ABOUT THE NATURE OF ONLINE ROLEPLAYING
[REVISED NOV. 1997]
The age of the professional multi-user environment (MUE) is upon us,
and it won't be long before competition makes the seller's market into
a buyer's. Games will compete for player time, but we've already gained
understanding of how to keep players' attention for decades instead of
months or years. The lessons learned in the all- text games are still very
applicable to the newfangled colorful 3D worlds.
1. WHAT ARE THE PROPORTIONS OF THE DIFFERENT PLAYER TYPES ON TEXT GAMES?
My theory is that there's four general categories of interaction. From
watching text games over the years, and talking to many other wizards,
I've estimated that in a sample of 10 text players, 4 prefer peaceful non-competitive
activities (Socializers), 3 prefer a sort of free-form Let's Pretend (Persona
Players), 2 prefer to be well-defined characters in an ongoing storyline
(Roleplayers), and 1 prefers nonstop fighting (Combat Players). Players
usually think they will enjoy a mixture of these but they actually spend
the lion's share of their time in just one.
2. WARGAMES ARE BEING JOINED BY OTHER KINDS OF GAMES.
Most online multiplayer all-text games are the class called the "muds"
or "combat muds" or "dikuMUDS." They're like Dungeons and Dragons with
the numbers-crunching handled by the computer. MUEs devoted to Social,
Persona, and Roleplay have gone from a ratio of 1 in 20 around 1996 to
1 in 3 in 1997. (Text games combining combat and the other sorts of activities
are extremely rare.) Because of affordable RAM and a willingness to write
games for Pentiums rather than mainframes, the other kinds of games are
up and coming. The domination of PC games market by Combat type games could
be because the strongly competitive and aggressive mentality yields financial
gains. That is, the people who like Doom and Quake happen to be the people
buying Pentiums, leading to the false impression that these are what everyone
else wants. Maybe that's why we have so many Wargames. The Combat players
are a minority, but a vigorous one. The Combat player wants all players
to be playing by the same rules, wants to kill lots of monsters and take
their treasure. The Combat player, very simply, wants to *win*. It's very
easy to make a game with rules, where it's very clear when somebody wins,
and maybe THAT'S why we have so many Wargames.
3. WHAT DO SOCIAL PLAYERS DO?
Social play is what I term activities that which tends to be the players'
actions, only performed in a virtual setting. A Social player who doesn't
steal in real life, might find it very abhorrent to steal in a game. Social
text muds and IRC far outnumber any other kind of "real time" net hangout.
The Social player places far more importance on the ease of speech, asynchronous
communication (internal mud email and bulletin boards), group communication
(chat channels a la CB radio), and privacy. Solitary activities for when
friends are not present are strangely vital to them-- activities like building
custom locations are more than enjoyable pastimes or forms of self-expression:
They prevent one's circle of associates from growing too large. This helps
to stabilize an ongoing social community. Social players are "just folks"
who talk on IRC about sex, religion, politics, sex, and so forth. they
fill out Web Browser matchmaker site questionnaires to find dates in their
own cities. They send AOL email, download recipes for tuna casserole. On
LambdaMOO, they solve or code puzzles, vote on administrative issues, or
play Scrabble. The way others hide behind fanciful nicknames and fictitious
genders makes them very uncomfortable; they still feel there's an obligation
to be truthful, just like in the /real/ world. Many inferior systems can
continue to exist because their inferiority is seldom noticed. Social players
go to where they have established email collections and "buddy lists".
They will suffer through a lousy environment because they don't know better
or their friends are all there. Complexity mathematicians refer to this
as an example of a phenomenon they call "Lock-In". Lock-In is a very powerful
factor-- maybe one that can be turned to one's own advantage... Enter--
3.1 THE PERSONAL COMMUNICATORS
Desktop personal communicators such as ICQ, I-Chat, and PowWow make it
possible to send and sort messages in a way that's supplementing and even
surpassing the usefulness of ordinary email. These communicators also send
messages in an /immediate/ mode. They take on the roles of telephones,
pagers, P.A.'s, and more. The formation of one's personal list does create
Lock-In to that specific communications network, but they are also liberating:
Users can migrate their networks of interaction very easily onto them,
and are no longer tied to various ICQ channels, established favorite muds,
and chat systems such as AOL. They're making computer Internet connections
useful in a more "local" fashion, connecting people at offices in a more
efficient fashion. Users of ICQ in the same city can send a message in
the morning, and gather to see the same movie in the afternoon, even though
they are at different workplaces. Email was passive, required the user
to dig into a pile of it. Personal communicators are /active/ and put the
immediate messages at your immediate attention, with you controlling its
priority. Any game that doesn't leave desktop space for the personal communicator
will be cutting a player off from their personal friends, relatives, and
co-workers. Demanding the full processor and full screen is a bad idea
for the player who turned to multiplayer games because they wanted social
contact.
