i was thinking about an MORPG (not massive, i'm not foolish enough to start ordering thousands of dollars worth of servers and support techs when i don't even know if the game will be good) in which information was an important resource, just as important as gold pieces or PUSDs or whatever... where both true and false rumors would be generated by NPCs and PCs witnessing (or inventing) events. the rumors would be passed around between NPCs and PCs during their normal interactions (there have been several discussions about this, so for the sake of my point let's just assume that it is worked out already). the reason for this information being an in-game resource is because then (a) the NPCs can generate, spread (or hide, if that is more their interest), and act upon the news, and (b) the "charisma"-type stats (and any special skills/magics that would affect information gathering) of the players actually means something more than prices in a NPC shop. currently MMORPG players can chat by typing whatever they like, and can interact with NPCs through one crummy interface or another, but they have no way of using a high charisma, or a charm spell, or mind reading, to actually get information from another player that doesn't want to give it up. say character A knows (because he witnessed it) that character B stole something from character C. character C happens to have psychic powers (or a high charisma, for persuading people to give up information), and can therefore tell when someone is lying or extract the truth. he could use his powers to question character A, but currently there is no way to force character A to tell the truth (or even indicate to character C that he is lying) even if his powers should allow it. it would be easy to implement this for NPCs, since they must obey the "dice rolls" or whatever, but how to make the players conform? another example would be if there were a guild of mages, who had some secret or other. someone (a grief player? or just an evil character?) could infiltrate the guild, build trust to find the secret, and then (via the global/private message chat features) tell the world and ruin the secret, using an out-of-game-reality method. while it would be okay for the character to do this by walking back to the thieves' guild and spreading the secret with the game mechanisms, that character (and anyone who know where this leaked information came from) would be suceptable to the probings of the really pissed-off wizards. by allowing OOC chat, leaks and cheats are built right into the game. now, i would never dream of taking away chat features; they are a huge part of the fun of online games. but how does one keep it from interfering with the game as it is supposed to be played? chatting can be used both to pass information that should not have been allowed to be passed (or at least should have to be passed with an in-game mechanism), and to circumvent the consequences of having done so in-game. what would be ideal is a system where in-game interaction between PCs and NPCs is identical, and players who would never dream of "cheating" or "twinking" by passing information (remember, it is a valuable thing in this game) in the channels that are really intended for OOC chat. but that will never happen! does anyone have any ideas or thought on this? while i like the idea that people can log into a game they like, and talk about something or other with their friends as they play, it seems to me to be mutually exclusive to having information have any in-game value as well as to having any need for charisma-type stats and other features (why specialize in invisible eavesdropping or psychic powers when you can just ask in the global chat channel?). --- krez (krezisback@aol.com) [edited by - krez on December 20, 2002 6:19:00 PM]

is it that nobody cares, or my complete lack of formatting gives you a headache?

i think i''ll rewrite this and try again...

formatting, capitals, punctuation actually.

If you find a solution, let me know.

It is the old problem in differing between the players and the characters knowledge.

In my pen&paper group we try to hand out no information to the player what the character can''t know.

Your problem is you do not have a small, master controlled group, but an anarchic group of internet kids.

All you could try to do is to keep track of all information a character has and only let them use this kind of information. With passwords to special locations this wouldn''t be that hard, as you know this kind of information will be usefull later.

about rumors or whatever you can''t know if it is a usefull information, and you had to save it just for the case.

Deus Ex has an interesting way around the player getting hold of codes from outside the game rather than finding them in-game - whenever the character gets a code, he memorises it, and then, when he comes to a keypad or computer terminal, if he knows an appropriate code, he uses it automatically rather than the player entering it manually.

If you combine that sort of idea with a more general approach - if a character doesn''t know the way through the labyrinth, then it randomly generates... if he''s been told the way by another character, or is being escorted by a character that has found a way through, then the labyrinth behaves... the only possible problem there is if two people who found different ways through try going through together - maybe in this case both routes could work, or maybe rather than expecting the player to remember the route, on later visits, the player has a personal guideline through the maze...

Actually, the guideline idea could be used to simplify navigation in general - player specifies where he wants to go, and, if the character believably knows a way to get there from here, the guideline comes up... of course, it would only go through known territory (known by exploration or by map/description) and wouldn''t necessarily be the best route (depending how much effort you want to put into route-finding and optimisation - could just be best previously travelled path there ignoring loops). Anyway, to drag this vaguely on topic - giving directions to other characters needn''t be perfectly accurate - following directions rather than memory could easily leave your character in completely the wrong place.

In general, the way to protect in-game information from OOC transmission is to make applying it something the character does automatically, rather than something the player does manually.

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Original post by OmniBrain
It is the old problem in differing between the players and the characters knowledge.

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heh heh, boy did i waste a lot of space trying to explain this... but yeah, that is my dilemma. simply storing what information the character should know won''t help though, i don''t think; they can type anything they like in the OOC chat, or put it on a website. there is no way i can concieve a system that would be able to check if, when a given action is taken, it is based on "allowed" knowledge, or a random guess (which would be valid in the game context, i suppose), or knowledge based on OOC or a website.

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Original post by rmsgrey
In general, the way to protect in-game information from OOC transmission is to make applying it something the character does automatically, rather than something the player does manually.

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yah, this would solve a good deal of the issues, actaully. i like your randomly-generated labyrinth idea, and the suggestion about having the character know the codes/passwords without even telling the player; i don''t think this will be perfect, but it might be acceptable.

