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

[Michael Chui]

On 5/18/07, Ian Hess <ianhess at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> 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.


While I can somewhat see the reason you want to focus on negative events,
taking for instance the infiltration of a large guild in EVE, there was
substantial immersive possibility presented. As the leader of the
infiltrators said, nothing they were doing was outside of the bounds of the
game. So what it seems to me is that it doesn't have to do with providing a
story to explain it; that's available. It's convincing people to accept it,
rather than claiming cheat.

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.
>
> 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.


Interesting numbers. I haven't seen any data on this anywhere... it might be
worth investigating. I've been an advocate of using players to generate
content for a while; I've just never figured out how to do it right.

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.


More prior art. Check out both Dragonrealms and the IRE games (Achaea,
Aetolia, etc.). Both have governmental systems and extensive opt-in
GM-player interaction. There was a major event in Dragonrealms about three
years ago where a group called the Outcasts usurped one of the major cities
in the game, executed its leader, and declared martial law. Unfortunately,
the GM running it passed away, so the storyline drifted and is now a bit
stale. However, at the time, it was a server-wide war with multiple sides
and creative tactics, and the only real disappointment was the inevitability
of the Outcasts' victory. Nevertheless, in the years afterwards, a
resistance group formed and stayed on the outskirts of the city, making it a
point to continue random, if ineffectual, attacks... and perhaps... a year
ago? the GMs restored the city to its former status, installed a new
Ferdahl, and happily ever after or something.

And that's merely the most recent largescale war; I know of at least two
others that the players actively participated in.

> I was thinking of allowing a player to choose a literary/story role for
> themselves, and have some fairly easy mechanism for them to discard it
> and choose another.  In this way, when someone defines themselves as a
> citizen of X group, citizen content starts to occur between their
> characters and others who have chosen specific roles.

Now, this makes me think of Castle Marrach at Skotos. IIRC (and I never
really got into it, so I'm pulling a bunch from my memory of Shannon
Appelcline's (sp?) column), there are no levels, and the entirety of the
gameplay is interaction, socialization, political intrigue, a fair amount of
exploration. They don't seem to force roles upon you, but you might take a
look into that and see what you find.

(NOTE: After I wrote all of the bottom, I read your second email again and
realized that I'd made a mistake. So... realize that I'm sort of answering
an incorrect assumption I made about what you were doing. Beg forgiveness:
I'm sick and my brain isn't quite where it should be.

I'm leaving it in mostly because it continues to address the mistaken
concept of the Socializer, even if it doesn't really apply to you anymore.)

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.
>

Virtually no one does, at this point; it's an open field. However, I think
it's inherently a mistake to think of virtual worlds as games. They're not.
You should give socializers support, yes, but a game isn't support: it's
assuming they've got nothing better to do and need it. I still use the
tennis court as an analogy to the virtual world. Achievers are the people
who play tennis and win matches on the court. Explorers are people who
experiment with different rackets, different strokes, spins, court material,
balls, string tension, and so on. Socializers are the people sitting on the
sidelines watching and chatting and making sure there's enough food and
drink. And Griefers are the malicious little kids that run around spilling
water and tennis balls all over the place.

What socializer support comes down to is community management/relations. How
you relate to your community is a different question; it might be through
roleplay events, through large organizations, or through forums or what not.
I think you agree with this.

> Despite that, there should be purely
> socializer story options.  Examples might be: the experience of a close
> friendship between heroic companions, the oft used dependant character
> in superhero stories, or maybe even the romance that seems to exist in
> every online forum I've played in.

I want to emphasize "seems to exist in every online forum I've played in".
Why do you need to provide options? They're doing it. The option is there,
embodied in the chat feature, in the representation of the character. You
can't suggest it: romance happens or it doesn't. Are you going to script or
contrive it? I can't see my way past thinking that as a good idea; maybe I'm
wrong?

-- 
-Michael Chui
The Information School
University of Washington