November 2001

• Digimask Technology. Matt Owen
• • Digimask Technology. Ian Macintosh
• Call for submissions to Game Programming Gems 3 Andrew Kirmse
• Virtual environments for education? Edward Glowacki
• • Virtual environments for education? Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt
  • • Virtual environments for education? Bruce Mitchener
  • Virtual environments for education? Ola Fosheim Grøstad
  • Virtual environments for education? Dr. Cat
  • Virtual environments for education? Mats Lidstrom
• Playing NPCs Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
• A Hello, and thanks... o. rchaeus
• NPCS Mr Dylan Tovey
• • NPCS Travis Nixon
  • NPCS luke@rocketship.com
• Story in MM*s [was ] Joe Andrieu
• player-driven content? Sasha Hart
• • player-driven content? Paul Schwanz
  • • player-driven content? Bruce Mitchener
• (no subject) J C Lawrence
• • (no subject) Koster, Raph
  • (no subject) Peter Tyson
• WebRPG Travis Casey
• [TECH][SURVEY] non-mainstream languages? Bruce Mitchener
• • [TECH][SURVEY] non-mainstream languages? Brian Hook
  • [TECH][SURVEY] non-mainstream languages? Nathan F. Yospe
  • [TECH][SURVEY] non-mainstream languages? Mats Lidstrom
  • [TECH][SURVEY] non-mainstream languages? Bruce Mitchener
• "sweeping change"? Sellers, Mike
• • "sweeping change"? Michael Tresca
  • • "sweeping change"? Sellers, Mike
    • • "sweeping change"? Michael Tresca
    • "sweeping change"? Freeman, Jeff
    • "sweeping change"? Matt Mihaly
    • • "sweeping change"? Sellers, Mike
• Re[4]: Expectations of in-game reality Travis Casey
• Cynical at a young age T.A.J.BARTON
• Tabletop RPGs and Inspiration (was: no subject) Brian 'Psychochild' Green
• • Tabletop RPGs and Inspiration (was: no subject) John Mariotti
  • Tabletop RPGs and Inspiration (was: no subject) Matt Chatterley
  • Tabletop RPGs and Inspiration (was: no subject) Sean K
  • Tabletop RPGs and Inspiration (was: no subject) Don Healey
• Some survey results... Andrew Wilson
• • Some survey results... Matt Mihaly
  • • Some survey results... Jeremy Noetzelman
    • Some survey results... Andrew Wilson
  • Some survey results... Dr. Cat
  • • Some survey results... Andrew Wilson
    • • Some survey results... Dr. Cat
  • Some survey results... Derek Snider
  • • Some survey results... Andrew Wilson
  • Some survey results... Matt Mihaly
• Role-Playing Games Are Not Dead Michael Tresca
• • Role-Playing Games Are Not Dead Dave Rickey
  • • Role-Playing Games Are Not Dead Ryan S. Dancey
    • • Role-Playing Games Are Not Dead Richard Aihoshi aka Jonric
      • • Role-Playing Games Are Not Dead Leland Hulbert II
        • • Role-Playing Games Are Not Dead Richard Aihoshi aka Jonric
          • Role-Playing Games Are Not Dead Matt Mihaly
        • Role-Playing Games Are Not Dead Paul Schwanz
        • Role-Playing Games Are Not Dead Dave Rickey
    • Role-Playing Games Are Not Dead Sellers, Mike
    • • Role-Playing Games Are Not Dead Ryan S. Dancey
  • Role-Playing Games Are Not Dead Valerio Santinelli
  • Role-Playing Games Are Not Dead Koster, Raph
  • • Role-Playing Games Are Not Dead Michael Tresca
    • • Role-Playing Games Are Not Dead Brian Hook
    • Role-Playing Games Are Not Dead Lars Duening
    • • Role-Playing Games Are Not Dead Ola Fosheim Grøstad
      • • Role-Playing Games Are Not Dead Phillip Lenhardt
        • Role-Playing Games Are Not Dead Lars Duening
      • Role-Playing Games Are Not Dead Matt Mihaly
      • • Role-Playing Games Are Not Dead Travis Casey
        • • Role-Playing Games Are Not Dead Matt Mihaly
          • • Role-Playing Games Are Not Dead Travis Casey
    • Role-Playing Games Are Not Dead Don Healey
