Spontaneous play in on-line MUSH
AJ_Flowers:
Hi. I haven't logged in to this forum in a really long time, but hanging out at Forge Midwest inspired me to at least start lurking again. I notice that my RL name has changed but of course my forum name hasn't - bad side effect of using the name, alas!
I had thought about doing AP write-ups about some of the games we played at Forge Midwest; I don't know how interesting this would be to some but I kind of still want to share my experiences as they stuck with me fairly well.
But in this particular post I want to talk about actual play on-line, in a venue I've been playing at for a number of years, and get some feedback about the system as-is. I'm sharing this in part because I think that, outside the small community of people who do story-based MUSHing, how the gameplay actually works on these games isn't talked about a lot outside of the community, let alone from an academic or analysis standpoint. I'm also sharing because I'm a little dissatisfied with certain aspects of this interaction, and I'd like to get to the bottom of how to get around it, if that's even possible.
A MUSH is a text game which is an analogue to a MUD for narrative people. Interaction on this game takes the form of "Scenes," where it's to be expected to have maybe one of these a night. At least where I'm from, players tend to pigeon-hole scenes in to two separate types, "Combat," where fighting is going to occur, and "Social," where fighting does not occur. I think it would also be useful to judge scenes on a different matrix: Pickup, which are scenes that happen spontaneously, and Planned, which are scenes that are planned ahead of time.
Some other games use published systems like World of Darkness MUSHes, but I have less experience with them. I'd be happy to hear about how things work from people who do have more experience with them. Generally for the anime/superheroes type communities I frequent it's a narrativist style of gaming. Our game uses a fairly basic I-attack/you-attack combat system, but some gamism is sort of encroaching on the borders with more complex strategic systems being invented. I might elaborate on that later but for now it'd be an aside.
Scenes that affect the game's overall "story" are called TinyPlot. TinyPlot is typically run by the game's overall staffers (I'll just call them GMs). (Aside... The phrase "TinyPlot" is silly, so while people still say "TP," people kind of gloss over what it stands for. It's because of the TinyMUSH codebase appending everything with Tiny, not because "TPs" are inherently small. In fact, usually they're opposite, and if a game has a big world-changing event you can bet it will be called a "TP." Anyway...)
There used to be a global bulletin board on the game where the GMs would announce "TP scenes," meaning scenes to effect the overall plot. A few years ago I suggested altering this to "Scene Announcements" instead of "TP Announcements" so that players who were not GMs could communicate planned scenes too. This went over pretty well and is starting to become more standard.
Also a few years ago, the game installed a system which allowed players to make direct requests of GMs. In practice, only the primary GM for our game actually answers the requests, even though theoretically any GM could answer the requests. Requests are, for example, something in the world you would like to investigate, invent, or do to NPCs, etc, which would be handled by a GM. A lot of times these things can be handled without any actual roleplay, as they're downtime things, and then the GM just tells you the results. Players can post to a few different public IC boards (representing news media, or the in-game internet, etc) to communicate what they've done to other players.
Now what I've noticed is this. Say a player puts in a request to the GM that they want to do something, and that something can't be handled in the background, either because it involves a named NPC, or it involves another player character. So doing that thing becomes an announced scene, where other people can get involved in the scene potentially.
I've noticed that most scenes end up being planned pretty well in advance, with this method. So, if someone wanted to do something, they'd make a request of the GM, the GM would say, "this requires a scene," and then the GM and player would hash out exactly what is going to happen in this scene. Other people show up to the scene, but most of the time they're like the Greek Chorus, either chattering about in the background or doing battle in the background, without a lot of input in what actually happens in the scene. The events of the scene, /including its outcome/, have already been negotiated with the GM by the major players. It puts the whole game in to a sort of audience/performer dynamic.
Now we get to the part where I'm not satisfied, and want a better approach. Either I am important to a scene, and "in on" what's going to happen in that scene, or I'm not important to a scene. In the latter case, what happens then will be a surprise to me, but there's not much I can do to affect what happens. As far as I can tell, big MUSH scenes are this way a large percent of the time. It isn't that the large game is railroaded, because players can negotiate all kinds of different types of scenes, but an upset /within/ a scene is fairly rare. There are a few, shining gems where something unexpected happens and people go with it, and a lot of times that's what I hope to get out of scenes, but it's not that common.
I talked to a friend and fellow player about this, and he said that it's that way for a reason: if you don't negotiate what you'd like to get out of a scene, you're bound to walk away disappointed, especially if you prepped your own scene. It's true that, in the past, since I am such a wide-eyed optimist, I'd organize scenes but NOT pre-determine the outcome. I still have a tendency to want this because pre-determined outcomes make me kind of sad. But this occasionally backfires. For example, I once set up a scene where: a heroic group was invading the star base of a villainous group, and the outcome was decided purely by the dice combat; whoever won would keep the base. The combat system, however, wasn't really strong enough to support this and it washed out in to bickering which left me equally dissatisfied. I was told then, and often am still told: you have to decide the outcome in advance, otherwise, there's no way to moderate it.