4. WHAT'S PERSONA PLAY?
Persona play is what I call acting through a character mask, an artificial
personality not unlike a character in a work of fiction. The Persona Player
is living out a fantasy, taking a break from the constraints of society
and reality. Because they are seeking play without restriction, they tend
not to let their /play/ environment restrict them either. The Persona Player
is interested in their own Persona, and the Personas of others. The setting
in which they exist is a convenience, to be ignored or changed as desired.
The events which take place in a scene are not serious, in that what is
done one day may be undone without penalty the next. Persona Play resembles
a cartoon; characters seldom die, and "character "hooks" are far more central
than "character development". FurryMUCK players are mostly Persona Players:
they will perform a scene in which a character is beheaded, but the character
will be there the next day, without any explanation required. The Persona
Player's description is free to say things that, in the context of the
characters, could not be known. For example, they might write, "Lydia was
abandoned by her parents." or "Lyle is looking for a true-love." What most
people call "roleplaying", I prefer to call Persona Play, because there
is another, somewhat similar activity, that I would rather refer to as
Roleplaying. I would say that Persona Play has always been going on, as
spontaneous let's pretend kind of games on IRC or via email. The difference
between code-supported roleplaying using game mechanics and character creation
rules is vastly different from Persona Play. The comparison is somewhat
like the difference between dribbling and playing a game of basketball.
Persona Play is a prelude to, or component of, what I would call Roleplaying.
5. WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PERSONA PLAY AND ROLEPLAYING?
I think I could have as easily switched these terms but there are subtle
connotations that divide them reasonably well. Persona play is limited
exclusively to portraying one's own character. It's very "personal". I
define Roleplaying as having a Continuity, and Rules that prevent an arbitrary
resolution. The Continuity is an ongoing story, in which that what happened
yesterday or last month is still "valid" as the basis of what happens today.
The Roleplayer's character may be uninspiring, less unique or less interesting
than a Persona player's. Their description will say only that which is
readily apparent to a virtual observer. Here, the important semantic component
of Roleplaying is that it implies one has a "role", a place, in a larger
scheme. The Roleplayer values their character because of the connections
that have formed to organizations, because of events that have taken place
in-character, and because of longterm achievements.
5.1 ADVANCEMENT AND ROLEPLAYERS
Surprisingly, advancement of a statistical nature means little to Roleplayers.
Combat players enjoy increased statistical ability, but Roleplayers are
more willing to accept a realistic topping-out. One form of Advancement
is awarding points purely on the basis of how long it has been since the
character was created, in terms of real time. Basing advancement on time
logged in sounds good at first, but leads to wildly disparate levels of
character ability, or to the slighting of players with limited time. Also,
it doesn't lead to a sense of accomplishment. My favorite form of advancement
in a purely Roleplaying game, is one in which the players may give out
monthly commendations to each character with whom they have interacted.
To allay abuse, votes from multiple characters played by the same player
must still only count as one vote (hard drive verification rather than
site ID is useful here!). For a handful of votes, the player receives a
small award. Each larger point award requires a larger number of votes.
This encourages players to interact with a large number of other players.
5.2 RANDOMIZED DECISIONS ARE NECESSARY
Several years ago there was a fad in which it was hoped that diceless tabletop
roleplaying games would become popular. These games had their merits; some
led to a more advanced perspectives on character creation (for example,
Amber Diceless RPG, and Laws of the Night LARP). Sophisticated new social
conventions also arose out of these games (see the Consent rule, http://www.thegenieslamp.com/Fur/chargen7.htm).