    • • Role-Playing Games Are Not Dead Michael Tresca
      • • Role-Playing Games Are Not Dead Matt Mihaly
      • Role-Playing Games Are Not Dead Paul Schwanz
      • • Role-Playing Games Are Not Dead Travis Casey
        • • Role-Playing Games Are Not Dead Phillip Lenhardt
        • Role-Playing Games Are Not Dead Don Healey
        • • Role-Playing Games Are Not Dead Koster, Raph
  • Role-Playing Games Are Not Dead Ling Lo
  • Role-Playing Games Are Not Dead Ryan S. Dancey
  • Role-Playing Games Are Not Dead Paul Schwanz
  • • Role-Playing Games Are Not Dead Michael Tresca
• [DGN] The Human Condition Kwon Ekstrom
• Multi-protagonist stories. Paul Schwanz
• • Multi-protagonist stories. Matt Mihaly
• licensing Adam Martin
• • licensing Vincent Archer
  • licensing Travis Casey
• Tabletop RPGs and Inspiration (was: no subject) Sami Kosonen
• Licensing PnP RPGs was "sweeping change"? Brian Hook
• • Licensing PnP RPGs was "sweeping change"? Richard Aihoshi aka Jonric
  • Licensing PnP RPGs was "sweeping change"? Freeman, Jeff
• Good Writing (was: Role-Playing Games Are Not Dead) Brian 'Psychochild' Green
• New laws. (was: Player Manipulation of Environment) Marian Griffith
• • New laws. (was: Player Manipulation of Environment) Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt
  • • New laws. (was: Player Manipulation of Environment) John Buehler
    • New laws. (was: Player Manipulation of Environment) Bruce Mitchener
    • New laws. (was: Player Manipulation of Environment) Marian Griffith
    • • New laws. (was: Player Manipulation of Environment) Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt
  • New laws. (was: Player Manipulation of Environment) Bruce Mitchener
  • • New laws. (was: Player Manipulation of Environment) Marian Griffith
    • • New laws. (was: Player Manipulation of Environment) Mark Eaton
      • • New laws. (was: Player Manipulation of Environment) Marian Griffith
      • New laws. (was: Player Manipulation of Environment) Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt
      • • New laws. (was: Player Manipulation of Environment) Travis Casey
        • • New laws. (was: Player Manipulation of Environment) Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt
          • • New laws. (was: Player Manipulation of Environment) Travis Casey
        • New laws. (was: Player Manipulation of Environment) Andrew Hefford
        • New laws. (was: Player Manipulation of Environment) Paul Schwanz
  • New laws. (was: Player Manipulation of Environment) Matt Mihaly
  • • New laws. (was: Player Manipulation of Environment) Marian Griffith
  • New laws. (was: Player Manipulation of Environment) Paul Schwanz
• Storied Games Paul Schwanz
• • Storied Games amanda@alfar.com
  • Storied Games Lee Sheldon
  • • Storied Games Dave Rickey
    • • Storied Games Travis Casey
    • Storied Games Paul Schwanz
    • • Storied Games Marian Griffith
      • • Storied Games Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
      • Storied Games Lee Sheldon
      • • Storied Games John W. Pierce
        • • Storied Games Lee Sheldon
          • • Storied Games jsmithn@hotmail.com
  • Storied Games Matt Mihaly
  • • Storied Games Miroslav Silovic
    • • Storied Games Derek Licciardi
      • Storied Games Matt Mihaly
      • • Storied Games amanda@alfar.com
        • • Storied Games Matt Mihaly
          • • Storied Games amanda@alfar.com
            • • Storied Games Matt Mihaly
• Player Manipulation of Environment/New Laws Paul Schwanz
  Marian Griffith wrote:
  
  > It seems this leads to two new laws :)
  
  > 1) Muds can't be narratives for the players.
  
