[MUD-Dev] DESIGN: Personal NPCs

[Jaycen Rigger]

cruise <cruise at casual-tempest.net> wrote:

> Why give additional rewards for performing actions that the player
> should want to do anyway?

As G. Gordon Liddy once put it, "How do you get more of a behavior?
Subsidize it!"

You reward that behavior so you'll get more of it.

> If someone is evil, and they want slay the NPC's, then fine, they
> can slay them. But the reason for slaying them should be because
> they're evil - not because it gives them 5% to the next level.

And if everyone in the world lays down their guns at the same time,
we'll live in fantasy land.  You can't know why someone does
something.  You can only measure their behavior, or its results.
What's more, the computer can't possibly predict why a human made a
decision like that.

> PnP RPG's had to have numerical "levels" to represent player
> advancement since there was no other easy mechanic for reflecting
> it.

*LOL* Do you play many PnP RPGs?  There's one important game
mechanic that every single PnP game shares in common.  It's the
ultimate mechanic for reflecting player advancement....the Game
Master.  The levels aren't just a measure of character ability, but
also they are a reward.

Any measurement system is going to be arbitrary.  It's created by a
human being for human consumption.  It's going to be arbitrary.  The
system by which one advances through that arbitrary measure of
ability can be standardized through the computer game mechanics.
And dice rolls still exist in the computer, or that element of
randomness and possibility of loss can't exist.  The tension in the
game is lost.

Maybe this is all just a bit "theoretical" for me.
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