[MUD-Dev] Graphic MUDS/Ultima Online

[Alex Oren]

On Wed, 13 Aug 1997 20:40:23 PST8PDT, Adam Wiggins wrote:

} As for the janitor example above, that's a little trickier.  There has
} to be a pretty good reason for not revealing the secret to just anyone.
} The most obvious reason, of course, is that your character fears for their
} safety by sharing such knowledge.  This doesn't work, however, when it's
} just up on a user website somewhere.  I can't think of any direct
} solutions right off hand, but one thing I *love* doing is giving false
} information.  Ie, if you constantly hear NPCs gossiping about so-and-so
} being a secret underground resistance leader or morphing into a dragon
} at night, you're going to be less inclined to believe it when someone
} says 'that old fool is actually a mafia boss.'  You'd only believe it,
} perhaps, when you actually saw the underground opperation going on, and
} presumably then some other reason would exist for you not sharing.

Consider the following:

There are 42 different street sweepers in the underworld.  They have similar
names, although each has a different ("true") name.
One of them, named Moloch, is actually the supreme ruler of the underworld.
Uttering the ruler's name invokes a powerful curse on the hapless character
(let's say a sure destruction within the next 2 game hours).
The existence of the curse, and the fact that it is non revokable, is well
known.
As a "safety", the ruler will change it's name after it has been uttered 7
times.

--
Have fun,
Alex.