I had a similar post on this (which very few people responded to) a while back. I personally think the whole information as a resource thing along with the player\NPC interacting in the same way will work really well, but considering I have the same idea I may be a little biased. I think you should still allow player-player chatting, but the only thing that should matter in game should be information trading, which is the same between everyone.

If information is an object (like physical objects, except easily replicated) and player's can't abritarily create information, then the system works fine. If you have a system where player's can lie (create false info objects), then they can make "true lies" if they find something out through outside means. You can of course flag the information as a lie even though it's true and treat it as a lucky guess or an assumption, making it invalid when player's need real proof.

You also have the situation where player's act on information their character shouldn't know, even though this happens in games all the time in current games and I can't think of a way to avoid it. You could make it so actions with reasons that can be linked to the in game information system are more legal than actions without reason. If a player kills someone because they killed that player's NPC companion, even though the player's character shouldn't know that information, the punishment for the crime could be stronger than if the PC knew about the event.

[edited by - impossible on December 20, 2002 8:39:13 PM]

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Original post by Impossible
If information is an object (like physical objects, except easily replicated) and player's can't abritarily create information, then the system works fine. If you have a system where player's can lie (create false info objects), then they can make "true lies" if they find something out through outside means. You can of course flag the information as a lie even though it's true and treat it as a lucky guess or an assumption, making it invalid when player's need real proof.

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i have to think this out further, since at the moment it is just a general idea that i want to include but am not sure about yet. i was thinking that players could create information (i buried a chest of gold at this location, i locked this door magically and this is the secret word of opening, etc), but any example i think of now could probably be generated as an in-game information object after all. since it might actually be feasible, i now have to work out all the sorts of information that can exist and see if the will break the system.

that's a good idea with flagging all player-created information as a lie automatically... the only way to let players invent information (other than the ones generated through player actions) is to let them type it in, or build it with some sort of interface... so why not flag it as a lie until otherwise proven true?

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You also have the situation where player's act on information their character shouldn't know, even though this happens in games all the time in current games and I can't think of a way to avoid it. You could make it so actions with reasons that can be linked to the in game information system are more legal than actions without reason. If a player kills someone because they killed that player's NPC companion, even though the player's character shouldn't know that information, the punishment for the crime could be stronger than if the PC knew about the event.

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this is another concern of mine, but i think it will work out... if the player kills someone for revenge (where the character shouldn't know revenge is even necessary), it would be foul murder; if the character knows somehow, it could be justified revenge (and therefore not a bad or illegal thing).

the only problem is if someone digs over someone elses buried treasure (or something similar, where there is a small chance that they dug in just the right spot by luck) because they know where it is via OOC chat. but, i think that could be taken care of through random chance, biased with some factors; if the "cheating" player walks to the spot and digs, they won't find it there, but if they are digging up the whole countryside they get a percent chance based on how thorough their search was. or at least something to that effect.

i have to work out more details, now that i have a bit of affirmation that this idea isn't completely impossible.

EDIT: btw, does anyone know who came up with this PUSD (Platinum Uber-Sword of Death) acronym? i have seen it a lot lately here on gamedev.net, and i am just curious. i wonder if it does more damage than the GSGG (Gratuitous Sword of Gratuitous Gratuity)...

[edited by - krez on December 20, 2002 9:03:39 PM]

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Original post by krez
i have to think this out further, since at the moment it is just a general idea that i want to include but am not sure about yet. i was thinking that players could create information (i buried a chest of gold at this location, i locked this door magically and this is the secret word of opening, etc), but any example i think of now could probably be generated as an in-game information object after all. since it might actually be feasible, i now have to work out all the sorts of information that can exist and see if the will break the system.

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The way to do this would simply have the game log any events\actions that the player witnesses or takes place in and store those in the player''s information bank. This could get kind of out of hand, so you''d probably want to group similar actions together, or ignore mundane things and just consider major events. This way all "real" information is kept track of by the game, and all "fake" information is created by the players. The player''s could lie with some kind of graphical interface, selecting character''s, objects, locations, actions and times. A lie\rumor system is pretty difficult to build, but there is a lot of potential for interesting gameplay there.

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the only problem is if someone digs over someone elses buried treasure (or something similar, where there is a small chance that they dug in just the right spot by luck) because they know where it is via OOC chat. but, i think that could be taken care of through random chance, biased with some factors; if the "cheating" player walks to the spot and digs, they won''t find it there, but if they are digging up the whole countryside they get a percent chance based on how thorough their search was. or at least something to that effect.

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This could be a problem, but I personally think that if you tell the location of where you buried something to someone untrustworthy, either through the in game information inface or through OOC chat, you''re just asking for it. This could be a problem with NPC treasure, especially if it''s always in the same location (people could just look this location up in a faq, or ask someone OOC), but if the locations of all items are randomized every game it shouldn''t be much of a problem.

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Original post by Impossible
A lie\rumor system is pretty difficult to build, but there is a lot of potential for interesting gameplay there.

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i figured it would be but i'm not even working on detailed design yet, i'm still trying to decide what is worth including in a general sense

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This could be a problem, but I personally think that if you tell the location of where you buried something to someone untrustworthy, either through the in game information inface or through OOC chat, you're just asking for it.

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i am worried about a situation where a player sees another player bury something in game, and then tells a third player where it was buried OOC... now even if the first player asks the second player, and extracts truthful answers, he will find that that character saw him bury it there, but that he didn't dig it up or tell anyone else where it was... so now his treasure is lost with no way of tracing it ever. then again, i imagine this wouldn't happen often anyway.

[edited by - krez on December 21, 2002 6:12:41 PM]