[MUD-Dev] Building a \\\'Deeper\\\' MMOG

[Travis Casey]

Thursday, June 27, 2002, 3:15:51 PM, Marian Griffith wrote:
> On Fri 21 Jun, Ron Gabbard wrote:

>> I think the player's and the character's best self interest would
>> need to be the same.

> Not at all. I have RPed characters who did all kind of things not in
> my self interest, and sometimes not in the interest of that
> character either.  Those two are not at all the same.  That is if
> you really take on the role of that character.  If I am roleplaying
> an incurably curious character I would make her check out the
> strange noise, even if I as a player already know it is a monster
> lurking around the corner.  The character knows it is not smart, but
> would not be able to resist her curiosity to find out what it is
> that makes that funny noise. I as a player know that it is very much
> not in the best interest of the character to do this, and that it
> might lead to the character dying because of it.

There's even a P&P RPG that's based around the fact that players and
their characters can have different motivations -- Ron Edwards' game
"Elfs".  A player in Elfs can announce both what his/her character is
attempting, and what he/she (the player) is attempting.  For example:

  GM:  You round the corner, and there's a great big dragon there,
       sitting on a pile of gold.

  Jim (Boffo's player):  Boffo, being the greedy little snot he is,
       wants to tiptoe past the dragon, stuff his bag with gold, and
       sneak back out.  I want Boffo to get the hell out of there,
       since he doesn't have a snowball's chance of doing what he
       wants.

Elfs is a comedy game, which this sort of thing is especially suited
for -- the *characters* don't want to look like idiots and get laughed
at, but the *players* may want them to.  However, the same sort of
thing can still happen even in serious games, as Marian's examples
point out.

--
Travis Casey
efindel at earthlink.net

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