Now, returning to the topic of pure roleplaying-games, I want to explore the idea of adding minor amounts of physics in order to bring about order. Now, it might be that order can happen some other way or maybe it’s not even neede, but for the sake of this reply I will assume it’s.

I’m imagining …. limited sets of models that people can use. Perhaps medieval, or high fantasy, or sci-fi. This would be a constraint. This way, whatever you create, will have a similar feel to other things in the world. Also, I see there being a limited amount of points you can spend on things you change or add to the world. Further, other players could grade you based on your work. Perhaps every piece of content in the world would be authored or would list author(s) and each could be credited for their work. Players could form communities and perhaps there could be a varinat of democracy. Maybe players could form governments that would have the power to ignore a players work (remove) that’s in their territory? Who knows.

Do you think a world in which people can have anything they wnat and do whatever they want and add whatever they want can have order without any kind of restriction? That’s the question I wnat to leave here.

The comment:
“All of these things require time and patience because the underlying game depends on numbers and those numbers don’t budge. It’s like the physics in our universe…”

Should probably read something like the following:
“All of these things require time and patience because the underlying game depends on constraints (physics) and those limitations don’t budge. It’s like the physics in our universe…”

I didn’t really expand on this. Basically, a world that has a resemblance to reality also must have its restrictions. In other words, it must have a physics. You can’t be whatever you want to be. You can’t make money out of nothing. Anything that happens must be built or made to happen from the elements present in the environment. You cannot be a pure storyteller as the storyteller is limited by the physcis of the game world. For example, land has a price, so you cannot role-play a god that owns all the land of the world. You’d have to own all of the land to do that, and that’s not possible in a game world that has a hard physics. All of these limits add credibility to the word. People who’re looking for a lite version of the real world desire these limits because they have a likeness that’s familiar to them and enriches their enjoyment.

Belive it or not, but I have thought about what it would be like to have a game where you can be and do whatever you want. It’s hard for me to grasp it, as it would not be a sandbox or a world in the way I understand worlds to be, but I think it would be closer to true roleplaying. I think a true role-playing world should not limit what you can do or where you can go or who you can be. You don’t have to earn it, you just have to role-play it. And that’s what’s different from a simulated world. It would allow a players imagination to trully flower. So instead of being a participant in a universe like this one, they would transform into a hybrid storyteller that’s both an actor and a writer. The question I have is, if the world has no underlying physics, what would bring order to it?

It should actually, more appropriately, read:
“I’ve thought about how players are tending more often to “play” themselves, as opposed…”

Because that reflects the intent of that part of the post. I was trying to say that i think mmorpgs, as they’re today (not as true role-playing games might be) will move from being numbers-based to being knowledge-based. To put this more succinctly, the game gives you credit for what your actual knowledge is, as opposed to what your level might be or whatever number currently represents you in the game.

It’s not easy to role-play. If you want to roleplay an evil, powerful wizard, you first have to spend 8 months leveling up and then you have to join a raid guild, and on top of all this you’ll have to play probably 20+ hours a week. Similarly, if you want to role-play a rich capitalist with earnings in the top 100, you have to jump through an equal number of hoops to make it possible.

All of these things require time and patience because the underlying game depends on numbers and those numbers don’t budge. It’s like the physics in our universe. They don’t budge much. We still haven’t found anti-gravity. And if I want to roleplay bill gates, i’ll probably have to wait for my next life (if there is one). God knows I have billions of dollars to go. So, you can’t really call it role-playing, can you? There’s no human being that can fudge the rules on the spot. The game is fixed.

Todays games are simulations of varying similarity to the real world we live in. They resemble sandboxes. Players are like a boy that plays with army men. They log on, make a character, and wage wars and do things they wouldn’t normally do in real life. The goal isn’t to role-play, it’s to create a new experience for themselves.

Roleplaying is different. In order for todays games to allow for it, they would have to eliminate leveling somehow, or any kind of constraint on what they can be or do. They would literally need to allow players to have whatever they want, whether it’s items or money or fame or whatever else. Alternatively, you can have worlds run by a GM or DM that has the flexibility to allow you to be and do things with little limitation or even none at all, while at the same time giving the illusion of money and constraint within the world that the players exist in.

The catch, of course, is that true role-playing games have little resemblance to the real world. No DM or GM can maintain a world as complex as the real one or even a simulated one anyway. Computing power is able to keep track of everything, including all of the restrictions that roleplayers (and those with little patience for it) tend to not like (money, leveling, grinds, etc). If people are looking for a real world on training wheels (real life: lite), a place where they can fulfill all their fantasies and do things they can’t do in reality, then they’re not looking to role-play. They’re looking to play as themselves, essentially. They want to earn everything.

I’ve thought about how players are tending more often to “roleplay” themselves, as opposed to their character, as it’s represented in code. For example, if your skill in blacksmithing is 65/100, but you already have multiple characters with 100 blacksmithing and there’s no mystery to it, then playing an alt with 65 blacksmithing doesn’t make much sense does it? They want a game that gives them credit for what they already know. If they already know what comes next, the game shouldn’t constantly throw it at them like it’s the first time. So players, increasingly, are wanting a game that lets them play as themselves, with no hard limits. They’re not asking for a game without limits, rather they’re asking for a game that’s less reliant on the character’s numbers and more based on the players -actual- knowledge.

Of course, this might have the effect of increasing content costs because players will eat it up faster and ask for new content at a more feverish pace.

I’m talking about an mmorpg that’s knowledge-based, not number-based. In effect, if a player has all of hte items to produce a weapon, for example, and they know the process required to make it, then they can. There’s no number restriction in the code to stop them. So long as they got the items and the know how, they can do it.

The locations were also quite small (or I somehow made them small… ;) to prevent splitting.

Also simply saying players to “keep together if you want me to act as a storyteller” worked wonders ;)

I know of a small company working on the storygeneration parts (not on gm functionality) and it would be great to see some more of this in game development instead of focusing on physics and polys. http://www.openstorygroup.com/index.html