Subject: Re: radical departure
From: joshua 'hook' corning (hook@u.washington.edu)
Date: Tue Nov 16 1999 - 05:10:42 EET
Taneli Niko Tikka wrote: > We dont want to > create a 'blank' world and end up with green fucking wankers with pink > panties running around huge pints of lager damnit! We all ready have green wankers running around though they probably wear loin cloths. Have you read Aluna's desc on the Vram islands? This is precisely the problem with forcing history and culture on the players. We have no idea what will work with the game and what won't. Think about it. Just deciding an where a good city should be is impossible. There is no way of telling where a good place would be until the game is actually working. Does that hill make a good defensive position? is it on a trade route? where is a good trade route? Is this to close to the giants of the mountains? Is it to far away from that friendly city to the north so if we are attacked will they be able to help? and it goes on and on and on. And this is just in deciding where to put a city. A small thing in terms of the whole world. Then if we change physics like making the world flat differences with our world will become more prominent and impossible to factor in when designing because as we are sphere world dwellers we have no experience with existing on a flat world. this is just an example. More stuff like this will come up advantages and disadvantages will occure with the client interface. Players will use this and min max. the benefits. This could cause adverse effects to the societies we created in ways we can't begin to imagine. Gods and sages will be lost in the chaos trying to hold together our artificial societies and kingdoms. Within a month or two of game play the world we spent two years designing will appear nothing like we intended it to. Players will act how they think elves should act or an Orc should act. They WILL call them selves stupid names brake laws find ways to kill npcs by the thousands until only players exist. The world will do this on its own. Players will not want to be constantly told how to act and behave by the gods and will either not play the game or just do it when its 4 am in Finland. Do you want to be a god or a policeman. :) cause that kind of > bollocks would be coming from 'blank' development. Your "social > developement" > only works in theory AND includes ALL things not just a selected group of > players.. Yorkaturr has some reall good points down there. > > If the world has no history.. myths, legends, artifacts etc.. nothing has > no meaning at all.. Our world has no meaning but we seem to do OK. > > And as a mental note id like to add that anyone interested how societies > really do develop, please read culture athropology and sociological book, > huge pile of em. Societies really do develop by self organization. Most modern anthropology and sociological books agree on this. Try reading the "selfish gene" or edward O Wilson's book "On human nature". What model do you attribute social origins and development to? Joshua 'hook' Corning hook@majik3d.org
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