Imagine my happy surprise to see Ron and Sorcerer get some free publicity at Skotos today. Its not the first time that Ron's ideas or products have gotten tossed around as pertinent to narrative text-dominant online RPGs. I'd be curious to see what Ron thought about Travis' pov.

http://www.skotos.net/articles/BSTG_27.shtml

Interesting. I particularly like his comments about railroading.

Actually, Laurel, I'd be interested to hear what you think of it, since Devil's Cay is going to be an online RPG, isn't it?

Here's a quote of my comments on the Skotos forum, which aren't relevant for a conversation about Sorcerer.... unless after I finish Devils Cay, I blow off a big gaming company we all know and drop to my hands and knees and beg Ron to be allowed to make an online game of Sorcerer (and it *is* tempting because Sorcerer is so good). This might belong in a different thread like RPG theory or design.

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I'm going to agree with Travis about the importance of "story now" for starting characters. I'd divide the responsibility of said story-creation equally between the game designer (by making individual story-now inherent to the char-creation process) and the player (by them taking the iniative to create dynamic/active as opposed to passive/reactive characters).

Passive roleplaying is a hold-over from GM-dominant RPGing, where a GM introduces virtually every plot element into a game. The players' responsibility is simply to have thier character "react" to events and NPCs. Players might attempt to initiate certain styles of event (aka "Lets go explore that mine shaft"), but they leave the GM with 99.99% of the directorial power.

Without a single, constant GM and the very high player-to-GM/ST ratio in online games, there's no way for this kind of scenario to be successful. There are some very good strategies that can be utilized for "story now" in online games. Players integrating their characters together into social units like families or guilds either at creation or immediately after and cooperatively creating a set of story circumstances is one solution. The important thing to remember is that rpg stories really do need conflict. Multi-layered, integral conflict where a character must address issues like character vs. character, character faction vs character faction, character vs. nature, character vs. Institution (social/political/religious structure or ideology), character vs. himself. Conflict doesn't have to involve sticks and stones- its the words and emotions behind a conflict that create the best roleplay.

The game designer has to make sure that the game itself has a broad enough, interesting enough story that conflict is inherent and easily achievable for starting characters without it becoming so overwhelming that the starting characters will never have the opportunity to integrate into character communities and develop over time.
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BTW, not to blow my own horn, but I'm the guy who writes "Building Stories, Telling Games" on Skotos. :-)

I meant to give a link to the sorcerer-rpg web site at the end of the article, but forgot to... I've put one in the forum attached to my column now.

And thanks, Joshua, for your kind words about my comments on railroading. I've had lots of long arguments on Usenet with people who think that any sort of "story-driven" game has to be railroaded.

--Travis

Hello,

Sorry for taking so long to get back to this thread.

Travis, many thanks not only for the reference to Sorcerer, but also for your excellent paraphrase and use of lots of Forge notions. I agree with all of your points, much along the lines of Laurel's reply.

I guess there's not much more to say, 'cause it all works for me.

Best,
Ron