[MUD-Dev] believable NPCs (was Natural Language Generation)

[Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com]

From: Amanda Walker [mailto:amanda at alfar.com]
> On May 27, 2004, at 5:53 AM, Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com wrote:
>> Amanda Walker wrote :

>> A previous post suggests that an actor playing a barkeep could be
>> fairly ignorant of the world, but I don't buy that. If they can't
>> talk plausibly about the world they are functioning in, what
>> value do they add?

> Conversation, rumor mill, etc.  They don't have to know
> significantly more than players.

I agree. The only difference is that I think players know an
incredible amount. If the average Everquest player is spending 20
hours a week in game and has been for months, the minimum competence
leve is going to be high. Of course given how static game worlds
currently are, I'm not convinced of the value in paying people to
regurgitate the same stuff endlessly. May as well use a dumb NPC ;)

>>> Quite probably.  And "heck if I know, I'm just an inkeeper" is a
>>> perfectly good answer for them to give.

>> I really don't think so. In fact, if I heard a character use the
>> construct "heck if I know..." in a fantasy game, any illusion
>> would instantly be shattered. I'd think I was in America not
>> Pyroth. Dialect is important.

> Applying this criterion removes all major MMO games from the
> discussion.  Players use those constructs all the time.  Now, if
> you're building a strict roleplay game, role playing ability would
> be a job qualification, but for popular MMORPGs, that illusion is
> already shattered.

Players expectations of other players' conduct vs that of game staff
are different. If you want to create a feeling of other worldliness,
dialog is important. Just because you can't enforce a style on
players doesn't mean you should abandon the effort completely. If
you just want poor out of character conversation, the players can do
it pretty well by themselves!

Perhaps a better avenue of exploration is to work out how to make
playing an inkeeper interesting for players, so that they can do it?
This reminds me of that discussion a few years back where
information was treated as an object e.g. the magic word to open a
cave is a flag associated with a character, not something they can
type in and share OOC. Perhaps an inkeep could be a trader in these.

Dan
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