Top Mud Sites Forum - View Single Post

Burr · 05-14-2002, 03:14 PM

How much would you let a character determine about their background, and how would you deal with that in the cross-referencing? In constructing his background, a player may need to determine certain characteristics about the people surrounding his character.

For instance, say that sometime <i>after</i> creation, the young blacksmith tells another character that his mentor was a drunkard. Later your creation engine hands another player the character of the mentor. How does this player know that his character is supposed to have been a drunkard?

You could give the blacksmith the power of adding such things to the mentor's background up until the time the creation engine gives the mentor character to another player. However, at what point would enough be enough? The player of the mentor probably won't enjoy getting stuck with a character whose every detail has already been determined by another player.

You could give the player the option to choose from more spin-off characters than just the mentor, but then you will lose the benefits of having an involuntary background system. If a player wants a warrior instead of a prince or blacksmith, they will find a spin-off character that is a warrior.

In an RP-enforced mud with distinct groups of RPers and PKers, this may be a good thing, if you also give them the option of generating a completely new character rather than making them choose a spin-off character. That way the people who enjoy (and are thus probably good at) writing backgrounds will be the ones that determine the backgrounds of all characters. And the people who would rather play a particular class of character will be able to choose to do that.

But if your mud is mostly PK, then you aren't really losing anything if a person's abilities doesn't match their background. And if your mud is mostly RP, then you could be losing a lot if you restrict your player's artistic liscence through automation.

05-14-2002, 03:14 PM	#2
Burr Member Join Date: Apr 2002 Posts: 123	How much would you let a character determine about their background, and how would you deal with that in the cross-referencing? In constructing his background, a player may need to determine certain characteristics about the people surrounding his character. For instance, say that sometime <i>after</i> creation, the young blacksmith tells another character that his mentor was a drunkard. Later your creation engine hands another player the character of the mentor. How does this player know that his character is supposed to have been a drunkard? You could give the blacksmith the power of adding such things to the mentor's background up until the time the creation engine gives the mentor character to another player. However, at what point would enough be enough? The player of the mentor probably won't enjoy getting stuck with a character whose every detail has already been determined by another player. You could give the player the option to choose from more spin-off characters than just the mentor, but then you will lose the benefits of having an involuntary background system. If a player wants a warrior instead of a prince or blacksmith, they will find a spin-off character that is a warrior. In an RP-enforced mud with distinct groups of RPers and PKers, this may be a good thing, if you also give them the option of generating a completely new character rather than making them choose a spin-off character. That way the people who enjoy (and are thus probably good at) writing backgrounds will be the ones that determine the backgrounds of all characters. And the people who would rather play a particular class of character will be able to choose to do that. But if your mud is mostly PK, then you aren't really losing anything if a person's abilities doesn't match their background. And if your mud is mostly RP, then you could be losing a lot if you restrict your player's artistic liscence through automation.