[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] Mechanical support for socializer playstyles

[Ian Hess]

It occurred to me after reading many stories in the last six months that
MMOs have sufficiently complex models in place for some standard
?negative? literary stories to occur.  The razing of the rper village in
UO, the infiltration of a large guild in Eve Online, and many smaller
scale events (city invasions in wow), match several common book plots. 
However, when they occur in the context of an MMO, the frequent reaction
is out of character anger, and breaking of immersion.

I have been trying to describe how online player actions, character
roles, and play experiences can fit into literary models.  For this to
work even on a small scale, I think setbacks, failures, and even
disasters have to be mechanically encapsulated in bits of story.

Death mechanics in various muds and MMOs might be a simplistic example
of this, where there is a specific set of challenges or experience
around returning to life.  Inferno (worldofinferno.com) has a series of
riddles to solve before your character can be revived.  WOW has some
quests that can only be done while in ghost form.  

I think that small scale story encapsulation of negative events makes
for good game play and a realistic world.  If resurrection is pushing a
button, spending some mana points, and using up a component that costs a
few coins, death is trivialized in experience and potential roleplay. 
Especially if support is desired for other Bartle types than achiever,
then getting players right back to the hunt isn?t as important, in the
case of death stories.

Finding ways to encapsulate in story mechanics war, betrayal, plague,
revolution, infiltration, politics, or similar potentially  ?negative?
experiences would allow more immersive worlds to be presented.  

Many games, especially in text, have tried to use live Gms to run real
time story events.  I served as a game master in Inferno.  Our
observation was that there was a mandatory ratio of players to
storytellers that is very similar to live action or large tabletop rpg
games.  If you want each character to feel personally engaged each
session, most GMs will manage to entertain four to six players.  If you
are willing to rotate the spotlight or develop the characters in small
groups in turn, one GM to eight to twelve has seemed to be a good ratio.
 I headed a plot committee for a three hundred person live action game
for a few years, as it grew.  We found that building social layering,
including political offices that could be contested, self-defined player
groups, and social mechanics for basic socializer activities*, allowed
many less game masters to players.  We ended up with twelve Gms to
roughly three hundred players, or a 1:25 ratio.  The assumption was not
that each player would be entertained, but that the social clique
organizers would be given story seeds that applied to groups. Making
those player leaders story gateways only solidified the contest for
those positions.

Needless to say, even a model of one gm to twenty five is not
sustainable on the scale that exists in most MMOs.  This seems
especially true considering that as organizations of Gms grow, so does
administrative overhead.

Literary use of groups, organizations, cities or nations as characters
is pretty common.  It might be argued that most of the large scale
stories I mentioned earlier, especially war, revolution, and city
building, need to be mechanically supported by coding socializer support
for groups.

I am still at the stage of writing a design document, as well as
researching and compiling notes on prior art.  Nexxon?s Dark Ages had a
pretty involved voting system for player government.  Vampire the
Masquerade had a great system of political offices with specific powers
that players could fight over.  A Tale in the Desert has a great concept
of demi-pharoahs being elected, and having the limited ability to
permaban other players.  Many muds, Inferno included, have law
enforcement guilds that give access at some rank to verbs that can be
used to pacify, exile, or jail other players, often in ways that make
socializers with few combat powers able to deal with powerful achievers
while on the socializers home ground.

I suppose I?m envisioning a socializer mini game as intricate at the
current achiever mini games.  It begs the question how much content can
be stuffed into any one game, but that?s something I don?t have as much
experience with.

Thoughts?

 Ian Hess


* By socializer support, I am referring to mechanical support for group
definition, rulership, shunning, exiling, altering another characters
reputation, being able to bargain social support, and enforcing
contracts.  For many applicable details to this kind of mechanic, see
vampire the masquerade live action rules version 2 or 3.