Subject: Re: radical departure
From: joshua 'hook' corning (hook@u.washington.edu)
Date: Tue Nov 16 1999 - 12:15:12 EET
Pekka Toppi wrote: > > > 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 > > Why do we have to have any experience of living in a flat world? I think > the lack of experience is an advantage. Now we have the possibility to > create it the way WE want. Sure we can make the world the way we want it but how long would it stay that way? If the game is coded well enough the players should have absolute freedom to choose their destiny. What makes you think they will follow your designs? The only way to curtail players that don't fallow what we say is to code the game without freedom of choice or to constantly police them. Which is not the intention of the game. Majik is a _fantasy_ world and everything is > possible. I personally like the idea of a infinite, flat world like Tommi > described. My argument is not about having a flat world. That descution just presipitated the idea of removing any pre made sociaties from the game. ie the radical departure proposal It would be cool to add completely different environments and > make them accessible through dimesion gates in remote islands or secret > temples. Dimension of eternal pain with hordes of demons would be a dream > come true for most of the suicidal-type adventurers. Yes that would be cool and still do-able within my proposal > IMO you have lost the whole idea of this game. Part of the idea behind the majik game is to make a world with consiquenses. A world in in which the players write the history. I am not making this up it is in the FAQ. If you have not read it i sugest you do. I have played > RPG's for a long time and I think that the primary fact in the game's > success is it's world. The more detailed, the better. I love games in > which > the society is functional and > where there are myths and secrets to reveal. Unlike paper based rpgs majik will not have a DM to dictate the world or the sociaties of that world to the player. This fact gives majik a huge advantage over these games i feel becouse it gives the player complete freedom to do what they want to do. Have you ever played d and d and you want your thief to run off and rob a house but can't becouse the other players want to get on with the adventure that the DM has prepared and the DM dosn't have the time for your theif's side adventure. In majik this should not be a problem. This also makes majik unstable. No DM means the players can do waht they want to and if that is the case what prevents them from ignoring our desc and doing what the hell they want. Sure we could try to design viable sociaties for the players but that is near imposible becouse there is no way we can forsee all the factors that effect those sociaties until the game is running. My proposal would make it so that the players make the societies within the game that way they would be viable becouse they did take in all the factors that exist. . Has anyone played Ultima > Online or any other graphic online games? I haven't but it would be nice > to hear if they have had any of the problems Joshua is fearing. As i undersatnd it ultima is hevaly policed and the world is unchanging. If you kill something one day its back alive the next. There is no real history in ultima. Borders are non changing sociaties are static. Joshua 'hook' corning hook@majik3d.org
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