Literary Role-Play in Cyberspace

Multi-user dungeons are giving birth to a sophisticated new form of role-playing, where expressive language counts for more than combat skill. Phil Goetz explores the world of cyberspace werewolves.

Back in Inter*action #1, I wrote what I thought was a comprehensive article on interactive fiction and computers. Although I touched on the subject of MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons) in my article, I implied that they were little more than multi-player versions of Zork.

So imagine my confusion when I logged into GarouMUSH for the first time. The game really has only two verbs: 'look' and 'pose . No 'attack', 'climb', 'drink', 'open', 'swim' or any of the other commands that one gets used to on more conventional text adventure games. In a conventional MUD. if you wanted to drink the water in Half Moon Pool, Pool, you would type:

drink pool

pose kneels on the mossy banks of the pool, scoops some of the cold water into his hands, and drinks.

What Makes the Difference

If you log into GarouMUSH, you will find distinct characters, moving about between the city and the forest purposefully: talking over recent events in St Claire or at the Caern, making friends and enemies, and living their lives. On most MUCKs, MUSHes, and MOOs even one such as LambdaMOO and FurryMUCK where people take the trouble to describe their characters and their homes you find people dropping in and out of character, sometimes making virtual plays at each other by basically just chatting. What makes the difference? I believe there are several reasons for GarouMUSH's success.

1: The simplest and most important new idea in GarouMUSH is that it distinguishes between IC (in character) and OOC (out of character) play. If you, the player, want to speak to another player, you use the command 'page':

page Anpwhotep=Will you be on tomorrow night?

Blinks-at-Fire pages: Will you be on tomorrow night?

Player characters are not allowed to make use of information gained OOC. If your character doesn't understand English, you may not respond to things said in English. If you check players' locations and see that a friend is alone in the Umbra with two dangerous Black Spiral Dancers, you may not rush to help without an IC excuse for wandering through that part of the world. And when it's time to go, you don't just disappear as if Scotty had beamed you up; you make some IC excuse for leaving or going to sleep.

2: The MUSH is set in a very well developed game-world, closely based on White Wolf's game Werewolf: The Apocalypse and set in the fictional city of St Claire which has been carefully planned by the creators of the MUSH. The werewolves, or Garou, have a cosmology; they have hierarchies at the levels of the tribe, the sept (like a town), and the pack; a system of challenges describing how these hierarchies change, and how to govern themselves. Each of the fourteen Garou tribes have stereotypical attitudes and modes of behaviour. GarouMUSH de-emphasises game mechanics, but if you need them, the Werewolf manual has guidelines for dealing with everything from being trapped underwater to jumping off a cliff.

3: Before a new player joins the game, their character has to be approved by the 'wizzes'-the people who administer the game. This helps at least three ways. First, it defuses arguments ('A wolf can't be an explosives expert!'). Wiz approval gives characters a stamp of authority; presumably if a character did not make sense or was too powerful, no wiz would approve it. The balance of power between characters is especially important in MUSHes, where most role-play is spontaneous, because your adversary is more likely to be another player than an NPC gauged to your level. Second, it keeps the cast of characters balanced (GarouMUSH gets a disroportionate number of applicants wanting to play angst-ridden adolescent characters!) and prevents new characters from interfering with major plotlines. Third, it keeps the 'wrong element' out. People who aren't willing to take the time to write up a good character, who are mainly interested in killing, or who don't write well, would clutter up the MUSH.

A central gathering place is crucial to a MUSH. Spontaneous role-play is much more likely when you have a reasonably large number of characters in one place. On GarouMUSH, the Caern is the centre of Garou life. It is a large, circular grassy area consisting of nine locations, from any one of which you can see what people are doing in the others. It's better than a park or bar, because people can meet there any time of day or night, and because there aren't as many restrictions on accepted behaviour and topics of conversations in a caern.

Three elements, specific to Werewolf strike me as the key to the game's success. First, the characters have a common cause (to defend Gaia and fight the Wyrm) which unites them all in some way. Second, they can barely stand each other. As in any religion, different sects disagree on their purpose and methods. Thirdly, there is a constant undercurrent of violence and anger running through the Garou community. The strict dominance hierarchy and the Old West-style respect for violence as final arbiter creates constant tension. On one hand, this causes frustration an anger, and tempts the players to create combat monsters. On the other, it encourages people to stay in character, and it's a great source of stories. If you can't resist making a joke at the expense of the wrong person, you will pay the price.

