[MUD-Dev] narrative

[Sasha Hart]

[Amanda Walker]

> This isn't just a matter of big things, but little things, and I
> think it contributes to the "whatever, it's just a game, don't
> bother me" grief player attitude.  In most games, the world is
> made out of Teflon-coated diamond.  You can throw fireballs in
> town all you want, and never blow up a shop (or shopkeeper) by
> mistake, attract any attention from NPCs, or even leave scorch
> marks.  Where's the fun in that? :)

YES.

Devil's advocate: "Where's the fun in losing all of your gp because
the bank exploded? Even if the gp don't get lost, where do people go
to conduct their bank transactions?" Other than the obvious (static
scenery means easier debugging/fixing of catastrophic problems, is
technically easier in most cases), it seems to me that the main
reason not to allow all that much change is that static scenery is a
good way to ensure consistency. That's especially important when the
point of the game is to level or what have you, and it just so
happens that the interfaces for various features of the game happen
to be tacked onto NPCs and other realistically destructible
materials.

Of course, it isn't going to matter to the player if a quest they
hadn't encountered yet got destroyed, if an equivalent quest had
popped up in its place using people who weren't killed by fireballs
prior. If fireballs aren't quite so common, destroying shops isn't
so bad as long as other shops can pop up somewhere else. I don't
think it's too much of a pain to go find another place to buy
consumables just because the old one got trashed in a fight.

As some recent post just mentioned, games which are more closely
managed by human beings are prototypes. I have played several MUSHes
in which buildings or entire neighborhoods got trashed or blocked
off because of recent events, and although it was a *minor* pain, it
was a *beautiful* effect. Disasters mean a lot more, even if all
that happens is that the shop dies. So I don't think an automated
version of the same thing would be bad at all. Truly critical places
could be protected in specific ways ("the security in this club is
HARSH.. they took away my nail file!"), while others could trigger
an event to find any demands seroiusly affected by the event and
rectify them (e.g., the goods from the shop are released onto the
black market, the shopkeeper changes storefronts, someone else steps
in opportunistically, etc.)

For bonus points, one could pin enough incentive on such events that
players work to fulfilll certain local demands for goods,
employment, etc.

This seems blockheadedly obvious to me, but I can't name the last
time it happened to me in a game. I am probably missing something
(e.g., effort, commercial feasibility, real interest from any
quarter.)

Sasha

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