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Diaryland is da bomb I just *have* to tell you how much this all sucks. Who're these other people he's writing about? Who's the freak writing this, anyway? What's gone before. What's going on right now? Where do *you* visit on the web? What're you building right now?


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Another smart-assed remark from Mike
Flashbacks
14:00:00 on 1999-10-11

Drinking Ozarka Natural Spring Water. I thought the water tables throughout the area were contaminated with heavy metals and dioxins from industry? Yummy!

Last night Gurugrrl came, she read, we talked, things were better for all of about two minutes (literally!), I made a stupid statement while trying to kid around, we fought some more, we both left upset.

No wonder relationships are for other people and not for me.


I woke up this morning with my thinking about something I hate thinking about. I was thinking about fantasy roleplaying games and the last group of folks I used to roleplay with in days of olde when tales of woe were told and you kept your geekiness in the closet, except on Sundays when everybody got together.

Yes, yet more proof I�m a geek. Oddly and closely coinciding with my geek online habit (imagine that), from mid-1979 until I finally "kicked the habit" in 1991 (barring my brief flirtation with cyberpunk RPGs in late 1995, but the group I played with for three sessions were into "splatterpunk," and I�m sorry but I get attached to my characters), I played RPGs as an obsession. Almost always fantasy RPGs, and when I wasn�t game mastering, I always played some form of magic-using character (especially wizards. I have a thing for wizards. Although I still hold a soft spot for that magic-user/assassin I played once...).

With the last group, I was the game master, though. We played first edition AD&D. None of this namby-pamby second edition crap, and none of this third-edition "let�s invalidate everything before so we can sell them the same stuff over again" garbage being put out by TSR (begotten by Wizard of the Coast (begotten by Hasbro)). Hardcore, contradictory, unbalanced first edition, live it and love it.

And let me tell you, there is no greater time sink than knowing you need to prepare Sunday�s entertainment for anywhere from four to seven other people. You spend your time sketching maps, scribbling notes, visualizing strange places, thinking up odd puzzles and traps, rolling dice, preparing cards with statistics. It puts a crimp in your weekends with your significant other, too, who decided early on that she would rather have her eyeballs gouged out with a +2 flaming longsword (+4 versus undead, and don�t forget 1d6 fire damage per hit) than be forced to suffer five to eight guys talking in bad accents that still have southern drawls or foreign accents and singing really bad filk about rangers and the forest nymphs. In fact, I never did find out where she went most Sundays.

Anyway, I dreamt that we were together again. We gamed one more time from noon to 4:00 AM. Pizza for lunch, Chinese for dinner, Taco Bell for late night munchies run ("Gee, would you go get us something to eat? They�re at the dragon�s cave right now, it�ll hurt the tempo of battle if we broke right now, and we�re really hungry... yeah, you can study later though, can�t you? Come on, the guys are waiting. Can�t you sleep later?" (And you wonder why we quit playing? I�m glad I�d never do that to somebody again...)). Lost dice, Conan movies on in the background on video, and a couple of the guys smoking something that... I�m not sure exactly what it was. I�m glad I�m allergic to smoke now.

Man, I loved those guys. I wonder what happened to them?


Anyway... what I woke up thinking about was more pedestrian than that. I was thinking about something ancillary to that -- one of the problems I�ve always had with multiuser dungeons (MUDs, for the uninitiated).

MUDs are sweet pieces of software. They exhibit a lot of the technical aspects of operating systems and compilers, databases to store stats and code, AI for monster tactics and movement, complicated networking code... you can see where I fell into the whole idea of them early on, around 1989.

I used to pour over the source for MUDs in thick printouts or on screen, dreaming about designing one when I could get my hands on a Unix workstation at some point in my life. I scribbled notes and ideas, and some of those ideas evolved into some other ideas that I have. The concept of the MUD is an interesting base technology.

But I haven�t kept up with MUD technology (I am subscribed to the MUD development list over at kanga.nu, but no, I don�t read it). Now there are graphical MUDs, large MUD systems, distributed MUD drivers, and even commercial MUDs like Ultima Online with the familiar Ultima overhead view, and EverQuest that uses 3D graphics.

What has always bothered me about MUDs, though, is that how do you implement something like this? I think this is the problem that, if it could be solved, would make online multiplayer roleplay take off. Or at least kill off pencil, dice and paper gaming.

I woke up thinking about a fresh party of adventurers, first level in AD&D parlance. Now, think about some of the common dungeons that I put new players through -- they were my old familiars from the old second round of Boxed D&D sets, B1 ("The Caves of Chaos") and B2 ("In Search of the Unknown"), because I could run the basics without a lot of preparation, I�d run them so much.

B1 was centered on a lot of small caves set in some foothills. It was less than a day�s travel from the local keep, where the players are assumed to base out of. Most of the caves were small enough that one party of six to eight could clean it out in two days before heading back to the keep, no problem on provisions.

If you want to get down to bookkeeping nitty gritty detail, though, B2 was much more of a challenge. It was a two-level dungeon that was very dense, room-wise, and each level took up most of a sheet of graph paper. It was about two days travel from the nearest settlement, or at least I always put it there.

What was the problem? Well, it was so big, players couldn�t hope to explore it in one trip, or even ten trips. And it was far away (four days food and water going back and forth). Everybody had to bring lots of provisions.

So I had scenario that I had happen quite often in both -- a relatively large band of humanoids (usually orcs or goblins) cut off the players inside the dungeon. In B1, they didn�t bring much food or water (or often, spellbooks, so they couldn�t refresh their spells), and in B2 they brought everything, but they just didn�t have much left by then.

It�s a great opportunity for roleplay, especially group dissention, as some members of the group want to chop a hole in the enemy defenses and run, every man for himself. Some want to hole up and play guerrilla games with the monsters, reducing their numbers (although I let it become known somehow that reinforcements for the monsters are coming in a few days, along with fresh supplies, so they aren�t apt to give up this siege -- they�ll just starve the players out).

Usually they find a way to sneak out, or just get into an out-and-out fight with the monsters, lose a few of their numbers and get away licking their wounds and eating berries and drinking rain water on the way back to town. Although I had one group in high school kill a nonplayer character and cannibalize him in this situation. Fortunately, it was an evil party (if it hadn�t been it would have been after that!). Points for originality, guys!

But how do you do this in a multiplayer online game? What sort of AI would be required to make monsters try to wait somebody out instead of just going in and slugging it out with somebody? Has somebody set something up like this already? Could it be evolved with some sort of strange combo of neural networks and genetic algorithms, so you don�t actually code it, you just build for it? (What would your selection criteria be, anyway?)

If we could get opponents that intelligent, we�d have a winning game on our hands. Well, (un?)fortunately I gave up on the idea of designing games for a living a long time ago. I wonder why I still wake up thinking about things like this, though.

restlessmind


Ancient history:
2013-03-01"You'll be stone dead in a moment!"
2007-08-07I covet fuck you money
2007-07-16My own long, dark tea-time of the soul
2007-07-11My internet experience is lacking
2007-07-10Coincidence



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