~~@Pollution:~~
> I'm not really clear on what our collective take is on keeping things
>
> 1) in character, game related, immersive
>
> or
>
> 2) out of character
>
> as an overall game philosophy.
>
> On one hand we have separate channels and rules to enforce their use. But the separation really seems to stop there. Real world and virtual world lines overlap in just about every other area. A few examples:
> * Ability to see actual numerical damage of hits.
>
> * No in game explanation at all for some events, such as boosts. Boost announcements are clearly ooc.
>
> * Quests from the Mayor and the King are obviously senseless busy work to earn rewards. I just recently saw a quest that required me to kill the King Scarab, then rescue him twice. Interesting question. My overall answer lies in between complete role-play and a mishmash of real world/in game, slightly more to the roleplay side.
To explain a bit further, I believe that each character should have for themselves at least a short character history and some set of values (or lack thereof) that they uphold at least most of the time. This is because in playing previous RPGs, I liked to give my char some sort of motivation. I definitely think some RP is good, but the thing is, you can't really force people to RP; the best you can do is encourage it by giving players some tools to define who they are as a character (titles, descriptions are a start - restrings can also be good although they can also definitely work against you in keeping in-char stuff in-char).
As to the list you provided, remember that numerical damage can only be turned on by immortals and by players on the test port for testing purposes only (non-imms on the main port can't see them). Boost messages are OOC, maybe they really do detract from the in-char aspect of things.
The quests are obviously lame (what do you expect, the code was derived from Vassago's snippet 8)) but I definitely hope to, as soon as I have the chance, replace them with both tokenized quests and automatically assigned, but more logical quests created by immortals or even players. Obviously this would take a lot of work, but it would make questing a lot more interesting and a more rewarding experience than just doing some busywork.
> There's a disconnect somewhere. Since the background story is being developed, I assume there is at least some desire to create immersion. I think some major game dynamics work strongly against it though, as things stand. You are right in that regard, and I'm willing to work to make changes to give playing the game (not being an imm, there is a difference) a more immersive effect. Questing and levelling obviously need to be improved, as do other things. I believe once the storyline is finished we will at least have some sort of starting place.
> I'm pretty impartial as to the direction the mud ultimately takes, the things that draw me to muds are gameplay and social aspects, not roleplay, so for players like me there is less need for story or immersion. Obviously there are a lot of people on the other side though. The important thing is consistency, so a little clarity in the mud's philosophy about in game/out of game issues could guide the hands of future coding and building. I agree with you to some extent, many people enjoy RP whereas others don't care too much about it. I'm not too extreme into RP, I don't think we all have to be walking around speaking Olde English to have a feel of a seperate virtual world, but we should have seperate areas to discuss OOC stuff as well as more in-game explanations for events like you mentioned.
The main reason I would like to develop immersion is to prevent this game from developing into a battle.net-like environment full of teenagers calling each other Ch34p j00s. In the future, with tokens, better scripting, better engines for things like leveling and questing and most importantly an overall storyline I believe we can go a long way to making sentience a real "world of our own".
