[MUD-Dev] Commercial value of RP

[Miroslav Silovic]

Mike Sellers <mike at online-alchemy.com> writes:

> Not only that, but it doesn't always work.  I heavily RPed several
> (okay, many :) ) incognito characters on M59, and only rarely was
> the RPing picked up.  I once challenged a guy to a duel in fairly
> florid language, and his only response was "yah, whatever dude."
> Sigh.  If the environment doesn't encourage RP, those who make the
> effort will soon give up even trying.

Eventually I concluded that the main ingredient to the ammount of
roleplaying you'll see on the MUD is the ammount of user-to-user
interaction necessary to accomplish any given goal. On a MUSH, you
have tons of roleplaying simply because NOTHING can be achieved
without user-to-user interaction. I noticed the following on DarkeMUD:
Whenever admins implement something that makes advance tough without
players needing things forom other players (and darke allows players
to create magical items, mundane weapons, heal, and so on - and that's
probably the only way to get powerful objects of a high level), the
ammount of roleplaying I subjectively perceive increases. The converse
is also true. If the simplest and most obvious thing to do is to go
out and kill mobs, that's *precisely* what players are going to do -
regardless of how creative, innovative and 'cool' your gameplay system
is.

Conceivably, if true AI (or reasonably believable approximation of
such) were actually implemented, you could let people just go to the
monsters and talk with them rather than whack them. But that day is
nowhere near, IMHO.

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