The creators of GarouMUSH went further to create the kind of role-playing environment they wanted. They recruited a core group of about thirty players, by invitation, and took a few months of practice role-play to iron out difficulties before opening it to the public. The theory was that, before letting in J. Random User, the MUSH would already have a role-playing standard with momentum behind it. Players who didn't like that kind of role-playing would leave through social pressure before they could form a stable clique. Newcomers who liked what they saw could take the core players as role models, and eventually become high-calibre players themselves.

MUSHing Along With Your Faceless Friends

Given these factors, some good players, and luck, you can find rewarding role-playing in a MUSH. But you aren't merely playing a tabletop game via e-mail or IRC (inter-relay chat). The resulting style of play is quite different from an ordinary role-playing session - even if you ran that session without dice and communicated only via written notes.

The first difference is that, most of the time, no one is in charge. It up to players to find something to do. What they find usually isn't a heroic quest, but character interaction - visit someone's pups, ask if they think the rumours about the pack-leader are true, teach a wolf-born werewolf how to use a telephone. It may take characters longer to show their true colours, but they end up more fully developed. Alex of GarouMUSH says, 'This place is fun because you can play your character in more depth. Everyday stuff. Real life games are more involved with major highlights of a character's life. Not the average days.'

Because there is no referee, the purpose of players changes. Instead of taking what the referee gives them and choosing an optimal respon, they see themselves as co-authors, with a more global concern not just for their character, but for the entire story.

Perhaps the most important difference is the strange social environment. The oddities of of MUSH oot-of-character social life would fill an entire article, but here is the central point: you never see the faces of the people you talk to. This can be an advantage. Therru says, 'I am much more free to become my character. No one can see what I actually look like - gender, age, appearance, and demeanour are all incredibly flexible. Though in theory this is possible in face-to-face role-playing as well, it is much more difficult to pull off' But intonation and body language are lost over the net. It's hard to know when you've offended someone, and harder to know when you've been forgiven. Players have to go to great lengths to convey their feelings in text. For example:

Face-to-face Player: [Glares at another player, and speaks in a slow, Clint Eastwood rasp]: 'You oughtn't have come.'
MUSH Player: Takes-the-Pipe walks stiffly towards Micah, tail raised. He narrows his eyes and snarls, ~You should not have come.~

Literary Role-Play?

When you sit down at the keyboard, something happens. Maybe it's the need to convey that extra-textual information, maybe it's vanity, but suddenly ordinary telegraphic communication just isn't good enough. Whatever you type is going to zoom across the world, onto others' screens, and into their permanent log files.

So you sit there, watching the cursor blink while you figure out what to say, and how to say it. You type a line, but before you press return, the urge to edit takes over. And before you know it, you're not just playing, you're writing. The resulting role-play is a lot slower - it may take as much as five times as long as a conventional game - but it has a descriptive depth rarely found in face-to-face play. Here's a verbatim transcript of session I played in.

Umbra Farmyard
This place is a nightmarish rendition of its real world counterpart, hemmed in dosely on three sides by the dark, glowering woods. A spirit's corpse - the spirit of a once-happy fannhouse? - lies mouldering in the centre of the yard. The barn is a shadowy thing, vague and indistinct, harbouring its own dark thoughts in lightless, windows and vast haylofts that are much too big for the building's physical limitations. And just inside the forest's edge the trees stand jealous guard over the neatly stacked corpses of their fallen, a woodpile in the real world. To the west, Weaverspiders tend to the fields, quietly arranging nature's growth into predictable rows even after the harvest is in. Domestic animal spirits seem almost plastered over, quietly accepting their own regimentation in the provision of food for lazy homids. The woods are deepest and darkest to the North-east.

Su stops to make certain everyone's all right in the dark farmyard. Her voice is hushed by the gloom. 'Let us move into the forest. It too is dark, but not as much so.' She turns to move into the forest, and her huge light wings reflect the moonlight. She flutters them slightly to fold them out of the way.
Therru stares at Su's wings.
Su looks down at the stares, having fogotten as usual that her ghostly, weightless wings are there until she needs them.
Therru blinks and drops her gaze hastily.

