Community Blog Spotlight: Dungeon Masters, Anyone?
Every Week, Community Manager Laura Genender takes a look at one or more of the entries being created in our MMORPG.com blogs. This week, she looks at Jesad's blog entry about the Dungeon master's role in pen and paper gaming and how that relates to MMORPGs.
If you asked the average gamer to tell you what the root of the MMORPG genre is, you'd probably get varied answers. Some would claim EverQuest started it all - some Ultima Online, some Lineage I. Many would cite the MUDs that brought roleplayers to the virtual world. Heck, some of the new kids would proudly cite World of Warcraft.
To many though, the MMO genre began offline, without computers, in the pen and pencil world of Dungeons and Dragons. This week, user Jesad's blog, "In My Understanding" asks a question of the genre and its patrons: What ever happened to the Dungeon Master?
"The other day I was running through a cave with a friend of mine," the blog starts," and he said something to me that made me think. He said, 'Man! If I could only have imagined caves looking like this back when I played paper and pencil D&D... I probably would have been a lot better at those games."
"He was right, of course. The MMO has made leaps and bounds toward replacing the old-fashioned requirements of imagination, social interaction, and a basic understanding of the rules with beautiful landscapes, artificial intelligence, and easy to play characters. I wondered to myself then, 'Why do I not find these games nearly as fun to play as I used to find paper and pencil D&D to play?'...Why? You ask? 'Because the DM sucked!' that's why."
In effect, he argues, the MMO world's capabilities act as the DM in our virtual tabletop games. They fulfill the DM's responsibilities, including: explaining the surroundings to the players, providing the players with encounters, running the game within the parameters of the rule-set as non-obtrusively as possible and keeping the story interesting and moving forward.
The game's graphics, sound, animations, etc explain the player's surroundings quite well. Random monsters sprinkled all over the game worlds provide us with encounters, and even automatically roll the dice for us - running the game non-obtrusively and efficiently.
But who keeps the story moving forward? According to jesad, whose opinion here I agree with, the game places that in the player's hands - it's our responsibility to find quests, to pursue monsters or XP, to explore dungeons. NPCs don't run up to us and ask us to find their daughters - they stand patiently in front of their shop, holding an exclamation point above their head.
Now, I both agree and disagree with jesad on his following statement. "This leaves one person or group of persons in charge of making the game fun for those who can not make it fun for themselves. Who is this poor soul you ask that has all this responsibility heaped on them? You guessed it, it's the guild leader."
I am the co-leader of an 80 player guild in EverQuest. We call it herding cats sometimes. We are CONSTANTLY encouraging people to show up for raids and events, constantly encouraging people to progress their character, to get their zone keys or flags, to bring a certain potion or gem to a certain raid event. Yes, we are, in essence, a DM's little helpers, but I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing.
No one saddled me with a guild and made me lead it. I both accepted and welcomed the opportunity, and I would not have it otherwise. There's no responsibility heaped on me; I heaped it all on myself.
If anyone is hurt by this model, I think it's the game publishers. "We have come full circle back to the same old game breaker which is, either the DM sucks or they don't," jesad continues. "In cases where the DM or now the GL is concerned the task is to find a way to keep guild members inspired and moving forward without being too...diligent and scaring half the membership away." In effect, the publishers are handing me and my co-leader the keys to 80 people's subscriptions. If we don't provide these 80 people with a good time, they'll either find a new guild (best case) or a new game (worst case, for the publisher).
And a lot of guilds, I believe, do this wrong. As jesad pointed out, being overpowering can scare users away. But if a player wants to see the high end content, they have to join a raiding guild - and these normally have mandatory attendance, mandatory character progression routes, etc. How long can you let someone else dictate your character before it's no longer fun?