The text MUSH games based on the diceless tabletop games began as very
successful, but it took several years of play to discover a flaw in Diceless:
It was impractical to require the presence of a referee at a conflict.
When a player faced a player-character enemy, the out- come was negotiated,
in out-of-character whispers, using simple statistical comparison of numbers
to guide the decision. Players liked to face the same enemy again and again;
this process of negotiating victories out-of-character, arbitrarily, made
the conflict stale, lame. The gamemaster-less World of Darkness MUSHes,
on the other hand, which feature computer-generated die rolling and detailed
rules for weapon use, injury, and healing, are much more viable today.
The majority of MUSHes are based on Vampire the Masquerade, and this is
as much due to the way the rules are written as to the popularity of the
dark/superpowered/supernatural genre. Roleplayers like to keep their characters
for /years/ and making up the ending falls flat after the first two or
three times. A random element keeps it fresh, and provides an outside fairness.
5.3 NOT EVERYBODY WANTS TO BE A ROLEPLAYER!
Many people think they will come online to Roleplay, but there's more to
RP than acting. They're more likely to be Persona Players, only very -loosely-
"roleplaying", or Combat Players, there to face foes in a conflict that
gets very real real-life adrenaline pumping, or Socializers, there to hang
out and unwind and relax. The most serious Roleplayers dislike "spectators".
Even if a player isn't violating the Continuity with an out-of-genre or
out-of-character comment, Roleplayers tend to relate their enjoyment to
a mutual support of the shared virtual universe. It may be useful or even
necessary to provide a clearly labelled area where the in-character is
taken more seriously, and only those who have completed character sheets
are permitted. It's definitely good to have its opposite, a clearly labelled
out-of-character neutral zone, where players can take a break from being
"somebody else". Roleplayers have an /urge/ to do what they do. They'll
try to construct meaningful backgrounds, organizations, world mythos features,
in games whose creators didn't intend it. Roleplayers give their deity
a name when they play Populus. Fortunately, this means that Roleplayers
tend to make things more interesting for everyone else. Most players can
appreciate the efforts of those who are more serious RPers. The Roleplayers
are the ones who come up with the grand schemes, the major plotlines. When
a Socializer, a Combat Player or a Persona Player dies, they may be back
in a half an hour, good as new, with the same name. But when a Roleplayer
"dies" in the game, it's a dramatic event, a sacrifice of a virtual possession.
The fact that the character's demise is probably permanent is what lends
drama to the event. What the Roleplayer values, perhaps even more than
their own character, is Continuity.
5.4 THE PRECIOUS CONTINUITY
Roleplayers are upholding a common continuity, so they document and learn
about current events. Who's who, and what's where. Remaining in-persona,
negotiating in writing, and maintaining both real ("out of character",
OOC) and fictitious ("in character", IC) organizations takes quite a bit
of human cooperation and effort. It also requires creativity. To maintain
an IC region requires meticulous, creative people with plenty of time and
a cooperative spirit called "humility".
6. WHAT DOES IT TAKE FOR ROLEPLAYING TO THRIVE?
Roleplaying is the interaction of its components. The first is the player
character, who can have background (being the brother of another player
character, for instance), skills (which is given a sense of officiality
via a character-generation process), and other features. The second is
the setting. Who's in charge? What activities are permissible? Roleplaying
can be pre-negotiated by players who would rather not take risks; they
are going through a loose script, as if they were putting on a play. More
often than not, though, the action is spontaneous, and its outcome unexpected.
Roleplayers require a system that documents previous events, and prevents
a player from claiming things arbitrarily, in order to give them a kind
of synthetic value. Roleplaying requires a good system of bookkeeping accessible
to players where appropriate.
6.1 SOLID PRIVACY AND COMMUNICATIONS
The "Social" things are email, paging, whispering, chat channels, message
bulletin boards, mailing lists, and so forth. Roleplaying /requires/ a
very good Social system upon which a setting can be built. Roleplayers
in general feel a much keener need for security of system and player privacy.
They tend to equate potential with the results: if there is a way in which
something can be abused, they assume that the abuse is rampant, and clamor
for its prevention. Roleplay requires more than just a suitable location,
it requires a location that the players emotionally trust. (I won't go
further into issues of security from invasion of privacy, harassment, etc.,
as these issues are far more Dr. Cat's domain.)
