[MUD-Dev] Point of View

[Ted L. Chen]

Damion Schubert Writes
> From: Shane P. Lee
>> --- "Ted L. Chen" <tedlchen at yahoo.com> wrote:

>>> Second - and hopefully something to provide a seed for
>>> discussion - why are we all so ingrained into providing only a
>>> point of view in our games that derive from a simulationists'
>>> perspective?

<sniped>

>> Mostly, I see a change in POV to include a broader range as
>> cheating on the part of the wizard, who doesn't want to put too
>> much effort into the quality of the game.

> True, but there are still definitely 'in character' ways to
> dissimenate this information.  You could call it a newspaper, a
> reenactment, player putting together the clues.  In UO2, we wanted
> to use Dreams and Prophecies heavily to dissimenate story
> information (and in fact hoped to give player Prophets,
> effectively a player class, more information, in hopes they would
> spread news for us).  This was an idea that was toyed around with
> minorly back in CarnageMUD.

While I think newspapers and alternative methods for dispersing
general information is a good idea, I'm not entirely convinced that
such methods are always better than a non-character POV.  In
contrast to a newspaper, the non-character POV has the advantages of
immediacy, and can be very detailed.

The immedicacy helps keep the pacing up, because when I'm out in the
field, I'm not too keen on reading a newspaper to figure out some
very basic information.  If the local Farmer John tells me he was
attacked by a large wolf near the stony brook next to his farm, I
would hope that the game engine show me what the farm and the brooke
looks like, so that I know it when I hit it.  Of course, one could
setup a complicated NPC dialog with Farmer John where I could play a
game of 21 questions, but what does that really buy me other than
playing a keyword guessing game with the game designer?

Also, we should note that not all players have the luxury of
spending hours in the game-world.  Hence they might not have read-up
on the newspaper.  Nor would one really expect small things like
Farmer John's house to be displayed above the fold.

>>> To me, it seems that limiting ourselves to only observable
>>> viewpoints is part of the difficulty in conveying an engrossing
>>> narrative.  Imagine if Shakespeare's plays could only be shown
>>> from one actor's perspective?  A lot of the plot devices
>>> employed require that the audience knows more than any given
>>> character.  This does border the "what the player/or character
>>> knows" thread from a while back.

> You don't have to imagine it.  "Rosencranz and Guildenstern are
> Dead" tells the story of Hamlet from the perspective of 2 lesser
> characters in the epic, who barely interact with the tragedy and
> yet still die from it.  It is a very amusing play which displays a
> lot of confusion on the part of the two titular characters. ;-)

Okay okay, I was being dramatic :P I haven't had the opportunity to
see the play you refer to but trying to relate it back to the
original point, how much of the amusement is derived from novelty,
and how much of it can be attributed to the meta-knowledge you hold
of the happenings in Hamlet.  From a purely first-person POV, that
confusion you speak of isn't all that interesting.  It is only in
light of what you know is happening around them (through knowing
Hamlet beforehand) that it has some meaning.  And while Hamlet might
be a recalled memory (which a newspaper would be too), I ask if - in
your minds eye - you interspliced your recollection of an acted
Hamlet scene, in the context of Rosencranz and Guildenstern are
Dead?

> It seems there are competing requirements for disseminating news.
> The news (a) needs to be distributed 'in character' to the
> recievers and (b) it needs to be recieved uniformly by the
> recievers.  This seems difficult until you realize that recieving
> news 'in character' doesn't necessarily mean another character
> delivers it.

Quite true.  However, recieving is only part of the problem.  The
other part is whether or not it registers with the user and that's
where the alternative 'in character' methods seem to fall short for
me.


TLC


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