I'm moving the discussion in the GM Tool Requirement List 0.10 topic to a new topic.

Having a dedicated thread is a good idea. Sorry about hijacking the GM Tool thread.

So far we have discussed a few ideas concerning the RP aspects of a Harn MMORPG and I have posted some of the ideas that my team has come up with. If we could get a discussion going about what aspects everyone thinks a Harn MMORPG should have, that would be great. Draw upon the many games we have all played and tell me what you liked, hated, and always wished had been implemented.

On the technical side, are there any modelers out there? Artists (I know we have some great artists), any level designers, database gurus, networking, programmers, unskilled laborers willing to put in some brute force and ignorance???

One of the things that have bugged me in the MMORPG's (and there are many things which bug me in them) is the quality of scripted 'quests' and similar things. Basically, in the games I've played, they've been more or less 'go there, find a bug, kill it and return here to gather experience'. Compared to even the most straightforward content in solo-CRPG's, they're crap and lack depth and originality.

Another thing is that MMORPG's are usually made to work without GM guidance; that's probably why the quests are so bleak. In a way, it's understandable, because all GM things are usually handled by paid staff, and companies can't really afford employing too many people.

One thing that I've been pondering about would be creating a sort of model which put's players into position of GM's - Neverwinter Nights, to my knowledge, does this but at the same time isolates them into separate games; they, in a way, only emulate tabletop games. Creating some kind of hierachy which allows player's who've proven themselves to have some GM powers might be good. The people who run the game would of course have all the power, and manage the upper reaches of GM power - plot's that affect the whole game and so on. The next set of GM's - long time players, who've also proven themselves to be able GM's and fine fellows on their own, could run events of limited scale. If we think about modelling the whole Harn (just as an example), perhaps each or several of them could handle one country.

New GM's (someone who've proven themselves as players) could handle smaller plots, in smaller scale - say, one area like a city or keep. There could be one more 'level' of power - for proven players who could play characters or power, like local lords, etc.

I think such model works quite well in some MUD's and MUSH'es - which is one of the reasons I prefer them over MMORPG's. The problem with them is that they usually lack a large enough player base and the burden of actually running the game and plots falls on too few people, who quickly burn out. It might work, if someone could introduce such model into a MMORPG's with a larger player base.

Of course, implementing such things takes a lot of thought and pre-planning, on both technical and social side.

One other thing which bugs me in the MMORPG's is the limited scale of communications; having played text-based online games for some time, it's really frustrating to try roleplaying in MMORPG's, which interfaces really don't support anything like that. I'd favor a text-based approach with enchanted graphics over an approach with a state-of-the-art graphics engine and sucky communications; the latter ones usually turn into a slangfest hack'n'slash -games, where 'roleplaying' consists of other people asking 'could u pls buff me?'. Which is irritating.

Just my few cents.

_________________
Merten at iki dot fi
Currently on hiatus of unknown length.

I think there are several elements that could make this work. The first is that rather than building a bunch of AI maintained quests, it's better to build a framework whereby the principles of power in the game world are not obtained through individual action. This means that there should be a framework where players can hire other players to go on quests.

Suppose I play a minor noble in the service of Troda, Another player might be in the service of Maldan Harabour. (Both Troda and Maldan might actually be higher level players). I might be tasked by my lord to find and tail known servants of Maldan, Maldan's servants may be tasked with carrying an important message to his brother Koris in Tashal. My objective is to find out about the message or prevent it from being delivered. Maldan's servant is to deliver it, without it being discovered.

What is really necessary is to develop a method where players can build their own minor quests, and hire lower level players to do their dirty work.

While a priest might rise to the 3rd circle easily, 4th and above will require additional levels of player involvement (e.g. election by other players).

Magical items, much like in HarnWorld should be rare. If everybody and their dog has magic, then magic becomes mundane... If there are limited numbers of items, then there will be plenty of characters in competition for the few limited items, and the Lia Kavair will be very much interested in stealing them....

Hopefully we're getting close enough in technology that by the time sucn an MMORPG could be developed we'd be communicating over voice....

_________________
There is no truth to the vile rumor that I am a fireball throwing Peonian Priest!

Well I've played Dark Age of Camelot, Shadowbane, and A Tale in The Desert, and had a different set of complaints about each of them. Let me list the complaints, and which games they applied to:

Leveling. DAOC and SB had what I understand is a common feature of MMORPGs, which is that as a player advances, their powers increase immensely. A 20th level player in SB has godlike attributes, offense, and defense compared to a 1st level player. In either of these games, 5 levels of difference between players is enough to ensure that the higher leveled player could defeat the other in combat 99.9% of the time.

Slow leveling. After complaining about the existance of leveling at all, now I'm going to complain that in DAOC it was excruciatingly slow. SB accelerated it somewhat. Given that the mechanic of leveling existed at all, it was painful that it took repetitive killing of the same mobs (monsters) over and over again in order to advance. It made the game pretty dull.

Few players. SB and ATITD were both games in decline by the time I got involved. The world was sparsely populated, with abandoned settlements all over the place (and no way to take ownership of them in the case of SB).

I'm concerned that a Harn based MMORPG would suffer from the latter problem unless it were able to attract players from beyond the Harniac community. Once the game world consisted of the whole island, even several hundred players might wander all over without encountering each other very often.

TeamSpeak can (and is) used by MMORPG players now to improve communications. Something like that could probably be built in relatively easily.

Thanks for the well thought out responses. Please keep them coming. Let me get one thing straight right off the bat and hope that it puts our Hârn-centric fears to rest. Any Hârn based game that I have anything to do with will be strictly canon. My idea of "artistic license" is that we deviate only when there is a serious technical/feasibility reason for doing so. I have been part of this community for many years (even though I don't post much, I read everything every day) and I know that our collective greatest gripe is that we don't want to water down Hârn and lose that which makes it stand apart from the rest of the RP community (and I am not referring to our arrogance ). This would most assuredly apply to magic in the game. The best part of having the computer in charge is that you could finally implement magic in a way that people not in the know really wouldn't know they had a magic blade as opposed to a "REALLY" nice weapon.

