Re: Broken Lands - DungeonWorld Free Play

From: madcentral@aol.com (MadCentral)

Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2001 10:49:42 +0000

>>Commercially, I doubt it will hurt you much to limit your users to
80-90% of the population. <<

Commercially it wont hurt me at all, because the game is free! <grin>

>> It seems so unnecessary, though.  Why don't you just have a form with 45
fields for the 15 orders that submits them
all directly, instead of reformatting them into a single text string?<<

There really is a good reason for this.  Its because the amount of characters
you can control is dynamic.  You might end up writing orders for fifty
characters (unlikely, but possible).

>>Then you wouldn't need any scripting at all.<<

My original experiments with the online order entry program were exactly as you
describe.  For various complicated reasons it didn't work.  The dynamic
characters is one major factor, but even with a giant form with fields for
loads of possible characters there are still problems because of the format the
game needs the order.  With this, and not wanting to load a giant form with
hundreds of fields, I thought the dynamic way Id written it was quite a good
solution.

>>It seems pretty slow to me.  Just an opinion.<<

Well, if everybody agrees, we'll speed it up later.  I would add, though, that
we already run several commercial 7-day modules and most players struggle to
keep up.  Perhaps, once you've played a while, you'll see why.  Or maybe you
Broken Lands guys will be much faster than everybody else, in which case we'll
speed it up to whatever speed you think is cool.

Certainly, compared to an onlive live game, or a mud, its slow.  But its a PBM
and weekly turns are, generally, quite fast for a PBM.  Still, if you all want
daily turns later, it can be done.  I've based the weekly turnaround on what
the player base of existing games seem to be want and be able to manage, but
its all flexible.

>>Perhaps making it too fast would make it too attractive an alternative
to your commercial games.<<

I dont think so, really.  The decision was based more on what players seem able
to manage.  I'll speed it up, if it looks like that'll be better.

>>  But, if you had the capability to run at any pace, and if it requires
minimal GM intervention to run, you could
consider an alternative commercial game with a flat-rate model (e.g.,
$5-10/month) instead of per-turn pricing.<<

I've considered a flat rate game before and the idea has some merit.  If people
seem to want to play a fast module at a flat rate then I'll certainly make one.
 Broken Lands will remain free, however, because I said it would when I set it
up.

The main commercial game, which runs fortnightly, still has a great many things
which the Broken Lands doesn't have, not least of which 'complex large-scale
player interaction', guilds, politics and the like'.  I don't expect it to
suffer at the hands of Broken Lands, no matter how fast we run it.  Indeed,
most commercial players dont *want* to play any faster in DW.

Don't worry... if you guys decide you want BL fast, you'll *get* BL fast.

Steve T.
-Madhouse UK

References

Re: Broken Lands - DungeonWorld Free Play
David desJardins <desj@math.berkeley.edu>
Tue, 17 Apr 2001 22:13:35 +0000