Computer Support for Collaborative Dramatic Art

There is little question that current role-playing MUD systems provide entertainment for their users. Nevertheless, experience with these systems, however entertaining, often falls short of the compelling, rich and varied experiences we associate with dramatic art. This limitation is in part due to the nature of control in MUDs. Control within a MUD is, by de nition, distributed; unlike conventional dramatic media (e.g., the novel, the stage play), MUDs eliminate the boundary between artist and audience, empowering the participants with complete creative control and making them share responsibility for the creation of their own experiences. While distributed control is a compelling strength of the MUD experience, it is also a principal limitation. In current systems, each player relies on the activities of a collection of participants to de ne her MUD experience. These participants are of varied skill, commitment and ability. Consequently, their contribution to the overall structure of a MUD is equally varied. In addition, MUD participants lack the global awareness of the unfolding dramatic context needed to ensure that their actions are consistent with subtle or complicated plot lines or plot lines whose current activities are distributed geographically about the MUD world. And they lack the global coordination and planning abilities required to construct aspects of dramatic structure that stretch over time (e.g., measured rise in con ict, sustained balance between antagonists,