I agree completely with the comments about RP and how lacking they are in mainstream MMORPGs. We all agree that we want RP to be THE central theme of Hârn. What we need to do is to devise some social/technical ways to bring about this desired outcome without beating people with a stick. We want to be able to bring in as many players as possible WITHOUT lowering our standards to the lowest common denominator. I think we have some great ideas here concerning player GMs and they fit nicely in with our earlier discussed ideas about earning RP points in game. Those players who earn enough could qualify to be a GM and receive permissions to recruit players into their campaigns. My team had thought of this and we see it as a great way to keep veteran players interested over the long haul. Some research I have been reading shows that even the most devout players lose interest after 4-5 years. With the ability to become a GM, we could keep these players in the game.

On a side not (just remembered), going back to the discussion of RP points, we though that along with a button to complain about someone, there could be a "praise" button. Players could use this to reward others for good RP. I realize that this could be abused, so we would have to have a limit on how often it could be used.

As to the communication interaction. It would be difficult to implement a real voice communication for a number of reasons. The biggest problem is bandwidth. Think of all the data being passed in and out of the server when thousands of people are logged on. If we put audio data on top of that it would become unmanageable. Also, just think what it would sound like at a busy place in the game. I believe in being immersed in a game, but... I guess that means we are stuck with text, so we would need to come up with a really nice way of having the interface. Any ideas? We could always have a peer to peer audio channel for party members.

Merten: You mentioned that some MUDs have a GM system similar to what we are discussing. Could you look into them and write up some of the ways they implement this?

As far as quests/adventures go, I want that to be a major focus of the game. There is far to little of it going on in current games. I don't want any "monster points" in our game. There will be an encounter generator as opposed to pre-placed spawn points or areas. Each area will have its own encounter probabilities to be generated on the fly. This also alleviates the server of having to track NPCs who are not within a live players LOS. I was thinking that characters would also receive a flag once an adventure had been completed and they would not be able to participate in it again. We need to look at a five year mainstream game run at least. A huge amount of adventures would need to be put together and introduced over time to keep the pace up and to keep things fresh. As player GMs came online, they would be able to augment this base of quests. Some quests could be recurring (gargun crushing, etc.), take Trobridge for x, then y, then z , etc.

As far as leveling goes, it would not be an issue because we would follow the Hârn Master rules set. To go even further, I would propose that the player never even see a number unless he is counting his inventory. I would rather have all character attributes and skills have descriptive levels that left finite values out of the picture. A warrior would be a veteran as opposed to 70 ML, or a Renowned Swordsman instead of 90-100 ML, etc. Someone would be of average strength or exceptional intelligence, etc. This is just one more subtle way to pull the power mongers and levelers away from the technical side of the game and refocus them on RP. We will have to have a lot of RP “levels” to allow people to strive for and define themselves with. Like Master of a craft, journeyman, apprentice, Bailiff of _____, Lord of _____, religious circles and titles, Mayors, etc.

For developing skills, I would tweak the Hârn Master skills section a bit. The computer allows for higher levels of detail, so I would break tasks down by difficulty and as you moved up on ML, you would only gain additional skill for accomplishing more difficult tasks within your craft. This would keep people from getting a 100+SB in a skill just by sitting around and performing trivial tasks.

We would need to market the game to as may people as possible. More people is more economically feasible and is more fun to play (as long as we can contain the masses tendency to drift away from RP). This is why we need to be really creative on how to channel RP without forcing it down people’s throats.

I think something like Teamspeak or Roger Wilco would be fine for parties and people who willingly join into them. This way we can let them chose to accept the overhead and possible lag with it.

There is so much to talk about. Thanks for the great input.

Please excuse me, 'cos I am about to have a good old rant and ramble.

Disclaimer - it took me a while to write this, and now I see that Llewelyn Mawr has addressed some of it already - that is a good thing, because this is not a rant aimed at anybody - it is aimed at the current state of CRPG, if it is 'aimed at' anything.

I have recently been browsing The Forge internet site and reading the essays there about the reasons and motivations for people roleplaying. These are developments of ideas known as the 'Threefold Model' discussed some years ago on the rec.games.frp.advocacy newsgroup and, while they are not (yet?) 'complete', they bear examination by all roleplayers and (especially) GMs. Following on from that I read the 'Hârnic MMORPG thread here. Now, it strikes me that the concepts discussed in those essays, as well as applying to tabletop roleplaying games, apply equally if not more so to MMORPGs.

So what? Well, let's look at the 'default' MMORPG setup - a setup that has already been assumed in the thread here, in fact.

The player designs a character
The character starts out so weak that local small fauna represent a threat

The character kills things and takes their stuff - for this the player is rewarded with a stronger character

The character gets handed some cheesey 'quests' when strong enough to tackle them - success is rewarded with a stronger character

Eventually the character is capable of taking on whole nations in battle and winning, so the game devolves to a PK contest, possibly with some political elements in lieu of 'roleplaying'.

A similar set of conditions apply in the 'typical' tabletop RPG - which is, of course, where the paradigm comes from. One of the beautiful things about Hârn and HârnMaster, to my mind, is that they break this particular mould, at least partially. Received wisdom says that the spiral treadmill of kill stuff -> get stronger at killing stuff -> kill bigger stuff - which can be very addictive! - is neccessary to sell a (C)RPG. The point of the Forge/r.g.f.a GNS/GDS models is that this isn't so.

A Whole New Paradigm

So what is needed to make a completely new type of MMORPG that people will flock to enjoy?

Well. let's first try to understand what the 'old' model offers. It offers an escalating series of challenges against which players can 'test' themselves and either 'win' or (temporarily) 'lose'. This represents one way to satisfy what the GNS model calls 'Gameism' - the drive to experience competition - to 'Step On Up'. Except for the fact that it gets locked into an unsustainable power spiral it does this very well - that is why it's quite popular and successful.

Now, Hârn, to me, is much more about exploration - discovery, of a whole range of sorts - and stories. So why not develop a game where the rewards are given for exploration and for engaging with the world, rather than for killing stuff? And where the result of those rewards is not to make you tougher and more able to kill stuff, but give you more knowledge, more ability to exploit and explore the world, and more ability to interact and experience stories.

