<!-- MHonArc v2.4.4 --> <!--X-Subject: Re: [MUD-Dev] Alignment --> <!--X-From-R13: pynjerapNphc.uc.pbz --> <!--X-Date: Mon, 08 Sep 1997 17:23:48 +0000 --> <!--X-Message-Id: 199709081721.KAA21933#xsvr3,cup.hp.com --> <!--X-Content-Type: text/plain --> <!--X-Reference: 199709050330.WAA27771@dfw-ix12.ix.netcom.com --> <!--X-Head-End--> <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN"> <html> <head> <title>MUD-Dev message, Re: [MUD-Dev] Alignment</title> <!-- meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" --> <link rev="made" href="mailto:clawrenc#cup,hp.com"> </head> <body background="/backgrounds/paperback.gif" bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000" link="#0000FF" alink="#FF0000" vlink="#006000"> <font size="+4" color="#804040"> <strong><em>MUD-Dev<br>mailing list archive</em></strong> </font> <br> [ <a href="../">Other Periods</a> | <a href="../../">Other mailing lists</a> | <a href="/search.php3">Search</a> ] <br clear=all><hr> <!--X-Body-Begin--> <!--X-User-Header--> <!--X-User-Header-End--> <!--X-TopPNI--> Date: [ <a href="msg01161.html">Previous</a> | <a href="msg01163.html">Next</a> ] Thread: [ <a href="msg01102.html">Previous</a> | <a href="msg01167.html">Next</a> ] Index: [ <A HREF="author.html#01162">Author</A> | <A HREF="#01162">Date</A> | <A HREF="thread.html#01162">Thread</A> ] <!--X-TopPNI-End--> <!--X-MsgBody--> <!--X-Subject-Header-Begin--> <H1>Re: [MUD-Dev] Alignment</H1> <HR> <!--X-Subject-Header-End--> <!--X-Head-of-Message--> <UL> <LI><em>To</em>: <A HREF="mailto:mud-dev#null,net">mud-dev#null,net</A></LI> <LI><em>Subject</em>: Re: [MUD-Dev] Alignment</LI> <LI><em>From</em>: <A HREF="mailto:clawrenc#cup,hp.com">clawrenc#cup,hp.com</A></LI> <LI><em>Date</em>: Mon, 08 Sep 97 08:29:20 -0700</LI> <LI><em>Reply-to</em>: <A HREF="mailto:claw#null,net">claw#null,net</A></LI> </UL> <!--X-Head-of-Message-End--> <!--X-Head-Body-Sep-Begin--> <HR> <!--X-Head-Body-Sep-End--> <!--X-Body-of-Message--> <PRE> In <<A HREF="msg01102.html">199709050330.WAA27771#dfw-ix12,ix.netcom.com</A>>, on 09/04/97 at 09:51 PM, "Jon A. Lambert" <jlsysinc#ix,netcom.com> said: >On 3 Sep 97 at 14:38, clawrenc#cup,hp.com wrote: >> In <<A HREF="msg00727.html">199708260030.TAA05736#dfw-ix9,ix.netcom.com</A>>, on 08/25/97 >> at 07:01 PM, "Jon A. Lambert" <jlsysinc#ix,netcom.com> said: >> >Who really wants to run for office on a chaotic evil platform >> >against one running on a lawful good platform? ;) >> >> This calls into question the more interesting area of value systems, >> which in turn calls into question the entire area of popularity >> campaigns within MUDs. I'll note for the wary here that I view any system which is dependant on a popularity campaign as inherently farcical and impracticable. As such idiocies, they are fine fodder for games to play with. >> Consider: >> >> The prime concentration in a MUD is to have "fun", however that >> "fun" is defined. >> >> The prime concentration in RL is to survive, or to improve one's >> survival. >> >> Survival is not always synonymous with "fun". Additionally the >> value of survival is considerably lower. IRL few would consider a >> program which slaughtered hundreds for the possible benefit of a few >> (enemy hundreds or no), yet in a MUD this is pro forma. >> Additionally any MUD activity or program which is seen as "fun" will >> be championed, and activities strictly geared to survival >> downplayed. Few want to spend their MUD time scrubbing pots and >> pans behind the Inn while earning a liveable MUD wage. Many are >> willing to grab a rusty piece of lightly hammered iron with one >> less-dull edge and run off to confront Tiamat's rotisserie oven. >> >> Reverting to the above quote for a GOP game: >> >> I'd suspect that an chaotic evil platform could easily be played >> to >> the hilt, making it very fun, with all sorts of crafty >> embellishments, jibes, digs, and finger pointing at the stodgy >> enemy. "Yes! You too can wander in the pits of hell turning up the >> flames on your favourite enemies, pouring acid on their festering >> wounds, awarding yourself the choice selections from their >> EQ...etc," or even the more probable fun-thru-corruption campaign. >> >> As Hollywood has long known, Bad Guys are fun. The recent otherwise >> abysmall Batman movies are perfect cases in point. Who remembers >> Buster Keaton's role in Batman 1? Who remembers Wolf Man Jack as >> the Joker? > >I'm not sure what to make of all this Chris. It started life as a polemic against Good necessarily being the winner in the initially referenced election. >You seem to be touching >several topics at once and I detect a spooky feel to this post. Let >me toss some RAMBLINGS out and hopefully they'll be marginally >related (to something). :) Spooky? I had not expected my posts to haunt the place. <fading scream> Yep, I'm heading for several items: 1) There has been much discussion here of social and political systems which attempt thru game-internal mechanisms to shadow or emulate their counterparts in RL. I now strongly doubt if this will work with a GOP player base as the motivation is so massively different from the motivation of the players in the RL structures. 