As always, wish I had more time to participate in this discussion...
Also as always, I'm inclined to overlay my tabletop-RPG views on
this. (Perhaps Lurker Par has some thoughts about how all this plays
out in existing MUDs, such as the groundbreaking work he and his
company are doing now at http://www.skotos.net -- I envision this
kind of thing eventually being a back-end to interactive stories of
the type we're talking about, with a 3D graphics display system in
place of text descriptions -- there are a lot of ways in which the
problems being solved are different in these two cases, but also, I
think, a lot of similarities.) In most RPGs, the GM does not --
cannot -- just set a clockwork universe into motion and step back,
because someone has to play the part of Len's devils and angels --
non-player characters, inanimate objects, all the incidents and
accidents that interfere with or promote character goals.
[Um, it's come to my attention recently that many people these days
use the term "RPG" to refer to video games in which you go through a
sequence of adventures killing everything in your path. I suppose
this is a reasonable usage -- until a recent review in Strange
Horizons I had no idea that these games had true storylines, and I'm
still a bit mystified as to how that works -- but it's not how I use
the term; I'm talking about traditional Dungeons & Dragons-style
roleplaying games, where everything takes place in the players' and
GM's imaginations, perhaps aided by pencils and paper and dice.]
But there are a lot of different GMing philosophies -- and a lot of
different tricks. Some GMs try to come as close to the clockwork
universe as possible: they create a detailed world, they create vast
hordes of NPCs, and then they do their best to play those NPCs as if
they were real people with real goals. Other GMs are trickier,
manipulating things from behind the scenes to ensure that things go
the way they want, changing motivations and even facts on the fly as
long as they're not already known to the player characters. (Think
Schrodinger's Cat: if the PCs don't know something, that thing can
remain undecided, in limbo, until the PCs collapse the state vector
by determining the single true answer.)
My usual example -- no time to see if I've said this before here,
apologies if I'm repeating myself -- is when the PCs are faced with
three doors, and they have to choose one. The trickster/interfering
GM can put the adventure behind whichever door the PCs choose --
whereas the clockwork-universe GM has to build three adventures, one
for each door.
I think there's room for both styles; as long as the players don't
catch you changing things behind the scenes, as long as they can
maintain suspension of disbelief, it doesn't matter whether the
buildings are all facades. (Think that old Star Trek episode, the
gunfight at the OK Corral, with the movie-set-style building
fronts...)
The clockwork universe makes more sense in a computer-based story in
some ways, because you don't need a human's intervention to keep it
running. On the other hand, in my experience it's less likely to
result in a dramatically satisfying story than a universe with a
hands-on God who can push things into the paths of best narrative.
So perhaps a modification of the devils and angels approach: a
puppetmaster God (an AI if possible, but maybe it would have to be
one or more humans in the near term) who can push the various
entities in the world in various ways. Nudge them in the right
direction when they falter, provide rescues from frustrating dead
ends if they spend a certain amount of time pounding heads against a
wall.
Note that MUSHes often have storylines planned by a group of players
who more or less run the game -- a multi-headed God, who can more
effectively deal with the multitude of players interacting. I gather
that Live-Action RPGS (LARPs) also run this way.
And speaking of running, must run.
--jed
Jed Hartman
Fiction Editor
Strange Horizons
http://www.strangehorizons.com/
