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Each roleplaying game is set in a world and this is one of the most important aspects of these games. It is not just a series of scenes that provide a stage. At least it need not be. For a game to work it must be perceived by the players as a living and breathing whole, and their game characters must become a part of that world as much as possible. If a player can forget being in control of a character it becomes easier to roleplay and the entire game becomes more enjoyable. It is to a large extend the same as how a good book can draw the reader in, and make her forget for a short time she is actually reading a story.
To do so game worlds must consist of more than a scene. I will for the moment restrict myself to text based games; because these are the most common for on-line roleplaying games. It is obvious that the world is more than a textual description of locations. Objects and characters are equally part of the game world. They provide a greater variety of ways the player's character can interact with the game. In the case of creatures they can even provide a feeling that the world exists and is active without the player being involved. This feeling is typically hard to achieve on the more static single player games, and even on the pen-and-paper roleplaying games.
Besides the physical (in as far as bits of text can be considered physical) components of the game world there's the less tangible parts of it. Like e.g. history or the laws of physics. If the game has a sense of history it gains a credibility because things tend to fit together in a natural way. The same is true if there's a laws of physics underlying the game world. The latter is obviously the realm of the people who make the game work, e.g. the coders. And for most roleplaying games there's a set theme that controls to a large extend the history. But it is the task of the world builders and designers to make everything come together in a game world that the players can immerse themselves in. |
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