nu.kanga.list.mud-dev

11159: Re: [MUD-Dev] The Relationship between pkers and monster AI?

On 03:02 AM 9/11/1999 -0500, I personally witnessed Greg Miller jumping up
to say:
>Solmyr of the Azure Star wrote:
>> murders. Which is what I think pking should be - in-character.
>
>And why is that? Role-playing is simply not fun for most mud players.

Ever try to play D&D by yourself?

Speaking from my own experience, roleplaying is a *cooperative* exercise,
and if the rest of the players don't *cooperate* then roleplaying is not
fun. When you step into a room on a MUD and say "What ho, my good men! How
go things?" and they respond "What level are you?", that ruins the fun.
When you provide your character with beliefs and history but nobody cares,
that ruins the fun. When you decide your warrior has some quirky dislike of
swords and will never use one, but then you discover that the average sword
is twice as effective as your average non-sword of comparable level, that
ruins the fun. When roleplaying is worthless in the game, then it is not
fun. And when nobody else is roleplaying, then roleplaying is worthless;
all it does is make you an outcast and a weirdo. 

What makes roleplay not-fun is the failure of the other players to treat
their characters as anything more than pawns on a chessboard with a sheet
of stats. They do this because there is no reason for them to do otherwise.
There is no BENEFIT to roleplay except that it is FUN. And when nobody else
is roleplaying, you may as well not bother.


-----
| Caliban Tiresias Darklock            caliban@darklock.com 
| Darklock Communications          http://www.darklock.com/ 
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