On Sat, 30 Aug 1997, Daniel Koepke wrote:
> On Sat, 30 Aug 1997, Andrew Helm wrote:
>
> -+Studying our words can help us understand our underlying intentions
> -+and motivations. I hope you will reconsider whether "how much you
> -+piss-off your players vs. how much you can before they leave" is
> -+really the same as creating challenges for your players which will
> -+increase their enjoyment. After all, one can easily make decisions
> -+which will frustrate the players without adding to their enjoyment
> -+of the mud.
>
> Ah, and your constant nit-picks over how someone phrases things is a
> clear indication of your raging lust for simians...Thank you Dr. Helm,
> should I be paying you for these therapy sessions, now?
This is in essence a problem with principle, not terminology. Yet
I don't know how to express myself more clearly without essentially
requoting my previous message to you. If you cannot go beyond my
words to my meaning this discussion will never get anywhere. Try
rereading what you just quoted me saying.
Ideas can be implemented which will make life harder on the players,
yet you will find that not every idea which makes life harder on the
players will increase their enjoyment of the game. When you simplify
your goal to a matter of "pissing-off" the players instead of
increasing their enjoyment, you commit a common yet dangerous error
of thinking. To judge things by the amount that they frustrate
players (always being careful, of course, since we would not want
to "piss-off" them to the point that they leave) will prevent you
from discriminating between good ideas and bad ideas unlike a person
who takes the harder goal of working for the player's enjoyment.
> Hence, I must mean that I am a sadist that likes
> to play out grotesque fantasies of enraging complete strangers over a
> mud...of course, it's all so clear now...
Don't misunderstand: I know that your intentions are good. The point
is that an administrator can inadvertently undermine his own good
intentions by equating a method of "pissing-off" the players with
increasing the players overall enjoyment of the game. As I said, if
you implement the right challenges you will find that your players
end up being "frustrated," as it were, with the challenges, not the
administration. When you successfully make a distinction between
merely "pissing-off" you players and giving them challenges which
increase their enjoyment, you will truly have learned the Art
of Administration.
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