[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacysystem

[Sean Howard]

"Michael Sellers" <mike at onlinealchemy.com> wrote:
> See, this is what I'm talking about.  Games are not inherently
> competitive. That is one kind of game ("agon" in Caillois' terminology),
> but by no means the only kind.  But when you design to competition from
> the get-go, you drastically limit the breadth of possible design.

I just finished a book on education, and there was a fascinating section
in there when it talked about how people become competitive in
non-competitive environments, like ranking how well American schools are
doing against the schools in other countries. Apparently, a study was done
and discovered that it is somewhat cultural, and that Americans are
naturally more competitive and see things competitively - even when they
aren't and shouldn't be (for instance, seeing education as competitive is
exactly the worst possible thing you can do if you want students to learn
and enjoy learning).

I too think that seeing games as competitive is a horrific concept. It
brings out the worst in designers and players. You can have
non-competitive single player games, but if you put two people into Animal
Crossing simultaneously, they'll argue over who got more fruit and who
keeps cutting down all the trees. Adding additional players who are not
socially known to each other outside the game literally puts them
competing against each other precisely because they are unknown to each
other.

As a way to stave off boredom, I engaged in an exercise to design the
backbone of a MUD that would be completely non-competitive and did not use
rewards and carrots to drive player participation. My ultimate conclusion
was that the only way to do it was to remove all independance - not
mechanically, but socially. Players were not allowed to have names,
persistant characters or possessions, communicate from a distance, or form
collectives like groups or guilds. Rather than trying to create mechanics
that made everybody friends, I went the opposite direction and made
everybody anonymous - no deed is remembered, no identity retained. You
work together or separately, but never against each other and never for
competing goals.

A pretty crazy idea and counter to just about every common wisdom held for
MMOGs. Ironically, after posting the idea in my blog, I received hundreds
of emails from people who wanted to play the game.

> Adding diplomacy and other forms of social gameplay in MMOGs is terrific.
> But adding a new kind of combat and calling it diplomacy is just kind of
> tired, IMO.  When the play of a "diplomacy" system relies on choosing a
> particular "move" (card, pie-slice, etc.) so that you can "defeat" your
> "opponent" -- well, that's pretty much combat in slightly different
> clothes.

It is, but then in Vanguard, so is crafting. Vanguard is old school in
many ways, not the least the concept that failure is a required part of
your experience, and oh yeah, you should be punished heavily for every
failure.

That being said, I think the Diplomacy system is an interesting new model,
mainly because while you are playing this card game you are also reading a
dialogue between characters. To have the story be included during the
quest rather than before or after (or not at all) is intriguing and I find
that playing the Diplomacy stuff really deepened my appreciation and
understanding of what was ultimately a generic fantasy world. I think in
the hands of other designers, Diplomacy could be a fascinating new
direction (or at least alternative to combat-only, akin to crafting or
SWG's entertainers). By no means the full realization of the idea,
Vanguard is at least to be praised for having and attempting the idea in
the first place.

> Nope, I haven't.  But I'm disinclined to take the opinion of a hardcore
> MMOG player (if that fits Tim) on how well diplomacy works as a non-
> combat game system.

A reasonable opinion is a reasonable opinion, regardless of how hardcore
the source is, so it's a bit closed minded to ignore it without even
contemplating it. Of course, I don't think I've ever had a reasonable
discussion with Tim, ever, so I guess it is fair to ignore it based on how
reasonable the source is in the first place.

-- 
Sean Howard