(Continued) Polly’s Tale

Why won’t they role-play?

Everyone is in the same real-world room. Everyone can see each other in real life. They’re in MUD, but only shallowly; they’re still connected in Reality. Everything they do in the virtual world is subject to the same peer pressure as in the real one, because they still feel like they’re their real selves. They’re constrained.

Yet I’ve played D&D. I know that people can be connected in the real world and still role-play. MUD offers even more opportunity to experiment with identity—precisely what my friends seek. So, why won’t they step over the line?

They need permission to role-play.

As MUD’s programmer and the group’s overall leader, I’m the obvious choice to give them this permission. Yet how can I do that? And how will they know what to do when I’ve given it anyway? They won’t take direction—I can’t say, “Pretend to be someone a little more tolerant than you are,” and expect them to go with it. The best I can do is to demonstrate role-playing in action.

Yet even then, there’s a strong pull back to reality. I can create a character and pretend it’s a pirate or a monk or an enthusiastically chivalrous knight, but they’ll still identify the character with me. That could be tricky, as there’s no shielding context: Pretending to be an upper-class twit is fine if you’re acting in a play, but bizarre if you do it while playing chess. Somehow, I have to show that MUD is a shielding context.

If I’m going to break the mold, I’m going to have to hit it hard. I formulate a fiendish plan.

I create a character called Polly. Polly is a secondary character I use for testing things in the game. I say that I chose the name because Polly is like a parrot. Everyone knows Polly is my debug character.

When I inherited MUD1 from Roy, it didn’t implement gender. This was entirely due to Roy’s rush to write as much of the program as possible in the short period of time available to him; he felt that gender could easily be added later, whereas things such as communication had priority ¹. As far as both Roy and I were concerned, gender was merely a linguistic issue forced on us by the English language; the only changes it meant for the virtual world concerned personal pronouns in event descriptions.

Polly may be the stereotypical name for a parrot, but it’s a female name. This gives me my excuse. I add gender. Players are asked, “By what name shall I call you?” then “What sex do you wish to be?” Naturally, I use Polly to test my new code.

So Polly is no longer a parrot. Polly is a cheerful yet feisty girl who likes helping people but gets cross if they patronize her.

If I’d added gender to MUD and not created Polly, what would have happened? The chances are, people would not have played with switched gender, afraid of the disparaging remarks about their sexuality that doing so would attract.

I run that risk, of course, but I’m confident that I’ve designed Polly well enough that no one is going to see her as a sexual object, just as an ersatz sister. I also have the advantage of not actually caring if people say I’m a transvestite behind my back.

Luckily, Polly works.

People know I’m Polly, but they also know I’m not Polly; I thereby illustrate the massive gulf it’s possible to create between player and character. As MUD’s programmer, my kudos is sufficiently strong enough that I pull it off. People think, “If Richard can have a female persona, maybe I’ll try it myself.”

They do. The gates are open, and new lands await. Players laugh and joke about having female characters, but their other characters also begin to act in smaller, more incrementally different ways. Players have a freedom that they couldn’t have in real life.

I’m ashamed, because I’ve been manipulative, but I believe that overall I did the right thing.

Besides, I’m rather fond of Polly.