  > Players "live" in the game, they participate far more directly
  > than the reader of a book, or the viewer of a
  > movie. Techniques and strategies that work for a narrative
  > structure do not work for muds. This is a direct result from
  > the "everybody wants to be the hero of the game" law. >
  
  I'm comfortable with the notion that MUDs cannont *be* narratives.
  I think this is a result of the fact that MUDs offer player
  interactivity while narratives impose authorial will. On the other
  hand, MUDs certainly can *have* narrative content. What form that
  content should take and whether or not it will be ignored by players
  in favor of interaction are questions still very much in debate.
  
  >> 2) The game world must be large enough to absorb the player's
  >> ability to affect it.
  
  > The more freedom the players have to affect the world the big-
  > ger that world has to be, or the they will rip it apart sooner
  > or later. Probably sooner. This however requires some
  > serious change to the way games are organised, including the
  > fact that for games to be experienced as lively they need to
  > be extremely dense, which directly conflicts with their need
  > to be big. Of course currently players have no ability to
  > affect the world in any meaningful way, which lead to the game
  > feeling stale and to repetitive gameplay.
  
  I think the requirement for density (I'm assuming you are talking
  about player density) can be lessened where players are allowed to
  interact more with the game world. If the game world itself seems
  more "alive" you don't need as many other players around giving the
  virtual world its liveliness.
  
  I will now rant. ;) I'll talk specifically about DAoC, not because
  it is any worse than some of the other MMORPGs, but because it is
  what I've been playing recently.
  
  The developers at Mythic have determined that I will have one and
  only one method for interacting with pigs (and virtually every other
  creature in the game). I can kill them. That's it. They are
  designed to be killed for gold and exp. I can't breed them. I
  can't herd them. I can't own them. I can't raise them to sell
  them. They may drop stuff that *looks* like meat, but it isn't. It
  is simply copper in a different form. How do I know this? Because
  I can't eat it. I can't use it in recipes. It is designed to be
  taken to a merchant and exchanged for a few coppers. Any merchant
  will do and all give exactly the same amount of gold for it. Why
  not just give me the gold in the first place? And when I do kill a
  pig, it isn't really gone. I have had no lasting effect on the game
  world. The pig will just respawn. So I'm not really killing it, am
  I? In fact, we talk about "farming" a spawn point. We use language
  like this because we know that a pig is not really a living animal,
  even in a virtual sense. It doesn't act like a living animal. It
  is an exp farm. A small faucet from which we may collect precious
  drops into our cumulative character containers.
  
  Similarly, the game dictates to me that I will interact with my
  trainer, Mavelle, in one particular way. In her case, I may *not*
  kill her. Why not? I'm not sure. We could always respawn her just
  like we do the pigs. I suspect it is because Mavelle isn't really a
  human. She is a kiosk. She is not a person, she is a function.
  She doesn't need to be mortal in order to be a function. In fact,
  she can do her function much better if she isn't dead. And her
  function has nothing to do with dripping exp into our little
  cumulative character bags like other exp farms, so why should I be
  able to kill her? In any case, the scope of possible interaction
  with both Mavelle and all other MOBs in DAoC is very narrow.
  
  The other day, I killed a creature in Midgard and it dropped copper
  in the form of a carving tool and some carved figures. I wished
  afterward that I didn't have to kill the little guy. I imagined how
  cool it would be to discover the carving tool on the ground
  somewhere and give it to one of these little creatures, only to be
  offered a carved figure of myself. I imagined searching around for
  scraps of wood in various raw shapes and returning to these
  mysterious carvers to see if I could get them to make other objects.
  Unfortunately, someone else had already decided that I could not
  interact with a huldu stalker other than killing him. And it had a
  yellow name, which told me that I could probably kill it and get a
  good amount of exp. Of course, there are probably a hundred
  different ways to go about killing the huldu. I suppose the
  developers were too busy figuring out the different methods for
  killing to have time to explore other types of interaction. Or
  maybe they were concerned about how such interaction might be
  "gamed." You know, you have to constantly be vigilant to ensure the
  game doesn't become unbalanced. If you are not careful, you players
  might skip across your cumulative character rainbow and discover
  there is no content pot of gold at the end. Of course, DAoC has
  RvR.
  
