[MUD-Dev] Nation of shopkeepers

[Adam Wiggins]

[Jeff K:]
> Still the msot laughed at announced feature of UOL is that you cna become a
> baker and spend all your tiem baking bread...

I don't find it all the surprising.  You could do this in the Ultima single
player games, as well.  Really the best way to make money was to turn
raw materials into finished goods - grow cotton, harvest it, bale it, take
it to the loom and weave it into cloth, take that to the tailor's and turn
it into clothing that you can sell for a good price.  Of course, in
the single player game you rarely actually spend a lot of time doing
any of these things unless you were really hard up for cash, but it still
kicked ass that you *could* do them.  It makes the world seem real and
immersive; and also makes you as a player think, "Wow, if they put
that much detail into little things like that, IMAGINE what they've
done with the 'big' stuff?"
Any good mud will let you make a living doing completely mundane things;
this is just part of modeling a world.  Of course, most of these things
will be handled by NPCs most of the time...players just tend to show up
in certain parts of the econmic chain, such as selling pelts that they've
hunted for, hiring out their abilities as a blacksmith, or healing those
in need in exchange for a small donation to the glory of their god.  It
just so happens that many players prefer the more adventurous and glorious
roles of traditional RPG 'heros'.