A few suggestions for doing this:

Hârn has always majored on beautiful maps. Players should get 'memory maps' (as files on their PC?) covering the places their character has explored.

Contacts - NPCs could be set to 'contact' status once befriended by PCs, with the result that they will pass on their store of news and rumours when they meet. Stories might be fed in the other direction, too...

It's not what you know, it's who you know - have some mechanism by which PCs can build (positive or negative) relationships with NPCs. Include a mechanism for spreading news about what people do - those who kill friends or family will soon be reviled, those who do their 'duty' will be better thought of.

It is essential, if the game is to be truly Hârn, for there to be a working economy and ecology. Learning what lives on what can be very useful.

Learning the prices of things can be literally valuable.

What About 'Story'?

Robert McKee, in his book 'Story', describes what is needed to generate a story. First you need a protagonist who has a 'dramatic need' - that is, something he or she wants so badly they are prepared to go to considerable lengths to get it. Then you need reasons why (s)he can't have it.

That's it. The rest will come naturally as the protagonist tries increasingly extreme methods to get what they are after. The trick, of course, is to bring out those 'dramatic needs'. How do you get players to give their characters driving desires - needs strong enough to drive stories? The 'traditional' answer is to give them quests, but that is commonly cheesey and trite - it can be done right, but when it's just coining a cliché the magic goes. The result is what McKee refers to as 'Sentimentality', when what we want to achieve is true 'Sentiment'.

So how does one do it? I wish I knew, but a start would be rewarding it in some way - I guess this more or less has to be an administrator function. And tell the players you are rewarding it - 'hidden' rewards are seldom successful - but you don't need to be too specific about what exactly is rewarded - you'll know it when you see it.

The other thing you need to do is provide adversity - make doing things difficult. Note that I say 'difficult', not 'dangerous' (although some things might be dangerous, too). Getting killed every time you try to do something does not encourage conceiving those 'dramatic needs' - but if at first you live but don't succeed, you might try, try again...

And The Game System?

If the 'standard' de facto program of:

DO
Kill things and take their stuff
Get tougher and more capable of killing things and taking their stuff
LOOP

is to be avoided, we need both (a) a reward system that does not reward killing things and taking their stuff and (b) a character development system that does not mean getting better at killing things and taking their stuff.

I suggest something based on HârnMaster. Simplified, maybe, so that attributes generate SBs, skills have an OML of n times SB and extra SBs can be added to this through practise. At character generation, X points are allocated to skills (perhaps through occupational 'templates' as per HM) over and above the OMLs. X never changes - as new stuff is learned, old stuff is forgotten, so training one skill increases that skill but the longest idle skill reduces one SB. Focussing on skills the character is naturally good at (high SB) has obvious advantages, but maybe interest or neccessity will drive other skills to be developed for a time. Such development should not be tedious - but it should be neccessary to plan it. Maybe plot changes and then they happen after a real-time delay of a day or so.

The real reward system, as I say above, is elsewhere. It is contacts, relationships, knowledge and understanding of the world. These last are especially key, because they outlast character death and transfer, at least in part, with the player to the next character. This should take away some - though by no means all - of death's sting. And, as someone said, there's always Bukrai...

Finally, don't use hit points. They are fine for representing a struggle to overcome a challenge before your own resources ('life') runs out - they are crap for representing the hazard of doing a dangerous task. Again, use HM as a basis - simplify, sure, but have individual wounds 'gained' and carried around as hindrances until they are removed through care and rest, not HPs lost until sudden and unglamorous death. Have physical damage represent a hazard and a threat, not a store of resource that you don't want to run out of...

In Summary...

If we want a game that breaks the mould of hack and slash, we need to do two things. Don't reward hacking and slashing, and don't give rewards that mean 'getting better at hacking and slashing'.

The received wisdom is that anything not based on this paradigm will fail. I think the opposite is true, because anything built on this paradigm has lots of competition. Start small, with a well conceived 'new model' that rewards discovery and drama and I think you might have a real 'winner'. But it has to be done well.

And that, of course, is the trick

_________________
Balesir
___________________
- Eschew Obfuscation!

Quite a many MUShes I've played in (not that much, five or so) have this kind of system; you cast votes to other players with whom you liked to play with. Sort of 'props for good roleplay', which will them become experience in the receiver's end. Usually just a fraction of an experience point (when talking about, say, Storyteller system) - it's possible to vote for larger amounts of XP in some places, but that kind of votes usually need to be backed up by RP logs.

And yeah, voting usually has limits.



Believe me, you don't really want to hear the orkish gibbering us non-english speaksers can come up with; with typing, we can at least do some quick proofreading...

But yeah, I'd go with a text interface - and I'd go on, and make it a lot more central thing that what the current MMORPG user interfaces do. Let's face it; the graphic engines today can do marvelous job when potraying a sunset over a river, but when it comes to communicating through body language, they can't do a squat. A town hall full of characters waving and bowing to each other looks somewhat funny.

One of the problems is that the text interfaces are too small and divided over several channels. This alone usually limits the communication in IC (In Character) channels to few sentences long blocks, with which one really can't communicate anything but very prompt and right-to-point things. Not to mention anything about body language; I certainly dig the way some people write eloquent 'poses' in text-based online games. A form of art, that - though not necessarily something one might want to implement in an MMORPG.



Usually through social mechanics, like player promotion. On the technical side, the MUD's and MUSH'es usually have few different levels of administrative accounts, like wizards/gods (sort of root access for the owners), and then one or two levels of staffers/GM's. In, say, White Wolf-based games there are usually the owners/head GM's, then sphere wizards, who each run things for their own cliques (like, say, mages, vampires, werewolfes, criminals, law & order, and so on), and they might have few helpers (GM's who run small plots).

The right to access code and tools goes according to the account; owners and wizards can do pretty much everything (the former ones usually have the *nix-account upon which the whole game runs), coding staff can access the "softcode" (MUSH'es usually a kind of C-like scripting code, which I've never been able to learn), and the plot-running GM's have access to the basic functions, like checking character sheets, moving unseen and other helpfull stuff like that.