2) For the RP tainted, Evil would seem a heck of a lot more fun to play with than Good. As I mentioned, who remembers Keaton in Batman? Who remembers Jack in the same movie? Who ware more "fun"? This has some interesting extensions even if you move away from Good/Evil contructs. Deconstructionalists are a *lot* more enjoyable to play with than contructionists -- same principle at heart as Good/Evil. In the game Lemmings, in a lot of ways it was a lot more fun obliterating the poor wee beasties, and putting them thru terrible trials and intricate traps than it was hauling their sorry arses to the door to get to the next level. 3) Games atttempt to define goals. This is implicit in the definition of a game as consisting of goals, barriers, and freedoms. Its tough to ensure that the goals you attempt to design as a game-designer in a MUD are really going to be the goals your players assign themselves. Bartle approached this area in his MUD survey with his panning and dimissing of the Tiny-* clan as not games but merely over-designed telephones. I've discussed this area a few times previously. Mostly I recall mentioning the arcade game Tron and how I redefined its goals: In the game you stood on one of a number of circular disks that floated at one end of a cuboid room and threw frisbees at your opponent who similarly stood on disks at the other end of the room and threw frisbees at you. The nominal goal was to knock the other fellow off his perch on the disks and thus "win" the level, and ultimately the game. This is a fairly simple and obvious goal. I didn't play it. Instead I noted that when your frisbees hit his frisbees they mutally exploded in a loud "CRACK!", and you got a lot of points. I also noted that this was a lot more challenging than merely knocking him off his perch (which quickly became a simple speed question as the game rate increased). Ergo, I changed my game goal to staying on each level, destroying his frisbees without ever touching him diredtly for as long as I could. I think the longest I ever played was just under an hour and a half on one quarter, during which time I managed to get as high as level 6... The implication here is that you may define "collect lotsa money", or "collect biggo weapons", or whatever as your game goals. but its quite likely that your players are going to pick on doing something else entirely *IF* they consider it more fun. Add in the strong social element implicit in MUDs, and once one finds that "other goal", its quite likely he'll drag the rest of the player base in that direction as well. Recently I noticed that if one asks my son where his belly button is he'll always look first, find it, and then say, "There!". This is even if he already has his hand on it from your having asked him 5 seconds previously, having played with it the whole time since. While this is of course a cause for much laughter in the family, it illustrates the point of the "fun" not necessarily having anything to do with the "goals". I also recall a certain dwarf on a bridge in MIST (? may have been MUD1 or Laser) where one of us discovered that if you stood on the bridge and did nothing but jump up and down the drarf would draw his sword and run about shouting imprecations and mangled version of previous player comments it had overheard. This turned into a major game and gag within the game and was high on the list of mus-visit sites for newbie tours. 4) Historically, MUD aministrators and IMMs have been asked to play the Good Guys. Per r.g.m.admin they should be kind and caring and considerate, and willing to restore player accounts and lost EQ at a whim, should be happy, and should offer mental salve and an endless ear for all those times the big mean nasty monsters somehow, freakishly, win and slaughter the poor unassuming over-armoured behmouth players with +d10 accoutrement. Of course r.g.m.admin also suggests that this is not quite always true in practice. Lorry (MIST IMM and Admin) clearly proposes that admins should be capricious, evel-minded, nasty, profane, easily provoked, cruel and petty only at the best of times. The rest of the time they should be much much worse/(better). Bartle implicitly seems to support this with his comments on creating wizard heirarchies, ensuring annoying or incompetant mortals were perma-deathed before they got too far, etc. This echoes #2, but extends the argument to the challenge of