  What it doesn't have is trees. There are things that (sorta) look
  like trees, but they are not trees. How do I know this? Because
  they don't grow. I can't plant them. I can't cut them down. I
  can't use wood from them to build a house or a barn. They are not
  trees, they are props on the stage that I must walk around in order
  to kill things. The wood that is available in DAoC is not in any
  way tied to these props. The wood is unlimited, created ex nihlo
  each time I visit the (very functional) wood merchant. There is no
  concept of scarcity (at least not as it pertains to wood), so the
  value of wood never changes. In fact, very little ever changes in
  DAoC. It seems entirely static. Players cannot have any real,
  true, lasting impact on the world. (Maybe this is why everyone
  seems to focus on changing themselves through their constant
  endeavors to gain exp.?) But maybe RvR will change my perception of
  this.
  
  Bleah. I hate rants. They tend to simplify and point out problems
  without offering solutions. I want to offer solutions. I will do
  so in another post, however, since this one seems to be getting all
  long and rambly-like.
  
  --Phinehas
• • Player Manipulation of Environment/New Laws Bruce Mitchener
  • • Player Manipulation of Environment/New Laws Paul Schwanz
  • Player Manipulation of Environment/New Laws Marian Griffith
• Player Manipulation of Environment Paul Schwanz
• • Player Manipulation of Environment Paul Schwanz
  • • Player Manipulation of Environment Matt Mihaly
    • Player Manipulation of Environment Andrew Hefford {Coregen}
    • • Player Manipulation of Environment Eli Stevens
  • Player Manipulation of Environment Jasper McChesney
  • • Player Manipulation of Environment Paul Schwanz
    • • Player Manipulation of Environment Adam Martin
      • Player Manipulation of Environment Jasper McChesney
      • Player Manipulation of Environment Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt
      • • Player Manipulation of Environment Ling Lo
        • • Player Manipulation of Environment rayzam
          • Player Manipulation of Environment Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt
          • Player Manipulation of Environment Marc Hernandez
• Fw: AVATARS2001 this weekend Frank Crowell
• [NEWS] Lineage: The Blood Pledge Interview Dave Kennerly
• • [NEWS] Lineage: The Blood Pledge Interview Dave Kennerly
• Storytelling and Professionals (was: ) Kathleen Foley
• • Storytelling and Professionals (was: ) Lee Sheldon
  • • Storytelling and Professionals (was: ) Dave Rickey
    • • Storytelling and Professionals (was: ) Lee Sheldon
• not about telling stories Joe Andrieu
• • not about telling stories Freeman, Jeff
  • not about telling stories Travis Casey
• Storytelling and Professionals (was) Lee Sheldon
• A Non-Cumulative Character MMORPG? Heresy! Paul Schwanz
• Storytelling and Professionals (was) Ananda Dawnsinger
• Asheron's Call, Story and Population Density. Zak Jarvis
• • Asheron's Call, Story and Population Density. Sasha Hart
  • • Asheron's Call, Story and Population Density. Christopher Kohnert
    • • Asheron's Call, Story and Population Density. Sasha Hart
      • • Asheron's Call, Story and Population Density. Christopher Kohnert
  • Asheron's Call, Story and Population Density. Lee Sheldon
• Tech: Pathfinding with Rooms Sanxion
• • Tech: Pathfinding with Rooms vognsen@post10.tele.dk
  • • Tech: Pathfinding with Rooms David Bennett
    • • Tech: Pathfinding with Rooms Sanxion
      • Tech: Pathfinding with Rooms Christopher Kohnert
      • Tech: Pathfinding with Rooms Per Vognsen
      • • Tech: Pathfinding with Rooms David Bennett