That's good, but I'd include at least two aspects to the major focus-list; social roleplay and politics between different groups/organisations (preferably, at some point, with player character lead). Social roleplay tends to be the real meat in online games (and rare meat, unfortunately), and technically, it should be rather easy to implement. It's just that the players... Gah, I won't go into that.

As for politics, the world really starts to live only when the power groups form, preferably from the players themselves. As you mentioned somewhere (probably in this text, but it's so darn long), there can be all kinds of missions affecting two or more groups. That's where the fun comes from.



... And that's where the work begins. Obviously, since you try to steer away from the Lowest Common Determinator -approach, it'll be hell to find enough players to run a game. I'd suggest creating a very, very small place first, writing a very long "metaplot" and dozens of smaller plotlines to keep the first players intrested, and then slowly expand.

Keeping people from each other's throats might be even harder yet; for every five good and civilized players, one egghead always turns up to mess things. One needs to write the rules for social behaviour beforehand and communicate them clearly to players. And do lot's of other kind of social engineering.

_________________
Merten at iki dot fi
Currently on hiatus of unknown length.

Balesir:

"Please excuse me, 'cos I am about to have a good old rant and ramble."

Your rant is well appreciated and understood. I think your points are right on the money. A serious focus on RP is what the entire MMORPG community needs and what we will provide that makes us special in a large market. I think EQ has somewhere in the region of 400,000 subscribers, UO is down to about <200,000 and Lineage makes EQ look like a slumber party. There are a lot of hack and slash people in the mix (the majority perhaps), but a sizeable population are people like us, playing to RP and finding the games lacking, but they are the only show on the block.

For the mechanics of the system, I would wish to implement the Hârn Master rules and if anything, get even more precise. All of these rules would be behind the scenes though, so as not to divert attention from the RP aspect of the game. That is what I meant by not having actual numbers representing attributes and skills. Those numbers would be there just like on any Hârn master character sheet, just the in game player would not be able to view them specifically, but in a descriptive way so as to get a feel but not be finite. I detest the idea of levels, hit points, et al. Hârn master is a great system and its only drawback is its complexity, we will skirt that with the computer.

To be fair in any game, characters should start out at the same base line and progress from there. We just need to painstakingly define what "progress" is and channel it away from skill improvement. What I am proposing would be tiers of occupations from HM. First time players would choose from the first tier. Earning RP points would allow them to start subsequent characters off (or change occupations of an old character) at a higher tier.

For example:

A new player starts a character as an apprentice carpenter. After a while he becomes a journeyman and has earned X RP points. Now that we know he is a good RP he moves into the next tier of professions. He could start a new character from the new tier, perhaps a Yeoman, or apprentice of a higher class craft (mercantyler, etc) or he can continue to play his original character. Lets say his original character had the makings of a great Shek Pvar but he didn't have enough RP points to be allowed to this tier yet, now he might be approached by an NPC and given the opportunity for this higher tier occupation. What occupations constitute what tiers are open to debate at this junction. I think we can all agree with something like the following:

1
low income craftsmen
urban poor occupations
poor rural occupations
common warriors w/o good equipment
non leading tribesmen

2
high income craftsmen (Weapon crafters, shipwrights, Jewelers, mercantylers, etc)
NCO level warriors (yeomen, professional soldiers)

3
nobility (landless knights)
khuzdul & sindarin characters
Shek Pvar

There can be various grades of these with different amounts and quality of starting equipment and family resources.

There is so much in your post (all of our posts actually) that I will need to read it over a few times more. After two readings, I would say that not only do I agree wholeheartedly, I have felt that way myself for some time. If there is enough interest, we might need to start breaking these conversations down by specific game aspect within an MMORPG and tailoring or comments to each specific area.

I heartily recommend you folks check Adellion at http://www.adellion.com.

The web site is a bit muddled, but the FAQ should let you know what the game is all about. I think it should popular with the general Harnic crowd.

_________________
Ken Snellings
CHMP Member
Fredericksburg, Virginia, United States of America

I second Ken's suggestion to check out http://www.adellion.com for an interesting example of a home-grown MMOG with a strong focus on roleplaying. Be sure to read the forums. Based on what I've seen, these guys have already given a lot of thought to the sort of problems a Harn MMOG would encounter.

_________________
Keith Mann
I really must get around to changing my .sig

I agree. I have been looking over their site and see a lot of familiar themes. I will definitely take notes.

I am not sure if everyone read though what we were discussing in the GM Tool thread, so I may sound redundant if you have read the tail end of the other thread.

A MMORPG being such a huge undertaking, we were planning to just start off with a one city block zone around the Coranan Pamesani arena. This represents a small amout of initial work on an area in which to implement the major background systems of the game. From there, we could add models as they get completed and test out our code.

A lot of the problems I see about dealing with a MMG for harn is the individual gaming aspect. It’s true that most games have that “hamster wheel” feel of running around looking for things to beat the next beast and so on. To avoid this some ideas have to be implemented such as:

· Genuine plotlines that involve the players have to be layered on top of each other.

· Having the players interact and being able to manipulate the world around them.

· The time line will easily go beyond 720. So a post history timeline should be mapped out.

· A sense of randomness of non-combat encounters that the players can take advantage of.

· A tier system of power. Not of personal power but of political power that players can be involved in and NPCs should easily adapt accordingly.

· The ecology of existing races. Some how we have to deal with the delicate balance of beasties to players. Say once a raid on a Gargun complex happens do the Gargun “pop up” after a few minutes of game time or do we deal with it realistically with the diminished population for a time period.

· Inter-personal quests some how have to be developed to give the feeling this isn’t a mindless game that has programming in the background. Some how apply “Polti's 36 plots” that Andy posted on the harnforum a while back.