the game. MUDs are inherently mechanical. Mechanical systems are implicitly easy to beat once one has learned the "trick". There's always some sort of basic formulae which can be followed to "success" within a mechanical system. If you don't want this, a major portion of your system must then be non-mechanical -- ie heavily influenced by players or the Admins. Unfortunately players can't really be trsuted to do this. Their goals allign with their "success" in the game. Therefore *not* permuting the game away from their assumed basic formulae is to their advantage. Even if you add various forms of feedback into the system (XX wins big therefore some YY must lose big to maintain equilibirum), all you've really done is added some oscillations to the steady state that already exists, and added a competitive edge to the already present basic formulae. Thus, it is left to the admins. They have no vested interest in the game mechanics or their impacts on player's and accomplishment of in-game goals. They can freely be rogue elephants, or the looney bearing the steel football on Airforce One. They can, with a little imagination, inject real randomity into the system. They are utterly unpredictable at base within the game as they have no interest in winning the game. Thus in a military arena they would be the Isle of Togo declaring war on the USSR and (nearly?) winning, or in a Monty Haul the Newbie who wanders in, slaughters Tiamat with a bodkin and crashes the gold-economy by dumping the entire hoard on the market, or in Lorry's case, makes an implicit function of the formulae of the game "ensure Lorry doesn't wipe me" when Lorry is known to be a random number generator. >A game (of whatever type) can be singular game or be a set of loosely >or tightly coupled games/sub-games. And each one of these games can >have a single goal or multiple goals. Attempting to achieve these >goals requires a player to exercise a value set or multiple value >sets. This "fun" aspect, of which you speak, comes during the player >activity to achieve a goal or goals. If this activity is not "fun" >then the particular goal or perhaps game/subgame is not >popular/played/achieved/worthwhile or well-designed. Agreed. One of the hopes in this is that the number of sub-games and goals and the various attempts to achieve them by divers players will create a sort of cross-synergy to the game making it appear (if not be) a lot more complex and interesting than it really is. This can be a difficult thing to craft. Too often the game devolves into a loose mesh of sub-games which cross each other rarely, and actually effect each other little. Interestingly enough if the game designers concentrate too heavily on the cross-connects, then instead a steady-state is achieved. There is so much cross-activity that nothing really changes. Analogy: 1) Take a shoe box and put two table tennis balls in it. Shake the box up and down only. The balls will occassionally bounce off each other, but will largely just bop up and down between the box walls. This is the case of the too-few cross-connects. 2) Take the same shoebox. Now put in 50 table tennis balls. The box will be not that far from full with balls. Shake the box any way you want, as hard as you want. The balls will hit each other a lot, and they will make a lot of noise. However they won't really move very much. Mostly they'll sort of rattle in place. This is the case of too many cross-connects. There are so many cross-connects that everytime something changes something else changes to put it back. There's a delicate balance in there where the balls rattle well, bounce off each other a lot, and very very rarely spend any time merely bouncing unhindered between the sides of the box. >Along with the "game" activity, there is social activity. I would >venture that the above "evil" character is having "fun" primarily >through social interaction. Absolutely. >> Given this, the whole question of popularity campaigns within a MUD, >> especially something like the Rank Point system I proposed earlier, >> is questionable. It would seem that the "civilizing" influences >> will now have to be embedded in the game (otherwise unplayable chaos >> will result) with the players acting as injected corrupting >> influences. > >Hmm, back to popularity campaigns. The question is, what value sets >are used to achieve rank and just what game effects are felt when >one achieves the goal of a rank or position? A more telling question: You have 50 rank points you can freely assign. There is a position (whatever) up for grabs within the game. Bubba has a very perverse imagination and has some ideas for what he'd like to do if he got the position. His activities will result in demolishing many other game structures, causing bankruptcy, starvation etc etc. But the ride up to the fall looks like being a real hair raiser, full of interesting twists and clever features. Boffo is much more staid and promises to coninue things largely unchanged and in a predictably "positive" and constructive manner. Who do you give your RP's to? Why? Now you are Bernie beer swillin' redneck, who do you give your RP's to? Why? Aside: I'm *really* curious here. What could possibly be descirbed as "spooky" about that post? <<baffle biting>> -- J C Lawrence Internet: claw#null,net (Contractor) Internet: coder#ibm,net ---------------(*) Internet: clawrenc#cup,hp.com ...Honorary Member Clan McFUD -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith... </PRE> <!