[MUD-Dev] Enforced log out aka "real sleep"

[Ling Lo]

On Wed, 30 Jan 2002, Paul Schwanz wrote:
> From: Brian Hook <brianhook at pyrogon.com>

>> So, let me state up front that I think the very idea of limited a
>> player's ability to play a game is fundamentally unsound.  It's a
>> Bad Idea.

Great, so you've not become clinical insane. :)

>> Related to this is the idea that characters must "sleep" in-game
>> in order to avoid fatigue.  In a single player RPG, this is
>> instantaneous (tap the "camp" button, bam, you're good to go for
>> another 24 hours).  On-line -- obviously not.  Most games I'm
>> aware of just avoid the issue.  So again, I'm curious if anyone
>> has come up with something particularly crafty to address this.

Right.  Single player games have the fortunate situation of being
able to pace the game by skipping uninteresting parts, filtering
events or nudging the player along.  Muds tend to have none of
those.

> I think that this problem stems from the fact that there is no
> distinction made between the player and the character.
> Specifically, that there is no distiction in regard to time.

> Imagine the (hacky?) solution where the amount of time available
> to a character != the amount of time the player is logged in.
> Suppose we gave every character 24 hours in the day.  This is a
> well of time from which they draw to perform certain in-game
> actions.  These actions might include some of the following

[snipped]

> I think I'd go for the second.  The interesting thing would be for
> a Vampire to have to budget his character time well.  (After all,
> once the 24 hours is used, he doesn't get more character time
> until the next day.)  If fighting is particularly fatiguing, then
> the Vampire must pick his battles carefully, lest he spend too
> much of his character time recovering and then remains vulnerable
> until the next day cycle.

I've been a fan of this concept for a short while now.  The game
character, after all, does not live a realistic life.  Certain
assumptions are already made, why not stretch those assumptions
further?

It also partially handles the problem of addicts who live on the mud
and those who play casually.  The extra 'character time', as Schwanz
coined, can be made to be inversely proportional to user online
time.  I've worked out this also makes for some neat effects.  Say
the user logs in, starts the character and goes into the Murky
Forest, slay lots of stuff, goes back to town and sell up.  If this
affair took 5 hours and the game was specified so that 24 hours was
one gameweek, the character could have a journal entry for that
little adventure lasting about 1.5 game days.

Conversely, if the user played the entire weekend with 2 two hour
naps, the character could have a journal entry corresponding to a
two week adventure.  In this case, because only 4 real hours were
spared (or 1 game day), then for two game weeks, the character could
be assumed to have left town for an extensive adventure.  This would
notify the server to not use the character time for that period on
anything which could go towards character improvement since the
character was not at home.

Anyway, apart from the fact that forcing downtime is bad unless the
marketing department can carry this off as a feature, I'll build on
the above...  For the World of Darkness thing, specifically the
Kindred, it probably is possible to break away from the canon
aspects of the the material and start adding empires to the Kindred.
Since vamps can create ghouls, manipulate humans and stuff, create a
management subgame for the sleeping period to set things up for the
waking.  Need to move to another city?  Vamp goes to sleep in a box,
then Fed Ex it for 10:30 pm.

Other types of games and power struggles on the waking world could
probably be dreamt up.  The World of Darkness universe implies many
human events were masterminded in some way by a member of the
Kindred somewhere along the lines.  Users will no doubt have
enormous fun twisting the waking world to their needs and desires.
The sleeping world could then either by used to augment the night
world or become another dimension within which to excel.

--
  |   Ling Lo
_O_O_ Fish!

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