6.2 CHARACTER PROFILES
State-of-the-art Roleplaying gives the player a way to record details about
their character. Some are private; some are accessible by all other players.
The act of creating a character is valuable in that it exposes the player
to what activities are performed in the world, what other races or social
strata exist. In playing in a science fiction universe, for instance, a
player might look at the choices and discover that "cyborgs" and a "bionics"
skill exist. Graphical Furcadia's character generation (beyond the choosing
of one's gender, species, and colors) is optional. It will be necessary
to complete this "advanced" character generation before being allowed into
a few areas of the game. I estimate it takes a player 10 minutes to do
the simple character, but from 25 to 45 to finish the advanced portion.
This investment of time is what strongly discourages players from being
able to disrupt IC play.
(click here for
a peek at the design document for this. :)
6.3 GAMEMASTERS? NOT REALLY, JUST HOSTS/STAFF
Traditional tabletop games had referees, called GameMasters (GMS). Over
the past few years, this has proven to be unnecessary in the all-text games.
In a professionally produced persistent game, the rules may be even better,
leading to fewer ambiguities. There does seem to be a need for moderators
of posted text, and staff for resolving disputes, however.
6.4 SOLID RULES, AVAILABLE -ONLINE-
Roleplaying benefits strongly from a system of making both the rules and
the source material immediately available, not through a World Wide Web
document or FTP'd manual, but through immediate online commands. It's interesting
that White Wolf and FASA allow their Vampires and Battletech rules to be
utilized, which has strongly enhanced the popularity of their paper game
products. For some licenses, the text muds are economically symbiotic--
they are free advertising of a sort that encourages the purchase of further
products. Some online players enjoy purchasing and owning compendiums of
the rules, or books of source material (such as the history and important
personages of a political organization), bound and illustrated. Some players
will play a game 15 hours a day, 7 days a week. The hunger for new events,
locations, and characters never ends. The system that permits and facilitates
amateurs to create, as well as paid staff, will therefore have a huge advantage
over the ones that don't. Longtime players become a resource, as they become
very enjoyable repositories of game information themselves.
6.5 CONFLICT RESOLUTION
This point is crucial to the overall level of Roleplayer satisfaction.
There ought to be a way to pit your virtual avatar's abilities against
that of another, should both participants desire. The game of Let's Pretend
fails when two finger-aiming youngsters cannot decide who should fall down.
Conflict resolution can be nonviolent. A Roleplayer may wish to play through
attempting to tame a monster. They may wish to compare their singing prowess
with that of others in attempting to win a laurel from the Queen of Hearts.
If the conclusion is seen as arbitrary, the Roleplayer will be less satisfied
with it. In all-text muds, there have been three types of conflict resolution:
arbitrary negotiation via "whispered" pages, coded fast-time (as in dikuMUDs
or NetHack), and slow-time conflicts. Social players often prefer the arbitrary
resolutions, as it's a minimum of effort. Combat players definitely prefer
fast-time. Roleplayers, however, prefer slow-time, which resembles traditional
tabletop/pencil&dice RPGs.
6.6 NON-PLAYER CHARACTERS
A virtual "robot" is not going to past the Turing test, but sometimes there
are tasks best suited to NPCs. An example of a non-violent NPC on Furcadia
is "Gargathon", who can tell players about the in-character mythology.
He's much more interesting to deal with than typing in `News Primes', because
he's interactive. His script was first created in the text environment,
using MUSH, then a version of him was created using Zmud's trigger detection
and response system for the graphical Furcadia game. Bartenders and shopkeepers
are also better done as NPCs. A player might enjoy the task but will not
be available as much as we might like them to be. The vast majority of
players don't log in to a game to simulate working. In a game with combat,
NPCs can be "flunkies", pets, riding animals, and opponents. Like the fictitious
Westworld's androids, they are the drudges and the whipping boys. Roleplayers
especially enjoy getting together to go up against some monstrously powerful
single creature, with statistics that it would be grossly unfair to give
any player character.
