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

[Eli Stevens \{WG.c\}]

J C Lawrence <claw at kanga.nu> wrote:
> On Tue, 25 May 2004 20:24:25 -0400
> John Buehler <johnbue at msn.com> wrote:

>> As allies, they become the social context in which the players
>> operate. They decide to build a town here, dig a well there,
>> clear this land, war on that guild, put out that forest fire,
>> etc. And they need help.  The players have a purpose, a meaning,
>> for their gameplay.

> This rankles me with the question:

>   Why are they necessarily NPCs?  Why aren't they other players?

> Is there some special quality to NPCs that make them more
> attractive or in fact more functional for such operations than
> other humans (players, GMs, or human-driven NPCs)?  This isn't to
> say that every possible role that could be occupied by a human
> must be occupied by a human, but rather in observance of the fact
> that

Emphasis on the next part (apologies for fragmenting the quote, but
this is key):

> if NPCs doing XYZ are interesting, then humans doing XYZ are
> inherently more interesting.

More interesting from who's perspective?  While it's more
interesting if other players (as opposed to NPCs) dig my ditches for
me, it's usually not so interesting to dig ditches for other people.
That's where NPCs come in handy - they don't mind doing the boring
or unpleasant (not matter how exciting) things that other players
won't pay* to do (like dig ditches or be the 400th orc to die by
Huric the Hamhanded's hammer this afternoon).

I would be hard-pressed to find a player that would be willing to
perform the duties of the average Diku shopkeep - stand there, and
give any player who gives you 10 silver a new sword.  Having a
literal vending machine doesn't fit the setting, so you have an NPC.
But those kinds of NPcs are pretty boring - the whole point of this
thread.

What I want to play is Caesar, not the mob.  Almost nobody wants to
play the mob; finding a Brutus wouldn't be hard (yeah, I'd like to
be Brutus, but I'd settle for playing Caesar if the game was fun
enough ;).

Here's a play style I'd _love_ to see possible in a game:

Take an average mud city - city guards, peasants, scoundrels and
ruffians in the alleys, etc.  If I spend a week's worth of play time
paying money to the scoundrels, giving food to the peasants and
supplying the ruffians with weapons, come the weekend I should be
able rabble-rouse a rag-tag army and have fun storming the castle.

Or maybe I spend enough on my noble appearance around the Royal
Guard that they look the other way when I assualt peasantry.  The
City Watch might still be on the lookout for me, but since they
aren't much better than the people they arrest I don't much care - a
few gold and a wave of my laced handkerchief and they fall into
line.  The rest of the population has to behave while in the city,
but due to my manipulations I can act with impunity.

I don't want NPCs to trick me into thinking they are real people; I
don't want NPCs to try to act like humans _per_se_; I don't want
chatterbots.  I want a game system that can be experiemnted with,
tweaked, min-maxed, etc.  I want politician to be a class with
in-game skills just like "cast fireball" for mages, "shield bash"
for warriors and "backstab" for thieves.  Give me "bribe" and
"inspire" and "intimidate" and I'll be happy.  Heroes may turn the
tides of battles, but generals win wars.  That kind of thing.

Eli

[*] - Either with time, attention or money, it doesn't matter.

--
Give a man some mud, and he plays for a day.
Teach a man to mud, and he plays for a lifetime.
WickedGrey.com uses SpamBayes on incoming email:
               http://spambayes.sourceforge.net/
                                              --
_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev