quote:Original post by sunandshadow has there ever been such a thing as a mmo adventure game? If not, why not?

I dont exactly think there is such a thing. I believe the nearest you could get would be online investigation games : there is a mystery to solve, and anyone is free to join in and figure it out. People can interact, exchange clues and ideas as to wodunnit, etc. But it''s not ''exactly'' an adventure game (a la Sierra games). Play by email RPG and similar games seem to be what you would be looking for. They are usually lo-tech (no graphics), but the absence of restraining graphics allows for great freedom of plot/action. The way I see it, if you wanted to do an MMO adventure game, you''d have to have a different system to the actual online RPGs, and try to use more of the *real* RolePlaying Games mechanisms. You would need some real GM (or Storyteller, whatever you prefer) to animate the world, make events happen, give clues, etc. If you have ever played RPGs, it''s what we call an open (or improvise, although this is not really correct) scenario/campaign : first you need an underlying idea, a theme on which the plot will be threaded, say Corruption. Then you need characters, places, and events. And then you ''simply'' put your players in it, and see where it goes. The trick is to prepare one session at a time, improvising what you havent planned, and to develop the scenario as the players discover it. For example, while the players are trying hard to solve a problem, they come up with weird hypotheses. As the scenarist, if you havent really figured out the answers yet, you could take one of their hypotheses, and develop it. Say, someone is commiting murders, and you have a good idea by now, of who it might be. But you are trying to understand why he commits those crimes. Is the guy a psycho, and what provoked that ? Or is he being manipulated ? What is the link between the victims ? As the scenarist you could decide that the victims belonged all to a sect and where trying to leave it. The psycho is in fact a former member of the sect, with real problems. His guru ''converted'' him and is using him to eliminate people who were becoming dangerous to the sect. Suddenly, out of thin air, you have a whole sect element that joins your scenario... The problem with this sort of thing is that it requires a lot of preparation between sessions. And as to how that could be implemented ??? The best thing is still to have some simple text interface, IMHO. The graphics are more an impediment than anything. Unless you have some way of creating locations and characters ''on the fly''. Mmmh, that''s a thought to develop youpla :-P

Ooh yeah I heard about that one ! That is such a good idea to mix Real Life & Game, reminds me of Killer (by Steve Jackson games).
But you see, the problem is that this sounds very much like an investigation game, because investigation games have the nice advantage that the players are NOT actors as such. They are merely spectators. The intrigue evolves, they get access to it in full or in part, and they have to catch up with the plot. If they don''t, well, too bad.
That''s quite different from an *adventure* game, where the characters should be *actors* of the plot.

Last night I had this idea of a virtual world (well, something like a Everquest world, you know), where people could evolve around the place and interact but there would be no game as such. They could only interact and move around, no stats, no goal. Then there would be people, the game masters, that would simply *rent* locations and actors in the environment to create scenario for players.
I dunno if it''s really clear. What I mean is the environment would be a simple virtual world, not a game as such. But IN the virtual world, people could decide to play Live Action RPG, or whatever the Game Master have in mind.
Mmmh... sounds weird, doesnt it ?

ahw ell :-P