[MUD-Dev] Re: Introducing the background hook

[J C Lawrence]

On Sun, 13 Sep 1998 19:22:44 +0100 (BST) 
Ling <K.L.Lo-94 at student.lboro.ac.uk> wrote:

> Unlike fantasy muds that can assume some cliches are universal, eg:
> dwarves are short, elves have pointy ears, I have a sci-fi mud which
> has a huge unknown factor.  Absolutely nothing can be assumed so
> somehow, I must introduce an almost entirely different universe to
> the players.

I have the same problem.

> Does anyone have any suggestions?

Yup, do something equivalent to the function of the Guide in infocom's
Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.  The guide would be queried at any
time with a command of the form:

  > ask guide about XXX

and would usually generate some sort of answer, often useful,
occassionally critical.  

The advantage of this approach is that the data is not forced on the
player but made available upon request, with the format and
requirements for that request being utterly reasonable in a game world
context and constant across the game space (ie sort of a universal
HELP command, but for IC issues instead of OOC issues).

> What I don't want is to have a whole bunch of help/info files that
> the player is forced to read thru before playing (eg: DartMUD).  It
> looks like a webpage with lots of pretty pictures is a must-have...

Another possibility is to retain a set of flags, either on the
character or account, which record whether that character/account has
ever done XXX (unusual thing) before.  If no, the first attempt
(successful or not, your choice) generates an extra text highlighting
some of the differences from likely expectation and providing pointers
to more in-depth data.

> Apart from that, are there any tricks I can use to teach the player
> how my imagined world works?  

Demonstration, and story telling are always the biggies.  The first is
usually done by having the character see <whatever> happening so that
he then knows it is possible.  (cf Arcade demo mode, your FF IV
teaching, or cut scenes).  Another is to have other NPC's tell each
other or the player stories which either describe or reference the
<whatever>.  Care needs to be taken with this one however, not to fall
into the classic pulp SF trap of having characters telling each other
all about things that they should already know full well (eg two
spaceship pilots telling each other how space travel works just so the
reader gets a clue), or not to lay it on too thick and patronise your
players.

> My current ideas include having excerpts from an 'Encyleopedia
> Galactica' appear around login screen and menu as well as having
> in-game news broadcasts but this is too 'in yer face' for my liking.

cf HHGTTG.

--
J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw at null.net
----------(*)                              Internet: coder at ibm.net
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