[MUD-Dev] Re: BUILDERS: Ferries

[Marian Griffith]

On Tue 09 Dec, Derrick Jones wrote:

> On Sun, 7 Dec 1997, Marian Griffith wrote:
> > On Sat 06 Dec, s001gmu at nova.wright.edu wrote:
> > > On Fri, 5 Dec 1997, Sauron wrote:
> > > 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.

> > Having a map is not the critical issue. You need to have a lot of back-
> > ground information of  how areas look,  how they interact  and how they
> > came to be to be able to create a consistent world.
> > You also run into a problem of scale. Certain areas have to be more de-
> > tailed than others and to keep everything into scale you will find that
> > you end up with countless rooms of 'wilderness'.  E.g. to create a city
> > you need rooms that are no bigger across than a couple of meters  to do
> > it justice. The same amount of detail on your 'plains of the east' will
> > leave you with an area of thousands of rooms across.  And if you decide
> > to make rooms in the plains  bigger by a hundredfold  than those in the
> > city you have effectively shrunk the plains to city size.  And lost the
> > scale of the mud.  Crossing the plains is no harder than walking across
> > the city. There's a more elaborate summary of this topic on the website
> > in case you want to discuss this more elaborately.

> Of course, most clients have an equivalent to #2000 east to move a
> character 2000 rooms east.  (you'd have to add in breaks to prevent the
> mud from cutting you off for spamming?)
> The trick with scale is to increase the time it takes to travel larger
> rooms.  (You can replace 'rooms' with 'areas' or 'locations' for different
> designs)  Therefore, a player can walk across a small town almost
> instantaniously, but the 'plains of the east' may take 2 full minutes to
> cross, even tho both sections have the same number of areas described.

[quoting from my own web page about building]
**Plains** are the hardest thing to describe properly in a game world. They
combine the problems of forests with those of streets.  There is nothing to
prevent a player to travel in just about any direction which isn't possible
in all practicality.  And players can see many leagues, which does not work
well with the rooms-and-exits organisation.

Finally there is the issue of **relative sizes**.  Inside, rooms reasonably
match  the actual locations in size  (ignoring for now  the special cases).
Planes,  at the other extreme,  but this really is true  for just about any
outdoor region,  have rooms sized in kilometers or more.  Fixed size rooms,
as have been proposed,  would lead to deserts of tens of thousands of rooms
across.  All with identical descriptions.  Clearly this would be tedious to
create and even more tedious to travel.
[end quote]

The problem as I see it is that there simply is no convenient way to create
the richness of a natural environment in a way that is both simple to build
and pleasant to play.  A region 2000 rooms across is impossible to write. A
game that has the same physical size compressed in a dozen rooms  stretches
credibility. Not to mention that it totally upsets any realistic travelling
times to the point of being silly.
The best solution that I can see  is having a world where travel takes time
according to the actual distance being crossed.  If a plain is a hundred km
across  then it will take some ten mud days  or so  of dedicated walking to
cross it.
Clearly that would majorly change the nature of a game set in such a world.
Travelling across the plain would indeed be a major expedition  and players
could be expected to prepare carefully for the undertaking.  Also there can
be no more quick equipment or experience runs in remote areas. Simply since
getting there itself is taking too much time.

> Many muds I've seen use a 1:48 time scale (30 min RL to 1 mud-day), so the
> plains would be crossed in 1.5 hrs mud-time, and the town in less than a
> minute (most players wouldn't notice a 1 second delay over the course of a
> dozen moves).  Now neither of these times is anything close to realistic,
> but realistic times (3.5 hours per week walking) would be unplayable.

It would be unplayable  if you expect an ordinary game.  Games designed for
this situation  may still be quite playable.  Roleplaying would play a more
significant role, since there is less else to do. Roleplaying here is meant
to be taken as 'acting out a character'. And the travelling itself could be
made more interesting.  At the moment, in the typical mud, those plains are
in themselves uninteresting. This need not be the case, without much change
to the game mechanics one expects in a mud.  Suppose there are nomads roam-
ing the plains.  If an attack by those would be dangerous  (the way the can
not be on a mud at the moment)  then the players crossing those plains have
to be alert for signs of possible attacks.  Add to that a need for food and
water and dangerous animals roaming the world.  All this could provide lots
of entertainment  and adrenaline rushes for the players  while they spent a
week or more real playing time crossing an area.

> Fast travel times can be a 'Good Thing' for two reasons...walking isn't
> all that interesting, and the mechanics can be hdden from the players.
> Also it increases the chance of a character performing a dramatic rescue.
> (They can act more quickly on information, and can get to the 'scene'
> before all te action is over.)

Depends on if you feel this should be allowed. Dramatic rescues can also be
considered cheap plot devices. If a party gets into bad trouble they should
have prepared better, or the gameworld should be somewhat less dangerous.

Not to mention that walking is not the fastest way to cross large distances
in any case. It would at least give a good reason to have mounts of various
types and perhaps other travelling equipment  to speed up time spend in the
field.

Marian
--
Yes - at last - You. I Choose you. Out of all the world,
out of all the seeking, I have found you, young sister of
my heart! You are mine and I am yours - and never again
will there be loneliness ...

Rolan Choosing Talia,
Arrows of the Queen, by Mercedes Lackey