This is another place where I think MMOs-as-DMs fail - as advanced as our graphics and technology are getting, they're still hugely primitive when faced off against a human-run event. When you play D&D, you can do anything - I remember playing a campaign where two jokers bought parchment, crapped in it, and set it on fire on an inn stoop. Did this do anything for the game progression? No. Could they do it? Did it affect the game world in a lasting way? Yes, yes it did. In D&D you could do anything, and the DM could account for it in any way they pleased. You could attack gazebos, use anything as a weapon, come up with crazy but brilliant plans. MMOs don't let you do that.
Check out the rest of Jesad's blog entries at http://mmorpg.com/blogs/jesad.
The only possible way for the observation he made to come to be is in the all too familiar idea of guilds derived from WoW. It's all about pragmatism (some might say elitism, but nothing about WoW seems elite to me), and guilds are just created in order to reach content you otherwise couldnt see, run like a sweatshop or treadmill, by, yes, the guild leader. People seem to willingly place their fate in his hands too, so i'm not blaming the guild leaders alone, i am blaming those people too.
Yet i can hardly wipe out an entire kind of people, or change anyones mindset by force.
Therefore i will merely say that while i've also held leadership positions in guilds (long before WoW mind you), i'm not looking for people to herd. I don't need people i can manipulate, or maybe even i can lead. What i want is people i can inspire. They should be very capable and inclined to think and act on their own, and be what jesad seems to want guild leaders to be on their own already.
Having some of the same background (pen&paper RPGs), I can do nothing but agree with this.
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I've played pen&paper RPGs for approx 15 years back in the day, DMing most of the time. (and, yes !! I did suck
Since then, I've been playing a lot of MMORPGs, with WoW, Vanguard and EVE online beeing the latest. (Tried 8-10 others too.)
I co-lead a guild in WoW with a bit above 100 accounts. (used to be around 250 pre BC.)
So I can very much relate to what you are talking about.
The challenge with guildleading, is that there are so many different ppl from all walks of life, with as many agendas.
(Yes, we all want to play and have fun, but there are as many definitions of "fun" in the game as there are players.)
So we have tried to cater for a broad range of player-types, and I feel we've been succesfull to some extent. After 3 guild-splits, we're still alive and kicking as a guild, more than 2 years after we started on EU-Hellscream server. We're now a very tight "family", with regular rl gatherings.
Without us (the GMs) to "drive" things forward, I think a lot of players would have quit the game a long time ago.
The most difficult part of designing a MMORPG, is allowing the players to have a lasting impact on the world, without letting it spiral off into chaos. A few games have tried in various areas to allow some of this. ( Horizons had it's GM controlled / triggered events, and the ability to buy land and design & build houses (guild-effort). Vanguard has it's Diplomacy system, which can alter some game-settings for a short time.) So what to do ?
One way could be to bring the GM back into the game, but for WoW with approx 9 million accounts, this is simply not possible.
So, what is the only viable option left ? Yes, let players take on some of the GMs tasks !!!
How much more challenging wouldn't it be, if you had a living, breathing, thinking adversary that you had to overcome on your guild-raids or regular dungeon-crawls (groups) ?
And a fresh thing would be to allow some degree of player impact on the world. (The players of the realm drive the story forward to some extent.) This would require a GM for each realm tho' to make sure one "side" didn't get too powerful too fast.
Also, the ability for a guild to do things together (besides raiding, questing & talking), would also be a huge leap in the right direction.
Guild-events & guild-efforts bond the players together, and gives the game additional "fun".
Oh well, enough of this unstructured ranting.
Pappy out.
I agree with the final part of the article, about the MMO-DM not being able to adjust to the players actions. In a paper and pencil game, a good DM or GM or storyteller or referee will creat a framework and the players will fill in thier parts. Then the DM will respond or react to the players actions. Unfortunately MMO devs have yet to find a way to replicate this. When you play an MMO you choice of how to respond to an NPC is limited, they say something then you choose a response then they have a response or quest. Thus is the way of computer gaming, everything is scripted. The MMO that can come up with an AI that allows for more variety of NPC actions will be the next great MMO. The MMO that has active and realistic NPCs and enviroment will never get old because it will always be changing.
(The game has fresh new twists on a variety of traditional MMO concepts, but is lacking in quite a few areas.
I doubt there will be an AI for NPCs that gives us the realism we want in the foreseeable future. (famous last words...I know... but for the next 5-10 years at least. AI programming is darn hard.)
I think the solution would be to bring in players "on the other side of the table" !!!
So, the next great MMO will be the one that manages to have real thinking beeings on the "other" side, providing players with fresh challenges all the time. (In WoW-raiding now, it's a matter of learning the scripted events, and make a set strategy to overcome it. Yes, it's challenging in it self, but quickly becomes another routine-task that you "have" to do.
)
If instead you didn't have a clue about what the lord of the Molten Core and his minions (as an example) would throw at you, and how they would behave when you and your companions entered his lair... Now that's a challenge !!!
-Pappy-
Another advantage of the pen & paper rpg's was flexibility. If the players were advancing too slowly, I'd give out extra XP rewards or make up a quick side-storyline that really had nothing to do with the overall story. I could also "fudge" rolls if the situation warranted, don't want a creature's lucky roll of 20 to wipe out the main tank at an inopportune moment.
I wasn't the best or worst of DM's, I consider myself average. The best DM I ever played with was a college english professor, now he really knew how to do storytelling!
As far as the MMOG's go it's now a mix of developer making the rules and hoping there is enough social interaction to keep it going. Many people may not like the game they play, but they enjoy the "company" of their guildies. As I've said before, the players make the game fun not the developer.
I find this whole concept to be fascinating, because it is so alien to my experience.
I have played in over a dozen MMORPGs over the past seven years, log in to three different games now on a weekly basis, and not once has any guild been a major part of my gameplay. I have a level 70 fury in EQ2, raid from time to time, and not once with my own guild (we seem to be incapable of making a competent group, let alone raid, if our guild leader is involved). My guild is for chatting and resource sharing, not raiding. I make friends in other guilds, join pick up groups, etc. I play around 20 hours a week on a slow week, and I have a great time overall.
Am I doing something wrong?
"...attack gazebos..."
Err, do you know a mutual friend of ours that played in Oregon?
So far I only know of one gamer that ever attacked a gazebo.
It will be take a long time for any MMO to match the real excitement of playing a Pen and Paper role playing game with a good Dungeon Master. A good DM would make a big difference in how the players would enjoy the game. This was why I usually took that role for more than 10 years starting in the early 80's playing AD&D.
My storytelling skills were not the best but I could always find something that would maintain the interest of the group and keep them coming back for more. What kept them coming back was setting a clear goal for the group to acheive and giving them choices as to how they will acheive it. The choices that are made along the way to reach the goal is what sets an MMO apart from a human DM moderated game. I think certain elements of choice can be implemented into the quest structure of an MMO.
Yes, some freedom as to how you would complete a quest would be good.
Also, one thing that DDO managed to do (at least partialy), was to have quests with more "puzzle"-elements in it.
You would actually have to use your mind. (unless you're chicken and just look up the solution on the webby from someone that has done it previously.)
The current quest-system, as it stands in most MMOs now, is utterly boring.
"Go there and kill XX of that mob, and YY of that mob, and return."
"Her , go take this package to XX and report back." (a run to a NPC with a big flashing arrow pointing at him, saying "It this guy you wanna talk to silly!!!")
"Go scout that area, and report back"
"Collect XX of that item, and YY of another item,"
ALAS, how boring in the long run !!!
The addition of some nice story-line to wrap a quest(line) in, helps a bit, but only so much.
If the developers could instead spin further on what they started in DDO, and give us some mind-boggling quests !!!
(preferably with some built-in variation, so you couldn't just look it up on the webby.)
