worth
eating. I think that the newer big MUDs have tended to develop in
this direction, to great effect.

On the conflicting side: gambling and variable schedules, which are
very efficient at sustaining high rates of response/
gambling/playing, and can be a little interesting in themselves.  A
certain collection of people enjoys games of chance very much.

My guess is that the constant-steady model of NWN is, like a
well-trained mare, very easy for designers to use effectively once
the initial training is done, and the variable-schedule models of
gambling, maybe PvP and so on, are much more demanding, unstable,
and also more surprising and exciting (I guess, to complete the
analogy, I have to say "like a stallion" or something. Slightly
embarrassing).

Assuming that this is true, what aspects of a game are best managed
on the mare model, and which on the fiery stallion model?  (Removing
the bizarre analogy, where will it be more appropriate to use
variable payoffs, and where more predictable payoffs?)

Are there other models? (e.g. predictable, but only if you are
really smart/on-the-ball, or predictable, but only if you manage the
conditions - the image I always have is of tilting the pinball table
in order to constrain the movement of the ball further). If so, what
are they like, and where can we use them?

Sasha

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