[Worldforge-all-lists] Re: [WF-General] Belchfire - infusing stories to the game?

[William <ser...@ro...>]

Maybe WF could add Elements of SimCity into the game to incorporate the
different types of Natural Catastrophies.  There is already a premade
Linux Version of that popular Game under the GNU license.

http://www.floot.demon.co.uk/lincity.html

It would be interesting to incorporate parts of that code to create a more
adaptive world.



Coreolyn Elginor wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Bryce Harrington" <br...@ne...>
> To: <ge...@ma...>
> Sent: Saturday, February 10, 2001 3:45 AM
> Subject: Re: [WF-General] Belchfire - infusing stories to the game?
>
> > On Fri, 9 Feb 2001, Tess Snider wrote:
> > > Just to throw some popcorn on the fire, there's a very interesting
> quote
> > > by John Fowles (the author of _The French Lieutenant's Woman_)
> which
> > > Ernest Adams quoted in one of his lectures a few years ago:
> > >
> > > "...we wish to create worlds as real as, but other than, the world
> > > that is.  Or was.  This is why we cannot plan.  We know a world
> > > is an organism, not a machine.  We also know that a genuinely
> > > created world must be independent of its creator; a planned world
> > > (a world that fully reveals its planning) is a dead world.  It is
> > > only when our characters and events begin to disobey us that they
> > > begin to live."
> >
> >
> > I think this is a good quote, however it isn't precisely perfect.
> MUD's
> > are good at putting things full over to the independence-from-author
> > measure.  In a sense, they are (or at least, *can* be) author-less.
> > What we want is something that walks the thin balance line between
> > author-driven-control and player-driven-independence, giving much to
> > each and taking none from either.
> >
>
> As I've come to view it, world creation is the art of programing
> chaos. The digitizing of nature. A gripe that I've always had about
> all RPG's is how little attention and detail is paid to floods,
> earthquakes, plauges etc.  Nature provides a programatical chaos that
> controls and keeps the human race in check throughout history. This
> has not gotten attention in the standard RPG's due to the difficulty
> for DM's to manually manage the massive amounts of data that such
> catastrophie's represent so monsters and armies became the check and
> balance and driving force to survival (the true meaning of expirience
> points/levels). Giving expirience for combating/adapting to nature
> never gains expirience, therefore all problem sovlving revolves around
> killing instead of survival, and the drive for the player to add to
> the world is diminished and given over to the 'death-sqaud' players.

>
>
> > > And yet it is our burden, as caretakers of a world to have a
> context,
> > > a story, and a thrust to the progress of time. Consistantly, this
> is
> > > touted as one of the things that people want from MMORPGs -- and
> > > aren't getting enough of.
> >
> > Well then dammit, let's give it to them!  :-)  It is what I want
> too.
> >
> I can't tell you how great it is to hear/read that there are people
> that have similiar interests  :)
>
> > Integrating stories and games seems to be extremely hard.
> > But I like challenges!  And I know y'all do too.  So we can achieve
> this.
> >
> > > One of the things that we have to understand, as game
> administrators, is
> > > that we are not the only ones telling a story.  Every single
> person in the
> > > game is, to a degree, telling a story as well.  A game's story is
> like a
> > > patchwork quilt so large that you can't see from one end of it to
> the
> > > other.  Any given player can only see those patches that are close
> to the
> > > one's he's sewing.
> >
> > *Nod*  This is something I've been mulling about for a LONG time.
> > Many people are there ONLY to enjoy the story, but we mustn't rule
> out
> > those who are there (or who wouldn't mind to be there) to CREATE
> > stories.  How do we leverage their wishes within the larger quilt?
> >
>
> Reccomendation. at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FRDMing (Have to
> create a stupid yahoo account to access). There is a water-cooler
> group of middle age Game Masters that have been running large scale
> manual AD&D campaign worlds for decades. Some of them work for Wizards
> of the Coast. I've occassionally lurked there for a couple of years.
> They often discuss in detail the dynamic effects of different
> approaches to infusing story with games.  Technologically they are
> only up to a play by email approach.  Going through there mailing list
> archive could well prove to be a valuable resource in groking 'story
> infusion'.  I wouldn't suggest directly contacting them as I think
> they see computer games as a threat to their 'art'. Eventually though
> I think these types of people are the perfect administrators of
> worldforge worlds. (Therefore installation/maintenance has to be
> brain-dead easy before they'd have any interest.)
>
> > > Some players are served better by petri dish GMing than others.
> > > Explorer-types and self starters tend to throw themselves right
> into the
> > > world, and start investigating, researching, poking, prodding, and
> > > questioning.  D00dz immediately start hunting for the fastest path
> to phat
> > > lewt.  Other folks, though, might stand around and go, "Uh, so
> what's
> > > next?"
> >
> > Right!  I guess that is something I've been pondering myself...  We
> can
> > see that some players like the plain ole hack and slash approaches,
> but
> > many of us want something a bit more...
> >
>
> I don't see why a player who just wants to build and maintain a home
> and garden in a virtual world shouldn't be able to recieve enough
> satisfaction/expirience/Vcash to want to be a part of a virtual world.
> (Meanwhile the connection sucks the clients CPU to help drive the
> nature engine -- heheh ooops wrong mailing list.;)  If his home was
> threatened by attack you'd have a gamer with a cause to support
> armies, government, etc. Just the kind of stuff the chaotic gamers
> long to attack and subvert.
>
> > > That's why, occasionally, you have to throw an asteroid in their
> laps.
> > > Read: events.  These are things like tourneys, state marriages,
> invasions,
> > > missing persons, wars, holidays, stock market crashes, political
> > > scandals, and other disasters.
>
> I've written (along time ago in Access 2.0 VB) some time ago that kept
> track of localized calendars(clocks)/weather/events/seasons and moon
> cycles (after all moon cycles are at the root of most of the
> aforementioned events).  The CPU and IO requirements just to manage
> this aspect of the application was overwhelming. Things have
> technologically advanced light years since then but even with today's
> technology the impact to the overal performance would still loom as a
> major factor.
>
> (I will stop jumping in to all these conversations eventually just
> haven't had the opportunity to d/l my brain on this stuff before.:)
>
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