BUILDERS: Ferries

[s001gmu at nova.wright.edu]

On Fri, 5 Dec 1997, Sauron wrote:

Attribution?

> > My first mortal mud, Silicon Realms, had twelve "ferry" rooms to  various
> > parts of the mud (there were only 2-2.5k rooms in the world) but no way to
> > access them via land.  That was an easy out for the imps and made player's
> > lives easier but at the same time made the world seem less real.  When I
> > think of my own world, which I don't even know as well as I knew the SR
> > world, I can envision it as a  connected planet (the map on my wall
> > doesn't hurt).  I found out after months of playing SR that I had the
> > world completely turned upside down and inside out and didn't know it well
> > at all--although I know the sequence of directions to get in and out of
> > the various areas I really had no concept of the world as a whole.  That
> > was a disappointing discovery.
> 
> In order to avoid this exact scenario in my mud I have started with a
> map of the world, creating continents, oceans, major landmarks and other
> places of interest which will be the majority of the programmed rooms on
> the mud when I and my co-God Locke are done. One of the challenges I
> have found both interesting and enjoying about working with an entirely
> original theme is that of creating a believable world with an enthraling
> history which draws people in. As of this moment I am working on
> refining that very history. The map of the world (known as Nighton) is
> completed and Locke is "enlarging" my basic sketches. All in all, I
> think that the world should not develop around the rooms, but the rooms
> around the world allowing for expandablitly and for a dynamic and
> changing world. For example, you have an initial 12,000 rooms that cover
> the central cities on each of the major continents. You can then at your
> leisure expand upon these major centers further out into your continents
> thereby expanding your playable world without redesigning the entire
> world. Many muds run into the problem of players "wearing out" areas and
> becoming bored with what they have. This provides a fairly easy solution
> for one who does not want to program the entire world beforehand (which
> I intend to do).

Amen.  :)  I think having a full world map also makes solving the problem 
of long distance travel a little easier.. at least it's easier to keep it 
a realistic solution.
 
> Concerning the matter of IC travel across long distances such as oceans
> or "blank area" between important areas, I think it should take some
> time for a player, however, they shouldn't have to sit at their terminal
> for two hours waiting to finish crossing an ocean. I believe if you
> follow the general rule: "keep it realistic (as applying to RL) only if
> it does not interfere with the overall enjoyment of the players" works
> effectively in this situation.

The difficulty with doing long distance travel instantaeously is that, 
unless you have some teleport mechanism (magically or techonology based),
characters SHOULDN'T be able to travel vast distances in the blink of an 
eye.  You have an inconsistancy in your game world.

I fully intend to have such teleportation devices (magically based as it 
fits our very loose fantasy theme) available, to increase the 
'fun-factor', but leave the option for the normal over-land routes, 
adding the 'adventure-factor' for those who are willing to undertake such 
a journey.

A word or two about our rather vauge world layout concepts might help 
clarify a bit.  Our world is probably going to be only moderately 
populated by humans, who mostly stay clustered in and around cities.
My own view is that the big-bad-wilderness is just too harsh for anything 
smaller than a grouping of about 1,000 + humans to survive for any length 
of time.  The wilderness between cities is QUITE wild, and travel 
off-road is QUITE deadly (unless you REALLY know what you are about).  
Cities stay in touch through some pretty heavy-duty magical 
communications links, and the occasional large caravan, as well as the 
teleportation devices.  Magical communication is not terribly expensive, 
but not really cheap either (say, roughly equiv to a call from NY to 
Tokyo), and magical teleportaion is VERY expensive (say, roughly equiv to 
price of a plane ticket, ordered the day of the flight, for xmas eve, no 
discounts available).  Overland travel is risky, but FAR cheaper than 
teleportation, and therefore still used a lot.  For players, using 
teleportation to shortcut long travel times not only keeps the fun 
factor, but helps impoverish the players from time to time... always 
something worth while, IMHO.  ;)  having the overland trade caravans also 
adds the possibility of actually exploring the world, and giving newer 
adventurers something to do to help gain $, noteriety and experience.

We haven't decided if we want to have trans-contental transportation... 
it never came up, actually. :)  I imagine we'd handle it in similar 
fashion... tho I doubt sea-travel would be as exciting as land travel.  
We may just end up opting for a Pangea-esque world. :-)  Either that or 
say that sea travel was possible, in the distant past, so there are 
cities established across the sea, but it is no longer feasable (too 
dangerous or something), so only teleport is available now.  *shrug*  
something we need to think about, obviously. :)

No matter what we come up with, though, keeping it consistant with the 
rest of the game world is of paramount importance.

-Greg