Comments on: The third role: neither devs nor players but somewhere inbetween

By: Brian 'Psychochild' Green

Brian 'Psychochild' Green — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 17:44:06 +0000

As I said to people repeatedly while demoing the Storybricks tool to people at Gen Con, one of our big inspirations was tabletop gaming. We wanted to capture some of the elements of collaborative storytelling and real social interaction in an online game.

Should be fun!

By: Brian 'Psychochild' Green

Brian 'Psychochild' Green — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 17:40:55 +0000

You could still have “world firsts”, etc. by only counting encounters that were run without the “raid master” option; they’d simply be like current raids are now. Of course, a well-organized group would probably use the “raid master” option to feel out the boss faster. But, you could potentially have much harder normal raids to compensate. I think it’s an interesting possibility.

By: Andy

Andy — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 11:11:11 +0000

The problem with allowing ‘raid masters’ is that the playing field is no longer level, which removes the possibility of world/realm/etc.-firsts and other such competition. I make no claims about whether this is a good thing or not.

By: darkeye

darkeye — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 10:12:03 +0000

I think a lot of people in WoW would freak out at the suggestion that the ‘raid master’ could manipulate boss and trash encounters, such as increase cooldowns of problematic abilities, reduce damage of special abilities, give individual buffs to undergeared players to help a raid group that is struggling to complete an encounter. I would love it personally, it would go well beyond easy/hard mode.

Another alternative to GMing in an RvR game especially, is to give superpowers to some players randomly or otherwise, or boost guild lords/leader (actual players not NPCs) to super elite levels, let them be able to nominate champions/bodyguards and have a standard bearer. The guild lord boosts nearby guild members, say letting them take keeps/control points quicker. WAR did a good thing when they made players champions in city sieges, not that I’ve played it but more of that sort of thing would be awesome. If the enemies took down these super-players it would be a boost to honour/renown on the level of taking a control point.

By: spinks

spinks — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 09:31:08 +0000

It’s an interesting thought. One of the downsides of traditional RPGs is that if you have a bad GM or don’t have a GM at all, then you either have a bad game or you can’t play. If you automate the GM function then sure, you may never have the awesome games or give people to chance to play that role, but you guarantee EVERY SINGLE PLAYER a consistent experience in game. So that way does scale better and probably makes a larger number of players happy.

I’m just arguing that the other route isn’t a dead end.

By: spinks

spinks — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 09:29:39 +0000

It’s a style of play that really does need other players. Even if it’s making mods for a single player game and then sharing them, so you aren’t all playing together at the same time. But it’s a good thought about Minecraft, which shows that people really do enjoy playing in the sandbox (in the original sense of the word, not in the sense of a cut-throat PvP MMO) and freeform collaboration.

You could also argue that blogging about games falls into the same sort of general area of facilitating other players.

By: Gazimoff

Gazimoff — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 09:27:21 +0000

Apart from making me miss my time playing D&D, this got me thinking about those games that do allow you to create something for others. I’m wondering if games like Minecraft are tapping into this, allowing one player to shape the environment before others explore it. Hrm…

By: Andy

Andy — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 09:17:47 +0000

I wonder if the reason MMOs (although I only have experience with WoW) minimise the roles of guild leaders etc. so much is to avoid a kind of two-tier society. Perhaps they’d much rather just have everyone as a player (i.e. customer) rather than let people get ideas above their station.