Is there some way to program NPC’s to spread stories and rumors? Sort of like a slow moving info virus. Lets say as an example PC bob kills a merchant, NPC frank the weaver witnesses the murder. Now NPC frank holds this info for say 10 game days or 20 conversations or up to 5 batches of info. Which ever comes first? He would of course inform the local authorities first. Any one he talks to or a PC passing on to another NPC, the info would be held for half the time. Authorities would hold on to the batch of info for a longer time...or if the assailant continues his killing spree the length of time extends depending on the severity of the crime.


Some NPC should interact but we would have to be wary of the “furby flu”. It would be good if stories from one town followed the PC’s to another town, by way of NPC’s (merchant caravans, troop movement, sailors, etc.) Generally authorities communicate problems from each town to the lord’s of the realm.


I’ve noticed that in most MMORPG’s a proper economy is hard to sustain. Once something upsets the balance of an economy it generally leads to destroying the believability of the “world”. Is there a way to set up a market system that is regional where if to many of one product is produced than the price is lowered until the overstock is sold off? You could also set it up as if PC merv the Fletcher sells his collection of 50 longbows to the local NPC Fletcher, the NPC would stop production until the 50 were sold off? Or maybe NPC Fletcher has time to work on other products.


It’s quite obvious that the memory storage of everything I’ve suggested will be an immense burden. Because harn is story driven over combat driven would it take some of the pressure away to build the world in a quake II “visual” way? Lower graphics compared to the high-end graphics of existing MMORPGs? Just wondering.

I don't know if this concept has been given much thought lately, or if there is any progress toward a design for a prototype. I've been thinking about this recently, and wondered if any thought had been given to the development tools. Beyond 2 is apparently a Open Source tool that utilizes twisted network messaging and Nebula graphics rendering (both also Open Source). While both tools might have significant limitations, they would seem to be the best place to start from a tools standpoint.

As for game design, I think there are clearly some challenges, but if they could be handled what we are talking about could be a great game.

So here are some game design thoughts:

Time: clearly real time per se won't work. It's fine for running around in Tashal, but when I march off to Azadmere, I don't want to spend days of real time going up the silver way. This means that time/distance ratios will have to be applied or some other adjustment will need to be made.

Death: The threat of physical violence should be very real. Death should mean death. You're dead and your stuff get's looted. You probably can't be brought back unless you're very rich and in the good graces of a peonion bishop. This makes adventuring truly dangerous and something not to be taken lightly.

PVP: I think this is a must. In order for there to be a real world sense of story, player vs. player must be always on. There should be no real way to tell how powerful a character is in-game, so there would always be risk in taking on another player. If you're killed by a player, they'll probably loot your stuff.

Of course if you're Amorvrin...

PVP + Consequences: In game actions have consequences. If you go around killing other players, in Coronan, then the Legionairres are probably going to be after you. A player run justice system should be developed with constraints that encourage proper jurisprudence. A high level player would take on the role of the local lord and would be responsible for holding court, administering justice, issuing summons, rendering verdicts, etc. Take the wrong actions in game, and the local lord should set a reward for your capture and return to his dungeon to await sentancing (er trial)...

Cast spells in public, and the White Hand is likely after you....

Breach Guild privilidge and you're guild will take action...

Quests: This should be administered using a top down approach. Admins should take on the role more akin to dieties than powerful players. A player should be able to aspire to become King of Kaldor, or Emperor of Tharda. No reason a player couldn't be a Bishop in the Laranian church, even Archbishop... These are the rewards of continued, exceptional role-playing.

Want to be a Knight? You'll need to be knighted by another player knight willing to pay the appropriate fees and equip the character. Want to advance to Journeyman status? You'll need to spend enough time with a master to gain Journeyman status. Want to become a master? You will need to petition the guild to request a franchise. It's up to the players in the guild to determine whether or not the franchise is granted. Grant too many franchises, and profits drop as competition increses. Grant too few and there are shortages of goods and services causing price increases and a greater willingness of other players to breach guild priviledge....

It seems to me that this kind of social/political reward structure could provide the nexus for great role-playing and player provided quests.

The key is to provide functionality and structure that promote these activities.

One technique that might work, is to allow certain non-adventuring activities to provide in-game rewards as well as accumulate free connect time. Perhaps by spending so many hours working as a Journeyman weaponcrafter selling wares, a player would earn in-game income as well as accumulate up to 1 mo./year of connect priviledges. In addition, such activities could be required for character advancement.

That's about all I've come up with for now... Maybe more later...

_________________
There is no truth to the vile rumor that I am a fireball throwing Peonian Priest!

You really resurrected one from the past. But I am still here!

We are on the exact same page when it comes to what the game should be like.

Since this post originated I have slowly tinkered with my ideas, but there are supprisingly few people who are really willing to help out and it is a ridiculously huge undertaking.

What I was attempting to accomplish was just the Pamesani arena of Coranan and one city block around it. Just enough space to run around in and test all the various code engines. That could be run as a server and allow anyone to join and help test the code. From there the world could be worked on and expanded, but at least you would have the engine running (but not stress tested).

I was using 3D Game Studio, but is has a lot of limitations, not to mention that I am not an artist. I am a programmer. At the rate I am going I will produce the first fully immersive stick-man MMORPG.

The only comment you had that I would like to take exception to would be the time issue. I understand that players won’t want to spend hours wandering down the Salt Route, Silver Way, etc. but I feel the a time ratio of 1:12 needs to be enforced. What I have been playing with for long voyages (by land or sea) and for long crafting times is a system that keeps the same ratio as the game world but allows players to do it while out of the game.

For example:

You want to travel from Tashal to Zerhun along the Silver Way. You can do it in real time if you want to (I am an anal former Marine so…), or you can join a caravan before retiring for the night (real world that is). When you wake up the next morning and play the game, or come home from work, mowing the lawn, etc. you log on and can check your progress. You can join in for real time for a bit, then log off again and continue the journey. I realize that this creates other questions to be answered (like encounters) but I don’t want to compromise to much on the time dilation issue.

The reason for this is the economy. The one thing that all MMORPGs really lack is a decent economy. If we want real scarcity and real merchants fulfilling needs, then it has to be hard and time consuming. I would allow the profit of a real time caravan run to far outweigh that of a “virtual” one.