Pickup scenes of course, are totally spontaneous, but don't often have as large an effect on the game world. It's possible to have a pickup scene that does have a large effect, though that has a different downside: it only happens by accident and on a small percent of pickup scenes, so you might log on to a game to find out something fundamental changed last night but, nothing was announced warning you to take part in that.
Thoughts, comments, or suggestions? I'd give more specific examples of scenes, including the one I was in Monday night that started me thinking along these lines, but I’m afraid I’m already rambling on. My holy grail is to still have scene announcements so people know when to show up, but have the outcomes be up in the air so that showing up is "worth my while" other than to watch a spectacle.
Callan S.:
Facinating set up!
Maybe it's chumpy of me, but what springs to mind is to have several outcomes determined by you, and each has a points count. The players are told them all (if you must have a secret one, they are told there is a secret one). When a player action would make one outcome more likely to happen, you roll perhaps a d10 and it gets those points and perhaps a bonus on the dice determined by you. Also I'd make the d10 have a single step explosion - ie, roll a ten and the outcome gets say 30 points instead of ten. First outcome past the post of X amount of points is the scenes outcome!
That sounds fun to me, as each outcome builds up. Perhaps everyone favours one outcome, but their actions accidentally support another outcome? Everyone can see the points rising and so the tension rises. Perhaps they want different outcomes and there's conflict there. Or maybe I'm being chumpy and this isn't the done thing.
AJ_Flowers:
Hm, I'm not sure what you mean by being "chumpy," here. What you're suggesting would be highly experimental! So, well, no, it's not the way it's done, but it's one possible solution that might be interesting, and the way it is done has gotten old for me anyhow. I think the d10 idea it might work, but it's something I'd want to playtest it in a situation where the stakes, as it were, weren't terribly high, before letting it loose on the game at large. I think people would be up for it.
I'm mulling over a problem with it: Say the scene is, "We're robbing a train to get the magic artifact being transported," and the possible outcomes are "we don't get the artifact" or "we do get the artifact." In this case all the involved players do want to get the thing. I think the d10 solution has the problem of, my actions still don't matter per se, all that matters is the results of that one roll, not how clever I was in completing the action or what I did to do it.
But if I envision a scene that isn't binary, where three different groups of PCs all want to get the artifact, but only one can. I have had a lot of trouble figuring out how to do conflict resolution in this situation on this game. The standard method that is used is: it's already determined who is getting it, and then we move on to "Part B" of the story next time we scene, but... well, and here I've accidentally introduced the metaphor of a train already.
This is the part where your solution will work, I think: if it's three different people, and they're all making "get the McGuffin" rolls, the GM adds potentially a small bonus depending on what action they take, or takes away if the action is lame, and... then we have an arbiter to decide who gets the thing, which is visible to all players. The only potential point of quibble is how much of a bonus certain things might be worth.
LandonSuffered:
A comment: while I haven’t MUSHed before, my understanding is that it is more of collaborative story-telling than a role-playing exercise. I say this because the scenes described and their outcomes are negotiated and stories are told through mutual consensus. There’s no “role” that a particular player has (although there may be “ownership” of a character or characters).
What you seem to be wanting is for there to be unexpected, random, or unscripted (“impromptu”) outcomes to scenes…you want to be surprised by the turns the story takes, even when the scene is one that you’ve suggested. I’m not sure that a MUSH is the correct medium for this kind of experience. Like the MMO, a MUSH may be a different animal from a traditional RPG with a very focused creative agenda…um, “story now” for the sake of expedited phrasing.
Meanwhile, wanting to see “where the world takes you” is kind a simulationist CA, and one perhaps served better in a traditional RPG, even a PBEM or PBP…but you’d want an RPG that allows for more player input…something like Capes Light, perhaps?
AJ_Flowers:
Quote from: LandonSuffered on April 30, 2009, 08:02:56 AM
There's no 'role' that a particular player has (although there may be “ownership” of a character or characters).
Not really; maybe I wasn't clear about this. People do have their own characters, though a person may have "alts," that is, multiple characters. It is my character who wants something and about whom I make a particular request. Traditionally unless you are GMing a scene, you only control your personal character in that scene. (Again, at least on the games that I play on.)
And of course it's occured to me "this game just won't give you the experience that you want," but I'm trying to see if it's possible to improve the experience that I get regardless. I don't think that wanting the story to have unexpected twists is the same as not having an interest in the story.
I guess this is a broader question: I thought narratism was "story now," ie, the story is decided before play, but there are also aspects of discussion that talk about "story before" as being narrativist. So, okay, what we are doing is, we are deciding out the story before, and then playing it "now." If I want the story to unfold now without planning the whole thing before, isn't that still narrative of me?
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