--X-Body-of-Message-End--> <!--X-MsgBody-End--> <!--X-Follow-Ups--> <HR> <ul compact><li><strong>Follow-Ups</strong>: <ul> <li><strong><A NAME="01167" HREF="msg01167.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Alignment</A></strong> <ul compact><li><em>From:</em> "Jon A. Lambert" <jlsysinc#ix,netcom.com></li></ul> </UL></LI></UL> <!--X-Follow-Ups-End--> <!--X-References--> <UL><LI><STRONG>References</STRONG>: <UL> <LI><STRONG><A NAME="01102" HREF="msg01102.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Alignment</A></STRONG> <UL><LI><EM>From:</EM> "Jon A. Lambert" <jlsysinc#ix,netcom.com></LI></UL></LI> </UL></LI></UL> <!--X-References-End--> <!--X-BotPNI--> <UL> <LI>Prev by Date: <STRONG><A HREF="msg01161.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Affecting the world</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Next by Date: <STRONG><A HREF="msg01163.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] NPC AI and Learning.</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Prev by thread: <STRONG><A HREF="msg01102.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Alignment</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Next by thread: <STRONG><A HREF="msg01167.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Alignment</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Index(es): <UL> <LI><A HREF="index.html#01162"><STRONG>Date</STRONG></A></LI> <LI><A HREF="thread.html#01162"><STRONG>Thread</STRONG></A></LI> </UL> </LI> </UL> <!--X-BotPNI-End--> <!--X-User-Footer--> <!--X-User-Footer-End--> <ul><li>Thread context: <BLOCKQUOTE><UL> <LI><STRONG>Re: [MUD-Dev] Alignment</STRONG>, <EM>(continued)</EM> <ul compact> <ul compact> <ul compact> <ul compact> <ul compact> <ul compact> <ul compact> <LI><strong><A NAME="00720" HREF="msg00720.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Alignment</A></strong>, Matt Chatterley <a href="mailto:root#mpc,dyn.ml.org">root#mpc,dyn.ml.org</a>, Mon 25 Aug 1997, 09:09 GMT <UL> <LI><strong><A NAME="00727" HREF="msg00727.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Alignment</A></strong>, Jon A. Lambert <a href="mailto:jlsysinc#ix,netcom.com">jlsysinc#ix,netcom.com</a>, Tue 26 Aug 1997, 02:02 GMT <UL> <LI><strong><A NAME="01054" HREF="msg01054.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Alignment</A></strong>, clawrenc <a href="mailto:clawrenc#cup,hp.com">clawrenc#cup,hp.com</a>, Wed 03 Sep 1997, 21:37 GMT <LI><strong><A NAME="01102" HREF="msg01102.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Alignment</A></strong>, Jon A. Lambert <a href="mailto:jlsysinc#ix,netcom.com">jlsysinc#ix,netcom.com</a>, Fri 05 Sep 1997, 03:30 GMT <LI><strong><A NAME="01162" HREF="msg01162.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Alignment</A></strong>, clawrenc <a href="mailto:clawrenc#cup,hp.com">clawrenc#cup,hp.com</a>, Mon 08 Sep 1997, 17:23 GMT <LI><strong><A NAME="01167" HREF="msg01167.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Alignment</A></strong>, Jon A. Lambert <a href="mailto:jlsysinc#ix,netcom.com">jlsysinc#ix,netcom.com</a>, Tue 09 Sep 1997, 06:25 GMT <LI><strong><A NAME="01172" HREF="msg01172.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Alignment</A></strong>, Adam Wiggins <a href="mailto:nightfall#user1,inficad.com">nightfall#user1,inficad.com</a>, Wed 10 Sep 1997, 09:01 GMT <LI><strong><A NAME="01175" HREF="msg01175.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Alignment</A></strong>, Jon A. Lambert <a href="mailto:jlsysinc#ix,netcom.com">jlsysinc#ix,netcom.com</a>, Thu 11 Sep 1997, 01:55 GMT </LI> </LI> <LI><strong><A NAME="01193" HREF="msg01193.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Alignment</A></strong>, clawrenc <a href="mailto:clawrenc#cup,hp.com">clawrenc#cup,hp.com</a>, Fri 12 Sep 1997, 19:00 GMT </LI> </LI> </LI> </LI> </LI> </UL> </LI> </UL> </LI> </ul> </ul> </ul> </ul> </ul> </ul> </ul> </LI> </UL></BLOCKQUOTE> </ul> <hr> <center> [ <a href="../">Other Periods</a> | <a href="../../">Other mailing lists</a> | <a href="/search.php3">Search</a> ] </center> <hr> </body> </html>