I would use this same system for craftsmen. To gain ML the crafter would have to be in game and working at progressively harder tasks, but to make basic items of the craft, I would have a queuing system for when the player is logged off but the character is putting in his forty hours of work. If your character is a Freemaster, then he could designate a percentage of his journeymen’s time as well as his own towards the manufacture of goods while offline. These would be stocked in his store and available for sale. Of course, for the fine or difficult items, in game time would have to be spent.

With this you could get a good economy going.

Anyone who is interested in getting serious about this project, please get in touch with me privately. I really need people who can do 3D art, animation, textures, etc. More programmers would be nice also. Currently it is/has been a one man show for some time.

I recently had a conversation with a friend of mine (a DAoC and WoW addict) about how cool it would be to have a MMORPG based on Harn that actually was about RP and not PvP or the upward spiral of cheesy quests. We talked about a lot of these issues. One of the ones that stands out immediately is a realistic economics model.

One of the big problems with economics in most MMORPG's is that there is a steadily (and in some cases quickly) increasing amount of money in the circulation in the game. Players can use "skills" to make "widgets" that they can then sell for "money," usually to buy better weapons, armor, or magic items. But very rarely are there mechanisms to take money out of the system. Very rarely do players need any kind of raw materials with which to make their "widgets," or if they do those raw materials are cheap and/or plentiful.

To solve this, you need to really give a lot of thought to three key areas of concern: a) raw materials, b) consumables, and c) services.

Raw material costs should be significant and should adhere to an in-game law of supply and demand. If very few players are playing miners (because who wants to slave away in the mines?) but lots of players are playing armorers, weaponcrafters, and blacksmiths (because making weapons, armor, and tools is "cool"), the price of ore should go up. Rather than going to the local miner's guild and buying N units of iron ore for X price each, the guild system should work on an auction system (and in this regard the Mercantlyer's Guild would be immensely useful). So rather than going to a "Miner's shop" to buy as much ore as you can carry for a fixed price, the Miner's Guild should offer their ore in lots for auction. This is a great opportunity for role-playing, as players will be bidding against each other for limited resources, or even pooling their resources together in de facto "cartels" to ensure that they get raw materials before (or in lieu of) their competition.

If you want raw materials to be available in shops, a related system might be to have a model whereby if a raw material is selling quickly, the price goes up. If NPC shopkeepers have a stockpile on hand for longer periods of time, the price goes down. Some care would be needed to balance a system like this, but I think it would be a great boon to the verismilitude of the world. It would also encourage players to go into skill fields that are less "popular." Sure, mining isn't as sexy as weaponcrafting. But if there's a huge demand for ore and little demand for weapons, greed will prevail.

Second on the list are consumables. In most MMORPG's, there are very few consumables. Food and/or drink should be a major concern in a Harn-based MMORPG, not only for the PC's but for their mounts, dogs, falcoms, war-ferrets, or whatever. Lots of items could be used as consumables, and could draw a lot of money out of the economy, as once they're used, they're gone. For instance, perfumes might confer a bonus to interactions with NPC's. Medicines might reduce the risk of infection if promtly (and properly) applied. Tinder makes lighting a fire easier, and fire keeps you from getting cold/sick in the wilderness (or even in your house).

In a related field, most MMORPG's have persistent, largely invulerable items. Once you make an item, it exists in perfect functioning condition forever. As such, there is always a net increase in the number of items in play. But in the real world, items break or wear out. Even weapons and armor could be viewed as "consumables," because once you break a sword, you need a new sword. And even "damage" to items would need to be repaired to keep them in good functioning condition. When your "sword" item becomes a "dull sword" item, chances are good that you should get it fixed, as it does less damage. When it becomes a "dull, rusty sword" item, it might get dire. When it becomes a "dull, rusty, chipped, bent sword" item, it might be beyond repair. After all, how many MMORPG's have you played where you've needed to replace the soles on your boots after walking across the realm three or four times? It's simple things like this that can mean the difference between a realistic economy and one in which inflation is the only economic pressure.

Finally, the concept of consumables leads well into the concept of services. If you don't have weaponcrafting skills, you'll need to pay a weaponcrafter to repair your "dull, rusty sword" item and return it to fully functioning "sword" status. And that weaponcrafter might need tools (which themselves can wear out) and raw materials (which will be consumed) to accomplish the task. Don't have a place to stay? Pay cash to an innkeeper for a warm bunk. Want to keep your PC's home from being a nest of filthy vermin? Hire a ratter. Want to carry your goods from point A to point B? Hire a wagon, a teamster, and a pair of oxen to carry it for you.

One other important aspect to consider is a good model for a barter economy. Rather than having everything work in cash, being able to pay people in kind could be a huge boost to the verismilitude of the world. For PC vs. PC transactions, it's easy - people will barter on their own with what they have for what they need. With NPC's it might be a little tough to model, but in actuality you could reduce everything to monetary equivalent, then decide which items, materials, or services each NPC "career" needs. For instance, the going rate to transport a tunne of wood from A to B might be 100 silver. But if the character has "woodcrafter" skills, the NPC might ask the PC to spend a little time "repairing" the NPC's wagon in trade. Such a repair might take 50 silver in raw materials and a little bit of time (and wear and tear on the PC's woodworking tools), so the final price might be "repair wagon + 20 silver." This allows the overall cash needs of the gam to remain low, and more importantly places emphasis on a character's skills/tools than on the amount of silver in his or her purse.

A clever programmer could even come up with a weighting or prioritizing system such that critical or beneficial barters might offer a discount over paying in cash. Things that apply directly to an NPC's livelihood rank higher than those that apply to his comfort. Bartering a new hoe to a farmer will give you a more beneficial trade rate (compared to "real" money) than bartering perfume to the same farmer. Bartering that same perfume to a courtesan might be wildly successful, whereas the courtesan may not even accept the hoe.

This kind of economic model is complicated, but it would go a long way to controlling a lot of the economic problems that plague modern MMORPG's (which have spawned oddities like people in China spending all day at computers "farming gold" to sell to players in the game for real-world money).

