Kolian wrote:

It does not have to progress in an interesting and well-thought out direction; it should progress in the direction in which we cause it to progress.

Therein lies chaos, IMO. The question is how do we define "we?" If one thing has been impossible to attain in the cavern, it is consensus.

Last edited by tkwiggins on Sun Mar 11, 2007 12:05 am; edited 1 time in total

"We" is whoever chooses to do it.

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Kolian wrote:

"We" is whoever chooses to do it.

Whoa, whoa, whoa... That's a no-fly there...

You can't just say "anyone who choses to do something should be allowed to do it."

[snipped] - RV

Say I happened to come across to a link to an unreleased, incomplete, and potentially instable age, and chose to hand it out to anyone and everyone? Is that OK?

Say I chose to, and succeeded in, convincing EVERYONE in the cavern that Kodama killed Sutherland? Is that OK?

These are clearly extreme examples, but the principle is solid. One person CANNOT have that much power. Because there will ALWAYS be "one person" who wants to use that power to DESTROY URU UTTERLY.

If they do, will you let them?

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Last edited by Maratanos on Sun Mar 11, 2007 1:30 am; edited 2 times in total

What Kolian is saying is, in the words of one of my old professors, "true but trivial." Whatever we do, that's what we do - and that's true, but "whatever we do" doesn't necessarily produce good entertainment. Let's not forget the first duty of Uru: Produce enough customers to stay alive. As such, "story" should be in service to that duty. Now, it doesn't mean that "story" should be whatever maximizes the number of customers, but it still has to produce enough revenue for GameTap to keep the money flowing, otherwise there will be no story.

Maratanos wrote:

Whoa, whoa, whoa... That's a no-fly there...

Well first off, that isn't the point I was trying to make. It was in reference to my previous post; when I say "we" should do this, I am saying that "a group of likeminded players" should do this. I am, however, perfectly willing to discuss this other thing, which is the larger and separate issue of freedom in the Cavern. It is relevant to this post and, I will concede, indirectly related to what I was saying earlier.

I believe that we should be allowed to do anything we want to within a fairly basic Code of Conduct. Obviously there can be no sexual harassment or other forms of harassment, no real life death threats, and all the standard MMO policy.

Beyond that there is the issue of an IC 'Code of Conduct' which cannot be forced by Cyan but which should generally be agreed upon by anyone who wishes to engage in a given IC situation.

For this I again advocate a set of regulations that promotes freedom. You can't kill other Explorers, and you can't assume (your character can, but his assumption would be incorrect) that something happened that didn't happen. You can SAY something happened that didn't happen; that is, you are allowed to lie to achieve any goal you like.

EDIT: The part about "assuming something happened that didn't happen" is very flexible for the 'private' sorts of RP that don't include the whole Cavern. I make this point only on the most basic, unspecialized level (the level at which DRC characters operate).



I will now address your examples.

Quote:

Say I happened to come across to a link to an unreleased, incomplete, and potentially instable age, and chose to hand it out to anyone and everyone? Is that OK?

If the Age is not available via bug/exploit (I believe it is perfectly legitimate for Cyan to decide how they want to deal with bugs; this is an OOC Code of Conduct issue), you should be allowed to show it to anyone you want. We know that the game itself will not kill a character who visits it, and if it results in a character's IC death, that comes down to the rules of the Rolepaly you're doing; my personal preference is that anyone who IC dies should know beforehand and consent to IC dying.

Quote:

Say I chose to, and succeeded in, convincing EVERYONE in the cavern that Kodama killed Sutherland? Is that OK?

Yes. This I think is the most interesting example you have provided, and it best exposes my disagreement with many other Explorers. I think that you should be allowed to act for good or ill within the game Code of Conduct; I think that the most generic 'In Cavern' roleplaying guidelines should permit this as well.

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Last edited by Kolian on Sun Mar 11, 2007 1:29 am; edited 1 time in total

Zardoz wrote:

Whatever we do, that's what we do - and that's true, but "whatever we do" doesn't necessarily produce good entertainment.

This assumes that the game is played through a series of chatlogs.

Customers are not supposed to read the story. Customers are supposed to be the story. The importance of the process should not fall in the result, but in the production of that result. As long as customers are acting towards their own entertainment (that is, doing what they like to do), they are having a good experience regardless of what the actual outcome of their actions is.

Now, I have already stated that Cyan controls (and should control) the most crucial elements of the storyline. This means that nobody is effectively able to 'crash' the story. This is safeguarded. We don't have to worry about this.

