That is why you fail...

Or, How Political Beliefs Damage World Design

You might wonder how a designer’s political views could “damage” their philosophy as it applies to the design of an on-line world. Currently, politics in the world describes a range of beliefs that form a spectrum. The beliefs are not just in how people should be governed, but also in how people should live their daily lives.

Conservative beliefs tend to fall on the “political right” side of the spectrum. These beliefs generally support the ideals of Capitalism as the most fair and equitable economic system. Personal responsibility with very little government regulation is the basis for how people live their lives. Conservatives tend to believe that most people are generally decent and if left to their own devices, will make the “right moral choice”.

Liberal beliefs tend to fall on the “political left” of the spectrum. This belief system generally supports the ideals of Socialism as the most fair and equitable economic and governmental system. Under this belief, the government is responsible for almost everything that happens in a person’s life and government regulation is necessary to maintain “an even playing field” for everyone. Liberals tend to believe that most people are basically stupid, and if left to their own devices will make the “greedy” or “wrong moral choice”.

This is not really a political forum, but since political beliefs color the way we approach life and other human beings, even the way we understand the relationships between human beings, the two ideals are linked. If you believe that most players will make choices which annoy or work against other players, then you are starting off with an adversarial view point toward your player-base. Not only will you end up creating systems to deal with the perceived iniquities between players, but the over all structure of the game will tend to oppress all players in an attempt to keep any players from behaving in a way that goes against the desires (and belief system) of the designer.

I’ve been reading through a lot of the material on other developer’s websites, particularly those I’ve listed on the right under the “Smart Guys” section. All of those guys are smart. Some of those guys are still wrong, a lot.

I don’t see “being human” as a negative quality. If it is true that the majority of people derive enjoyment from throwing daggers at targets, then you should write code with that in mind. You ought to attempt to expand and expound upon that desire and broaden the game from that starting point.

After learning that the majority enjoys dagger throwing, some colleagues are “disappointed” by the apparent lack of diverse interests. They can’t see that they’ve found a human truism which can be exploited and turned to their own advantage within the game. Instead, they see this human truism as some kind of human failing.

I empathize with the potential players who might be spending time and money on servers designed to discourage dagger throwing.

Name Change

I doubt anyone even noticed this site existed yet, but I'm going to explain myself anyway.

Originally, I named this blog RPGDesigner. I was pressed for a cool name and fell back on what I knew. As I've been building up the site, though, Musashi's posting about Holistic Game Design came back to me and I went with that.

I've been working on the concepts (more recently the code) for Urilia for 6 years, now. Even before I knew I was going to create my own world, I was working on it. From day one, I knew there were some basic failures in the game I was playing. As I've learned and grown, I've been honing my solutions to those failures.

When I read the article on Holistic Game Design I came away realizing this was exactly what we were all about. My friends and I are creating a world with an eye to "the Big Picture". Any time a change is proposed, or something new introduced, we pick it apart from every direction and follow every path to its most logical conclusion. Anything that seems to encourage an established "bad" behaviour is modified or tossed out.

Anyway, that's what the blog is for (that...and to shamelessly promote my free UO shard, Urilia.) That is why you will only find links to other people's sites who seem to be of the same kind of mind set when it comes to world-building. Otherwise they were included because they still have something useful to contribute. OR, they were included as an example of the kind of world-building mentality that drives me crazy. Hey, you still have to keep an eye on what doesn't work, too.

Perma-Death?

The following is from an e-mail conversation between me and another MUD-Dev contributor regarding Permanent Death for player characters. It was spurned by my question to him about what an “avatar” was after reading the link he sent to me on the same topic on Damion Shubert’s blog:

From what I think I know: 'Characters as avatars' refers to how people relate to the world. Is the character on the screen an extension of who the player is (my skill at quake makes me a bad player, consequently, my avatar is bad, too) or is it a fictional creation that has no connection beyond the strings that you pull upon (e.g., a puppet that is really good at quake).

Another way of thinking about it: by in large, people just don’t role-play elves. Instead, they role-play themselves acting in the particular context of the v-world that they find themselves. I can give you the example of someone in my pen and paper group.

This person created a character whose general back-story demonstrates a personality of gutsy heroism and adventurism. But they play the character as themselves in the context in which their character appears. So when their character is in a crowd, they tend to be shy, not bold or audacious. In online games, it is the same sort of thing at work.

Many designers think that players will bear in mind the scope of the toon that they plan, so that if you are, say, a dark elf walking through the shire, then you’ll likely kill someone. But what happens is that the player doesn’t. They go about their business, using the toon as an extension of themselves instead of a puppet. But the dominant concept is the person creates a character as an avatar, as a puppet that they will interact faithfully with what the cultural or designer’s perspective intentions are for that character. Again, if they play as a wizard, we sort of expect them to act intelligent and not like an ass.

Only the best of actors and role-players are able to separate themselves and use the avatar for what it is, but when they do, few people respond to it in kind. Instead, they’re blacklisted or put on /ignore for that RPG-Speak.

That's how I interpret and experience 'characters as avatars'.

>>>>>>><<<<<<<<

Okay, that's kind of what I thought that meant.

So, we're really talking about 3 separate issues: is permanent death an acceptable game mechanic?, is your character an extension of yourself or a role-play tool?, and how do you deal with high level characters?

