[MUD-Dev] narrative

[Amanda Walker]

On 8/16/02 4:18 AM, Brandon J. Van Every <vanevery at 3DProgrammer.com> wrote:

> A story about 2000 people is not a story.  It is a war.  Go design
> a war if that's the number of people you want to have interact.

Or, rather than writing a story for 2000 people, write a *backstory*
for them.

I spent last week in a multi-user virtual context involving more
than 10000 people 24x7 for over a week straight.  No story for it
was pre-written, though there were a few pre-planned large-scale
"events".  Most events and content were participant-produced,
including housing and items, and most participants came out of it
with stories that were very meaningful and important to them.

There was PvP and RvR combat, though probably only about 20% of the
people took advantage of this.

This multi-user virtual context was called "Pennsic War XXXI", an
SCA event held yearly in western Pennsylvania
<http://www.pennsic.net/>.  SCA events produce stories, not by
writing or pre-plotting them, but by creating a context in which
individual participants and groups can *do things worth telling
stories about*.

Sure, many of the stories start "no joke, there we were..." or "a
long time ago...", but that's how most human stories start anyway.

I think that concentrating on narrative may be a mistake.  Game
developers want to build worlds, not write stories.  Players want to
do stuff worth telling stories about, not just write them from
scratch.  I think experience has shown, both in MUDs and in other
contexts, that if the setting and interaction are engaging, the
stories will just happen.

Amanda Walker


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