[MUD-Dev] Fear of magic (was:Usability and interface)

[Chris Gray]

[ChrisL:]

:One could champion the idea of reducing players to the level of
:monsters/NPC's as part of the game definition...

OK, I'll nibble.

This would be just a little bit extreme, I think. This works fine with
games like 'rogue' and 'hack', where you can play several full games
in a day (especially with tools like 'rogue-a-matic'). In a game where
a human player invests several days (or weeks, months, years) in a
character, treating them as fodder will produce an unhappy human player.
That's just the nature of the beast. Some players interested only in
combat go through several characters before they get a "good" one, but
once they do, they like to keep it.

However, many MUDs have a few long-term NPC's that are not intended to
go away, either because they cannot be killed, they come back quickly,
or they are good enough to avoid situations where they could get killed.
Reducing the in-game distinctions between such NPC's and player-run
characters is usually considered good, and has been discussed here before.

So, in some senses yes, in others, no.

--
Chris Gray   cg at ami-cg.GraySage.Edmonton.AB.CA