It’s a funny thing, making something real that was once just thoughts in your head and some scattered notes. You start to think about things you didn’t have to think about before, like “Would anyone actually play this?”.
Over the last few days I’ve been thinking about certain realities. Mostly, about how this is not a game for everyone. It’s a little hard to express, but … I feel like this isn’t a game that would ever attract a huge number of people, at least not long-term people. It’s kind of … earnest, I guess, which isn’t so popular these days (and the more joke-y games certainly have their place, I love a good unserious game) … here’s one specific thing I was thinking about, to try and illustrate where I’m coming from:
I don’t want characters in the game to have names like DeathKnight32 or SexyPanda or pchaf. Your login name, your account name could be anything (well, anything socially acceptable), but for your character … well, firstly, characters would have a family name and a given name, which could tie into the Heritage system (you could have a line of characters from the same family). I think this in itself would encourage less Internet-y names. Within the game, because of the way I want the history of the game to evolve, plaques and statues and record books filled with the exploits of players past, I’d like those names to be at least semi-sensible. And I don’t want to be a big reality nazi either, if someone wants to call their character Bootle Bumtrinket then, okay, at least it sounds like it COULD be a name. I actually had an idea, that for each player there’d be a ’silly_name’ flag, which would change NPC reaction to your character–you can name your character Death Knight but they’re not going to put that in a history book, and any encounter where you give your name is going to get you some funny looks and perhaps negative reactions. I don’t know, is that too punishing? I guess it’s just that I have a certain atmosphere in mind, and if you’ve got a bunch of DeathKnights and SexyPandas running around that takes away from the atmosphere.
I suppose I’m kind of catering to the more serious-minded player, or rather the player willing to put more into the game–the kind of person who fills out the history and description portions of their player sheet thoughtfully, who enjoys that kind of thing. I think it’ll be the kind of game where you get out what you put in, with interest. But there are people who just want to lark around with a game and not take it seriously, and maybe get their fun from messing around with other people, and that’s fine in some games but for this game … I don’t know. I have to think about it more, and maybe see how things go when (if) I take it live.
You see, part of my problem is that I’m little bit of a snob sometimes. A little bit of an elitist. Someone might say “But Ben, if you do that you’ll scare players off, they won’t want to play your precious little game!” and part of me would be thinking, “Well, good. Bugger ‘em then if they can’t play properly”. As a moderator, admin, whatever, I always try to be fair but I don’t suffer fools, either. Not that I’m saying that people who like to call their characters silly things are fools, necessarily, and I know sometimes people have certain handles they’ve used online for a long time …
Ah, that’s right, I got distracted a little, but near the start I mentioned that users would have a logon name (which can be anything, as long as it’s not R@PEY@URM@THER or similar) (seriously, I actually saw that as a username in an online game once, who are these people?), and then character names. Having an ‘account’ of sorts would be necessary because of the Heritage system (part of which would involving preserving your old character at the time of death–or ‘control shift’ to put it more accurately), and also it would allow for a more free environment–maybe OOC chat and conversations. I’m not sure if I’d have a LotGD-style comments system, I quite like that but I’m not sure if it’d work for BoT, but I think I’d probably have some kind of in-game chat, or at least messaging system (at one point I was actually toying with the idea of player-delivered mail, ie if you sent a message to someone, you’d then have to pay another character to deliver it for you, or take it to a post office where there would be a job board of sorts of undelivered mail and a ‘bounty’ for delivery, I still like the idea in theory but I think it’d probably just get frustrating in practice). Characters should be able to talk to characters. And players should be able to talk to players.
The other thing is, I don’t want to stifle creativity for the players. If someone is roleplaying something that I feel isn’t quite in the spirit of the game, I don’t think it’s my place to stop that–hell, I’d encourage it. It is, after all, just a game, and that kind of thing can be fun. I might make it so there are different ‘levels’ of public places–a boisterous pub, for example, would be more flexible for slightly OOC talk and roleplay, while the town hall would be strictly IC and on-topic only, then you’d have places which were somewhere in the middle–a more quiet tavern for general chat, in character but not totally strict, a public park where silliness was more welcome. Maybe even a lunatic asylum or something for totally OOC talk–the in-game justification being that they’re a pack of loonies ranting about cats and cheeseburgers. Hah, I just had a fun thought, people abusing the chat system and net meme-ing all over the dang place get locked up for a while, because they’re obviously insane–still able to play, but their chat is limited to the ‘asylum’ room for a certain time. Part of me really likes that idea, and not a small part. Then you could also have something like a shady pub on the wrong side of town, for IC but more sinister chat, maybe even PvP (which is something I’ve avoided thinking about; I personally dislike PvP but I’m aware it has a place in this kind of game) (actually I tell a lie, I did think about PvP just the other day, about the possibility of some kind of ‘duel’/'challenge’ system, maybe more on that later).
The more I think about this, the more I feel it should be community-run, appoint dedicated players who enjoy the more in-depth, serious side of things to actually become minor figures in the world–the barman at the local (or maybe a bouncer), a park sheriff, or a member of the town’s guard, charged with keeping the peace and stopping inappropriate talk, with authority to temporarily ban players from certain spots, or move them to a place more appropriate to their level of IC/OOC-ness. Maybe even a kind of player-run court system–no, that’s getting silly. But certainly it’d be nice to have PC elected officials … have them run campaigns, get votes, then give them some minor power–not anything big, I don’t think PC mayors would work, but minor officials, able to vote on issues or propose new ‘bills’–ah, A Tale In The Desert has something like that, I seem to recall, I should research that. Actually, A Tale In The Desert is probably the closest thing to what I have in mind for this game–different, of course, and probably more … I don’t want to diss ATITD, but … fun? More fun? I actually liked ATITD for the time I played it, but found the mechanics just too opaque, and the world and personality of the game to be a little too dry (ho ho). When I think of how serious my game should be, ATITD is kind of my reference for “too serious”.
You know, just writing things down, I don’t feel as ’strict’ as I did before. This should be a fun game, with some drama (not the immature player conflict kind, the story kind), seriousness and earnestness, but also fun and some silliness and, heck, maybe it would be funny to have a player named Sexy Panda running around. I don’t know, maybe I’m taking the whole thing a bit too seriously.
But having said that, and even so, I still feel that this won’t be a game for everyone, and for those who it IS for … I think I have kind of a responsibility. So maybe some sort of middle ground between the two–locations for the serious players, locations for the non-serious players. Maybe even a filter system, either choose yourself the level of IC-ness you want, or have it adjusted by player mods (so, for example, a player that wanted to get silly sometimes but doesn’t want to see people chanting “I CAN HAS CHEESEBOIGER?” in chat could choose an IC level of 2, while a very serious player could choose a level of 5. Huh. That could work really well, actually. Wait, though … hmm, but then would the IC 2 person be able to see the IC 5 people? Maybe more something like you can choose to be “Silly”, and only “Silly” people would see other “Silly” people’s chat … it needs more thinking about, but I feel this could be a good system. Of course, you could switch on and off as you saw fit. Maybe yes. Maybe very yes. You could also have a setting for “Ultra-IC” or something, just for players that wanted to really play in character with other people who also wanted to really play in character.)
Hmm. I feel like I’ve resolved some things here. I think the important things to remember are “This is a game!” and “Games should be fun!”. Realism is nice, game balance is nice, atmosphere is important, but if players aren’t having fun then the whole thing’s pointless.
Although having said that, griefing and abuse of other players will not be tolerated. I will have a very strong anti-idiot policy. Because this isn’t life and it’s not a democracy. It’s a game. It’s my game, and my game will be fun.