And, why not add some unique quests into the world too. (quests that only 1 person or group could complete).
When you got the quest, you would be kinda "lost" as to where to start, and you would have to do some serious research and thinking just to advance the quest a tiny bit. (you would actually have to read all the background info that's available to you in the game, to have a chance at advancing the quest-line at all.) The reward would have to be nice. And there should be a number of such quests "open" at all times in the game, and some kind of "spread the word" when one person / group had succeeded in completing such a quest-chain. (And a new unique quest-line should be added to the world.)
I know this probably require some GM work to maintain, but I guess a lot of the work could be made by the developers too, and the GMs would just have to activate these quests.
Oh well...I'm ranting...
Pappy out.
One of the few good articles I've seen here at MMORPG.
I think they could program a sort of virtual DM, or at least enough smoke and mirrors to create the illusion of a DM... but why bother when people are willing to play games with no plot?
Yeah, you kinda can do "almost" what you want with 9 million subscribers
But, eventually some MMO will come along that has some of this as it's features, and if ppl discover that they can have more fun in that game... then the "leaking" will start. (Those unwilling to change will loose in the end.)
The trick for most MMO developers nowadays is to launch a good game that survives the first 6 months or so.
(get a big enough player-base to keep investing in the game...improving it over time.)
Quite a few publishers have had to take their game offline during the last few years, as not many games live up to the expectations.
(Auto Assault is the last of many to close down under a year after initiation.)
I guess the major thing they do wrong, is to release a game too early. (before it's really finished and tuned.)
Thus, players are in effect beta-testing and stress-testing a game that ain't really finished when it is released.
*sigh* when will they ever learn...
I'm looking forward to Age of Conan... hopefully FunCom will stay in there for the time it takes to make it a finished product before releasing. *fingers crossed*
-Pappy-
I was at one time a veteran D&D player and have experienced some wonderful dungeon masters. Nothing against AI, but software and computers are not up to the job of replacing a good dungeon master, not even close.
I am sure that this will change, sometime in the future, once someone has a computer that can acutally think for itself, but the AI for such a program will require a lot more memory and horsepower available from computers available to us in the near future.
While I didn't take part in pen and paper (could of just never did) I agree basically with the article. In DDO there is always someone playing helper in raids (and these are only 12 player functions) but I disagree with the path mmo's have taken with the eventual goal of gaming being the raid. You shouldn't need keys, special potions ect just to go on a larger scale operation. It's the lack of a DM and it's replacement (the client for the mmo) that is at fault here. Players shouldn't need a bag ful of items just to take part. Only the player responsible for organizing the raid should need to have those items.
But mmo's in general are flawed from the beginning. They lack creativity and tend to fall back on what came before partly because of player expectations and partly due to the emphasis on making money and the lack of talented folks to design mmo's. This could be corrected in the future but it's going to take someone with a vision and the money to back it up. One feature desperately needed is the DM role controlled by one player dedicated to the premise of creating an interesting quest with the tools to make it happen. Until that happens all questing, adventuring and ect will be are a series of hoops for the rodents in the maze to jump through. And it doesn't even take a brain dead mouse to do it.
I think the gazebo attack is in reference to a Knights of the Dinner Table comic strip... [I believe you can find it by searching KotDT or Kenser Co]
While I have no use for guilds, she is spot on about MMOs lacking the flexibility of a RL DM [or GM, if you prefer]. I really think that "the Next Big Thing" will be MMOs that hire people to GM - not in a rules enforcement position, but to run aspects of the game for the players. They could spawn MOBs that more intelligently interact - not just fight - with the players. A few problems would exist: GM corruption, advancing friends over other players for example; having enough GMs, ratio would have to be 1:10 or less;...
I could see a "game" that provides the basic world and a GMs toolset that then hosts games - perhaps giving free time for GMs, maybe based on a rating, in exchange for their services... Food for thought.
PS - DM for 30 years :)