[MUD-Dev] Building a \\\'Deeper\\\' M MOG

[Damion Schubert]

From: Paul Schwanz

> Yah, if you define achievement in shallow terms and then design
> that into your MUD, it will be shallow.  In life, achievement
> might mean becoming president of a nation, CEO of a corporation,
> leading a mission to Mars, starting a spiritual revolution, or any
> of a number of other interesting and deep pursuits that might have
> nothing to do with 'levels, items, or gold.'  I see no reason that
> achievement in a game cannot be just as interesting and deep.

Recently, while playing Neverwinter Nights, I was considering this
very debate.  What brought it to mind was the variance in depths of
the different aspects of the game.

I found that in Neverwinter Nights, all of the depth came from
building the character.  Bioware attempted to capture the vastness
of the 3rd edition ruleset, and largely succeeded, creating an
almost infinite number of possible choices along the achievement
game.  Should I advance in halberds?  But I've already advanced in
critical hits in long swords.  What goes well with that?  Would it
be better to get two-weapon fighting, and learn to get super-
criticals in both of those?  What if I choose weapons that I never
find the top versions of out in the world?  Is it worth having to
spend twice as many feats in order to do that? Once I completed the
single-player game, I felt strongly incentivized to go back and try
it again with a different character.

By contrast, the story in Neverwinter Nights is not very deep, nor
is it very clever.  The first chapter, in particular, I found to be
godawful (the later chapters I found to be enjoyable but cliched).
At no point did I ever feel entwined by the story, nor did I feel
any empathy for what was going on.  Also, the story is very linear
and focused, and nothing that my character did seemed like it could
affect how the story would end.  The story, in turn, seemed so
shallow that it washed right off of me.

What does this have to do with the current discussion?  It just
serves as a reminder that 'achievement' and 'shallow' are not
synonyms, nor is 'story' and 'roleplaying'.  In particular, 'story'
and 'achievement' both depend heavily on execution.

Calling 'roleplaying' deep is even trickier in my opinion - in my
experience, 'roleplaying' is only deep if (a) you have good tools to
roleplay, (b) the game responds well to your roleplaying, (c)
everyone you're roleplaying with has the same opinion of what
roleplaying is that you do, (d) at least some of the people you're
roleplaying with are good enough at it that their collaborative
stories draw the others in, and (e) you've got a good, impartial,
fair and entertaining GM/Volunteer type leading the group.

Given that a lot of those things you need are outside of the ability
to code, the ability for an imp to make 'deep' roleplay in their
games is largely nonexistent.  That decision, ultimately, is going
to be up to the players (albeit often with prodding from the imps).
 
--d

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