[MUD-Dev] RE:

Freeman Freeman
Tue Nov 20 11:14:21 CET 2001


> From: Dave Rickey [mailto:daver at mythicentertainment.com]

> Our stories suck or are non-existant, yet people play, obviously
> they aren't playing to be told a story.  Why *should* we look for
> a way to do something there's no sign we should even care about?
 
> I don't see players asking for stories, rather they ask for the
> world to be made to seem more "real" and stories are the only form
> of that they've ever known.

Indeed.  As a player, the stories seem utterly contrived to me.

I get stories to tell from playing MMOs, but the stories are things
that "really happened", as opposed to the things that interest-GMs
claimed to have happened in order to fabricate a "plot" that the
vast majority of players don't care about anyway.

True story: A friend of mine is killed and his magic sword is looted
by a monster in a dungeon far away.  We all gather and travel to the
dungeon, fight hoards of vicious beasties, someone tells a funny
joke, and we recover my friend's magic sword.  Yay.

Fake story: A seer's character pops into existance at the local
tavern, waits for someone to wander into the tavern (probably
accidentally) and then claims that he lost his magic sword in a
dungeon.  We don't believe him, because we know that he just put the
magic sword on the monster in the dungeon and then appeared here in
the tavern in order to give us a quest.

Bleah.  It's the exact same story, but the "fake" one is not the
*least* bit compelling.  Worse if the "seer" is an NPC who loses his
magic sword every 15 minutes or so.
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