[MUD-Dev] What's in the lack of a name?

[shren]

On Tue, 22 Oct 2002, Ted L. Chen wrote:
> shren writes:
 
>> A momentary thought - I wonder if you can prevent the rate of
>> mass publication of game secrets by not giving anything a name.
>> Don't name places, don't name items, don't give out coordinates
>> to players.  Common names for things are critical for
>> communication.

> If a place / secret is interesting enough, people will name it
> whatever they want (for lack of any official names).  It reminds
> me of a little club in AO that was tucked away in the shanty towns
> outside a main city.  Most clubs in AO display a prominent sign
> with the name on it.  This one didn't and only had something
> telling patrons to just "relax".  Weirdly, enough people started
> to visit it and called it the Dancing Atrox (possibly in reference
> to its funky dancefloor).  Now, it's widely referred to as the
> "Dancing Atrox" although no official name was ever given.  Not to
> long ago, the devs threw in an actual dancing atrox just to cement
> the name.

> So players will figure to call it something instead of some set of
> coordinates.  "Hey, I'll meet you at the Dancing Atrox" is much
> easier to write and informative than "Hey, I'll meet you at
> 358x345".

Ah, but the point is that if you deny the players both names and
coordinates, they have to name everything themselves.  You're almost
forcing them to develop culture, and in doing so the will
collaborate.

Say I'm in a nameless, coordinateless world, up in a mountain
region, and while fighting off other foes a bunch of goblins come
over the ridge.  A member of our party named Dierog runs over and
holds them at bay untill we defeat the other foe and come help him.

Later on I want to meet a member of my group there, so to tell him
where I'm talking about, I tell him to meet me where Dierog fought
all of the goblins.  Lacking any other name, we might call this area
"Dierog's Stand", and other people, lacking any other name, might
pick up on it, and how it got it's name.

Because this area did not have a name, we now have a player-made
name, a famous player (famous for doing something other than being
cruel to other players or capping his level), and a shared myth.
None of this would have happened if the area already had a name.

Everything in the game that we do not give a name, we give the
players the opportunity to name.  As you have pointed out, every
time the players name something, they build culture.  So why name
anything in advance?  Yank visible place names and visible item
names right out of the system and let the players name everything
and share, through communication, the names they create.

Giving things in rpgs names during the design stage is practically
reflexive at this point.  Everything gets a name.  All I'm calling
upon all of you to think about is, what would the games be like if
this were not the case - if a longsword +5 didn't, for all intents
and purposes, have "longsword +5" digitally branded on the side?


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