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From: buzzard@world.std.com (Sean T Barrett)
Subject: Re: NPCs in a Simulation-ish Enviroment
Message-ID: <GLs5Ho.2rE@world.std.com>
Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2001 21:10:36 GMT
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In article <tta38he1nupd5@corp.supernews.com>, ibel <nothing@for.now> wrote:
>I view
>interactive fiction as a tool by which a player can create his own story, a
>story that just happens to be set in a world that I've constructed.
>
>In essence, if you want to tell a static story, then why not just use static
>fiction?

Sorry that I'm not replying to all the rest of your post, but
I haven't played any of the Civ-alikes, and my experience with
Black & White was very different from yours. (I didn't find the
story "told" by the player/creature to be interesting or engaging.)

But I agree with you, if the author is going to tell the story,
I lean towards static fiction. But I think the promise of
interactivity in art forms is in collaboration between player
and author, not in letting the player create his or her own
story.  As always, I will appeal to the experience (for those
who have had it) of pen-and-paper RPGing with a human gamemaster
as an interesting boundary point that we have yet to come close
to capturing.

I do personally feel like the pendulum has swung too far towards
"static story" in most recent IF, but the whole "NPC planning AI"
thing just smacks of the classic "I'm a technologist, here's a
neat technology I can make even though I have no clue how to make
it into an actual work/piece of art/game"--which we mostly see
here in the form of "I want to write my own IF system".

(Of course not *everyone* who wants to make their own system
is smoking crack, e.g. Graham Nelson, Mike Roberts, etc.)

SeanB
