[MUD-Dev] Creating a Player Narrative

[Ben Hawes]

This may or may not be news, but I found it interesting, so I
figured I'd share my discovery.

While developing the combat proof-of-principle game for the "Better
Combat" thread (http://www.casual-tempest.net/combat/), I found
myself creating a running commentary of the battle in my head. My
beta-testers did likewise, often sharing their favourite warstories.

When I added the health aspect, as part of creating the more complex
version, I originally added a simple number for the health, and
reported damage as a number too. However, in doing so, the game lost
something, and it took me a while to realise it was the loss of easy
narrative - it was very immersion-breaking to have numbers as part
of your story.

When I replaced all numbers with descriptions (simple value->string
array index), the narrative returned. Even for me, knowing the
one-to-one relationship between the words and figures, that little
aesthetic change made a world of difference.

At GDC last year, I remember the Shadowbane guys talking about how
players were sharing war stories of last-minute assassinations
saving a city, or being narrowly averted, etc. and how this was one
of their goals in the PvP setup.

Has anybody deliberately designed with the goal of facillitating
player created stories of thier in-game exploits? Anybody else found
this sort of thing to be helpful for player enjoyment? I suspect
there are MUDs out there who have. In suggestions for incorporating
this into more mainstream or graphical games? Would this help create
the sense of "epicness" missing in many of these worlds?

--
	"quantam sufficit"
[ cruise / casual-tempest.net / transference.org ]
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