6.6 ECONOMY
It's more of a Combat player's thing to want to collect a slain monster's
equipment and treasure, and sell it. The persistent game has to treat players
roughly the same, whether they play for ten minutes or ten years. Because
Roleplayers may want to start out as `rich', it's sometimes best to omit
the "micro" economy. That is, selling individual items. To keep the interest
of players for whom it's a fantasy to acquire, invest, buy, and sell, however,
some kind of "macro" economy might be good idea. I haven't seen it done
successfully yet, and I have seen numerous flops in text muds. GohsMUSH
included a merchanting subgame, run over real months, a bit like a stock
market simulation. The trouble was that some Roleplayers wanted to be moguls,
but didn't want to master all the new commands of a TradeWars style game.
The worst pitfall of it all was the increasing-returns phenomenon, i.e.,
Them What Has Gets. As in real life, possession of money led to *more*
money. And that wasn't `fun' for those with less, of course.
6.7 WHAT OTHER INGREDIENTS ARE NICE?
Coded mini-games proved popular on the text muds, but were limited by the
fragility of the servers upon which they were written. I've seen Chess,
Checkers, Backgammon, Scrabble, Poker, Solitaire, and much much more. A
system that grants its players the ability to -create- their own mini-games
would be formidable, indeed! One of my favorite mini-games was the Tauntaun
races on a Star Wars MUSE. Players could purchase Tauntauns and collect
a cut of winnings. Players could gamble game money, and watch races together.
Best of all for Roleplayers, they could enroll as jockeys, and there was
reinforcement for their In Character claims. The race game was continuity-aware
in that it did not employ the name of a player character jockey if that
player was logged in at the time. Code that supports player organization
is very useful. Furcadia MUSH encourages player organizations via its `finger'
command, which brings up what is public information. Players also use this
function for WWW home page addresses, and to express their play preferences
(for instance, `PG-13 Rated Plots Only Please!').
7. SO, WHAT'S THE PAYOFF FOR SUPPORTING ROLEPLAYING?
Lots of the things I've written about were unnecessary in Combat or Social
environments, but very good for Roleplaying. They all take time to implement,
debug, etc. I think that RP elements are valuable because they spark the
imaginations of Roleplayers. The players who fit this minority category
are also the most helpful players and creative. No robot I make will be
half as interesting as the most dull real-person logged in to the game;
you might say I'm renting people to each other, gift-wrapped in fur. If
I can give them a coherent background and tools for interacting to continue
advancing their storylines, they'll be more than just the costumed characters
at an amusement park. They become the living, breathing cast, and when
there are developments in their stories, they have something to talk about
with others, who may not be much into Roleplaying, themselves, but enjoy
just being in the setting. If a Roleplayer has built up a "history" in
the world, it will encourage them to keep coming back. They will be full
of anticipation- `what will happen to me next?!' Another benefit may be
that good mechanics make the pleasures of Persona and Roleplaying more
accessible and satisfying to /some/ Social or Combat players. So far, I
haven't seen much "conversion" though.
8. A NOTE ON FEMALES... FEMALES... FEMALES? FEMALES. YES, FEMALES!
First, a disclaimer: I'm going to generalize, here, and I'm aware of the
hazards in doing so. I know there's exceptions to the following generalizations,
but I have noticed the following tendencies, and I think they're very strong.
In general, women and girls don't /want/ complexity at the Warcraft/MagicTheGathering
level, they just put up with it if absolutely necessary. They would prefer
a more elegant consistent interface, and a smaller set of commands like
Links. They wish that games weren't structured with a conclusion where
one person loses while another wins, such as chess. They want it to go
on forever, like a soap opera. They would prefer indirect competition between
organizations to direct competition between individuals or even teams.
They may be logging in from work or a home with small children; they don't
think they can afford an exhausting drain on their attention like Quake.
They hunger for social interaction. The female market share in this group
is growing fast. They've come to outnumber male players two to one on most
text MUEs except for the ones with coded combat! Expect to see girls and
women going nuts for roleplaying MUEs.
9. SATISFACTION AND SURPRISES
Perhaps the biggest pleasure of watching "Furcadia" is that I get to see
people running with what Felorin and I created. Being a Furre is like participating
in a "shared universe" of fiction such as Lynn Abbey and Robert Aspirin's
Thieves World. The Roleplayers fill in the huge gaps with their own creations,
applying detail exactly where it's needed, at the immediate player level,
without dooming all players to having to read lengthy world-info manuals.