You tread carefully into the Umbral forest.
Umbral Forest
Despite the Realm's limitations on this forest - in the 'real world' it is perhaps a square mile in total area - it extends for dozens of miles in all directions. It's deep and dark, befitting such a spiritual enigma. A single gigantic oak tree dominates the centre of this area, as its physical counterpart does in the Realm. Gnarled and weather-beaten, this tree has seen countless dozens of human generations come and go.
Sepdet walks over to the great oak tree and kneels and presses her cheek against it. 'Hey there.'
Rholeen rubs at her arns, and looks around, seeming to reassure herself that all this is real.
Su glances up at Sepdet. 'Would you continue here? There is yet more patrolling to be done, and this night is good for it.'
Sepdet nods serenely. 'I will, sister. Walk well.'
Su flickers instantly into Crinos.
You paged Sepdet with 'Does the tree respond?'
The tree rustles softly on the umbral breezes, a sound that is not speech but is not random. Amusement, perhaps, or patience, at the little fast-living creatures that scuttle among its roots.
Su, looking quite regal now despite her ragged fur, lays a companionable hand on one shoulder of each cub. Then she backs away a step, turns and in one fluid motion springs upward.
Therru watches Su fly away.
Blinks flinches on seeing the huge tree respond to Sepdet's touch, and wraps his arms about himself as if he is suddenly cold.
Su soars silently to the south, banking once to start her surveillance of Gauntlet's territory.
Sepdet smiles delightedly. She steals a wide-eyed glance at Rholeen. 'Do you hear? It's all right, Blinks, it's just a Tree.'
Therru tears her eyes from Su's vanishing form and limps over to investigate the tree.
Blinks says, 'I know. But spirits... dangerous. Friendly spirits especially.'
Rholeen nods slightly, 'Maybe. It almost sounds like something trying to say something. It's not my imagination, is it?'
Therru sits down abruptly, looking at Blinks with a decidedly bewildered expression.
Sepdet nods slowly, watching Rholeen's reaction. 'It's saying something. In different words.' She sighs and shakes her head at Blinks.
Blinks stamps his feet and glances around the dark woods uneasily.

Rholeen cocks her head to the side, and tries to make sense of it. Oddly enough the harder she tries to concentrate on meaning, the less she seems to understand it.

On a MUSH, you can't choose one viewpoint character. You end up with the next best thing: a kind of restricted omniscience. You hear some of what every character is thinking, scratching the surfaces of their thoughts little more deeply than mere body language.

Sepdet gestures gently. 'Come. Follow. There are places where you can breathe easy, and I want you to show you those first.' She touches the tree and keeps her hand there for a moment, then steps away and begins to thread an easy slow path in the shadowed forest.
Blinks hurries to catch up with Sepdet, clearly not wanting to be left behind.
Therru follows Sepdet, loping happily though the spirit world.
Rholeen nods, and follows, her bare feet making slight rustling sounds on the forest floor.
Sepdet bears southward, taking a quick deer path that traces past ancient evereens and small circles of shadow, a wide open space ringed with massive redwoods, and then suddenly the forest to the left falls away...
Umbra: Lake Arthur
In the centre of a vast rippling lake stands an island, an outcropping of pure, untainted stone. Groves of ancient trees, their foliage an incredibly deep green, stand sentinel over the raw granite. A single tower of weathered grey rock juts from the island's south-eastern end, its sides creased and scarred by the elements. A delicate waterfall sparkles in Luna's light as it cascades from the tower's peak into the calm lake below, veiling the rough granite in shimmering silver. The lake waters surround the island, but Luna has provided a path that leads east across the crystal liquid.

Therru wanders down the lakeside to see if she can taste the umbral water.
Sepdet gestures out towards the lake. 'The leader of the crescent moons, Thorn-rhya, he has a cave out there. But he doesn't mind company.'
Blinks asks, 'He lives in Umbra?'
Sepdet shakes her head. 'Oh, no. I think he stays in the other world, most of the time.' She sounds wistful. 'Not safe any more to stay this side all time.'
Rholeen says 'Why?'
Sepdet walks down to the water's edge, finding the place where the moon's path of light touches the shore, and dabbles her hands in the water. 'Because... because the True World takes what's in the other world, and makes it more so. Bad city streets ... they're cold and cobwebbed and flow with blood in the cracks, and your feet crunch on broken glass of old needles, and ashes of burned money. The Enemy walks there. The forests out here are better - but you saw what the farmhouse is like. Wherever there's ill, the Enemy's spirits breed, and they roam free through the Umbra. It's a wilder place, and a more powerful one.'

It's also noteworthy that Sepdet managed to get the whole thing out! On a MUSH, no one can interrupt you before you press ENTER. Monologues are allowed.

