Player impact on the game world...

One of the advantages of running games in a world that you've developed over the years, is that you know it so well. Personally I never (almost never) set my games in places derived from other people's fiction.  I don't run games in the Star Trek universe, or the Star Wars universe, or on Middle Earth or in the Elric books.  Though I have been tempted to run a game set in the Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials world with armoured bears and shape-shifting daemons.  Might do that one day.  There is an advantage derived from doing it however, especially if your audience is familiar with the milieu.  You can add a lot of atmosphere just by setting a game in a certain universe.  I however prefer to make up my own shit.

This however has meant that I now have a fantasy gameworld (amongst other genres) which has been developed over more than 25 years, and spans six Ages.  Each with their own distinct events which characterise those Ages.  Now when I choose to run a game, I usually start with a rough idea of a plot, or story and think, which Age (if its a fantasy game), best suits this story.  And the thing practically writes itself.    But that's getting off the point.  I want to talk about player impact upon the world.

This is a fundamental which MMOs get so wrong, and one of the tragic flaws with WoW for example.  But I won't get into WoW and explaining why either, that is for another post.  What I want to do here is explain how you in classic P&P adventures, imbed some essential player impact into your games.  And there's many ways one can achieve this.

When running a game in a world that players have gamed in before, with different characters, there's an easy thing you can do.  Its a no-brainer, it has little impact on the new game (possibly) but just goes to add a bit of flavour to the proceedings, and I have used this mechanism several times.  Statues.  Now let me explain:

Place statues of previous PCs (from a game set in a previous Age) in a key location.  A town square.  A fort that was saved from destruction by a rampaging dragon 1000 years ago.  Whatever your players do.  If they do something cool, have the locals erect statues to them.  Then when you play a subsequent game, set 500 years later, have the new party come across statues of the old party.  Give the players a little warm feeling inside.

Similar things can be done with portraits, bards' songs, tombs, historical weapons.  The latter is a great one.  Have a PC wield a sword that was once wielded by the Great (insert previous PC's name) at the battle of wherever.  Give the weapon appropriate bonuses (which reminds me, must do a post on historical weapons vs arcane weapons).  But I'm sure you get the idea.

In games set in a more modern genre, contemporary or futuristic for example, you can have previous PCs turn up on the covers of old magazines, or listed in Who's Who 2121.  Or have spaceships named after them.  Or protocols etc.  "Captain, may I recommend we initiate Defense Plan Erasmus?"  Says the NPC 2nd officer.  Where Erasmus was a PC from an earlier game that evaded enemy capture by faking the evacuation of his own starcruiser whilst it was being boarded.

Whatever the setting of your game, there are myriad ways you can resurrect past memories of previous games by referring back to the epic exploits of PCs gone by.

on MMOs: Player Impact...

...just to give you a taster on how this should work...

Data is retrieved in terms of the success and failure of sub-quests performed by players relating to the over-arching story episode.

The game-designers / content-providers / story-writers then use this data to craft the next episode. So just like in a real P&P game, the GM reacts to the outcomes of the players actions and presents them with a new set of possibilities.

And all this really hinges off the revenue MMOs generate. Don't let them fob you off. They can afford to pay people to endlessly create new adventures. They can and they should. And then with the data gathered (as mentioned above) they can actually incorporate the endeavours of key personalities into the stories as they unfold. Giving MMO players an unprecedented level of interation with and satisfaction from the game-world.

This should then provide players with a sense they are adventuring within a living, breathing, mutable world which responds to their actions. And where quests and missions are not repeated, and everyone, whether on your side or not is working within the overall story, and helping to steer its course.

pilch out.
- I bring nothing to the table.