I remember the chuckle I got when I saw a player-created map with a fluffy
chick bird next to a big black cauldron in his kitchen. I had intended
them purely as pet kiwis when I drew the art, but then I realized that
the Baron intended to -eat- them. The visual image was very evocative of
a picnic. I realized that Baron's map was interesting because it had come
from the mind of a Roleplayer. To make a game that sparks the Roleplayers
requires more than programmers and designers, it requires writers with
traditional experience and artists with creative vision.
10. STEP ASIDE.
Last but not least, it's the job of the MUE to provide a common mood. What
players see and hear strongly influences their behavior; if you want players
to be polite, then provide a beautiful and gracious habitat. A bleak and
desolate environment leads to real-world feelings of the cold and grim.
Provide the options, label and localize them, and let the players themselves
choose what they prefer. The hunger for new things will always be there.
If you give the players the ability to add to your game, and reward them
for contributing in a way that makes enjoyment for other players, you won't
be saddled with a juggernaut of a game with players eternally hungry for
novelty that you can't afford to provide. Any mechanism that requires censorship,
editting, monitoring, etc., usually isn't worth human effort. Mplayer has
a rule that explicit materials are not to be passed via their game system.
If they were to then permit players to upload personalized unique portrait
.GIF's, they might feel obligated to have someone authorize/approve them.
In this case, the system has tied itself to a managerial task that could
easily grow too big to handle, or, on the other hand, not be worth the
human effort it requires. Sometimes a "baby" of player freedom is better
thrown out with the "bathwater" of player abuse. The less the staff must
step in and "forbid" or "preach", the better. The best MUE is the one that
runs itself, and whose staff steps aside to let their guests enjoy themselves.
A FEW WORDS ON ADULT CONTENT...
A large portion of Social interaction is devoted to the infamous "TS",
which stands for "TinySex", a takeoff on the phrase "TinyPlot", a storyline
taking place on a `TinyMUD' server. How this will be impacted by the presence
of graphics is tough to predict, but it can be generalized that if there
are rules on acceptable language in public and privacy is limited, its
occurrence is reduced. Sex, alternative sexualities, fetishes, or the playing
out of criminal acts can be supported by virtual simulations of props and
coded "permissions". An example of a virtual prop for fetishists is the
"shackles" and "gags" object from LambdaMOO. Shackles prevent the player
from departing their location; gags turn their speech into muffled versions
using a phonetic converter. ("This is great!" comes out as "Mmif iv grmf!")
An example of coded "permissions" is that these objects default to unusable
upon another player unless that player has actively typed in the commands
to set their character object's "bondage OK" flags, and, in doing so, also
learned the "safeword", a command to override the objects' virtual effects.
***
Village Voice's 1993 article on the Mr.Bungle Affair. ***
APOLOGIA
As a "rational skeptic", a supporter of Scientific Method and related logic
constructs, I have to admit that I'm not a social scientist. I wish that
I were! I ask my reader to take what I've said with several tablespoons
of salt, and I readily admit that on every last point, I could be utterly
wrong. Or grossly inaccurate. Or moderately inaccurate. Or slightly off.
There are many many times when I wished I had the resources to at *least*
do a formal poll to verify my many conclusions. My arguments for my points
aren't comprehensive, nor do they work to achieve a determination of "necessary"
or "sufficient" causalities. In my defense, I can say that I've been the
"wizard" of a number of all-text muds since 1993, and have interviewed
most of my "dinosaur" text-game wizard friends. Whether my logic is right
or wrong, the things I've presented here are at least useful as very tried-and-true
rules of thumb, folk-wisdom, as it were. These are "things that worked",
taken from a tradition of over a decade of play. I get annoyed when I see
this body of experience completely ignored by those who design multiplayer
games. There's as much to be learned from analyzing "Isle of Kesmai" as
"Habitat". Having been the one who coined the abbreviations "IC" and "OOC"
for use on RPG muds, and invented the Qcodes for Furcadia, I can say that
the text games still have much room for improvement, though they tend to
see themselves as finished or even perfected. After a few years, there
will be multiplayer games with graphics, played for pay, with userships
who can be polled. The 20/20 hindsight will be invaluable. --'Manda a.k.a.
Talzhemir
Talzhemir's Treasure Trove