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tkwiggins wrote:

Therein lies chaos, IMO. The question is how do we define "we?" If one thing has been impossible to attain in the cavern, it is consensus.

Consensus is, honestly, not really critical part of the equation, because the over-arching story is not as important as people make it out to be.

There is no 'one true story' to Uru. There can't be - it's physically impossible for thousands of people to interact and have it be part of a single narrative.

Sure, there are important personages. But there is much more to what happens in the Cavern than just what the DRC or Yeesha do. Rather, Uru is a lattice of narratives of various sizes and scopes.

While Nick White is chatting with the Great Tree folks somewhere, there are a bunch of folks in the Guild of Greeter hood who are talking about Negilahn, explaining it to someone who has just arrived in Cavern. While some goofy sit-in is happening and an image Yeesha appears like some surreal visitation of the Virgin Mary, two people are hanging out in Kadish Tolesa and realize that they really like each other and have exchanged phone numbers.

All of this is 'story'. Every interaction is a part of the history of the game and the Restoration, and I think that's Kolian's point (at least that's how I read it). It's not a single narrative. It's dozens, weaving in and out. The LJ 'anthologies' like Nocturne Alley and Reparo were like this. There were few over-arching plots, but rather several sub-plots which ran through and overlapped.

And yes, when you look at the Big Picture, it looks like a cacophony. But here's a secret about the Big Picture: no one actually lives there.

We live and personally experience the local, not the global. Unlike a novel or TV show, our view of the global narrative of Uru is archaeological in nature. When we look at Uru as a whole, we are piecing together dozens of little experiences, anecdotes, factoids and such into an interpretation. When we look at the Big Picture, we are not experiencing, we are reconstructing.

And as we are local beings, some of our experience will be vicarious. Some stories we will experience. Some we will hear about and pass on as stories.

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BladeLakem wrote:

Consensus is, honestly, not really critical part of the equation, because the over-arching story is not as important as people make it out to be.

I agree. It isn't one large metahistory; it's many small ones.

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From yesterday (sorry, was out most of last evening): Zardoz wrote: 'You've twice now mentioned the idea of writing as a way of producing fan-based stories. I had thought you were striving for something in-game rather than out."

I confess that I don't see a way to do much in-game. The game engine doesn't offer enough flexibility.

(I could write up a list of features Cyan could add to the game engine, but that would be a different thread. I want to keep this to what *players* can do. Aside from filing feature requests. :)

I have spent a fair amount of in-game time greeting newcomers. That certainly affects *their* stories, and it's satisfying in that respect, but it's not very creative work.

Perhaps I should spend the same amount of time in-game... doing what? My only idea is to write stuff on a web site, and then mention it to other players. But it's hard in-game to shift the presumption that I'm talking about new stuff in the game. I'd have to say up-front that I'm talking about my web journal, and then give the URL... and then what? It's not like you can click on my link and have a browser window launch.

(No, /startlog and then checking the log file later is still too much work. :)

I guess I'm not so much worried about how to *create* story, but how to create a safe space for it -- a context in which players (even newcomers) will understand that they're not seeing Cyan's work, but they *are* seeing something which was created *for* Uru, which may be worth investigating.

(This is where fan-created Ages would shine, because they ring that "worth investigating" bell really hard! Everybody wants new places to walk around in. But again, until that happens, I want alternatives.)

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I know there are IC story-journals out there, such as Whilyam's. I'm not sure they're what I want -- but it's perfectly possible that this is my misconception of what I want. :)

I should read http://urublogs.com/ for a week and then come back to this.

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Are players affecting the story?

/me reads Sharper's journal and sees mention of player/explorer Rils.

/me reads chat log where Nick White is looking for Rils.

/doh

/me concludes they are.

Rils is not "players". He's one player.

Realistically, there will never be a time when the majority of players will find themselves drawn into a game event in that way. (As opposed to game events which involve lots of players -- that could happen, but you'd be one of a crowd, not singled out.)

That's why I specified that this thread was about things that players can do which are meaningful *whether or not* Cyan taps you.

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Yeah. While I would say that sort of thing is an interesting and worthwhile way of appeasing the playerbase, it's still just a way of appeasing the playerbase.

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You don't want to be appeased? Would you rather they irritate the player base?

Lobo wrote:

You don't want to be appeased? Would you rather they irritate the player base?

Yeah, I called it worthwhile because I think it sucks.

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