From: lwl@disco.seas.upenn.edu (Lydia Leong)
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.misc
Subject: Re: Roleplaying (was Re: Who plays both combat MUDs...)
Date: 11 Dec 92 22:10:28 GMT
Organization: Evil Geniuses for a Better Tomorrow

In article <9212111953.AA23835@TIS.COM> mjr@TIS.COM writes:
>	Perhaps I'm dating myself here, but have any of the other readers
>in this group played reclone or any of the real-life RPG that folks used
>to run at sci-fi cons? The gamemasters used to assign each player a game
>character, give them some "representative objects" that they could use as
>props, and give each player a set of secret objectives. Everyone was then
>let loose, and the gamemasters would follow the action around, making
>rules decisions on the spot as needed.
> [ wonders if this has been tried on a MUD ]

Belgariad MUSH started out with this idea in mind. Players were supposed
to have "goals", there was a group of "judges" whose job it was to follow
the action, there were "rumors" posted from time to time, and occasionally
there were judge-staged events.  (Belgariad was, to my knowledge, the 
first place to try anything like this. The goal-directed-roleplaying-MUSH-
with-judge-system-craze started a few months after Belgariad opened.)

Unfortunately, one thing quickly became apparent. At a con, you are more
or less guaranteed that the players will remain in their assigned roles. You
also have a finite number of roles to give out. On a MUD, you have absolutely
no idea how many players are going to show up. You also don't have any
guarantee that they're going to stick around. Coming up with a neatly 
integrated goal for any given player is extremely time-consuming. In 
addition, the live-RPGs at cons are generally restricted to a few days,
so the judges have quite a bit of control over events. With a MUD, you're
generally looking at a storyline which continues indefinitely.

Belgariad eventually ended up allowing characters to have complete freedom
to pick their goals; they were asked to email the judges the goals they had
picked. It was up to the players to manipulate events so they could accomplish
their goals.

In keeping with the spirit of the David Eddings novels the MUSH was based on, 
there was a Prophecy, stating in the usual cryptic terms the events that would
occur in the future. The wording was vague enough to allow for a great deal
of player flexibility in accomplishing the goals; a large number of totally
unanticipated plot twists were created by players who were happily oblivious
to the direction the judges wanted the plot to take.

There were certain planned events, generally at least partially staged by
the judges, as well as zillions of smaller RPG confrontations between
characters. The latter had to occur under the moderation of a judge (at
the minimum, a judge had to receive a log) in order to be "official."
After reading the logs and looking at character goals, the judges voted
on the top "scorers" for the week (those who role-played the best and
went the farthest in accomplishing their goals).

The judges found that a lot of players felt like that the loose structure
provided by the Prophecy was overly restrictive, since there were some things
that they HAD to do (although rarely did they do them in the way the judges
hoped). Belgariad I ended with a grand RPG climactic battle between the forces
of Good and Evil, then went down due to database bloat. The entire RPG 
storyline took about eight months to play out.

The present Belgariad II is based on the same idea of goal-directed
roleplaying, except that there is no longer a long-term general structure 
for the plot. The judges staged the opening event - the death of the Emperor
of Mallorea and the subsequent assassination of his successor (well, the
person that everyone thought he'd named as successor) - but don't plan to 
push the players in any particular direction. Currently, the plot surrounds
the scramble for power; the judges will be throwing in little twists to make 
the characters' lives more interesting, but this is a more player-directed
story. Belgariad II takes place twenty years after the grand battle on
Belgariad I; a storyline for the intervening years was constructed by the
judges. (csa.bu.edu 4201 -- come check it out!)

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-+-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-+-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Lydia Leong - CSE '94 | Amberyl@Pern  | "Just try to make sure that Polgara's
lwl@seas.upenn.edu    | Polgara@Aldur |  not in the vicinity of anything 
lwl@imsasun.imsa.edu  | The Belgariad |  breakable when she gets angry. Like
lwl@csa.bu.edu        | "Why me?"     |  large cities and mountain ranges."
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Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.misc,rec.games.mud.tiny,rec.games.mud.admin