Therru looks over at Sepdet, water dripping from her muzzle, then places an experimental foot on the moonlight in the water. It goes through, but slowly and with effort. Fascinated, she continues to dabble. Sepdet says 'It's safer with the moon's light - she's our sun, here, and the Enemy shuns her. But by day its creatures walk freer, dare to come closer. And there's things that aren't our enemies that are still too powerful to be properly safe. Wyld storms, and spirits that tread on leaves and make you want to hang in the branches forever, and dirt that pulls you down to your knees to press close against the earth.'
Rholeen frowns. 'I know this is an obvious question but ... isn't there anything we can do?'
Therru trots a few steps out onto the moonbridge, seemingly standing on the water. She tries to put her foot through the surface again.
Sepdet draws something that hums and sparks with a faint blue shimmer from under the cloth of her jacket at her hip, and holds the grey ceramic blade up to the moon. We fight,' she says softly, almost serenely, but the shadows behind her eyes are pained and painful to see on her young face.
Sepdet dropped Klaive.
Blinks stares at the klaive hungrily. A faraway look comes over his eyes.
Rholeen looks disturbed, and looks around almost like she is trying to drink it all in case it fades away like a forgotten dream.
Sepdet strokes the blade's edge with a finger, then puts the finger in her mouth and the fetish creature away. She sighs. 'You will too, soon enough.'
Therru manages to put a paw through the water that she is standing on. She dabbles it around for a moment, then, as if in revenge, the moonbridge gives way and dunks her in the lake.
Therru yipes and paddles to shore, the moonlight breaking around her in bright amused sparkles.
Sepdet's head comes up and she runs a few easy paces out onto the water, watching Therru's progress with hands on her hips. 'What did you say to it, Flame?'
Blinks jumps in after Therru. He splashes about happily and looks up to see if anyone else is coming in.
Therru swims to the shore and emerrges, shaking herself ruefully.
Rholeen walks to the shore, and watches carefully. 'Sepdet? Is this really another world? Or are we just seeing it differently?'
Blinks wades toward shore. He stops a few feet shore and picks at his nasty wet clothing in surprise.
Sepdet drops to a crouch, balancing carefully on the soles of her feet as the moonlight-dappled water ripples up and down gently beneath her.
'It's... it's the world behind the mirror. I don't know. It's almost another world now, for the humans have pulled theirs very far from spirits, magic, life.'
Therru looks at Sepdet. 'I did not say anything! I just wanted to see if I could put my foot through.
Sepdet nods solemnly at Therru. 'You succeeded.'
Therru trots down the beach a short distance, politely, before shaking herself off. Blinks steps to shore and shakes off just where he is.

Rholeen says, 'Is it really a mirror world? Right is left?'
Sepdet lifts one leg under her and spins around on one foot very carefully. 'No... no. Things are more what they really mean, here. The forest trees are alive, and growing. The city is a maze of glass, and squares, and things that move back and forth unceasingly like they don't know why. Birds don't fly... they dance across the sky. Right is very right, and left is just as left as it can be.'
Rholeen nods, her eyes a little glazed. 'Have you ever read the Narnia books?'
Sepdet shakes her head negative. 'I don't... can't... read very much.'
Therru wanders over to Sepdet, distracted, and pokes her with her nose. 'I have read them.'
Sepdet lays her hands on both sides of Therru's muzzle. just for a second so as not to confine. 'Tell me, then.' She tilts her chin back up to Rholeen. 'It's like this?'
Rholeen thinks back. 'Well, in the final book all the people travel to a world which is the the world. All the trees are more real, everything is - bigger. Not in size, but in being. The brights were brighter, the darks deeper. When I read that, it seemed so true, even if it was just a story.'
Sepdet looks taken aback. 'A human book?'
Therru nods.
Sepdet traces a sinuous line in the water. 'I wonder.' She grins. 'I'm glad, though. Gives you hope?'

After reading that log, you should see why I referrred to 'literary role-play' in the title of this article. Well-turned phrases are a joy in and of themselves. (Perhaps MUSHers redirect energy that would have gone to problem-solving into writing. I often find my writing skill deteriorates as the plot heats up.)

If you're considering joining GarouMUSH, you might find the quality of the writing intimidating. I know I do. When I'm with a group that's on a roll, spinning out a well-written story, and I blurt out some bare, mechanical action, I feel like a bug that just crawled across their fresh canvas. Other new players have told me they feel the same way. I've noticed that players' descriptive writing skills are generally proportional to how long they've played on GarouMUSH. I'm not sure whether this is cause or effect, but all of the players I've asked think GarouMUSH has improved their writing skills.

Characters and Moods

remember when Therru said she can immerse herself in her charactee more when no one can see her face? This applies to moods as well as characters. Look at the following log from a Gathering for the Departed (a Garou filneral). It's a short excerpt from the original log, and the players maintained the same solemn tone throughout. Could your face-to-face group do as well, before someone became too self-conscious and broke the mood? Note that, though only Desert speaks for most of the log, he doesn't take over; everyone can describe their reactions and posture without interrupting him. Their silent reflections set the sombre mood; less than a sixth of the original log is dialogue.

