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[MUD-Dev] Character persistance, was Family, was characters per account



--- Paul Schwanz - Enterprise Services <Paul.Schwanz#east,sun.com> wrote:
>
> Daniel wrote:
> >p.s. I actually like the idea (or rather 'Mark Wells' idea,
> >ahem) of character persistence. I'd really like to build
> >it into a future game. Heavens, though, not for realism's
> >sake (I vaguely recall this being his principal motivation),
> >but rather that it increases attachment to the world and
> >opens up some interesting gameplay avenues. And yes, you
> >would need some sophisticated AI/scripting to make it work,
> >making it a pretty scary implementation proposition.

> As to interesting gameplay avenues opened, imagine trying to
> play out Tolkien's masterpiece without character persistence.
> The bearer of the ring would _have_ to be an NPC, since a PC
> could wink out of existence at the drop of a hat.  What then
> happens to the ring?  Does it just drop to the ground to be
> picked up by whomever is nearby?  And what of the fellowship?
> Now Aragorn is here...now he is not.  Poor Frodo will never
> know whom he can trust to be there to defend him against the
> black riders...or black rider...or no riders...where'd the
> rider's go?  Hehe.

Character persistance does not require the same player's persistance. This kind
of persistance is an issue of priorities. Persistance of this sort seems to be
more important on the MUSHes that I frequent than the MUDs I've sampled in the
past.

This is somewhat due to what MUSHes have to engage the players, which is, other
players, since many MUSHes are tabletop/pen-and-pencil RPGs converted to an
online form and usually lack items like coded puzzles, mobiles, and experience
gains through combat.

The traditional concept for characters required a registration and approval
process. Players were expected to put together a detailed and coherent
character which would be examined and placed within a group because of some
hook in the character's stats or background.

The popular shift in newer MUSHes (particularly WoD) is Open Character
Generation, where a player can make any number of starting level characters,
completely crafted by them to their own specifications.

 The first Open CharGen - Dark Metal - was a reaction to an earlier, more
traditional MUSH that had failed, an experiment to see what would happen with
the opposite rules. Or in the words of "Emily Treason", one of the founders:

"In the beginning, there was Masquerade, and the god of Masquerade decided for
reasons I won't get into to close the mush. And the ex-building wizard of MasqI
did go unto Thor, the ex-site admin and did say unto him, "Hey, we got a mush
concept, you got a site?" And Thor did say, "Yea, verily," and thus was
Amarynth born. And it was to be what all the players claimed they wanted --
quality-centered, backgrounds-checked, all characters approved, and so forth
and so on.

And after a few months, the staff did look around and say, "Those bloody little
buggers lied -- they don't want staff to dictate quality. They don't want
control."

After starting at USD in the Academic Computing department graduate lab in
spring of 1994, DM moved the next year (after the university administration
opted to take a momentarily dim view of mushes) to Fiend in North Carolina, and
then in late 1996 to Anubis in Boston.
The mush remains in a state of flux and tinkering, the better to provide a
quality role-playing cyberpunk-cross-gothic punk venue for the players. After a
general overhaul, chargen is once more fully open to the public -- unlike other
'open chargen' WoDs, there are no race quotas, and you don't need to submit an
application to get the character set up." -Emily Treason, 1997 (from
http://www.ennui.net/darkmetal/intro.html)
 

If the success of the experiment is measured by the size of the player base,
then Dark Metal is an enormous success. It attracts 130+ players a night and
has spawned many imitators. The newest MUSHes are extending the concept of Open
Chargen even further in the desperate attempt to attract new players by
throwing every character race/type/class that they can think of, regardless of
whether they mesh well or not. Throwing in every published race is distracting
enough without including non-WW races such as Highlander-style Immortals. I'm
wondering if this race glut is common elsewhere or merely part of a published
system. What is considered to be an ideal number of races?

In an Open Chargen system, more races seem to heighten one of the main problems
inherent in the concept. If you make the character with only your ideas in
mind, then the character starts out in the game isolated from IC connections.
Sure, the staffer can work to wedge the character in somewhere, but you still
end up with a surplus of hacker/supermodel/ninjas or homeless/runway/orphaned
children with hearts of gold and a lack of people in support positions playing
paramedics or journalists or politicians.

Depending on the MU*, there are differing amounts of support that players learn
to expect from the staff. I've been on MUSHes where players called for staff
judges at the first sign of combat or conflict, which causes more work for
staffers and tends to slow down play and possibly encourage a less bold
mindset, it can really maintain a meta-story well. On the other hand, Dark
Metal's laissez faire attitude extends out of the chargen and expects the
players to handle their own conflicts and combats as well as develop their own
plots and guilds and areas for approval. The staffers are primarily called in
for rule clarifications, over the top ideas, and heated name calling. Leaving
much of the action up to the players can be chaotic, have an inefficient amount
of overlap in player actions, and lack somewhat in a directed meta-story, but
the freedom encourages player interaction if they wish to achieve their goals
and brings about the unexpected in interesting ways.

It seems there is a third way to handle character persistence. Keep the
characters persistant, even if the players aren't. Firan MUX uses a roster
system of pre-made characters that already have detailed connections and
backgrounds to the players and the theme. The most important and involved
characters, Level 1 Features, often require an application, while the Level 2
Companions and Level 3 Citizens are immediately accessible. A newbie has a
fully fleshed out and connected character within moments of logging on. No
Chargen required. The idea is that the players are more like actors in a grand
play, instead of mere extensions of themselves. Not too useful for a pay site,
but the characters end up going back on the roster after 10 days or so idle.




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