Being as I too am a programmer, if you want to kick around ideas (and maybe lay down some code) for how to implement such a model, I'd love to do so.

OK, I haven't yet had time to read the posts above or the threat that fathered this, but I will go back to it when time allows.

I think the one and only problem with MMORPGs is the level system. Because people get levels only by spending time on-line, they start exp-crunching. This, of course, is harmful to role-playing.

What is especially lethal to role-playing, however, is the absurd differences in power levels between experienced characters and starting characters. No matter how many "newbies" you round up, they still won't be of any danger to that level 50 Knight. This means that experience characters dominate. This leads to more exp-crunching.

Can you see the direction we're going? Exp leads to levels, levels lead to power differences, power differences lead to player killing (griefing?), and griefing leads to a powerful need to gain exp! Where in that continuum do we have time for role-playing - while we're being p-killed by ultra-munchkins or while we're trying to catch up in order to survive?

OK, why not have player-killing areas and safe areas... Now that, if anything, is lame and really harmful to role-playing. That weak peasant can be a real mouth as long as he's in the safety of the safe area, but there's nothing you can do about it.

Thus, I would suggest that a Hârnic MMORPG would not have levels at all but would be based on skills alone. Similarly to HM, a character, no matter how experienced, would still be as fragile as a starting character. What would make a difference, then, would be skills, equipment and social contacts. If you knew that attacking that knight would bring the wrath of the feudal system on you, you'd think again before reaching for your pitchfork.

The HM system gives an opportunity to create a rather functioning social system: you need tailors with Textilecraft to create clothing, smiths with Weaponcraft to create weapons'n'rmur and knights to do the fighting. While most characters would get only 50% of any equipment they sell, mercantyler characters (guilded) might get 100%... Now each character "class" would need another simply to survive. You don't want to kill Tim the Taylor with his 120% Textilecraft if there's nobody else who would sell you as fine clothes as he does.

I am not a MMORPG expert, as many may have guessed, but I recall a MMORPG that revolved around bloodlines (I wonder if it was called Bloodlines?). I don't know how it would have worked in the MMORPG in question, but it did give me some good ideas on how MMORPGs could be run. Now, you might want to retain the lethality of the HM system (if wounds don't kill you, infection or shock might) and the mortality of characters, while retaining the continuity of having "permanent characters".

This could be done with bloodlines: characters would be mortal BUT they could father/give birth to children, who would mature and reach the same skill levels that the character had when he started breeding - consider this like a Save Game that can be loaded by taking a mature descendant and starting to play him! A character who has a lot of children would be able to generate a lot of these Save Games, although some of them (perhaps the Hârnic 60%?) would never reach adulthood. Curiously, an impotent or sterile character would be doomed to lead a single life...

Do any of these ideas fancy you?

_________________
"The greatest sport ever: the Biathlon - cross-country skiing interspersed with rounds of shooting Russians." - HierophantX on Finnish winter sports

Good thread. Having just gotten involved in my first MMOPRG (WoW, of course), I'm aware of the limitations, and as an ex-programmer, I'm aware of the massive amount of work needed to get this off the ground. Good luck with the effort, and if you think I can help in any small way, let me know.

_________________
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Leitchy
List & Forum Admin
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[Updated 25-FEB-2011]

Hello everyone. I am so glad to have people thinking about this with me. Like I said before, the one man show is just not going to accomplish such a task.

First, let me put one thing to rest. I would only create a system that used Harnmaster rules. NO leveling, NO experience points, etc. I would focus the entire concept of 'leveling' into climbing the social ladder in whatever sphere your character was in - rural life, Guilds, underworld, nobility, religion, barbarian nation, etc.

I think that Harn has so much to offer a MMORPG and if the creator was to stick to HARN CANON and only fill in the gaps with solid medieval history, then I think the end product would be a unique addition to the genre, something that is needed. I was very disappointed at the direction that Auran started to take when they were attempting this feat and I was not sorry to see that project end. I don’t care how many people we can mass market Ford Pintos to; I would prefer to sell some Mercedes to a select few. If it is a labor of love and not a capitalistic venture I can afford that sentiment. Lets face it, none of us are still here after almost twenty years because we fell in love with our Pintos. I would not water Harn down for anything.

Having said that and being committed to no leveling and the Harn combat system you can easily see that the fears of a 40th level warrior waiting at the gates of the town to kill anyone crazy enough to emerge can’t happen. Well… It would be really funny to watch it anyway. Just to see three dozen street urchins, carpenter apprentices, and town watchmen attack the foolhardy Agrikan Knight. He had better kill every one of them before one lucky beggar rolls a hit to the eye with his carving knife! In Harn a mob of riff raff can take down one or two pushy power gamers.

Here are a few ideas that I have written up in my notes. Please feel free to comment on them:


UPKEEP

No one will want to sit around double clicking loaves of bread or mugs of ale, but as mentioned by others this should be an issue in the game. I think I took this idea from a Harn article that I read, but don’t recall which one right now, perhaps the Household one back in Harnlore. The game mechanic would be that each time a character eats some food during a game day, the value of that food is subtracted from his daily/monthly need. At the end of the month, the character pays for the difference, based on his lifestyle choice for the month. If the amount owed is greater than the amount the character has in his possession, he will automatically be reduced to the lowest lifestyle level within his budget. If he falls below wretched, then he will suffer the consequences. This concept can be applied to food, shelter, and clothing.

Lifestyle
Wretched x .1
Poor x .5
Lower Class Burgher
Middle Class Burgher x 1
Wealthy Burgher x1.5
Lower Nobility x2
Upper Nobility
Royalty x4
Imperial Royalty

ROLE-PLAYING
Enforced by the carrot approach with the stick only being used with really troublesome players. The player interface could have a button that players may click on for good/bad RP and then click on the offender in the game. This will generate a RP report on the individual clicked on and bring up an interface through which the complaint/praise may be passed on to the management. Good RP will be rewarded with RP points. Each player may only petition to award RP points for good RP once per _____ <days, weeks, month>. Poor RP can be reported at any time, but severe penalties will be applied to false reports.