As for perma-death, my approach is to have as much to keep the high level characters entertained as the low and mid level characters. I do provide for perma-death situations, but only in certain circumstances. For instance, when we're done, there will be 4 uber-dungeons (beyond all the others) that each have a lich as the "boss". The lich tries once every X seconds to perma-kill a character nearby. Liches don't wander around, but anyone stupid or brave enough to go into their lair has the chance for permanent death. To extend that idea, I'm placing a demi-liche that will kill your character, but won't perma-kill him. Your ghost is prevented from leaving the lair of the demi-lich until the demi-lich that killed you is destroyed, and a cleric casts "Remove Curse" on your ghost. Only then can you be resurrected. Almost as bad as permanent death:-)

In the context of my gaming group, I think that we always understood our characters to be "what we're supposed to be role-playing" but at another level understand that our characters often end up being an extension of our own personalities. Some of the guys in my pen and paper group always play themselves, even though each new character "is a real departure from what I usually play" (hah). The rest of us recognize that our first characters were basically super-extensions of our own egos, and have gradually tried to expand our role-playing abilities into new and different territories. Stretching yourself mentally and emotionally (playing a character in a game is definitely an investment in both) is hard to do for anyone and I think most of us understand that change comes slowly and in small increments, if at all.

I've never played on a pay-for-play server before, so I've never seen what you're talking about to a great extent. I think most of the more mature players, especially those with a pen-and-paper background, think of their characters in the same way as we do; this kind of duality between "an alternate persona" and an extension of the player's own personality.

My best experience was a place where most of the players were mid-20s with some 30- and 40-somethings mixed in with a few teenagers. Most of the players had prior experience with pen and paper gaming (experience that is lacking in many younger players and SO shows itself in their behavior, attitude and general approach to the game) so they were used to a more relaxed role-play atmosphere. When players would walk up to us and start talking in a way that was out of context, we acted as though they were trying to cast a dark spell on us, or as though they were insane. They either got frustrated and went away, or they got the hint and started to behave more like us. With any minimal amount of effort, we would then be more patient with them and try to encourage that behavior. I think that's absolutely the best approach.

Anyway, it's just strange. I'm glad I'm not in the game of "they're paying for it, so we have to eat shit". It's my world and I'll run it any way I like. If people don't like it, they can take a hike:-)

There's a lot to be said for that philosophy.

First Post

So you may be wondering what this is about. It's about role-playing games, man.

It's about my Ultima Online shard, Urilia. It's about my experiences running and playing various role-playing games. It's about the desire to be part of the gaming experience in general.

I've been running and playing RPGs every Friday night (sometimes more frequently, sometimes less) for the last 16 years. I've been playing with almost the same group of 7 people that entire time (players come and go, but this group is my core). One of those people is now my wife and the mother of our 3 children. Since the rest of the gang figure prominently into my bid for world domination via our MORPG, I guess I'll introduce the group to you...

Stacey - My lovely wife. She keeps our home in shape, keeps my kids breathing (often running interference to my autocratic parenting), runs my younger daughter's Girl Scout troop, is a very active member of our PTO, and generally volunteers a great deal of her time and energy to being a pillar of our community. It's awesome, by proxy, I'm respectable.

Mike - Mike was my first and best friend when I came to St. Louis. I was 15 at the time. He made me listen to RUSH until I realized I loved it (came from a die-hard headbanger background). He showed me Highlander for the first time (no idea what I was in for, but he told me it was a wrestling movie when it first started....I thought he'd lost his mind). And we played Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (1st edition) for the first time in his basement. We butchered the rules and rejoiced when the second edition came out.

Shad - Shad was "Mike's friend" for the longest time. I can't even remember how he suddenly ended up showing up to regular sessions of Vampire: The Masquerade, playing his flamboyant, but ever-cool Eldred Fleming. Shad owns, maintains, and provides the bandwidth for "our" server. He's been really patient with this whole gig, and I hope we live up to his expectations when it's done. Actually, recently I've even gotten him to start slaving over code...

Dave - Dave was Mike's next door neighbor as they grew up. Dave taught us about serious gaming. The group Dave hung out with was older and immenently more mature about their approach to games. It was in Dave's basement that I met the one and only person to ever play a Druid well. The guy (I can't remember his name) was a brilliant Neutral. To this day, Dave is probably the player in the group who actually sticks to his characters and the personas he creates for those characters.

Shawn - Shawn was my first and only friend at my new school when I moved back to St. Louis in my sophmore year of highschool. He shared a stick of gum with me in Biology. He somehow ended up playing AD&D and later Vampire (Shad and I blood bound his character in the second night of playing) with us at my house. Shawn's the youngster in the group.

Darrell - "Shawn's brother" for years until that first time I helped him and his friends make up Vampire characters that night at their parent's house. After that, Darrell was hooked. Darrell was a convert to the conservative cause, and it took me a couple years to do it, but now he and I are probably the closest, politically.

Me - I'm the guy always trying to bring fresh blood into the group. Urilia was my concept and my dream. It's going to be the pinacle of my gaming career when it's finished. It's everything I ever wanted in a game that the pen-and-paper games could never be. Of course, I'll never stop playing the pen-and-paper games, because they'll always be something on-line games can never be.

Matt - Matt doesn't play with the group anymore, and he never had time to play with us for long, but he was the most regular outsider we ever brought in. He's since moved to Wisconson but stays in regular touch and helps us write code for Urilia. Thank god for Matt, as he's the only one of us with real programming experience.