Desert leads along a faint trail down from the hilltop, and up onto another hill, and another. Before long, the mourning party is ascending into the mountains, where the stillness of the Umbral day is undisturbed by your passing. Few Garou have been here since the world was young. Every tree and every rock seems to watch as you pass, though you continue to move in near silence. Soon, the way leads to a small plateau overlooking the world.
Thunder Biter flattens his ears along his head as he follows Thunder-of-Gaia, still a little dazed and confused. A swift shadow darts over the plateau, and then vanishes back into the moonlight.
Moon Otter tags along towards the rear of the group, eyes and ears flitting about nervously.
Desert seems to find this place satisfactory. 'Place his body in the centre.'
Thunder Biter walks beside Thunder-of-Gaia with his tail lowered and his ears flat across his head. He starts to look around him for the first time, though, exploring with his eyes and nose this new place. Drifting down from above comes the shrill icicle of a bird cry. It shivers down your spine and vanishes into the silence of the Umbra. Looking up you see a vague form flitting across the moon.
Song-Weaver nods once and does as bidden. After placing the body in the centre she stands and walks to a place across from where Desert is. She turns to face him and returns to her own shape.
Thunder-of-Gaia stays to the front of the group, seemingly accepting both Harald and Chaser as belonging towards the front with the tribe of the fallen. He watches Song closely, though his posture shows more rage than mourning.
Desert gestures for the lot of you to settle in a circle around him. Another shadow floats over the plateau, and then another. The shapes slowly start to take form as small specks drifting through the umbral sky.
Thunder Biter stands beside Thunder-of-Gaia silently, watching with wide, curious eyes everything around him.
Desert takes up a slender knife and slices the fur and the fat from Earth-Child's left side as he speaks, his words forestalling any objection. 'In my time at Wheel, I have fought beside Bloodfang, and he is dead. I have fought beside Broken Claw, and he is dead. I have fought beside Earth-Child, and now he is dead. So, too, have I fought beside SongWeaver. I have ever been friend to the Talons, and I am honoured to sing the Gathering on this night.'
Chaser remains silent, eyes narrowed, but her stance tenses at the movement of the knife, and the delicate nostrils flare. A diving swoop and a hoarse cry is all the warning you are given as a large eagle dives down towards you, and then past you, hurtling down past the plateau.
Desert makes deeper incisions now, revealing bloody sinew and jagged ribs. 'There is a story my people tell, that the First Garou were of the Red Wolves, and that the Red Wolves will be the last Garou to fall, survived only by traitors who turn to Zhongcairen the Wyrm and to Shejishi the Weaver.'
Desert continues his grisly work, laying open Earth-Child's entrails.
More cries fill the air, and you catch a glimpse of a peregrine falcon hurtling past you.

Conclusion

Much of my article on computers and interactive fiction in the first issue of this magazine was a search for the way out of the puzzle-solving, goal-directed, genre-based rut that interactive fiction seems to have fallen into. On MUSHes, I've found the way out. People stop acting like puzzle-solvers when they start acting like authors, and they start acting like authors when they have a good medium and an audience. The problem of freedom versus drama (that player-freedom is at odds with authorial-direction), and the worries I expressed under the heading 'Multi-reader interactive fiction' (that people would not be able to view all parts of the plot, or get key items for puzzles), were stated under the assumption that some author-on-high was handing one plot down to the readers. They disappear when the readers are also the writers.

In that same article, I drooled over the introduction of virtual reality to interactive fiction at some point in the near future. But the flashy graphic interface will kill the world of carefully crafted prose. Instead of writing, players will have a graphical emotion interface - click here for a grin, there for a glower. They will be that much less authors, creating one out of an infinite number of possible actions, and more merely players, choosing from a menu.

It may be that these are the glory days of the literate MUSH, which will soon join Infocom in that great bit-bucket in the sky. Virtual reality MUSH players will not slide back into self-centred puzzle-solving. They will still be responsible for their own stories. It may be that, further down the line, VR will allow fine muscular control over virtual puppets, opening up the world of acting and a new kind of creativity. But for now, you might want to log in to a good text mush before they disappear.

GarouMUSH is at cesium.clock.org (17.255.4.43), port 7000. It is not currently accepting new players, but you can "connect guest guest" for a look around.

Phil Goetz is a doctoral student of computer science at the University of Buffalo, specializing in artificial intelligence. He has played and written role-playing and adventure games for most of his life.