When the idea popped into my head to build an online multiuser role-playing game, my brain quickly divided the problem into two major components, the technical aspects and the world design aspects. I have significant real life experience doing both, at least in some aspects.
For the technical aspects, I have been a software developer for 30 years. I have shipped over 25 products in those years covering a wide gamut of specialties. I have had to work with low memory, low bandwidth machines and machines that really had no limitations as far as the software I was writing could push them. For me, software design and development is a series of constraint problems. This is a deep calling for me and one that I am fortunate to love and get well paid.
For world design aspects, I have significant experience being a player in such worlds, both in pen-and-paper games and single and multiplayer computer games. I have been a world designer for my own pen-and-paper games a couple of times during those years. I’ve met both players and game masters alike that are masters of the craft, and others for whom the game should never be played again.
Thus, when it comes to creating a new world for an online game, my thoughts immediately move towards adapting a pen-and-paper role-playing game. These games have been through extensive play testing, and in some cases, millions of people play them. There are plentiful resources both in book form and in online databases. Perfect!
Well, not quite. One of the key components that works for a pen-and-paper game is that the rules are interpreted by a game master and that game master can, at any moment, apply intuition, cunning or humanity to any given situation and make it work for the players. This can manifest in making an encounter a little easier if it looks like the players might die, to customizing the treasure as to reward the player of the hour.
The ability to inject creativity in real time is what cannot be so easily replicated by ones and zeros and a stream of computer code. This is part of the soul of a world designed by a person, run by a person and played by people that person is often familiar with.
In this day and age where MMORPG’s are common place with millions and millions of players (more than pen-and-paper games) are experiencing virtual worlds, it turns out that the most successful ones are those not generated from pen-and-paper games, or even those generated from canon based on books or movies, but those game that were specifically designed originally for the computer environment.
In parallel to the initial code development, I will start the world development. There are plenty of resources out there. I will tag this differently as to permit myself and others the ability to track the progress of the World Design.
