[MUD-Dev] narrative

[Ron Gabbard]

From: "Brandon J. Van Every" <vanevery at 3DProgrammer.com>
> Matt Mihaly wrote:

>> Further, most people do not WANT great writing. Joyce is arguably
>> the greatest English-language writer of the 20th century

> Joyce is a strawman.  When comparing the quality of writing to
> something tangible, look at the screenplay for "The Lord Of The
> Rings."

MUDs/MMOGs (under the prevailing game rules and environment) and
great narrative don't necessarily go together even using LoTR as a
standard .

There are just no consequences in the games.  If you impose current
game rules on LoTR and it would be one boring story...

  ... no Boromir (one group member) attacking Frodo (another group
  member) to steal the ring...

  ... and ending up dead... permanently.

  ... no internal struggle for Frodo between destroying the ring or
  protecting his "Precious".

  ... no subjugation of the Shire making life miserable for the
  'noobs' there.

  ... no risk of the world being completely over-run by the hordes
  from Mordor should the ringbearer fail.

  ... no 'superfluous' words are used to build the imagery in the
  reader's mind or convey a mood and just the [important words] are
  written.

Take out the consequences and remove the internal struggles from the
protagonists and you end up with a Rambo-like kill-fest with
immortal PCs killing off dozens of insignificant NPCs.  If you want
to make it more 'quest-like' or 'interactive', have Rambo ring a
bell after killing 30 National Guardsmen and the first player to
ring the bell receives a unique Infinite-Ammo Gun of Uberness.  Or,
more typically for online games, everyone eventually gets an
Infinite-Ammo Gun of Uberness as the National Guardsmen keep
spawning... for years.

There are just very few opportunities for players to express courage
in the strict definition of courage...

  "The state or quality of mind or spirit that enables one to face
  danger, fear, or vicissitudes with self-possession, confidence,
  and resolution; bravery."

Without consequences, there is no real danger or fear and most games
don't have a great deal of vicissitudes (unexpected changes).  Thus,
all the conditions necessary to enable the players to exhibit
bravery/courage are absent from games.  I don't care how well
wordsmithed a narrative may be.  If the protagonist can't express
bravery/courage, fear, or other reactions to danger, it's just a
bunch of pretty words with the substantive value of a Hallmark card.

Richard has been arguing the merits of permadeath with me for a
while now and I am beginning to see why PD is so important.  It
makes that life very precious and enables players (the protagonists)
to be truly heroic... not just uber.  Anyhow, that's a completely
different thread.  I'm just saying that the current risk-averse
model of online games precludes the designer from being able to
meaningfully implement rich narratives/storylines as it's hard to
have a rich narrative/storyline without heroes and you can't have a
hero with no heroism and you can't have heroism without courage and
you can't have courage without danger -- current games have an
insignificant amount of danger.

The result is marketable milk toast... with the emphasis being on
'marketable'.  And, that just may be the way it is in a
commercial-game world where "money talks and bulls**t walks."

Cheers,

Ron






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