        • • Tech: Pathfinding with Rooms Eli Stevens
  • Tech: Pathfinding with Rooms Christopher Kohnert
  • Tech: Pathfinding with Rooms Nicholas E. Walker
  • • Tech: Pathfinding with Rooms Marcus Johansson
    • Tech: Pathfinding with Rooms Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt
    • • Tech: Pathfinding with Rooms Leland Hulbert II
• [NEWS] Lineage: The Blood Pledge Interview - Richard's blunder :) Mathieu Castelli
• Subject: New laws. (was: Player Manipulation of Environment) John Robert Arras
• Meridian 59 purchased by developers Andrew Kirmse
• • Meridian 59 purchased by developers James C. Nugen
  • Meridian 59 purchased by developers Frank Crowell
• [STORY] Story and population size Adam Martin
• • [STORY] Story and population size Derek Licciardi
  • • [STORY] Story and population size Christopher Kohnert
    • • [STORY] Story and population size Timothy Dang
      • • [STORY] Story and population size Derek Licciardi
      • [STORY] Story and population size Vincent Archer
      • • [STORY] Story and population size Christopher Kohnert
    • [STORY] Story and population size John Buehler
    • • [STORY] Story and population size Derek Licciardi
      • • [STORY] Story and population size John Buehler
        • • [STORY] Story and population size Jeff Freeman
          • • [STORY] Story and population size Travis Nixon
          • [STORY] Story and population size Wells, Thomas
          • [STORY] Story and population size Matt Mihaly
          • • [STORY] Story and population size John Buehler
            • • [STORY] Story and population size Matt Mihaly
              • [STORY] Story and population size Jeff Cole
              • • [STORY] Story and population size John Buehler
                • • [STORY] Story and population size Jeff Cole
                  • • [STORY] Story and population size John Buehler
            • [STORY] Story and population size Michael Tresca
            • • [STORY] Story and population size Matt Mihaly
        • [STORY] Story and population size Dave Rickey
        • • [STORY] Story and population size Jeff Cole
          • • [STORY] Story and population size Dave Rickey
            • [STORY] Story and population size Paul Schwanz
            • [STORY] Story and population size Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
            • • [STORY] Story and population size Andrew Hefford
          • [STORY] Story and population size Bryan "Cyngon" Helmkamp
  • [STORY] Story and population size Bobby Martin
  • • [STORY] Story and population size Marian Griffith
    • • [STORY] Story and population size Bobby Martin
  • [STORY] Story and population size Bruce Mitchener
  • • [STORY] Story and population size Sellers, Mike
    • [STORY] Story and population size Bobby Martin
• [GENETICS] Evolving prey populations Adam Martin
• Stories, why? Ian Collyer
• • Stories, why? amanda@alfar.com
• Purchase of Meridian 59 by Near Death Studios Brian 'Psychochild' Green
• • Purchase of Meridian 59 by Near Death Studios Rob Ellis II
  • Purchase of Meridian 59 by Near Death Studios Lee Sheldon
  • Purchase of Meridian 59 by Near Death Studios Sellers, Mike
• Community Building Sanvean
• doesNotUnderstand behavior in C++ (was: Spoofs) Eli Stevens
• Importance of player roles Sasha Hart
• RTS aspects in MUDs (LONG) lhulbert@hotmail.com
• • RTS aspects in MUDs (LONG) John Robert Arras
  • • RTS aspects in MUDs (LONG) Leland Hulbert II
    • RTS aspects in MUDs (LONG) holding99@mindspring.com
  • RTS aspects in MUDs (LONG) Dave Kennerly
  • • RTS aspects in MUDs (LONG) Takis Kalogiratos
• Agora, a Wiki for MUD topics Bruce Mitchener