[MUD-Dev] Character evolution

[coder at ibm.net]

On 27/08/97 at 07:54 PM, "Travis Casey" <efindel at io.com> said: >>
From: clawrenc at cup.hp.com
>> 
>> This raises a point I've been musing on for a while:
>> 
>>   The general approach (assumed orthodoxy?) of most of the list is to
>> create a game world which largely resembles or simulates RL in terms
>> of physical mechanics and such, and then attempts to extend it via
>> magic, religion and other similar techniques to add a fantastical
>> entertaining aspect.
...
>All of the ideas you presented are also worlds which simulate RL in
>most ways, but vary it in others... they just vary things more than
>the typical mud, or in ways that seem strange to most people.

True.  I realised that after posting it.  The standard approach is to
take a familiar format and then only vary those parts that you wish to
direct attention to.  What ends up specifically annoying me about this
is that it becomes an implicit canon.

Of all the membership of this list, other than myself and Nathan, are
there __ANY__ not doing a fairly standard variation on a fantasy
world?  Oh, I know the details will be different, you'll have various
forms of internal economies, or magic systems, or family or clan
systems, or interesting forms of heavy/light RP, or whatever.  But the
base structure of a glorified medieval world overstocked with magical
touches...

>I can't think of *any* SF or fantasy world that doesn't mostly 
>resemble RL, and I think there's a good reason for that.  Quite
>simply, if you came up with a world that was different from RL even
>down to the basics, there would be no frame of reference for readers
>or players to understand things -- the only real possibility would be
>to start things off with a long lecture about what the basic rules of
>this world are.  Even then, most people probably wouldn't be able to
>"wrap their heads around it."

True.  It is for the same reason that so few have read "The Well At
Worlds End".  Its adherance to the actual structure of its time is so
authentic (including language) that few have the perseverance to get
much further than, "Uhh, yeah.  Weird words."

>The closest things I can think of to worlds which are fundamentally
>different from the real world that we're all familiar with are parts
>of the real world that none of us really have direct experience with
>--
>namely, relativity and quantum mechanics.  Each of these seems very
>strange to humans at first glance, simply because things moving at
>relativistic speeds or existing at quantum scales don't work the way 
>we intuitively think of things as working.

A long long time ago I read a very short short story where the
function of rality changed locally with great rapidity.  Thus a
sidewalk down the side of a street could suddenly turn into glue, or a
river, or the back of the great worm etc.  The people in the story
attempted to live a fairly ordinary semi-modern life )home, offices,
work, cars, stores etc) by excercising their own talents to mutate
themselves along with the localised world changes.  Fairly to so
rapidly or appropriately mutate constituted a form of darwinian
selection.

Unfortunately I have no idea where I read it...

On the same chord, I've long wished to do a game based on Laumer's,
"The man in black."  Such a personal hounding by a diety and creator
is intensely attractive to me.  The problem of course it that no
everyone can be the Man in Black with his single nature.

--
J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw at null.net
----------(*)                              Internet: coder at ibm.net
...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...