Role-playing points will be accumulated though various actions from the mundane to the heroic. Something along the lines of Harnmaster piety gain. The player would be unaware of this number, but it would allow other occupations to be open when certain thresholds were met. We don’t want a horde of Shek-pvars running amok before they know how to role-play them within Harn. The White Hand would have to much work to do!

I would allow the cream of the crop from the beta test to cash in their roleplaying points in return for good starting positions in the game. These people would then lead the new joins into the game and channel them appropriately. For instance, a beta tester decides to start the general release as the head of the clothiers guild. He will then play in the game to bring in new PC clothiers and train them. In time he may be unseated by the PC masters that will rise up in the guild's ranks.

As to the economy, I agree wholeheartedly with what has been said in this thread. What would need to happen is to have EVERY item in the game have a chart laid out that would recourse it back to its raw material. I have based everything on the fundamental building block of the peasant farmer. What the average villien can grow in surplus to what he needs for his average family. That surplus compared to the size of the population that did not feed itself would generate the basic price of bread, the basic unit of everything. The surplus or shortage of grain would be the driving force of all base prices. In this manner, we have a perfect and logical counterbalance to too much money in the game: Famine. If the economy starts to get too much wealth in circulation, the bad harvest will cause inflation and even it out or bring it down.

Here is a quick example of a break down. In this case, mad cow disease or a looting army eating up the supply would cause the value of a bovine to increase and would ripple through all of its child elements. You could even go one step higher and say that the bovine needs grazing, but in this case I would see the bovine as the parent raw material. At each stage in the decedents the price of the parent raw material is increased by the profit margin for the craftsmen using his skill to turn it into something farther down the chain.



I would be very interested in comments. Think of the pricelist we could generate. I hope my bullets work.[/img]

Wow. Despite the bullets not showing, I really like the idea that the economy would comprise of actually made products instead of computer generated lists of "items". If you can get this working, it'll be revolutionary.

Beta testers as guild masters would be only natural: they know the trade, they know the game. It is therefore only fit and proper for them to teach their knowledge to the apprentices. That's what masters are for!

With an economical system like this, collecting huge armies would be a real effort for the whole society, instead of just a loss of gold for the king. Just imagine what destruction invaders could do...

"Attack, attack! Burn their houses, kill their cattle, sow their fields with salt!"

Harbaal awaits...

_________________
"The greatest sport ever: the Biathlon - cross-country skiing interspersed with rounds of shooting Russians." - HierophantX on Finnish winter sports

It's not Harnic in any way, but Eve Online is widely reputed to have one of the best economic models of any commercial MMORPG out there. I've gotta run at the moment, will post more info on it in a bit.

_________________
I'm your only friend, I'm not your only friend, but I'm a little glowing friend, but really I'm not actually your friend, but I am.

Okay, sorry for the delay.

Eve Online is a space based game, but the economic principles could be fairly useful.

The basic resources are ores that are mined from asteroids. (For Harn, basic animal and vegetable products would come from manors and minerals from mines).

Ores are refined into minerals, which can then be made into more advanced products by those with the knowhow (in the form of production skills and blueprints). Harn would work somewhat differently, since instead of automated factories running on blueprints, items would be produced based on the crafting skill of the character creating them.

Eve has a thriving commodities market, in which any of the above and more can be bought and sold by players to NPC corporations and to other players. Players can place buy orders that can be fulfilled when someone else wants to sell items immediately, or sell orders to they can get a better price for their items. Markets are broken up into regions, inter-regional trade is more profitable than intra-regional trade.

I'm not how they manage it, but there's no long term inflation, although prices do fluxuate all the time. The money sources in the game are bounties from killing NPCs and from selling to NPC corporations, and the money sinks include buying items that only NPC corporations sell, such as skill books, certain blueprints, and others.

_________________
I'm your only friend, I'm not your only friend, but I'm a little glowing friend, but really I'm not actually your friend, but I am.

Please make the system OS agnostic, I run Linux at home, and would love to playtest/play in the system you are talking about.

I will probably not have much time for the next 3-4months, I retire from the Navy and need to get a real job.

Pete

You should take a look at "A tale in the desert" MMO
it is based in Egypt but has a lot of the complicated economic, gathering ideas being discussed here.

http://game1.atitd.com/main.html

It even has genetics for crossbreeding grapes for wine production
it is rather in depth.

No combat in the game at all but almost toally player driven economy.

_________________
San ren cheng hu shi zi xiang mao dun

Alright, well I didn't read through every post, as some got a bit longish and detailed, so if I repeat something someone else may have already brought up, my apologies.

First things first, I really don't think an "MMORPG" would work with Harn. Not that Harn doesn't have the ruleset or the background to flesh out a full world, that it certainly does. The main issue I see is the "RPG" portion of MMORPG. I don't care what you do, what game it is, how you do it, as soon as it becomes "Massively Multiplayer" roleplaying gets tossed right out the window. Harn is such a rich world, it's almost heretical to ignore the RPG aspect. Then you have the whole low magic aspect of Harn that would pretty much wipe out a lot of player classes if you stuck close to the rules.

I'm a long time online gamer, dating back from days of Mud's etc, and we always thought the next logical step was throwing a graphics engine on top and making it awesome, but as the first batch of "MMO's" hit the scene, those hopes of a holy grail game for us were dashed as the worlds quickly became populated by "L33t Ub3rDoodz" and griefers and all other manners of folks that just don't fit the RPG mold.

I've seen a few smaller niche games make a decent attempt at RPG, but it's just not ever going to work IMHO.

Now not to be all doom and gloom, there certainly is a market for smaller independant games that would cater to us "RPG old farts". I know I'd pay more than I'd pay for your normal subscription to have a true Online RPG that had DM's and you could actually Roleplay without someone running by asking what the Yankees score is...

I've seen a bunch of folks attempt MMO's as independants, but it's much more difficult than a regular game. On that point, there is a good game engine relatively cheap in the Torque Game Engine by GarageGames. If you're somewhat handy with C++ or have the time/motivation to get through the relatively steep learning curve, it's a great option to get started with. It's also platform independant