[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] What is a game? (again)was:[Excellentcommentary on Vanguard's diplomacy system]

[Dave Scheffer]

----- Original Message -----
From: "John Buehler" <johnbue at msn.com>
To: <mud-dev2 at lists.mud-dev.com>
Sent: Monday, April 09, 2007 11:27 AM
Subject: RE: [MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] What is a game? 
(again)was:[Excellentcommentary on Vanguard's diplomacy system]

> The core of this looks to be placing players into environments where they
> can pursue conflicting agendas.  Game designers seem to want to create
> flexible environments, but they end up so flexible that players just do
> whatever they feel like doing.  "Caliban" is pointing out that conflicting
> agendas can cause problems.
>
> Conflicting agendas do cause problems by definition.  The agendas 
> conflict.
> If I want to walk through a city and get a sense of it being an actual
> fantasy setting, then having some joker dancing naked in public is going 
> to
> be disruptive to the experience that I'm seeking.  The game permits me to
> follow my agenda.  But it also permits the joker to follow his.  They
> conflict, and it may produce a confrontation.  We've all seen them.

The problem is not that some players can "disrupt" the medieval setting by 
dancing naked.  The problem is that the gameworld doesn't respond to the 
behavior.  The mad, tearing their clothes dancing naked and eating feces, 
definitely existed then.  Evidence exists that sometimes entire towns went 
mad for various unknown reasons.

There may be players that want RenFest Online where everyone is a noble and 
speaks high society language but that wasn't the reality then.  Those may be 
the same players that want to host a wedding at a tavern with it being 
crashed by bandits but that wasn't the reality then either.

The problem is the gameworld not recognizing aberrant behavior and providing 
a compensatory game mechanic.

Why can't the town overlord agent detect when Pl4teD3wd's "Garb Sum" falls 
below a certain "accepted" threshold, that player's reputation is 
accordingly affected/persisted by the town overlord agent, and the 
NPC's/player share a common "mark of cain" indicator so that Pl4teD3wd is 
openly mocked in the square by NPCs who can refuse service or even bumrush 
him out of town with threats of violence/perma-death if he returns?  Why is 
it Bonehead and Pl4teD2wd can repeatedly crash the Tavern with no real 
justice that follows them around the world other than shades of glowy red 
stuff when it's pretty clear justice needs a mechanic that can kick in even 
when those "aberrant" players log off.

The answers to those questions have nothing to do with players as consumers 
but how game designers chose to address them.  There have traditionally 
been... understandable... reasons why gameworlds have not done so in the 
past.  But blaming the players because these worlds lack the most basic of 
reactionary mechanics is wrongheaded.

Dave Scheffer