Bartle's taxonomy is interesting because it gives a way to structure a game based on which play styles the games is intended to cater. If you've ever thought about starting your own game with caveats like "more competitive", or "deeper characterization" then it gives a framework around how to being building. It turns out that staffing a competitive game with nothing but competitive players burns out, as does a character driven game that focuses too much on the characters and not the world in which the dwell.


I've enjoyed playing with the ideas herein, and thought I'd share.


Warning
:
This taxonomy is targeted towards MUDs (which I doubt most remember), but it abstracts to LARPs easily
.


Here's the YouTube version:

youtu.be/yxpW2ltDNow



Here's the original written version:

mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm