Circumstances & Situations

[Ling]

I had a really bizarre idea.  This is another half baked thing inspired by
all the talk about relative size and difficultly in representing them in a
mud.

Would it be sane to have a mud which contained an internally consistant
map but the players do not usually travel around in rooms as per norm.
Instead, the players get something like:


  > enter city
  I join the Yut gate queue. [description of stuff in front] [pause]
  My turn comes, I show the first guard my ring.  The guards bow and lets
  me pass.  I have arrived at the city of Rathe.
  > go to the fire tavern
  I walk down Memory Lane. [pause]
  Taking the 3rd left for Sage Rul. [pause]
  I step into the main forum.  Although it is not market day, there is a
  large crowd gathering beneath the balcony of the Rathe Tower.  A man
  is making a speech to the crowd. [pause]
  [user decides it might be interesting]
  > investigate
  I am in the forum.  <description of the forum>
  > listen to man
  Blah, blah, blah, no, blah, blah, blah, taxes, blah, blah, blah.


The above is not quite right but I hope to convey the general idea across.
The central idea being that the meat of the mud isn't about simulating the
world physically unless required.  The mud would be orientated about
circumstances and situations the players will come across.  If they desire
to investigate, then the mud creates that situation as per norm to any
other mud (although the usual concept of rooms could be switched to
something more abstract).  There is still the problem of time but this
sort of removes the problem of having a vast tract of the mud dedicated to
the wilderness, described room by room.  Instead, the players will only be
pinged when a potential encounter results.

This means the characters will have to be vaguely intelligent to get
things to work.  Anyway, the main theme is that the player will only get
notified when anything remotely interesting results, otherwise the
character will quite happily attend to her own needs.

Seems to me this sort of thing would only work with an rpg mud.

  |    Ling Lo, freshwater fish (cod variant)
_O_O_  EEE, Loughborough University, England          Another 'Screemer!