Online Worlds Roundtable #7, Part One

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Written by BuckGB on August 6th, 2003

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If I think back to why I like this space, it started in the D&D days, rolling up a character, socializing with my friends, and going on an adventure or campaign to become a hero. It was when getting to the end of the adventure and achieving our goals were the primary drivers of our fun, not levelling. I don't think anyone's idea of fun in D&D is levelling your character up against the monster manual, but this is pretty much what the current MMPs offer in slightly more complex worlds.

Bringing that gameplay and purpose to a wide-open public sandbox is extremely difficult. There are just too many people doing too many things all of the time everywhere. Instead of building adventures and campaigns for people to play together, we focus more on developing game systems that govern advancement and exploitation of the levelling treadmill. We develop content that is sized different, skinned different, and has different hit points, but for the most part is that same little rat or snake you killed at the beginning of the game. Sounds like fun... right? Right?

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